I prefer ET-playstyle over AO, thanks for the video. Whats the reason youre going with static discharge over arcane based torrent (since youre sporting 20% damage increase on arcane)?
The damage coming from Arcane Torrent (no matter which rune) is so little compared to the Energy Twister that the best course of action is to get as many twisters out as possible. This is achieved by using the Static Discharge rune for Arcane Torrent because it has the largest spread of individual hits, granting the largest possible number of critical hits (read: generate arcane power) in the shortest amount of time. This of course, means you get to go back to hard cast spamming Energy Twister sooner than you would running other runes and/or Disintegrate.
I'm a bit baffled by what you mean by "inferno", assuming that you're not referring to the old Inferno system in vanilla D3. Some advice on helping you survive in general would be to utilize all three of the Vitality, All Resistance, and Armor stats. Ideally you want a good balance of all three without stacking too highly in one while neglecting the others. There is a sleuth of information out there on how to determine which ones you need more at any given point of your gear snapshot.
Aside from the fact that you could use a myriad of upgrades seeing that you have zero legendaries equipped of any kind, there are still some things that you can improve through rolls from what you're currently wearing. Your amulet can easily be replaced by another yellow with real stats (STR, Vit) rather than non-stat damage attributes. Bash on your pants can be rolled to Vitality. CDR rolls can be switched to Vitality too, for example, which leads me to wonder this next question:
Why are you consciously stacking CDR so hard? Your build has two skills that really benefit much from CDR, being Earthquake and Ground Stomp. If lower Earthquake cooldown was that important, you would have also already picked up the Boon of Bul'Kathos passive. Ground Stomp on a shorter cooldown doesn't seem like it has any synergistic benefits from having a lower cooldown. The rest of your skills such as Overpower and Avalanche already all have cooldown-lowering functions built into skills without CDR. All of these skills, save maybe Ground Stomp, don't help your survivability much at all, seeing that you need advice on survival. I believe that if you spend some time to re-think your build approach for a more defensive and synergistic build will do you more in the long run, especially when you're looking for help in "surviving the inferno"
A while back on DiabloFans, I noticed a poll that someone ran on the forums on which set people preferred/looked forward to the most. While this was still in the Lightning Whirlwind days, pre SoH fix, IK was leading the way with Raekors trailing far behind the other two. This prompted me to try and think why no one was as excited about Raekors or would find it as appealing to the other sets.
Fast forward three weeks, i'm currently closing in on paragon 500 with every single Barbarian set in my repertoire along with all the flavorful legendaries one could have for any popular barbarian builds these days, including mix-match dual-final-set-bonuses. Yes, i've been extremely lucky and no, this isn't a thread about my drops. However I do want to examine some of these initial receptions and perceptions people have about the different sets people have for barbarians.
While trying to complete my third and final set of the three, Earthquake, I had access to the complete other two sets. What I had found during that time while bouncing back and forth between builds and bonuses was quite interesting and contrary to the initial polled reactions people had. Often a perceived underdog and lesser-discussed set, I made it a mission to try and discover why Raekors wasn't as appealing as the others and maybe find out some redeeming qualities to it. Furious Charge gaining every rune certainly wasn't as flashy as the other sets. But here are my findings:
For Immortal Kings, I was able to stack around 100% elemental damage of Fire, Lightning, and Physical to test out most of the runes properly in various torments. I found that it had great flexibility in creating slightly higher torment survivability with Together As One, although it sort of caps out near Torment 6 when the amount of damage you take actually kills the Ancients quite often and faster than the cooldown of the skill, sometimes providing problems in maintaining them. The Council Rises, along with my perfect AS rolled Taskers and Theos gave my ancients the ability to crit very often for over 12 million at a time. This however, was undermined by the randomness of the AI in terms of targeting when faced with multiple mobs, which happens to be a great portion of the gameplay. This "drawback" proved too inefficient at killing through regular mobs at a faster pace that you'd come to expect from a well-built and groomed Whirlwind build. However they excelled at killing single mobs (read: annihilates single rift guardians) over almost any other Barbarian build I tried. Ancients' Fury is a very volatile rune, as many have predicted and tried. It allows for reliability in Fury-heavy builds such as Boulder Toss and/or HoTA variations. Unfortunately, as controllable as these situations are, their fury regeneration is often plagued too by the clunky AI where the ancients often get stuck in a limbo when off attacking a mob near the edge of your screen/their leash range. With all of these things in consideration, I would place Immortal Kings 4 piece bonus *THIRD PLACE* overall when compared to the other two sets. I do want to point out that the set bonuses leading up to the 4 piece are all extremely strong.
Raekors-- What Immortal Kings lacked, Raekors surpassed.
Fire damage-- Many people these days are stacking fire damage. The Council Rises as Ancients do incredible fire damage. How does Raekors stand up to them? As the Ancients were off doing 12mill crits to whatever random mobs they often pleased, Battering Ram Furious Charge was a controlled and often spammable (thank you Merciless Assault) attack that would crit every single mob the charge grouped up with Dreadnaught rune for 20-40 million damage per mob. This was the surgical efficiency that The Council Rises lacked. It made white mob grinding lightning fast even when compared to beefed up fire Ancients.
Fury heavy builds: Boulder Toss and HoTA variations and more. Ancients' Fury made it possible to sustain such builds with or without the help of a primary attack. Could Raekors do the same? Thanks to the Stamina rune and the spammability of Merciless Assault, I felt that on-demand fury was actually better than IK Ancient's Fury. To get a full Fury bar, you have to wait for the Ancients to attack for somewhere close to 5 seconds unhindered by clunky AI. With Raekor's charge, you get a full bar instantly so you can get back to throwing large rocks or slamming that big hammer immediately. This on-demand full fury bar function felt like a cornerstone in making any build I wanted to work. Even for less fury heavy builds like Whirlwind, a charge once in a blue moon could keep you Whirlwinding for the next 30 seconds unimpeded. I never felt as if I had to run something like Warcry: Charge! or a primary to generate fury. Did I mention that you also deal very solid damage every time you charge?
Survivability. Together as One, essentially permanent Ignore Pain is tough to beat. How can Raekors possibly stand up to Immortal Kings in this department? The answer wasn't as straightforward or as simple. I soon discovered that Raekors contribution to survivability was through another method; one that required a much higher learning curve than Immortal Kings (in which IK rune is passive, requires no such curve). The combination of Battering Ram (increased damage), Bull Rush (stunlock control), and Dreadnaught (aoe monk Cyclone-esque group up) allowed Raekors to surpass IK in the highest of torment levels. While Together as One gave a flat damage reduction, they still suffered from survival problems. Raekors was a built-in, reliable and vital tool that never went away. You can literally stunlock entire groups including elites from 100%-0% by using Furious Charge. While stunlocking, you're doing incredible damage, especially when stacking fire damage. Dreadnaught allowed you to take the fight away from dangerous affixes such as exploding Frozen orbs, or lethal Arcane Enchants, while grouping in more enemies for the kill. With this kind of reliable damage and control, I didn't need Together as One to survive.
By my anecdotal experience, I believe Raekor's strength in reliability, damage, control, and build-making/sustaining abilities are either parallel or surpass Immortal Kings in every department. I hope that fellow Barbarians will continue to embrace Raekors hopefully as much as the other sets too, or be just as excited to completed the set as they do for Earthquake or Immortal Kings. The potential is there, and I hope this inspires some really interesting builds to come.
I think the proper way to weigh this really depends on what you're trying to do. What kind of content are you doing that requires you to already be running Ignore Pain? T5? T6? If so, Pride of Cassius can be invaluable if you refuse/are unable to to abuse Unity rings. If you are using Unity rings, Ignore Pain and the Pride of Cassius are both overkill.
Now if you're doing lower torment levels and are running Ignore Pain, I might reconsider doing so. Especially since you have a String of Ears available. If using String of Ears means you won't be using Ignore Pain (for lower torments), that's an entire skill slot left open for you to choose something useful. Consider that.
Weapons Master does boost your earthquake damage. Your earthquake will do 8% more total damage based off your Maximus [(4500% of Maximus) x 8%].
IAS for 10 CDR would be a great trade. You are correct in suspecting a CDR diminishing returns. Don't quote me on this, but I think CDR starts diminishing at around 35-40%. If you currently have 30 and are looking to add on 10, you'd probably end up with something like 38%.
Earthquake considers your mainhand's weapon damage (damage range) and not your weapon DPS. You are correct in that it does not consider IAS. More often than not, IAS on weapons serve as DPS inflation stats. That is to say that it makes the big DPS number higher, but can be very deceiving at a glance. When considering what weapon to use in your mainhand in calculating Earthquake damage (or any skill that is modified by weapon damage %), always resort to the damage range and not the actual DPS. A lot of time you'll find that a lower DPS weapon is actually more beneficial in the mainhand slot than a higher one. One thing that might offset this a bit would be taking into consideration weapon type if you choose to use the Weapons Master passive-- but that's another discussion.
Seeing that you're asking about HPs for higher torments, I assume that you have your sights set up high. Higher torments a lot of times rely on damage moreso than toughness (at least until the Unity rings are "fixed/changed"). Thus a lot of builds choose HoTA over whirlwind purely based on fury to damage value, especially when factoring in cost-reduction pieces such as a Cindercoat (a staple to leap/HoTa/fire builds these days). I wholeheartedly agree with you on the flexibility and mobility of whirlwind being unmatched and highly desirable, however we should do well to remember that we're discussing a *Leap* build here, and we're already in the green for mobility, so to speak. I suggest that you play what feels comfortable and right. For me and a number of players, doing massive damage with HoTA suits a leap build very well as the choice fury dump.
From anecdotal experience, I can tell you that 400k HP is enough for the highest of torments, mainly because of the Unity rings. Anything beyond that is gratuitous. If you don't have access to these rings or refuse to consider them into your play, perhaps the ballpark of 500k would be suitable. Don't neglect your all resist and armor either. One combination that seemed to work decently well in torment 6 was the Pride of Cassius mighty belt along with Ignore Pain: Ignorance is Bliss, even without Unity. Maybe you can come up with something of your own to help you survive higher up, and share it with us after!
In regards to your TF question, you have a few options. IAS (along with your paragon points in attack speed) is not as useful for the current build you're running, due to the mechanics of whirlwind. Attack speed will only benefit you in intervals, and if you are truly curious, you can look up what break points they're at to see if you can hit them. I'd personally look into rerolling the IAS to either Vit if you need it, or CDR, or even elite damage. Similarly with your paragon points, i'd go strictly in just crit damage and critical chance, seeing you're only paragon 200~.
On a semi-related topic, have you bothered looking into obtaining a Sankis axe and/or crafting a Devastator? It doesn't make much sense using TF and randomly a BK weapon if you have the ability to get much better since you're running fire damage, as you've mentioned. If not, I might even try out the Maximus you have, seeing that the fire chains can benefit greatly with the added ability to leap past groups and drag the chain through.
Lastly on another note, i'd probably drop whirlwind and try out HoTA if it's not too much trouble (with a Cindercoat eventually) if I were you. I know that trying Maximus with whirlwind will proc the demon and chains at a substantially lesser rate than using something like HoTA as your fury dump.
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Aside from the fact that you could use a myriad of upgrades seeing that you have zero legendaries equipped of any kind, there are still some things that you can improve through rolls from what you're currently wearing. Your amulet can easily be replaced by another yellow with real stats (STR, Vit) rather than non-stat damage attributes. Bash on your pants can be rolled to Vitality. CDR rolls can be switched to Vitality too, for example, which leads me to wonder this next question:
Why are you consciously stacking CDR so hard? Your build has two skills that really benefit much from CDR, being Earthquake and Ground Stomp. If lower Earthquake cooldown was that important, you would have also already picked up the Boon of Bul'Kathos passive. Ground Stomp on a shorter cooldown doesn't seem like it has any synergistic benefits from having a lower cooldown. The rest of your skills such as Overpower and Avalanche already all have cooldown-lowering functions built into skills without CDR. All of these skills, save maybe Ground Stomp, don't help your survivability much at all, seeing that you need advice on survival. I believe that if you spend some time to re-think your build approach for a more defensive and synergistic build will do you more in the long run, especially when you're looking for help in "surviving the inferno"
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Fast forward three weeks, i'm currently closing in on paragon 500 with every single Barbarian set in my repertoire along with all the flavorful legendaries one could have for any popular barbarian builds these days, including mix-match dual-final-set-bonuses. Yes, i've been extremely lucky and no, this isn't a thread about my drops. However I do want to examine some of these initial receptions and perceptions people have about the different sets people have for barbarians.
While trying to complete my third and final set of the three, Earthquake, I had access to the complete other two sets. What I had found during that time while bouncing back and forth between builds and bonuses was quite interesting and contrary to the initial polled reactions people had. Often a perceived underdog and lesser-discussed set, I made it a mission to try and discover why Raekors wasn't as appealing as the others and maybe find out some redeeming qualities to it. Furious Charge gaining every rune certainly wasn't as flashy as the other sets. But here are my findings:
For Immortal Kings, I was able to stack around 100% elemental damage of Fire, Lightning, and Physical to test out most of the runes properly in various torments. I found that it had great flexibility in creating slightly higher torment survivability with Together As One, although it sort of caps out near Torment 6 when the amount of damage you take actually kills the Ancients quite often and faster than the cooldown of the skill, sometimes providing problems in maintaining them. The Council Rises, along with my perfect AS rolled Taskers and Theos gave my ancients the ability to crit very often for over 12 million at a time. This however, was undermined by the randomness of the AI in terms of targeting when faced with multiple mobs, which happens to be a great portion of the gameplay. This "drawback" proved too inefficient at killing through regular mobs at a faster pace that you'd come to expect from a well-built and groomed Whirlwind build. However they excelled at killing single mobs (read: annihilates single rift guardians) over almost any other Barbarian build I tried. Ancients' Fury is a very volatile rune, as many have predicted and tried. It allows for reliability in Fury-heavy builds such as Boulder Toss and/or HoTA variations. Unfortunately, as controllable as these situations are, their fury regeneration is often plagued too by the clunky AI where the ancients often get stuck in a limbo when off attacking a mob near the edge of your screen/their leash range. With all of these things in consideration, I would place Immortal Kings 4 piece bonus *THIRD PLACE* overall when compared to the other two sets. I do want to point out that the set bonuses leading up to the 4 piece are all extremely strong.
Raekors-- What Immortal Kings lacked, Raekors surpassed.
Fire damage-- Many people these days are stacking fire damage. The Council Rises as Ancients do incredible fire damage. How does Raekors stand up to them? As the Ancients were off doing 12mill crits to whatever random mobs they often pleased, Battering Ram Furious Charge was a controlled and often spammable (thank you Merciless Assault) attack that would crit every single mob the charge grouped up with Dreadnaught rune for 20-40 million damage per mob. This was the surgical efficiency that The Council Rises lacked. It made white mob grinding lightning fast even when compared to beefed up fire Ancients.
Fury heavy builds: Boulder Toss and HoTA variations and more. Ancients' Fury made it possible to sustain such builds with or without the help of a primary attack. Could Raekors do the same? Thanks to the Stamina rune and the spammability of Merciless Assault, I felt that on-demand fury was actually better than IK Ancient's Fury. To get a full Fury bar, you have to wait for the Ancients to attack for somewhere close to 5 seconds unhindered by clunky AI. With Raekor's charge, you get a full bar instantly so you can get back to throwing large rocks or slamming that big hammer immediately. This on-demand full fury bar function felt like a cornerstone in making any build I wanted to work. Even for less fury heavy builds like Whirlwind, a charge once in a blue moon could keep you Whirlwinding for the next 30 seconds unimpeded. I never felt as if I had to run something like Warcry: Charge! or a primary to generate fury. Did I mention that you also deal very solid damage every time you charge?
Survivability. Together as One, essentially permanent Ignore Pain is tough to beat. How can Raekors possibly stand up to Immortal Kings in this department? The answer wasn't as straightforward or as simple. I soon discovered that Raekors contribution to survivability was through another method; one that required a much higher learning curve than Immortal Kings (in which IK rune is passive, requires no such curve). The combination of Battering Ram (increased damage), Bull Rush (stunlock control), and Dreadnaught (aoe monk Cyclone-esque group up) allowed Raekors to surpass IK in the highest of torment levels. While Together as One gave a flat damage reduction, they still suffered from survival problems. Raekors was a built-in, reliable and vital tool that never went away. You can literally stunlock entire groups including elites from 100%-0% by using Furious Charge. While stunlocking, you're doing incredible damage, especially when stacking fire damage. Dreadnaught allowed you to take the fight away from dangerous affixes such as exploding Frozen orbs, or lethal Arcane Enchants, while grouping in more enemies for the kill. With this kind of reliable damage and control, I didn't need Together as One to survive.
By my anecdotal experience, I believe Raekor's strength in reliability, damage, control, and build-making/sustaining abilities are either parallel or surpass Immortal Kings in every department. I hope that fellow Barbarians will continue to embrace Raekors hopefully as much as the other sets too, or be just as excited to completed the set as they do for Earthquake or Immortal Kings. The potential is there, and I hope this inspires some really interesting builds to come.
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Now if you're doing lower torment levels and are running Ignore Pain, I might reconsider doing so. Especially since you have a String of Ears available. If using String of Ears means you won't be using Ignore Pain (for lower torments), that's an entire skill slot left open for you to choose something useful. Consider that.
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IAS for 10 CDR would be a great trade. You are correct in suspecting a CDR diminishing returns. Don't quote me on this, but I think CDR starts diminishing at around 35-40%. If you currently have 30 and are looking to add on 10, you'd probably end up with something like 38%.
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You can find a load of information in regards to technical issues such as breakpoints here, with credit due to Nubtro:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Avxzyy5pHlsZdDZoVzNQeVl3XzA3bExpdk5yTVdaV1E&output=html
Earthquake considers your mainhand's weapon damage (damage range) and not your weapon DPS. You are correct in that it does not consider IAS. More often than not, IAS on weapons serve as DPS inflation stats. That is to say that it makes the big DPS number higher, but can be very deceiving at a glance. When considering what weapon to use in your mainhand in calculating Earthquake damage (or any skill that is modified by weapon damage %), always resort to the damage range and not the actual DPS. A lot of time you'll find that a lower DPS weapon is actually more beneficial in the mainhand slot than a higher one. One thing that might offset this a bit would be taking into consideration weapon type if you choose to use the Weapons Master passive-- but that's another discussion.
Seeing that you're asking about HPs for higher torments, I assume that you have your sights set up high. Higher torments a lot of times rely on damage moreso than toughness (at least until the Unity rings are "fixed/changed"). Thus a lot of builds choose HoTA over whirlwind purely based on fury to damage value, especially when factoring in cost-reduction pieces such as a Cindercoat (a staple to leap/HoTa/fire builds these days). I wholeheartedly agree with you on the flexibility and mobility of whirlwind being unmatched and highly desirable, however we should do well to remember that we're discussing a *Leap* build here, and we're already in the green for mobility, so to speak. I suggest that you play what feels comfortable and right. For me and a number of players, doing massive damage with HoTA suits a leap build very well as the choice fury dump.
From anecdotal experience, I can tell you that 400k HP is enough for the highest of torments, mainly because of the Unity rings. Anything beyond that is gratuitous. If you don't have access to these rings or refuse to consider them into your play, perhaps the ballpark of 500k would be suitable. Don't neglect your all resist and armor either. One combination that seemed to work decently well in torment 6 was the Pride of Cassius mighty belt along with Ignore Pain: Ignorance is Bliss, even without Unity. Maybe you can come up with something of your own to help you survive higher up, and share it with us after!
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On a semi-related topic, have you bothered looking into obtaining a Sankis axe and/or crafting a Devastator? It doesn't make much sense using TF and randomly a BK weapon if you have the ability to get much better since you're running fire damage, as you've mentioned. If not, I might even try out the Maximus you have, seeing that the fire chains can benefit greatly with the added ability to leap past groups and drag the chain through.
Lastly on another note, i'd probably drop whirlwind and try out HoTA if it's not too much trouble (with a Cindercoat eventually) if I were you. I know that trying Maximus with whirlwind will proc the demon and chains at a substantially lesser rate than using something like HoTA as your fury dump.
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