So I'm sure most are familiar with the double tornado build which has been becoming increasingly popular. If you don't know what I'm referring to you can read all about it here: http://us.battle.net...opic/5888809698
I gave that build a try, and found it fun, but also found it lacking. I felt like it was only really good against large groups of mobs, was tough to get the ball rolling sometimes, and required a lot of life on hit to be successful. I decided to modify the build and experiment with different setups. First I'll go through each of my skills and passives and explain why I chose them.
The Skills:
Bash - Punish:
The standard double tornado build does not use any main attack skill. I hated that. I didn't like having whirlwind bound to my left mouse button and having to rely completely on fury spenders to do damage. I chose bash over frenzy because I found I rarely was able to keep frenzy at 5 stacks long enough to justify using it. I didn't like that I had to attack five times to charge up frenzy before it started becoming good. The punish rune increases skill damage by 18% and only requires you to attack 3 times to reach full effectiveness. Bash also does A LOT of damage compared to frenzy. The knockback is also really underrated in my opinion. It's great for interrupting enemy attack animations and getting out of surrounds. Having to chase them down after knocking them back isn't a problem at all since I also have sprint.
Seismic Slam - Strength from Earth
I always liked the idea behind seismic slam, but never really could find a place for it in my builds. I found the fury cost way too high to justify it. I tried this skill out with the reduced fury cost rune, and it fit in so ridiculously well l can't imagine switching it out. This skill is critical to the play style of the build and synergizes incredibly well with everything else. The AoE radius and range on this skill is massive and lets you put out insane damage when enemies are grouped up.
War Cry - Impunity
Nothing much to say about this. It's the best buff in the game in my opinion. Additional armor and a huge +50% to all resists is just too hard to pass up. The buff scales incredibly well as you get better and better gear and gives a huge benefit to the entire group if you are into cooperative play. The fury generation is the icing on the cake.
Battle Rage - Into the Fray
I originally always used the +30% damage rune for battle rage because, let's be honest, how can you pass up a flat 30% damage buff? Well the fury generation provided by the Into the Fray rune is ridiculous when combined with a high crit rate. The base skill also gives 3% additional crit and +15% flat damage, which is just amazing. Like the double tornado build, this skill and rune is a staple to the build and I'll explain why later on.
Sprint - Run Like the Wind
Whoever discovered how good this rune is deserves a handshake, because it's just amazing. The movement speed is great for both offensive and defensive purposes, but the tornadoes are a sight to behold. They attack incredibly fast and do respectable damage to every enemy they touch. It also effectively gives you a ranged attack since you can pop sprint, run away from a pack of enemies, and watch as they follow you and die in the process. The attacks from this skill also trigger life on hit and can crit, which have a chance to generate 15 fury with battle rage up. With enough crit chance, you can generate massive amounts of fury.
Wrath of the Berserker - Slaughter
I know what you're thinking. Slaughter? Really? Yes, really. The staple double tornado build uses thrive on chaos, which is great because it allows you to stay in berserker mode for long periods of time assuming there are sufficient enemies around. I tried thrive on chaos, it was good, but it didn't really provide the huge burst damage I wanted. I tried insanity, and that provides good burst, but it really just doesn't come close to slaughter. Slaughter makes it so that for 15 seconds, every critical hit you deal, causes 15-yard AoE damage equal to 155% weapon damage centered around where the crit occurs. Most people don't realize the AoE also hits the main target as well, so this rune is great against single targets too. The synergy with run like the wind and seismic slam is astounding and once you try this rune, it will be hard to go back, I promise. ALSO: keep in mind WOTB gives you 15 seconds of immunity to vortex, jailer, frozen, knockback. This makes some really nasty affix combinations manageable.
Passives: Weapon Master, Ruthless, Inspiring Presence
Weapon master and ruthless should be obvious choices. If you use an axe or mace, which you should, the two passives give you a total of 15% crit chance and 50% crit damage. This ups your damage by a ton and makes slaughter and into the fray that much better. The last passive is really personal preference. I chose inspiring presence because I have 70k hp and the life regen is pretty awesome with the playstyle of this build. I rarely find myself standing in melee range "tanking" hits so the passive life regeneration was more useful for me than a tanky passive like superstition, nerves of steel, or tough as nails. If you are having trouble staying alive, I'd recommend superstition as it does wonders to mitigate elemental damage and has the added benefit of additional fury generation.
The Playstyle
The general strategy is to maximize fury generation so you can literally spam seismic slam all day long until everything in the room dies. This build shines in Act 3 as monsters tend to be tightly packed in confined quarters (think Keep Depths). Always ensure battle rage and war cry are on you, which shouldn't be hard if you chose Inspiring Presence. When you enter a room and see a group of monsters, bash a few times to stack the +18% damage bonus to skills and generate enough fury for your first sprint. Pop sprint and run around them or through them if you can, to the opposite side of the room. Your tornadoes should now be doing some nice damage and your fury bar should be 100% full since the tornado crits have a chance to generate 15 fury. Face the group of monsters and spam seismic slam until they all are dead. The fury from the tornadoes plus the fury from seismic slam crits should allow you to spam seismic slam for a LONG time assuming you are hitting enough monsters with it. The knockback on seismic slam will basically prevent them from getting into melee range of you and will also prevent ranged monsters from attacking you since they will be "stuck" in the knockback animation, until they die. If they do manage to get into melee range, pop sprint again, run 40-yards or so away to generate a few tornadoes, then repeat until they are all dead. This general strategy should clear out trash mobs with relative ease. Some monsters you still have to watch out for as they seem to be immune to knockback. Those big 4-legged fat things in the Keep Depths are an example of this.
Now for elite packs, this is where WOTB with slaughter comes into play. Your biggest enemy with this build is shielding and invulnerable minions. Everything else should be manageable, depending on your gear level of course. Shielding will severely gimp your burst damage and limit the damage you are able to dish out in those 15 seconds of WOTB. When you see an elite pack, pop sprint and run away from them to spawn a few tornadoes. If they are surrounded by trash mobs, that's great. If they aren't, you might want to consider pulling them to more white mobs. The more mobs the more damage you deal to the elites. Once you have a good size pack grouped up, sprint away from them to spawn a few tornadoes. Once you see them hit the first tornado and start taking damage, pop wrath and watch the damage numbers fill your screen. I actually had to turn off white damage numbers because my computer literally couldn't handle all that damage. EVERY crit your tornado or seismic slam generates, will trigger an AoE explosion for 155% weapon damage. Your tornadoes and slams should be hitting multiple targets and probably critting a lot of them. This will cause tons and tons of explosions and do absolutely insane damage. If they manage to survive the 15 seconds of slaughter, they should be low enough to finish off with more sprint tornadoes and seismic slams with relative ease.
As for bosses, they get absolutely destroyed by WOTB with slaughter. I can kill Azmodan in less than 15 seconds using this build just by running around him with sprint in zerker mode. He'll be getting hit by 3-6 tornadoes at a time since he has a huge hit box, each one causing explosions each time there is a crit. Cydaea is just as easy but more annoying since she likes to run around and not sit still. The spiders she spawn will provide you basically infinite fury though so you can sprint and seismic slam all day until shes dead. You don't ever even have to be in melee range of her.
Conclusion
This is a very fun build and is very effective in Act 3 because of how much it owns the bosses and how the white monsters like to bunch up. There is a gear requirement for this build, which is pretty similar to that of the double tornado build. Crit and crit damage are your friends. The more crit the more effective this build is since everything synergizes with it. Currently I have 45.5% crit chance when buffed with battle rage, but this build can be done with less than that. Keep in mind, just from passives you should be sitting at 23% crit already. Gloves, jewelry, helm, and bracers can all have crit chance on them.
Besides crit stats, you do want some life steal or life on hit, especially if you are having trouble staying alive. Yes life steal is good with this build as your gear gets better since it scales better than life on hit with regard to AoE damage. Also people seriously undervalue life steal right now on weapons. You are more likely to find a good weapon with life steal at a reasonable price than one with life on hit. Belts are the only armor slot that can have life steal so try to find a good belt with life steal on it.
Anyways, constructive criticism and questions are welcome! Thanks for reading.
Hello! I've just stepped into act 3 inferno, and elite packs are pretty much wrecking me.
I could use some help on what stats to improve or maybe what to improve on my build so I can beat the elite packs / be able to have the elite packs on "farm".
Your damage is a little low, but honestly I didn't start trying to up my damage until I could safely stay alive against everything; elite packs included. I do think you need a little bit more resists (I aimed for 1k to everything), but you really, really need more hp. I was at the same place you were, then I upped my hp from 40k to 60k and it made a HUGE difference. People tend to undervalue vitality in favor of more resist, but some pieces of armor that have 0 resist but massive vitality are actually better for you. For example, my chest has no resist all but has over 300 vitality and 600 armor. This turns out to be much better than my old chest that had 100 vitality and 40-50 to all resists. Get yourself a helm with a socket + vitality. That will give you lots of hp. Besides jewelry and helms, belts, chest, and shoulders can also have +% to life, which is a great stat once you start getting a lot of vitality.
As for your build, I'd recommend dropping WOTB in favor of leap with iron impact like the above poster mentioned. It's great if you are having trouble surviving.
2
Before I get into the specifics, here is a link to the build I've been refining over the past week:
http://us.battle.net...kiUP!ZYX!bYcYZb
So I'm sure most are familiar with the double tornado build which has been becoming increasingly popular. If you don't know what I'm referring to you can read all about it here: http://us.battle.net...opic/5888809698
I gave that build a try, and found it fun, but also found it lacking. I felt like it was only really good against large groups of mobs, was tough to get the ball rolling sometimes, and required a lot of life on hit to be successful. I decided to modify the build and experiment with different setups. First I'll go through each of my skills and passives and explain why I chose them.
The Skills:
Bash - Punish:
The standard double tornado build does not use any main attack skill. I hated that. I didn't like having whirlwind bound to my left mouse button and having to rely completely on fury spenders to do damage. I chose bash over frenzy because I found I rarely was able to keep frenzy at 5 stacks long enough to justify using it. I didn't like that I had to attack five times to charge up frenzy before it started becoming good. The punish rune increases skill damage by 18% and only requires you to attack 3 times to reach full effectiveness. Bash also does A LOT of damage compared to frenzy. The knockback is also really underrated in my opinion. It's great for interrupting enemy attack animations and getting out of surrounds. Having to chase them down after knocking them back isn't a problem at all since I also have sprint.
Seismic Slam - Strength from Earth
I always liked the idea behind seismic slam, but never really could find a place for it in my builds. I found the fury cost way too high to justify it. I tried this skill out with the reduced fury cost rune, and it fit in so ridiculously well l can't imagine switching it out. This skill is critical to the play style of the build and synergizes incredibly well with everything else. The AoE radius and range on this skill is massive and lets you put out insane damage when enemies are grouped up.
War Cry - Impunity
Nothing much to say about this. It's the best buff in the game in my opinion. Additional armor and a huge +50% to all resists is just too hard to pass up. The buff scales incredibly well as you get better and better gear and gives a huge benefit to the entire group if you are into cooperative play. The fury generation is the icing on the cake.
Battle Rage - Into the Fray
I originally always used the +30% damage rune for battle rage because, let's be honest, how can you pass up a flat 30% damage buff? Well the fury generation provided by the Into the Fray rune is ridiculous when combined with a high crit rate. The base skill also gives 3% additional crit and +15% flat damage, which is just amazing. Like the double tornado build, this skill and rune is a staple to the build and I'll explain why later on.
Sprint - Run Like the Wind
Whoever discovered how good this rune is deserves a handshake, because it's just amazing. The movement speed is great for both offensive and defensive purposes, but the tornadoes are a sight to behold. They attack incredibly fast and do respectable damage to every enemy they touch. It also effectively gives you a ranged attack since you can pop sprint, run away from a pack of enemies, and watch as they follow you and die in the process. The attacks from this skill also trigger life on hit and can crit, which have a chance to generate 15 fury with battle rage up. With enough crit chance, you can generate massive amounts of fury.
Wrath of the Berserker - Slaughter
I know what you're thinking. Slaughter? Really? Yes, really. The staple double tornado build uses thrive on chaos, which is great because it allows you to stay in berserker mode for long periods of time assuming there are sufficient enemies around. I tried thrive on chaos, it was good, but it didn't really provide the huge burst damage I wanted. I tried insanity, and that provides good burst, but it really just doesn't come close to slaughter. Slaughter makes it so that for 15 seconds, every critical hit you deal, causes 15-yard AoE damage equal to 155% weapon damage centered around where the crit occurs. Most people don't realize the AoE also hits the main target as well, so this rune is great against single targets too. The synergy with run like the wind and seismic slam is astounding and once you try this rune, it will be hard to go back, I promise. ALSO: keep in mind WOTB gives you 15 seconds of immunity to vortex, jailer, frozen, knockback. This makes some really nasty affix combinations manageable.
Passives: Weapon Master, Ruthless, Inspiring Presence
Weapon master and ruthless should be obvious choices. If you use an axe or mace, which you should, the two passives give you a total of 15% crit chance and 50% crit damage. This ups your damage by a ton and makes slaughter and into the fray that much better. The last passive is really personal preference. I chose inspiring presence because I have 70k hp and the life regen is pretty awesome with the playstyle of this build. I rarely find myself standing in melee range "tanking" hits so the passive life regeneration was more useful for me than a tanky passive like superstition, nerves of steel, or tough as nails. If you are having trouble staying alive, I'd recommend superstition as it does wonders to mitigate elemental damage and has the added benefit of additional fury generation.
The Playstyle
The general strategy is to maximize fury generation so you can literally spam seismic slam all day long until everything in the room dies. This build shines in Act 3 as monsters tend to be tightly packed in confined quarters (think Keep Depths). Always ensure battle rage and war cry are on you, which shouldn't be hard if you chose Inspiring Presence. When you enter a room and see a group of monsters, bash a few times to stack the +18% damage bonus to skills and generate enough fury for your first sprint. Pop sprint and run around them or through them if you can, to the opposite side of the room. Your tornadoes should now be doing some nice damage and your fury bar should be 100% full since the tornado crits have a chance to generate 15 fury. Face the group of monsters and spam seismic slam until they all are dead. The fury from the tornadoes plus the fury from seismic slam crits should allow you to spam seismic slam for a LONG time assuming you are hitting enough monsters with it. The knockback on seismic slam will basically prevent them from getting into melee range of you and will also prevent ranged monsters from attacking you since they will be "stuck" in the knockback animation, until they die. If they do manage to get into melee range, pop sprint again, run 40-yards or so away to generate a few tornadoes, then repeat until they are all dead. This general strategy should clear out trash mobs with relative ease. Some monsters you still have to watch out for as they seem to be immune to knockback. Those big 4-legged fat things in the Keep Depths are an example of this.
Now for elite packs, this is where WOTB with slaughter comes into play. Your biggest enemy with this build is shielding and invulnerable minions. Everything else should be manageable, depending on your gear level of course. Shielding will severely gimp your burst damage and limit the damage you are able to dish out in those 15 seconds of WOTB. When you see an elite pack, pop sprint and run away from them to spawn a few tornadoes. If they are surrounded by trash mobs, that's great. If they aren't, you might want to consider pulling them to more white mobs. The more mobs the more damage you deal to the elites. Once you have a good size pack grouped up, sprint away from them to spawn a few tornadoes. Once you see them hit the first tornado and start taking damage, pop wrath and watch the damage numbers fill your screen. I actually had to turn off white damage numbers because my computer literally couldn't handle all that damage. EVERY crit your tornado or seismic slam generates, will trigger an AoE explosion for 155% weapon damage. Your tornadoes and slams should be hitting multiple targets and probably critting a lot of them. This will cause tons and tons of explosions and do absolutely insane damage. If they manage to survive the 15 seconds of slaughter, they should be low enough to finish off with more sprint tornadoes and seismic slams with relative ease.
As for bosses, they get absolutely destroyed by WOTB with slaughter. I can kill Azmodan in less than 15 seconds using this build just by running around him with sprint in zerker mode. He'll be getting hit by 3-6 tornadoes at a time since he has a huge hit box, each one causing explosions each time there is a crit. Cydaea is just as easy but more annoying since she likes to run around and not sit still. The spiders she spawn will provide you basically infinite fury though so you can sprint and seismic slam all day until shes dead. You don't ever even have to be in melee range of her.
Conclusion
This is a very fun build and is very effective in Act 3 because of how much it owns the bosses and how the white monsters like to bunch up. There is a gear requirement for this build, which is pretty similar to that of the double tornado build. Crit and crit damage are your friends. The more crit the more effective this build is since everything synergizes with it. Currently I have 45.5% crit chance when buffed with battle rage, but this build can be done with less than that. Keep in mind, just from passives you should be sitting at 23% crit already. Gloves, jewelry, helm, and bracers can all have crit chance on them.
Besides crit stats, you do want some life steal or life on hit, especially if you are having trouble staying alive. Yes life steal is good with this build as your gear gets better since it scales better than life on hit with regard to AoE damage. Also people seriously undervalue life steal right now on weapons. You are more likely to find a good weapon with life steal at a reasonable price than one with life on hit. Belts are the only armor slot that can have life steal so try to find a good belt with life steal on it.
Anyways, constructive criticism and questions are welcome! Thanks for reading.
Here's my gear for those wondering: http://i48.tinypic.com/2hq4i14.jpg
Here's the build in action in Act 3 inferno: http://www.twitch.tv...955/b/323510256
1
Depends how much gold it would cost I guess. I'm not a huge fan of block % so I'm a little biased.
1
Your damage is a little low, but honestly I didn't start trying to up my damage until I could safely stay alive against everything; elite packs included. I do think you need a little bit more resists (I aimed for 1k to everything), but you really, really need more hp. I was at the same place you were, then I upped my hp from 40k to 60k and it made a HUGE difference. People tend to undervalue vitality in favor of more resist, but some pieces of armor that have 0 resist but massive vitality are actually better for you. For example, my chest has no resist all but has over 300 vitality and 600 armor. This turns out to be much better than my old chest that had 100 vitality and 40-50 to all resists. Get yourself a helm with a socket + vitality. That will give you lots of hp. Besides jewelry and helms, belts, chest, and shoulders can also have +% to life, which is a great stat once you start getting a lot of vitality.
As for your build, I'd recommend dropping WOTB in favor of leap with iron impact like the above poster mentioned. It's great if you are having trouble surviving.