Karalius in my tank set with 1.5k LoH Molten, Plagued and even Desecrator heal me for more than they damage while OP:CA is up (~50% up time with high crit). 1.2k RA 80k HP and tank spec it really isn't a big deal to stand in elite abilities.
But you are right in that it is boring which is why I am dual wielding as of 1.03 and just burning things down. In 4p I will usually switch to some tank gear though because Zerking things doesn't really work as well.
If you want to main barb you might as well just be flexible and have two sets of gear. I never die and gear/spec appropriately for my party and act.
Erm, isn't the point of 2H to use Seismic Slam? Seems to be missing from your build. Personally I feel EQ is a waste because the things that are really going to be a challenge are elite Fallen casters/pterodactyls. These mobs will just walk right out of EQ unless you were able to corner them and even then you probably only get one of them to stand in it. If you grab Seismic you can shoot them while said douchebags are running around trying to spray you with Molten and Fire Chains or whatever. The only exception here is elite Phase Beast in which case EQ counters them nicely but you are only going to hit one pack of these right before Azmodan MAYBE.
I currently have resist all on every piece of gear (1k with Impunity) except for my shield, which has 14% life and 80 vit) my weapon obviously and helmet (Helm of Command with resist is not worth it). However, I am still hurting against elemental damage with some DPS builds and I want more.
You have two options if you choose not to get high resist stats: 1) 2h barbarians see a lot of success by cutting out some resist in favor of damage. With Seismic Slam and Bash you can very effectively keep enemies off of you although your health will rise and drop dramatically. 2) I highly recommend resist all 40+ on all items, but in 1.03 physical damage has been lowered so much that the only thing I feel I need to gear for now is fire. If you pick up Leap and Furious Charge cold bombs and arcane beams can be a non-issue with careful play. It is probably worthwhile to pick up low all resist gear that has fire resist as well to save money.
I'd estimate the damage in Act 3 at below half of what it was Monday. This is way more than I thought Blizzard would be willing to do. I'm not the most geared Barb in the world but I'm pretty happy at where it is right now. I work full time and have been playing Barb almost exclusively since release so with the amount of time I've put it I think I should be able to do all of the content. I was barely surviving the hard pulls in Act3/4 on Monday but yesterday I double pulled a pack of Invuln Minion Golgors and some other gold mob and it was only mildly challenging in tank spec.
I've since spent a bunch of money on DPS gear and I'm having a great time downing everything! I actually feel rewarded for my efforts finally.
The point of the game now is - max out your DPS like a boss, sell items on the RMAH, and have fun running your undergeared friends!
No, it's not like D2 at all. In D2 you had to hit breakpoints based on weapon speed alone. D3's WW works like any other skill in that it takes into account all IAS sources and has no breakpoints.
That actually helps immensely. I am planning on moving to this build but I was hoping to see exactly what gear you had before dropping 20m on gear last night. Do you typically use higher DPS weapons or is that sufficient with the amount of strength you have? Also I'm currently doing A3 runs and not struggling too much (I kill all elite packs although I may die once or twice against something really shitty or soul rippers) and I'm worried I'm going to lose this ability if I switch to a more DPS oriented build. Do you struggle with elites in A3+? I really don't like to skip groups unless it's something retarded like a gold golgor or horde arcane frozen shielding.
I'm hoping this is even more viable with the nerfs today but I guess I'll have to wait until after work to find out how gimped inferno is now.
Figured I would post in this thread as I have answers to most of the questions here and their is some bad info comming up.
A perma WW build is viable upto and including Act3 (not tried A4 yet and I am going back to 2H for a change of pace).
To do this, use the following
DW - Fast as possible with socket, 250vit, 100str per weapon, you do NOT need LoH and infact getting it will will actually make the weapon worse as it uses one of the 6 available affix slots of a stat you dont need.
Frenzy - Maniac
Whirlwind - Blood Funnel
Overpower - Crushing Advance
Warcry - Impunity
Battlerage - Into the Fray
WotB - Thrive on Chaos
Relentless
Tough as Nails
Superstition
Gear, yes it expensive, but your playing a Barb you know this already.
70k HP,
35% Crit,
1000 Res
1100 Phy & Fire
45% IAS
3% LL on Belt
15% IAS on EACH weapon, as the IAS from weapon 1 works for weapon 2, which is the main reason why a 1.3 axe with 15% IAS is much better than a 1.5 dagger without it.
The reason this works is because of the stupid amounts of HP/Sec you can get while spinning. This is why HP > LoH, the LoH coefficiant of WW is 13% so even with 2000 LoH (100million for weapons alone) that is only 260life. You are better off stacking Vit as the Blood Funnel proc will heal you for 700
You will imo never even with BiS gear be able to straight out tank the void zones, but you can with this spec. The more targets that you are hitting the better this spec works as more crits brings down the CD on Overpower. Using the Crushing Advance rune you can almost keep a 30% mitigation up 100% of the time. Its basically a perma mini-ignor pain.
The real treat is Relentless though. If you are in the middle of a group of mobs spinning on void zones, if you stop spinning you will insta die. This passive allows you to perma spin under 20% hp, if you just happen to get poor luck on crits or procs; this also works better for stacking Vit, as 20% HP of 70k is greater than 20% of HP at 50k, it also allows more time (a few seconds) if you are waiting on the Overpower cooldown. Once overpower is up watch your HP go straight back to 100%
Perma WotB, other than using Sprint (like DiNo does), this is the only way from what I can determine to keep perma CC immunity, your not going to get those 150k crits with this build, infact you will be lucky to crit for more than 10000 with WW but the spin speed is totally insane, you can burn 100 fury in 1.5seconds and that is why you need 'Into the Fray'. Not to forget about the increased IAS, and DODGE!! chance that WotB provides
You can use Windsheer for Act2 if you don't have enough crit to perma spin with Blood Funnel, but Windsheer is not remotly an option in A3, the mobs can literally 5shot you.
Use Amethests in the Sockets so that you can sustain LoH for single target mobs and bosses and Maniac works better than Sidearm for these situations. For these situations, dump fury with Battlerage and you can keep WotB up for a minute before it falls off, so 50% uptime single target.
This is completely badass and I'm going to try it.
I agree that you shot not need 3 defensive passives in Hell. I did not see if you were using a shield or not but if you are then you should definitely be picking up Berserker Rage.
You can also always go the Seismic Slam route if you have a nice big 2H lying around. I've even seen some people doing Inferno with it and saving money on resist gear although there are many elite affixes that will kill you in that build IMO.
I really don't feel Charge is super necessary in Hell mode and find Overpower to be more fun especially if you've got good crit. I think you should be pushing damage as much as possible before you hit Inferno and are pidgeonholed into either the tank or cheese builds.
Lastly Ignore Pain is great on paper but I will always see Leap as superior. It basically adds as much protection at Hell+ armor levels but its 4 of every 10 seconds instead of 7 of every 30. Additionally you can use it to get around obstacles, for example, I like to play jump rope with arcane lasers! And as attractive as Ignorance is Bliss is, I found that Revenge was healing me for way more than the 20% life steal.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't attack speed directly increase your LoH?
Ex: Barbarian has 1 attack/sec and 1000 LoH => 1000 life per second. He gained 10% attack speed. Now he hits 1.1 attacks/sec => 1100 life per second gained.
This doesn't account for Revenge obviously but while Frenzying (which I do constantly as a tanky Barb) you benefit massively from attack speed.
Agree about Superstition being a great Passive. Melee damage (for me at least) is probably the most predictable thing I find in A2/3. As soon as I see mobs I know how hard they're going to hit me because melee doesn't change much. The real spikes seem to come from 3 Arcane beams focusing on me randomly or trying to kill a pterodactyl with Plagued Molten Desecrator Shielding (although I'd rather watch Toddler and Tiaras than fight that on a Barb).
I like this build, it combines two of my favorite DPS alternates (inf Berserker and WW with life steal D2 style). I've got a few questions though.
First off, do you know if WW is affected by attack speed?
I've had a mighty weapon since the second half of act 2 and into act 3.
I've read multiple sources stating that Weapon Master's 3 fury gained per hit does not work with WW. Can you confirm one way or the other?
You can just sprint away and heal up a bit
Didn't realize the tornadoes worked with LoH. Nice!
The reason you don't need a lot of crit to keep it going is because the shear number of hits you do per second with both the cyclones from Sprint - Run Like the Wind and Whirlwind
You have Hurricane selected on your build - did you intend to take Dust Devils?
having Wrath of the Berserker up, literally, constantly
Are you keeping this up for whites too?
Frenzy - Maniac could be useful
Don't see this one happening, Bash seems preferable since you are focusing on DPS not tanking. Unless you have crazy attack speed you're not going to want to stand toe to toe with mobs just to get your 5 stacks for a few seconds.
Grats! Also you should check out the 1 million dollar challenge post for some cheap ways to gear up and still be buff. Personally I'm having a blast with Barb in act 2 - after a bit of gearing up I'm tanking Belial with my face while my friends are still getting 1 shot if they don't dodge one of the green things. I think if this game had DPS meters most of us Barbs would probably be on top just from the fact that we don't ever have to stop attacking when we are geared for tanking. Just wait for the repair cost hikes next patch and you'll be happy you're able to tank
I still don't know how to feel about this but considering the 1.03 patch is coming soon I think I'm going to just do it. Also Rorinn I was really surprised to see you not take Leap or IP. Do you end up having to run around a lot waiting for FC cooldown?
I've even been considering daggers for that 1.9 attack speed. Maybe that will be good enough?
Just a little headsup: Today I bought a new weapon for my barb (currently farming siegebreaker@act3) with 900 loh, so i thought "let's give dw a try". So I used my old and new weapon (something around 1500 loh together) and tryed to go to my old farming act2 belial route. I reequipped my shield 5 minutes in, it just aint viable in my opinion. Maybe if you overgear your act really really hard, but if then you're better off with a 2h.
With my shield I didn't die again and cleared everything. Dual-wield sucks imho.
Damn this really bums me out. I've been saving up for either a 30%+ SS or a 900+ DPS LOH weapon and have been leaning toward dual wield.
Can you please also post your attacks per second and defensive stats so I can compare to see how much I will suck if I switch?
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Just looking to see if this has changed in 2.4 in the eyes of the Leaderboard. Is it still going to be Monk/Monk or is Sader/??? doing work?
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But you are right in that it is boring which is why I am dual wielding as of 1.03 and just burning things down. In 4p I will usually switch to some tank gear though because Zerking things doesn't really work as well.
If you want to main barb you might as well just be flexible and have two sets of gear. I never die and gear/spec appropriately for my party and act.
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You have two options if you choose not to get high resist stats: 1) 2h barbarians see a lot of success by cutting out some resist in favor of damage. With Seismic Slam and Bash you can very effectively keep enemies off of you although your health will rise and drop dramatically. 2) I highly recommend resist all 40+ on all items, but in 1.03 physical damage has been lowered so much that the only thing I feel I need to gear for now is fire. If you pick up Leap and Furious Charge cold bombs and arcane beams can be a non-issue with careful play. It is probably worthwhile to pick up low all resist gear that has fire resist as well to save money.
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I've since spent a bunch of money on DPS gear and I'm having a great time downing everything! I actually feel rewarded for my efforts finally.
The point of the game now is - max out your DPS like a boss, sell items on the RMAH, and have fun running your undergeared friends!
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That actually helps immensely. I am planning on moving to this build but I was hoping to see exactly what gear you had before dropping 20m on gear last night. Do you typically use higher DPS weapons or is that sufficient with the amount of strength you have? Also I'm currently doing A3 runs and not struggling too much (I kill all elite packs although I may die once or twice against something really shitty or soul rippers) and I'm worried I'm going to lose this ability if I switch to a more DPS oriented build. Do you struggle with elites in A3+? I really don't like to skip groups unless it's something retarded like a gold golgor or horde arcane frozen shielding.
I'm hoping this is even more viable with the nerfs today but I guess I'll have to wait until after work to find out how gimped inferno is now.
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This is completely badass and I'm going to try it.
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You can also always go the Seismic Slam route if you have a nice big 2H lying around. I've even seen some people doing Inferno with it and saving money on resist gear although there are many elite affixes that will kill you in that build IMO.
I really don't feel Charge is super necessary in Hell mode and find Overpower to be more fun especially if you've got good crit. I think you should be pushing damage as much as possible before you hit Inferno and are pidgeonholed into either the tank or cheese builds.
Lastly Ignore Pain is great on paper but I will always see Leap as superior. It basically adds as much protection at Hell+ armor levels but its 4 of every 10 seconds instead of 7 of every 30. Additionally you can use it to get around obstacles, for example, I like to play jump rope with arcane lasers! And as attractive as Ignorance is Bliss is, I found that Revenge was healing me for way more than the 20% life steal.
Well, mileage may vary so good luck!
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Ex: Barbarian has 1 attack/sec and 1000 LoH => 1000 life per second. He gained 10% attack speed. Now he hits 1.1 attacks/sec => 1100 life per second gained.
This doesn't account for Revenge obviously but while Frenzying (which I do constantly as a tanky Barb) you benefit massively from attack speed.
Agree about Superstition being a great Passive. Melee damage (for me at least) is probably the most predictable thing I find in A2/3. As soon as I see mobs I know how hard they're going to hit me because melee doesn't change much. The real spikes seem to come from 3 Arcane beams focusing on me randomly or trying to kill a pterodactyl with Plagued Molten Desecrator Shielding (although I'd rather watch Toddler and Tiaras than fight that on a Barb).
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First off, do you know if WW is affected by attack speed?
I've read multiple sources stating that Weapon Master's 3 fury gained per hit does not work with WW. Can you confirm one way or the other?
Didn't realize the tornadoes worked with LoH. Nice!
You have Hurricane selected on your build - did you intend to take Dust Devils?
Are you keeping this up for whites too?
Don't see this one happening, Bash seems preferable since you are focusing on DPS not tanking. Unless you have crazy attack speed you're not going to want to stand toe to toe with mobs just to get your 5 stacks for a few seconds.
Sweet build, glad you made it work!
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I've even been considering daggers for that 1.9 attack speed. Maybe that will be good enough?
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Damn this really bums me out. I've been saving up for either a 30%+ SS or a 900+ DPS LOH weapon and have been leaning toward dual wield.
Can you please also post your attacks per second and defensive stats so I can compare to see how much I will suck if I switch?