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[ProzaicMuze]

(NEXT GUIDE: Multi-Strafe Demon Hunter)

I'm back with another guide! If you missed my last guide for a Sleet Storm Wizard, you can find it here:

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This build uses Thunderstrike's stunning mechanic to focus on heavy burst damage for guaranteed AoE stuns. Overpower and Rend provide considerable hands-free damage with multiple options for increasing survivability as needed. Battle Rage with Into the Fray supports the spamming of Thunderstrike, but you can opt for a Mighty Weapon and -HOTA items if you want to use Marauder's Rage.

Feedback and/or criticism is welcomed and appreciated as always

GAMEPLAY PREVIEW




THUNDERSTRIKE BUILD GUIDE




Build Calculator - http://us.battle.net...PQRc!YZd!bYZYYb

Gear Set - http://d3up.com/b/12454

You can find my channel at www.youtube.com/ProzaicMuze

[ErlendOlsen]

Nicely made guide as usually, but again i dont agree with the build.

I dont want to sound like a jerk, but i think this is a pretty bad version of the HotA build.

You got no sprint, no perma wotb, no perma hammerspam. (single target)

This is a teaser for my take on the HotA build: (will make a proper clip showing gear and build when 1.07 goes live)

Edited by ErlendOlsen, 04 February 2013 - 01:33 PM.

[ProzaicMuze]

ErlendOlsen, on 04 February 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

Nicely made guide as usually, but again i dont agree with the build.

I dont want to sound like a jerk, but i think this is a pretty bad version of the HotA build.

You got no sprint, no perma wotb, no perma hammerspam. (single target)

I think "different" is the word you're looking for, and you're going to dislike ALL of my Barbarian builds because I specifically try to avoid commonalities between them. You don't even have to watch my guides to say "No perma WOTB, no sprint, this is slow and sucks" because you're going to be right most of the time. I'm purposely avoiding putting that particular combination into every, single, build, because it's boring and defeats the purpose of my guides. It's the same with CM Wizards. I don't think you're a jerk at all, but I think you're missing what I'm trying to accomplish.

Also, you can certainly achieve "perma WOTB" with this build. . . if you want to. I cover this in the guide. You can also "perma hammerspam" with this build. . . if you want to. It's in the guide as well. I take a lot of time researching popular builds so that I can address them in the rune option portion of my guides. In this case, I mentioned Thrive on Chaos and how to use it, the benefits of attack/move speed and -HOTA items with Mighty Weapon being a route for those that are interested. Obviously you're dual-wielding which can be quite strong, but the whole point of this build is to use Thunderstrike with a massive two-handed weapon to stun things.

Efficiency really isn't something I worry about which is probably going to be a problem for you given your preferred playstyle.

Nice video btw! (Hate the song, though Xp)

[redcinder]

Are you saying you purposely create guides that are different but are slower and inefficient ? In my opinion I believe that the fun for most people comes with efficiency, how fast they can soldier on through the mobs and find the nice shiny oranges.

Props to you for making these guides but I would rather watch guides done by you on the most efficient builds because your style in guides is actually good.

Rather than "Heres the samo samo build but I changed a few skills to make it less efficient, BUT ITS FUN"

I don't know if its just me but I like to get the most out of the time I play and I feel like if I follow the guides this just wouldn't happen. I tried your Sleet storm build and found myself chasing ranged elites and especially the ones that shield themselves for longer than I would like to lol

TL;DR Good guide template, use it on efficient guides and get more views.

Edited by redcinder, 04 February 2013 - 03:22 PM.

[ProzaicMuze]

I actually JUST finished replying to a similar comment on reddit, so some of my reply will be familiar if you read my reddit post.

I could make guides about the more popular builds (as some people, like you, have been asking me to) showing ways to improve them even further (because I happen to be quite good at min/maxing from my strong D&D roots) and no doubt gain a lot of popularity for it. Unfortunately, I'd slash my wrists afterwards and/or be bored out of my mind given that nothing about those builds would be "me." I play (A)RPG games to inject my own personality into them and these quirky builds are how I do that. My goal is "fun" and enough people are enjoying these off-beat builds that I'm satisfied I might be convinced to sprinkle a cookie-cutter build in here or there JUST to say "okay I did it" (such as after a major patch when folks are scrambling), but it'll never be the focus of my channel and there are already plenty of others who do that already.

While I'm not TRYING to be inefficient, because believe it or not, I'm one of THE most efficiency driven people you could meet (when I was streaming I covered the AH a great deal and participated in a podcast), I derive more enjoyment from the creativity of a build than the pure efficiency of a build. For example, I hate whirlwind. I really do. It's just a dumb ability (to me). Likewise, I HATE the keyboard faceroll of CM Wizard and the mindless "roflazor" of Archon. The abilities don't follow any kind of theme, there is no personality to them, it's just a smattering of "the best" abilities in the game.

I'm also completely backwards (according to many people) in that I don't actually play Diablo (any of them) to "find the nice shiny oranges" nor do I care how slow/fast I clear things because I'd be playing an MMO if I wanted to hop on a treadmill. For this reason I also don't care for the Paragon system, have yet to craft a hellfire ring (or even attempt to) and don't bother with ubers unless I'm in a party that basically forces me to. I think a lot of people forget that these kinds of games are also about developing a character and with the itemization of this gaming being completely borked, the only real way left to do that is with your build.

[Aldoran]

Good and solid work, but you are little bit late, this build is popular for a very long time, but more like a variation of a standart hota build 'with thunderstrike rune to stun enemies'. and that is honestly all, that you can say about that build, do not know why are focusing on this rune so much.

also you are trying to cover all aspects of barbarian in choosen skills, and it does not play good. you can throw away half of your advice, if you loooking on middle-high barbs and doing ~mp6+ and as for beginers: you have so many variants and options, that it will not help them to choose )

Quote

Nicely made guide as usually, but again i dont agree with the build.

I dont want to sound like a jerk, but i think this is a pretty bad version of the HotA build.

You got no sprint, no perma wotb, no perma hammerspam. (single target)

This is a teaser for my take on the HotA build: (will make a proper clip showing gear and build when 1.07 goes live)

You forgot to mention one thing, to get working build you posted in your video for high MP you need 2x1Hs 200M+ gold each.
And you can find a good skorn for 20M.

[Kyoob]

Why do you think efficient build must be instantly boring? I play infinite wotb HotS build from time totime,especially uber farming. And its amazing. It's also quite challenging to play the build, as I dont like any cost reducing items for hots. And sprint is so so usefull in so many situations its hard to pass.

However I understand what you are trying to achieve, it's just not anything I'm looking for. What I do like about your video is the graphical design. It looks fancy, and I like fancy stuff.

[ProzaicMuze]

Aldoran, on 04 February 2013 - 09:27 PM, said:

Good and solid work, but you are little bit late, this build is popular for a very long time, but more like a variation of a standart hota build 'with thunderstrike rune to stun enemies'. and that is honestly all, that you can say about that build, do not know why are focusing on this rune so much.

also you are trying to cover all aspects of barbarian in choosen skills, and it does not play good. you can throw away half of your advice, if you loooking on middle-high barbs and doing ~mp6+ and as for beginers: you have so many variants and options, that it will not help them to choose )

It happens, I know not all of my builds will be entirely "new," but this is one of my older builds from months back. I'm only late in the sense that I hadn't yet moved to YouTube. I covered this build while streaming before HOTA gained popularity after the two-hander buff. As for why I'm focusing on this particular rune, it's because that's the whole point of my guides: taking less used runes and showing viable ways of using them regardless of whether or not they're top-tier efficient.

Don't take this the wrong way, but more people have commented (publicly and privately) about my builds being easy to understand while still offering a variety of options than those suggesting I cover too much. I'll keep this in mind, though, should more people start to share your concern.

Kyoob, on 04 February 2013 - 11:43 PM, said:

Why do you think efficient build must be instantly boring? I play infinite wotb HotS build from time totime,especially uber farming. And its amazing. It's also quite challenging to play the build, as I dont like any cost reducing items for hots. And sprint is so so usefull in so many situations its hard to pass.

However I understand what you are trying to achieve, it's just not anything I'm looking for. What I do like about your video is the graphical design. It looks fancy, and I like fancy stuff.

I don't, I just find the idea of making guides for builds that I neither came up with nor use as being dishonest. I actually use the builds you see in these guides allowing me to get excited about them and draw on real experiences with them. Not to mention that I'd be trading "this build is slow" comments for "congrats on a truely original build! *eyeroll*"

Glad you like the design, though

[IgnatiusReilly]

Well, video games are, before anything else, about having fun. Some people have fun by being most efficient, others have fun by creating builds that they enjoy. I don't know why it has to be one or the other.

Anyway, as one of the latter types of players, I support you! I think D3 offers a skill system with a lot of interesting potential, outside of maximizing farming runs, I think players should also try to take advantage of the skill system and craft their own build, because that can be just as fun.

I think I like WW too much (not WotB, just WW in general) but I'll see how this build goes for me and whether it clicks.

[bruteMax]

redcinder, on 04 February 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

Are you saying you purposely create guides that are different but are slower and inefficient ? In my opinion I believe that the fun for most people comes with efficiency, how fast they can soldier on through the mobs and find the nice shiny oranges.

TL;DR Good guide template, use it on efficient guides and get more views.

That's a rather large assumption to make.  If efficiency is the only thing that matters, then no new guides are needed as the DW/WW build at low MP is all that's needed for Barbs and that's been covered to death.

plvl 100 gogo.  Only way to play D3 lol.

[aloys24]

I would love to play all these different builds, but I have a full time job and a life so I'm only putting in 15ish hours of gameplay a week.  I really need to try and get the best drops I can in that time to try and build up some gold.  The best way for me to do that is a pretty standard WW build.

Interesting ideas, but for most people a barb build without sprint isn't going to be very popular.  To get the best drops you really need to grind paragon levels.

[ProzaicMuze]

aloys24, on 05 February 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

I would love to play all these different builds, but I have a full time job and a life so I'm only putting in 15ish hours of gameplay a week.  I really need to try and get the best drops I can in that time to try and build up some gold.  The best way for me to do that is a pretty standard WW build.

Interesting ideas, but for most people a barb build without sprint isn't going to be very popular.  To get the best drops you really need to grind paragon levels.

I have good news! You currently play more than double the amount of D3 I do in a week! Getting the gear for the builds I am making is not time intensive and will never cost more than 10-20mil. In most cases they can be achieved for 5-10mil with MP1 entry level requirements being 1-2mil max.

I do agree that missing sprint makes this build (and future builds I'll make) less popular, but I'm not much for popularity anyways ;P

[ProzaicMuze]

Just posted the next guide for a Multi-Strafe Demon Hunter