59 replies to this topic

[TheDemokin]

The amount of blasphemy in this thread is disgusting, this really shows that everyone that wanted an easy way to farm switched to the barb and has just about minimal or no knowledge of the class whatsoever.

Huminator, on 01 December 2012 - 06:52 PM, said:

Domeotaku, on 01 December 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

aerialus, on 01 December 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

Huminator, on 30 November 2012 - 08:30 PM, said:

In terms of xp /hour. Dual wielding is far superior to a skorn. Max performance is done on mp1-3 depending on gear. And at those mp levels its imposible for you to maintain 100% uptime on wotb with a two hander. Which hurt your xp gain per hour alot.

And before you say it. No running mp5 or 6 cannot reach the ammounts of xp, you get doing on low mp dual wield.

You are actually wrong.
Best exp/h is mp0 with 2h. Passive fury generation from set and passive, not using wotb, not wasting time on keeping it up (no bash, no primary skill). Insta killing elitepacks with leap/overpower combo. This can give you about 100m/h of exp with proper stats.

DW is cheaper and has more dps since WW spec scales so well with haste, the constant +50% movementspeed from sprint make WW DW spec alot more effective than any Skorn spec.

Not true. MP0 with skorn and just "Best exp/h is mp0 with 2h. Passive fury generation from set and passive, not using wotb, not wasting time on keeping it up (no bash, no primary skill). Insta killing elitepacks with leap/overpower combo. This can give you about 100m/h of exp with proper stats." is faster than any ww build xp per hour wise.

Exactly that. I still prefer tornado WW build simple because you never stop to cast anything, tornados one shot everyone behind you (white mobs), a couple of WW easily kills elites for me on MP2, with 2 rage gen passives i have very minimal issues with rage, if you wish no rage issues at all get IK x 5. 6-7 min clears of MP2.

With 1 handers my tornadoes are not going to guaranteed kill every white mob = i'll have to either make u-turns to finish them off (is a waste of time) or i'll just leave them alive or i move down to MP1 or even 0. None of those steps are optimal = there is absolutely no reason i will be switching to 1 handers for farming low MPs any time soon.

[Morphos]

Honestly, I think Skorn is superior to 1 handers for high MP uber/key farming as well, simply because the most efficient way to do that at this point is just to spam HotA. For ubers now I literally just hold down left click for HotA - Smash and with only 1.45 attack speed including WOTB I am able to keep permanent WOTB uptime doing nothing else and output 1.3mil dps.

This is the spec I use now for high MP key/uber farming: http://us.battle.net...kURP!ZYe!ZZcZYc

The only skills you actually need there are HotA, Battle Rage and Thrive on Chaos. I only keep the sprint/WW combo in order to farm the 5 NV stacks faster, but if you have somebody else finding the elites for you or something you could drop them both for Rend/Overpower and increase your DPS.

Edited by Morphos, 03 December 2012 - 03:17 PM.

[supertriqui]

bmiha, on 30 November 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

Skorn is good to begin with ,I started with skorn too ,and it was big numbers ,indeed ,but not as nearly as effective and fast as good 1handers. That's why good skorn is 50m and good 1 handers are 300m.

This. This is the main factor. Yes, you can get a good skorn for 50m (or a decent one for 15m). And good 1handers cost you 600m (300 each), while decent 1handers cost you 30 to 60 millions (15 to 30 each).

The fun part, is you get exactly the same results from both, if you are focusing on leveling up your Paragon level. Sure, for guys in the 90s to 100 paragon, it's kinda obsolet. But for everyone else, there's no difference, AT ALL. I use a Skorn in my regular MP0-1 Alkaizer run, and I can sprint constantly, I kill every pack of mobs in one single pass of WW, and I kill the elite packs in 5s (during the stun of Stomp). In lot of cases, I charge through the packs, killing them faster than with WW (because of faster movement) and I get rage to sprint to the next pack. I could spend 300 millions to buy two one handers, and I'd not get a increase in XP per hour in MP 0-1. So what's the point? I'd rather use that gold in other pieces of my gear.

To the OP, there's no doubt that DW is mostly the top end. Just like Rolls Royce is the best car. That doesn't mean you should save for a Rolls Royce, instead of buying a BMW or Mercedes. Specially, if your suit isn't a Versace yet.

Skorn is slower, and thus have less overall DPS  in Tornados. But I only use WWnado build to farm XP and items in low MP, and in those MP, a single Tornado with my build kill any regular white mob. So what's the point? You won't kill the mob *twice* if you DW anyways. And while Skorn have issues with the 'nados, it also have better return for some other skills. For example, Rend from Skorn are much much much better than Rend from DW. Charge/merciless assault also do more damage, and with HOTA it's easier to keep a full rage bar with a slow weapon if you don't have 300 million SoJ and Mara, because you need to spam less HotA for the same overall damage.

[Huminator]

supertriqui, on 04 December 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:

bmiha, on 30 November 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

Skorn is good to begin with ,I started with skorn too ,and it was big numbers ,indeed ,but not as nearly as effective and fast as good 1handers. That's why good skorn is 50m and good 1 handers are 300m.

This. This is the main factor. Yes, you can get a good skorn for 50m (or a decent one for 15m). And good 1handers cost you 600m (300 each), while decent 1handers cost you 30 to 60 millions (15 to 30 each).

The fun part, is you get exactly the same results from both, if you are focusing on leveling up your Paragon level. Sure, for guys in the 90s to 100 paragon, it's kinda obsolet. But for everyone else, there's no difference, AT ALL. I use a Skorn in my regular MP0-1 Alkaizer run, and I can sprint constantly, I kill every pack of mobs in one single pass of WW, and I kill the elite packs in 5s (during the stun of Stomp). In lot of cases, I charge through the packs, killing them faster than with WW (because of faster movement) and I get rage to sprint to the next pack. I could spend 300 millions to buy two one handers, and I'd not get a increase in XP per hour in MP 0-1. So what's the point? I'd rather use that gold in other pieces of my gear.

To the OP, there's no doubt that DW is mostly the top end. Just like Rolls Royce is the best car. That doesn't mean you should save for a Rolls Royce, instead of buying a BMW or Mercedes. Specially, if your suit isn't a Versace yet.

Skorn is slower, and thus have less overall DPS  in Tornados. But I only use WWnado build to farm XP and items in low MP, and in those MP, a single Tornado with my build kill any regular white mob. So what's the point? You won't kill the mob *twice* if you DW anyways. And while Skorn have issues with the 'nados, it also have better return for some other skills. For example, Rend from Skorn are much much much better than Rend from DW. Charge/merciless assault also do more damage, and with HOTA it's easier to keep a full rage bar with a slow weapon if you don't have 300 million SoJ and Mara, because you need to spam less HotA for the same overall damage.

The thing is, when you dual wield, you can keep wotb up 100%. This means you always have the extra 20% movement speed wotb grants.. You cannot so with a Skorn. And that costs you alot in terms of efficiency.

Say "But for everyone else, there's no difference, AT ALL" is a complete lie. There is a huge difference.  And that difference i explained you above. And you price numbers are also complete wrong. You can get a good mighty wep for less than 10m and then you take a decent echoing fury for 40m or so. And tada then you spend 50m on weapons, which is the same as a decent skorn. Your just are much quicker and efficient farmer, compared to the people fooling around with a Skorn.

[gothamknight]

DW is king. The atk spd procs the fury too fast. No reason not to.

[supertriqui]

Huminator, on 04 December 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

supertriqui, on 04 December 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:

bmiha, on 30 November 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

Skorn is good to begin with ,I started with skorn too ,and it was big numbers ,indeed ,but not as nearly as effective and fast as good 1handers. That's why good skorn is 50m and good 1 handers are 300m.

This. This is the main factor. Yes, you can get a good skorn for 50m (or a decent one for 15m). And good 1handers cost you 600m (300 each), while decent 1handers cost you 30 to 60 millions (15 to 30 each).

The fun part, is you get exactly the same results from both, if you are focusing on leveling up your Paragon level. Sure, for guys in the 90s to 100 paragon, it's kinda obsolet. But for everyone else, there's no difference, AT ALL. I use a Skorn in my regular MP0-1 Alkaizer run, and I can sprint constantly, I kill every pack of mobs in one single pass of WW, and I kill the elite packs in 5s (during the stun of Stomp). In lot of cases, I charge through the packs, killing them faster than with WW (because of faster movement) and I get rage to sprint to the next pack. I could spend 300 millions to buy two one handers, and I'd not get a increase in XP per hour in MP 0-1. So what's the point? I'd rather use that gold in other pieces of my gear.

To the OP, there's no doubt that DW is mostly the top end. Just like Rolls Royce is the best car. That doesn't mean you should save for a Rolls Royce, instead of buying a BMW or Mercedes. Specially, if your suit isn't a Versace yet.

Skorn is slower, and thus have less overall DPS  in Tornados. But I only use WWnado build to farm XP and items in low MP, and in those MP, a single Tornado with my build kill any regular white mob. So what's the point? You won't kill the mob *twice* if you DW anyways. And while Skorn have issues with the 'nados, it also have better return for some other skills. For example, Rend from Skorn are much much much better than Rend from DW. Charge/merciless assault also do more damage, and with HOTA it's easier to keep a full rage bar with a slow weapon if you don't have 300 million SoJ and Mara, because you need to spam less HotA for the same overall damage.

The thing is, when you dual wield, you can keep wotb up 100%. This means you always have the extra 20% movement speed wotb grants.. You cannot so with a Skorn. And that costs you alot in terms of efficiency.

Say "But for everyone else, there's no difference, AT ALL" is a complete lie. There is a huge difference.  And that difference i explained you above. And you price numbers are also complete wrong. You can get a good mighty wep for less than 10m and then you take a decent echoing fury for 40m or so. And tada then you spend 50m on weapons, which is the same as a decent skorn. Your just are much quicker and efficient farmer, compared to the people fooling around with a Skorn.

But to keep WotB up, you need to farm MP2 (or have low dps), even with DW. Otherwise, monsters die too fast to keep the WotB up. So you are losing in killing speed (due to the lower efficiency in MP2) what you gain in movement speed. This is easy to show, just take a look to the videos of people doing the Alkaizer run with Skorn (there are a few in the forums) under 6 minutes. There aren't that much videos of DW guys doing the run in less than that, you know. Even with the 20% extra run speed.

Plus it depends on what you call " a decent weapon". You can buy a 1350+ dps skorn with 300+ str and 180+ CHD plus socket for 10 millions in EU servers. For that price, you can't get an equivalent pair of 1handers, not even close.

[Huminator]

There is a reason pretty much every paragon 100 barb leveled as DW ww. Good luck achieving over 80m xp per hour whirlwinding with a skorn.

[supertriqui]

Huminator, on 05 December 2012 - 08:14 AM, said:

There is a reason pretty much every paragon 100 barb leveled as DW ww. Good luck achieving over 80m xp per hour whirlwinding with a skorn.

Pretty much everybody who is already a  paragon 100 barb, has absolutelly top gear. I've already said that DW is the absolute top gear, the Rolls Royce of barb specs, and nobody denies that. What I'm saying is, for those who don't have 1200€ in gear in their barbs like you do, the difference in XP is nil, and the difference in price is huge. I don't make 80 million XP per hour with my Skorn, but 99% of DW barbarians don't make 80 million XP per hour either, so the point is moot. Yes, for those already wearing absolutelly top gear, above 1 billion gold in stuff, you can break 80~85 million XP/hour with 2 incredibly expensive 1h weapons, while top skorn users are bound to 75~80 million XP/hour for half the cost. And yes, once you have your rolex, your Versacce suit, you eat sirloin everyday, and you have paid your holidays in Cancun, a Rolls Royce is a great idea (so is a private jet later on). But for 99% of the people, it's simply not worth it. It's not worth it to pay for the Rollls Royce when your watch is a Casio, your suit is a track-suit, you eat rice, and don't go on holidays to anywhere. A BMW is a nice and functional car too, and cost only a fraction, which you can spend somewhere else.

[aerialus]

Morphos, on 03 December 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

Honestly, I think Skorn is superior to 1 handers for high MP uber/key farming as well, simply because the most efficient way to do that at this point is just to spam HotA. For ubers now I literally just hold down left click for HotA - Smash and with only 1.45 attack speed including WOTB I am able to keep permanent WOTB uptime doing nothing else and output 1.3mil dps.

This is the spec I use now for high MP key/uber farming: http://us.battle.net...kURP!ZYe!ZZcZYc

The only skills you actually need there are HotA, Battle Rage and Thrive on Chaos. I only keep the sprint/WW combo in order to farm the 5 NV stacks faster, but if you have somebody else finding the elites for you or something you could drop them both for Rend/Overpower and increase your DPS.

Isn't it because of superstition passive and standing on top of dot, that you can keep wotb up?

According to these calcs:
http://us.battle.net...opic/7199962320

it is much harder to sustain wotb with 2h, against single target.

Quote

So in theory, just spamming hammer on one target, requires the equivalent of 209% ias for a Skorn, which corresponds with 12 ticks per second for WW. So generally speaking, hammer builds require higher IAS to maintain WotB in single target situations relative to WW/tornado, but you can make up for the deficit with a passive like superstition and standing in pools on purpose. With animosity passive, the APS requirement drops to 1.60 (18 fury per crit), but I feel superstition is overall a better solution.

In actual play, these numbers mirror my experience. I run 38% ias on gear, with 25% more from WotB with a Skorn. I use superstition and can maintain WotB for most of the SK fight by standing on lasers or getting in harms way on purpose. This works for me because of high lifesteal (9% between belt and skorn) and decent dps/mitigation. It's a losing battle to keep WotB up during the Kulle fight. I only have 1.63 aps of the 2.09 required, and it feels like I am swinging about 75% as fast as needed. I try to move to the cave-ins and get hit by fireballs for more fury, but RNG is ... RNG.

[Huminator]

1 decent mighty weapon is still less than 10m gold and for 40 mill, you can get a decent fury. There you got it. A better weapon setup than any skorn. You dont need 2x 1b one handers for DW to work. It can be done with less than 50m. And with 50m worth of one handers you can reach an xp per hour no skorn ww'er can compete with.

Edited by Huminator, 05 December 2012 - 09:02 AM.

[Morphos]

aerialus, on 05 December 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

Isn't it because of superstition passive and standing on top of dot, that you can keep wotb up?

According to these calcs:
http://us.battle.net...opic/7199962320

it is much harder to sustain wotb with 2h, against single target.

Yes, superstition is a big part of it. I completely disagree about not keeping it up vs. ZK/siege though, I have no trouble keeping 100% WOTB uptime in that fight. There are his fireballs as well as his tornadoes. The other thing is, the spec I linked and used is hybrid so if you get low on fury another option is to just sprint/WW for a couple of seconds to drop a bunch of tornadoes on the boss which will fill up your fury as you go back to spamming HotA. In the ZK/Siege fight this is particularly easy because Siegebreaker is huge and spends a lot of time standing still in your tornadoes.

Against actual packs when you are getting your stacks its never a problem either, because they will either have molten or arcane or whatever or since there are multiples and probably trash around you can just drop a couple of tornadoes.

So I understand that in pure theory this its difficult to keep HotA up, but in reality its quite easy.

[Morphos]

Huminator, on 05 December 2012 - 09:01 AM, said:

1 decent mighty weapon is still less than 10m gold and for 40 mill, you can get a decent fury. There you got it. A better weapon setup than any skorn. You dont need 2x 1b one handers for DW to work. It can be done with less than 50m. And with 50m worth of one handers you can reach an xp per hour no skorn ww'er can compete with.

This is pure BS.

Here is a video of me pulling 71mil XP/hour with a Skorn. My gear is nowhere near optimal and this run could easily exceed 80mil/hour if it was.

Also here is a video from one of the top geared barbs in the game explaining the efficiency of using a 2 hander rend build for farming: http://www.twitch.tv/cdxliv/c/1747935

[zimira]

Quote

So in theory, just spamming hammer on one target, requires the equivalent of 209% ias for a Skorn, which corresponds with 12 ticks per second for WW. So generally speaking, hammer builds require higher IAS to maintain WotB in single target situations relative to WW/tornado, but you can make up for the deficit with a passive like superstition and standing in pools on purpose. With animosity passive, the APS requirement drops to 1.60 (18 fury per crit), but I feel superstition is overall a better solution.

In actual play, these numbers mirror my experience. I run 38% ias on gear, with 25% more from WotB with a Skorn. I use superstition and can maintain WotB for most of the SK fight by standing on lasers or getting in harms way on purpose. This works for me because of high lifesteal (9% between belt and skorn) and decent dps/mitigation. It's a losing battle to keep WotB up during the Kulle fight. I only have 1.63 aps of the 2.09 required, and it feels like I am swinging about 75% as fast as needed. I try to move to the cave-ins and get hit by fireballs for more fury, but RNG is ... RNG.

It seems he forgot the quite important fact that generated rage must be equal to or larger then the amount you spend.
If he can't generate enough rage at 1.63 aps, going to 2.09 aps will only make him run out of rage faster.

(In the case he can't take advantage of superstition)

Edited by zimira, 05 December 2012 - 03:22 PM.

[elinar]

iSage, on 30 November 2012 - 03:03 AM, said:

I'm agreeing with the consensus here although I'm sure a Skorn defender will come soaring in soon to let us know why we're wrong. I am, however,  with arms open for someone like that as the Skorn HOTA build is pretty bad ass minus it's inferiority to duel wielding and it does kind of bum me out that it's just not up to par. I understand it is definitely a viable option, however I tend to be elitist and as of right now WW is the hot topic from what I can see. Any case, thanks for the opinions so far.

If your a monk like ME, buy a skorn with lifesteal for 100mills, then farm mp0 until ur lvl 100, then go for 2x1handers...

YOU NEED SKORN FOR SPIRITREGEN BUILD=== tempest rush all way every day

[aerialus]

Btw as for skorn builds.
Pretty much all high end top heroscore guys use dual wield setups with EF.
I wonder if it is possible to come close to this with just very good skorn. Also what skorn would be better, ias one or life steal.

[Domeotaku]

aerialus, on 01 December 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

It really isn't that simple.
Dual wield is better for high mp, ubers ect. But it isn't efficient by definition.
You can't run mp0 with high end dual wield barb because you lose berserker easily, stuff dies too quickly. If you increase mp to prevent that, you can't kill elites fast enough, and that ruins your efficiency.
There is balance between keeping enough fury for permanent sprint, and being able to insta kill elitepacks at the same time. Dual wield barb has trouble with this, and this happens to be most efficient way of farming. No mp bonuses can match sheer numbers of speedrunning mp0, and that is not just exp, but often drops as well.

You're not supposed to use WOTB in lower monsterpowers, what are you talking about? xD

TheDemokin, on 03 December 2012 - 05:59 AM, said:

The amount of blasphemy in this thread is disgusting, this really shows that everyone that wanted an easy way to farm switched to the barb and has just about minimal or no knowledge of the class whatsoever.

Huminator, on 01 December 2012 - 06:52 PM, said:

Domeotaku, on 01 December 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

aerialus, on 01 December 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

Huminator, on 30 November 2012 - 08:30 PM, said:

In terms of xp /hour. Dual wielding is far superior to a skorn. Max performance is done on mp1-3 depending on gear. And at those mp levels its imposible for you to maintain 100% uptime on wotb with a two hander. Which hurt your xp gain per hour alot.

And before you say it. No running mp5 or 6 cannot reach the ammounts of xp, you get doing on low mp dual wield.

You are actually wrong.
Best exp/h is mp0 with 2h. Passive fury generation from set and passive, not using wotb, not wasting time on keeping it up (no bash, no primary skill). Insta killing elitepacks with leap/overpower combo. This can give you about 100m/h of exp with proper stats.

DW is cheaper and has more dps since WW spec scales so well with haste, the constant +50% movementspeed from sprint make WW DW spec alot more effective than any Skorn spec.

Not true. MP0 with skorn and just "Best exp/h is mp0 with 2h. Passive fury generation from set and passive, not using wotb, not wasting time on keeping it up (no bash, no primary skill). Insta killing elitepacks with leap/overpower combo. This can give you about 100m/h of exp with proper stats." is faster than any ww build xp per hour wise.

Exactly that. I still prefer tornado WW build simple because you never stop to cast anything, tornados one shot everyone behind you (white mobs), a couple of WW easily kills elites for me on MP2, with 2 rage gen passives i have very minimal issues with rage, if you wish no rage issues at all get IK x 5. 6-7 min clears of MP2.

With 1 handers my tornadoes are not going to guaranteed kill every white mob = i'll have to either make u-turns to finish them off (is a waste of time) or i'll just leave them alive or i move down to MP1 or even 0. None of those steps are optimal = there is absolutely no reason i will be switching to 1 handers for farming low MPs any time soon.

You know that WW scales with haste right? DW deals way more damage than skorn.

Edited by Domeotaku, 05 December 2012 - 05:18 PM.

[Domeotaku]

DW is cheaper and stronger.

Edited by Domeotaku, 05 December 2012 - 05:19 PM.

[aerialus]

DW is cheaper? In what universe high rolls of EF are cheap bro. They are currently most expensive items in the game, along with decent rare 1h for barb.

Domeotaku, on 05 December 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

You're not supposed to use WOTB in lower monsterpowers, what are you talking about? xD

If you actually know game mechanics it becomes possible. Very high tick rate of tornadoes as priority over stacking crit bonus, and you can keep wotb up at mp0 despite having very high dps. It isn't popular because people try to do it with their all round gear, and then it fails obviously.

Edited by aerialus, 05 December 2012 - 05:35 PM.

[Morphos]

aerialus, on 05 December 2012 - 05:10 PM, said:

Btw as for skorn builds.
Pretty much all high end top heroscore guys use dual wield setups with EF.
I wonder if it is possible to come close to this with just very good skorn. Also what skorn would be better, ias one or life steal.

The top heroscore barb in the world (and 4th DPS) uses a Skorn: http://www.diablopro...452/Zebq/317096

[supertriqui]

Huminator, on 05 December 2012 - 09:01 AM, said:

1 decent mighty weapon is still less than 10m gold and for 40 mill, you can get a decent fury. There you got it. A better weapon setup than any skorn. You dont need 2x 1b one handers for DW to work. It can be done with less than 50m. And with 50m worth of one handers you can reach an xp per hour no skorn ww'er can compete with.

Once again, that depends on the rest of your gear. I have no doubt that your 1200 euro barbarian fast farmer than my 100€ barbarian with Skorn. But if you sell your two 1h, and buy a skorn worth that much, and I sell my skorn, and buy two 1h worth that much, you will farm much faster than me anyways. More important: I'll farm slower than I used to do, with my own gear, just because my skorn (1350dps, 190 CHD, 311 str) is worth just 10 millions, and with 10 millions, I can't buy two 1handers that come close. Your 50 million combo of mighty weapon+resonating fury cost FIVE times as much. I can do 50 million XP/hour with my set up and gear, and I can't do as much with two 1handers.

DW WWnado barbarian is the flavor of the month. Hence it's the most expensive, by simple offer and demand. If echoing fury and 1h mighty weapons weren't so overpriced, I'd swap to DW, no doubt. But right now, Skorn is a much cheaper alternative, and get the job done for 99% of the player base (those who aren't top geared)

Top DW players do around 85 million XP hour. Top Skorn players do 80 million. That's a 6% difference in efficiency. A pair of top 1handers cost more than twice the cost of a top skorn. If paying so much for a 6% efficiency is worth it or not, depends basically on how rich you are. Just like having a Rolex. A regular watch gets 99% of the job done, and cost 10.000 € less. If you are rich, you buy the rolex just because you couldn't care less for those 10.000€, but if you aren't, my advice is buy a Casio watch and save those 10.000€