Probably worthwhile to use ring of royal grandeur if you have it just so you can swap in another piece or two that may overtake unity. How are you liking the frostburn? I'm jelly =3.
Yeah both T&T and frostburn are hard to get. Either would be useful. Frostburn has that 10-15% cold, and ~40% chance to freeze instead of chill.
With how blizzard has (temporarily?) increased elite power damage significantly, I'm poking around with 3pc ashera, 4pc blackthorne, 3pc aughilds. May be temporary because ashera 4set is just so great - if you haven't tried it.. most people who do become believers very quickly. Usually if I want mitigation I would just go with string of ears (or hwoj), but currently the elite power change is making me curious about blackthorne again. I'm not having much difficulty due to all the mitigation you already get with spirit walk and horrify, but I'm not used to dying at all whereas now in groups on T5 it can happen (esp with the scaling monsters get with more players). Anyway this experiment may not last long because it is hard to lose Lord Harrington's belt and warzecian(spelling?) bracers because both can add to rifting speed so darn much - but if it's a group thing where you're limited in speed anyway...
It is hard to get 3 good pieces of blackthorne because of all the fixed stat rolls on several pieces. But pants/chest are fairly easy to get a good version of, and I finally lucked into a belt that had all the stats I want... allowing me to reroll that fixed life per second on it.
Note there is a bug currently where +haunt damage on gear is not working (or +locust damage?). Though despite that monsters still die faster than they used to with the fetish change. I still feel very comfortable in torment 4/5, but some elite powers are also now doing much more damage (I am hugging that horrify+100% armor hard). People are unsure if that is a bug or intended., hopefully blizzard will tell us soon, and at the very least fix up the skill bonuses.
I personally like the crit change, you waste less time trying to snapshot crit. I think takuto does not have a Quetzcoatl, but does have a Jeram (yes?!). And that's definitely a way to go in such a situation. I'm personally looking for either frostburn or tasker+theo to put in the gloves slot as my off item right now.
The other sets aren't very inspiring, and the survivability boost from ashera's is really amazing (including the healing from templar, and 5s hex that enchantress does etc). IDK. I also look at my followers as a damage boost, because they are very well geared for me personally - with the furnace weapon, pet summoning legendaries, and a knockback bow (and some others).
There are definitely great items for other slots and a few are mentioned in the opening post, but mainly it can be good to go view all the legendary items available for each slot on battletnet's main site in the game guide (though sometimes they are missing one or two.) The main off item I use are the bracers which give +50% move speed for a few seconds after breaking something, I might use goldwrap instead if a good one dropped (just for the gold to craft a few more gems). http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/
Heya, well I would run fetish army in a slot if I got zuni boots (would still use quetzcoatl though). And I would definitely consider using tasker and theo in gloves slot just to buff the fetish (probably keeping 4set ashera and 3set aughilds). Though I would use frostburn over tasker (both gloves are hard to get though).
I do have a mask of Jeram and ~+75% fire gear available to use in a bats/pet setup (no tasker/theo), it's just not as good for me personally, by a huge margin.
I really am impressed with the haunt and fetish change. I find I'm clearing Torment 5 slightly faster than I used to clear Torment4 with this, and I still don't have Jade6set or Zuni4set. Haunt will fly far off and pull monsters off screen, who will stumble in at half health. And fetishs add a lot of damage and distract/tank things for you.
Hey I updated this slightly to reflect the fetish changes. They are now quite useful. The proc chance is still modified by the proc modifier on spells (a hidden number), and the cold spells proc them quite nicely as haunt has the highest coefficient possible. The change to make haunt fly 70 yards to another monster when the current one dies is very noticeable in play. Horrify with the armor is even better now.
Hey apologies, fast reply. Very time constrained IRL atm.
I am short handing the info for sure, it is just that generally slower weapons have higher damage per hit (so yes, slower means higher base damage). But 2hander vs 1hand+offhand are equalish. Generally the offhand's stats bring it up to even on "average". Offhand can have 10% crit and some +skill bonus, and more INT for 1hand+offhand, and you'll average out to the same-ish damage. So it's somewhat up to whatever you have the best gear for. 2handers a bit better at lower gear, 1h+offhand same or better (on average) later on due to crit scaling well as you add +critdamage.
A slow 1hander gets some of the best of both.
Thunderfury has a very strong proc, and a well rolled one will generally be better in play due to its damage starting instantly (and chaining up to 40yards). But the Utar's roar is mentioned because it's very good, craftable, and will eventually scale better with EG 6set jade harvester -- but you are generally best off waiting until you have such a set before worrying about min maxing around it since other items will drop btwn now and then.
Hey Oni! Yeah and I would add the caveat that it's not a straight 7% advantage to Utar's, there are other sources of weapon damage like offhand/rings/neck that dilute the effect somewhat. It's more like 5-5.5% better for the weapon damage part of the equation. I mean you probably did the right thing, I would reroll weapon damage too on a weapon that was otherwise good and had a socket =D.
I'm sure you know, but at some point it's best to focus on other pieces and not go crazy. Though definitely later game it becomes about getting better versions of the same piece (and finally getting 6set and 4set bonuses of jade harvester or zuni).
Added a note in the opening post about Tall Man's Finger and Ukhapian serpent for high torment.
If you don't mind losing the ring damage, the mega zombie dog has 2700% the health of a normal dog and I find mine generally survives on torment 6, allowing you to get use out of your Ukhapian serpent. Normally T6 monsters near instantly kill zombie dogs. You can summon the mega dog via the circle of life passive, then swap the talent to something else, per usual. String of ears belt is also excellent.
Hey Oni. Yeah I've been doing the math on the different weapons, and +cold vs other things.
The TLDR (too long, didn't read) version is that the +cold weapons are same or better on paper than thunderfury, despite the possible INT loss (though you could get lucky and roll +damage +20% cold + int + socket. since attack speed doesn't increase dot damage, reroll it if it shows up).
The upside of TF is that it'll hit things around the room and be chaining before you get all your dots set up, and will usually be higher effective damage as a result. But on single target the +cold weapons may pull ahead a tiny bit. And you would definitely prefer the +cold weapon (or a 2hander) if you had something like jade harvester 6set (since thunderfury proc adds nothing to the 6set soul harvest effect).
Utar's roar, because of the slightly slower attack speed, innately adds 7% more damage to dots than a 1.4speed sword. Of course if you have a decent Azurewrath.. it has such nice passives that it may make up the difference =D. Plus farming chiltara is not known to be a fun activity, especially since you would likely need to make many Utar's Roars to get a great one, hopefully they patch her to show up more often soon.
Azurewrath has nice secondaries (chance to freeze), but Utar's Roar is craftable at blacksmith and better from a damage perspective since it's a 1.3 attack speed weapon (azurewrath is 1.4). Since dots do not scale with attack speed, they hit harder with slower weapons.
It requires finding Chiltara to get the legendary crafting drop, it's best to do this with a friend -- make separate games and go looking for chiltara (you can log in and out looking for the Cavern of Frost bounty in Act3). She's not guaranteed to be in there so you have to go in and check. What I've done is get a few friends who are also interested and then make separate games, look for the rare monster -- then have the others join our game if they find them. Blizzard says they will increase the spawn rate of Chiltara soon, I hope this is so.
TBH I want to say yes on the Ashera's. In multi player the pet buffs+damage are probably semi equal to the elite damage on blackthorne, plus they distract enemies. The 20% and 100resist are nice. Moreso you could have boots with up to +15% spirit barrage, and chest can have up to +15% haunt on it, currently I don't think your blackthorne can be enchanted into this =|.
I love the idea of 4set blackthorne, but it's hard to get great blackthorne pieces due to them rolling with so many pre-determined stats like life per second.
I'll try to make it more obvious in the opening post. You are not the first person to ask this in the thread - there is helpful stuff if you read through people's comments they talk about what they've tried and what works for them.
"4th passive is optional - I often use circle of life to get 3 dogs then change it to either grave injustice, jungle fortitude, or bad medicine (for groups) The dogs do not despawn when the talent is changed." you do need dogs for the offhand to work.
With how blizzard has (temporarily?) increased elite power damage significantly, I'm poking around with 3pc ashera, 4pc blackthorne, 3pc aughilds. May be temporary because ashera 4set is just so great - if you haven't tried it.. most people who do become believers very quickly. Usually if I want mitigation I would just go with string of ears (or hwoj), but currently the elite power change is making me curious about blackthorne again. I'm not having much difficulty due to all the mitigation you already get with spirit walk and horrify, but I'm not used to dying at all whereas now in groups on T5 it can happen (esp with the scaling monsters get with more players). Anyway this experiment may not last long because it is hard to lose Lord Harrington's belt and warzecian(spelling?) bracers because both can add to rifting speed so darn much - but if it's a group thing where you're limited in speed anyway...
It is hard to get 3 good pieces of blackthorne because of all the fixed stat rolls on several pieces. But pants/chest are fairly easy to get a good version of, and I finally lucked into a belt that had all the stats I want... allowing me to reroll that fixed life per second on it.
There are definitely great items for other slots and a few are mentioned in the opening post, but mainly it can be good to go view all the legendary items available for each slot on battletnet's main site in the game guide (though sometimes they are missing one or two.) The main off item I use are the bracers which give +50% move speed for a few seconds after breaking something, I might use goldwrap instead if a good one dropped (just for the gold to craft a few more gems). http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/
I do have a mask of Jeram and ~+75% fire gear available to use in a bats/pet setup (no tasker/theo), it's just not as good for me personally, by a huge margin.
I really am impressed with the haunt and fetish change. I find I'm clearing Torment 5 slightly faster than I used to clear Torment4 with this, and I still don't have Jade6set or Zuni4set. Haunt will fly far off and pull monsters off screen, who will stumble in at half health. And fetishs add a lot of damage and distract/tank things for you.
I am short handing the info for sure, it is just that generally slower weapons have higher damage per hit (so yes, slower means higher base damage). But 2hander vs 1hand+offhand are equalish. Generally the offhand's stats bring it up to even on "average". Offhand can have 10% crit and some +skill bonus, and more INT for 1hand+offhand, and you'll average out to the same-ish damage. So it's somewhat up to whatever you have the best gear for. 2handers a bit better at lower gear, 1h+offhand same or better (on average) later on due to crit scaling well as you add +critdamage.
A slow 1hander gets some of the best of both.
Thunderfury has a very strong proc, and a well rolled one will generally be better in play due to its damage starting instantly (and chaining up to 40yards). But the Utar's roar is mentioned because it's very good, craftable, and will eventually scale better with EG 6set jade harvester -- but you are generally best off waiting until you have such a set before worrying about min maxing around it since other items will drop btwn now and then.
I'm sure you know, but at some point it's best to focus on other pieces and not go crazy. Though definitely later game it becomes about getting better versions of the same piece (and finally getting 6set and 4set bonuses of jade harvester or zuni).
***PS: updated the math post on first page.
If you don't mind losing the ring damage, the mega zombie dog has 2700% the health of a normal dog and I find mine generally survives on torment 6, allowing you to get use out of your Ukhapian serpent. Normally T6 monsters near instantly kill zombie dogs. You can summon the mega dog via the circle of life passive, then swap the talent to something else, per usual. String of ears belt is also excellent.
The TLDR (too long, didn't read) version is that the +cold weapons are same or better on paper than thunderfury, despite the possible INT loss (though you could get lucky and roll +damage +20% cold + int + socket. since attack speed doesn't increase dot damage, reroll it if it shows up).
The upside of TF is that it'll hit things around the room and be chaining before you get all your dots set up, and will usually be higher effective damage as a result. But on single target the +cold weapons may pull ahead a tiny bit. And you would definitely prefer the +cold weapon (or a 2hander) if you had something like jade harvester 6set (since thunderfury proc adds nothing to the 6set soul harvest effect).
Utar's roar, because of the slightly slower attack speed, innately adds 7% more damage to dots than a 1.4speed sword. Of course if you have a decent Azurewrath.. it has such nice passives that it may make up the difference =D. Plus farming chiltara is not known to be a fun activity, especially since you would likely need to make many Utar's Roars to get a great one, hopefully they patch her to show up more often soon.
It requires finding Chiltara to get the legendary crafting drop, it's best to do this with a friend -- make separate games and go looking for chiltara (you can log in and out looking for the Cavern of Frost bounty in Act3). She's not guaranteed to be in there so you have to go in and check. What I've done is get a few friends who are also interested and then make separate games, look for the rare monster -- then have the others join our game if they find them. Blizzard says they will increase the spawn rate of Chiltara soon, I hope this is so.
Best of luck.
TBH I want to say yes on the Ashera's. In multi player the pet buffs+damage are probably semi equal to the elite damage on blackthorne, plus they distract enemies. The 20% and 100resist are nice. Moreso you could have boots with up to +15% spirit barrage, and chest can have up to +15% haunt on it, currently I don't think your blackthorne can be enchanted into this =|.
I love the idea of 4set blackthorne, but it's hard to get great blackthorne pieces due to them rolling with so many pre-determined stats like life per second.
"4th passive is optional - I often use circle of life to get 3 dogs then change it to either grave injustice, jungle fortitude, or bad medicine (for groups) The dogs do not despawn when the talent is changed." you do need dogs for the offhand to work.