The concept behind this build is to create a boss slayer that should be able to tank any inferno boss
while also retaining the ability to deal high single target damage to kill them alone. The skills are also applicable for tanking mobs and one AoE skill is provided for dealing with trash.
Skills:
Fury Generators:
Frenzy - Maniac (15% damage per charge) War Cry - Hardened Wrath (200% armor bonus) Ancient Spear - Dread Spear (175% life steal)
There are a couple of assumptions made in jusitifying the choices made in this build. The biggest assumption is that there will be bosses in inferno who are extremely difficult and cannot be tanked with a pure DPS build.
Defense vs Life:
The choice to focus on armor rather than life stems from the conclusions made in a thread on the official forums*. To summarise, the maximum amount of effective life a character can achieve is reached by maintaining a specific difference between armor and vitality. With a barbarian though there are other factors to consider when choosing between strength and vitality to gain effective life. Firstly, strength provides a bonus to both damage and survivability and secondly, there are advantages to having a high effective life and a low health bulb when it comes to flat integer healing from orbs and leech.
As a concrete example, having 1000 hp with 90% damage reduction grants you 10k effective life. If you
are leeching 500 damage per blow you are gaining 50% of your hp per strike, whereas if you had a 10k life bulb from pure vitality you are only gaining 5% of your max life per strike.
This means that by pumping strength you can potentially gain a large amount of damage reduction while keeping your health pool low, increasing the effectiveness of leech and also harnessing the added bonus of damage from strength.
Battle Core:
Passive damage reduction is sourced primarily from armor buffs in the form of Hardened Wrath and Tough as Nails; Superstition was chosen for general damage reduction as bosses are likely to spam a lot of elemental attacks. When going into a boss fight you will want to enter battle rage for the damage bonus and frenzy up on the enemy. The total damage buff should add up to 115%. Due to the benefits of effective health and good damage/speed from frenzy, Bloodthrist should be quite effective as a buffer against damage.
Presumably it will not be possible to leech lock the harder bosses. When they use their mega attacks or when you enevitably start losing hp you will want to pop Ignore Pain. During the 8 seconds of 65% damage reduction you should be able to not only live but ideally regain your life through leech. At higher levels Iron Hide can probably get up to 10 seconds, giving you 33% uptime on Ignore Pain. The challenge then becomes surviving till the next use of Ignore Pain.
During the 20 second cooldown you have to rely on leech and potions for a bit of staying power, once you get low you pop ancient spear for the 175% leech and hopefully refill your life. It is hard to say how realistic this will be without knowing the ratio of damage to life. The combination of these abilities are designed to create a survivability cycle that will allow the defeat of any boss eventually.
The only real fury spender in this build is whirlwind. I have specced it with volcanic erruption since it is the highest damaging modifier. It acts as the primary AoE skill for trash and is handy for dealing with physical immunes. At any point during a boss battle, possibly after using ancient spear or while ignore pain is active you might want to dump fury with whirlwind if it does more damage than frenzy.
Unknowns:
If Dread Spear proves ineffective for the purpose it was chosen or the bosses prove less difficult than anticipated I would consider swapping out either Ignore Pain or Ancient Spear for Wrath of the Berserker. In the event that bosses prove even more difficult than anticipated I think it would be worth investigating Wrath of the Berserker and War Cry specced for 60% evasion. I don't know much about the evasion mechanics but if it works as I expect it would be a considerable damage reduction.
This was my first build, I encourage you to give feedback on how to improve this build or point out it's flaws!
Frenzy- big yes and the rune choice is good.
War Cry- yes, but the rune choice is wrong. I can tell you now the majority of boss's attacks will be spells, except Butcher. So rune WC for extra HP and HP regen. HP helps against everything, spells and physical.
Ancient Spear- Dunno, never picked it in any build, picked Revenge instead, with 27% chance to proc.
Whirlwind-useless in your build. It's an aoe spell for large packs. HotA is MUCH better against a boss, pick more damage of extra loot drops, your choice.
Battle Rage- kinda underpowered and useless, WotB will be much better, should you decide to pick a skill to keep on.
Ignore Pain is good, as always if you gonna play Inferno.
All passives are good, except maybe Bloodthirst, as we do not know yet how much HP it will reward back. If 3% I'll skip it, if 10% then it seems like a must.
And the biggest problem with your build is no Threatening Shout. Its a must in Infermo I am afraid, takng half damage is crucial.
War Cry- yes, but the rune choice is wrong. I can tell you now the majority of boss's attacks will be spells, except Butcher. So rune WC for extra HP and HP regen. HP helps against everything, spells and physical.
I was under the impression that the damage reduction % that resulted from increased armor was applied to both elemental and physical damage. Some of the screen shots at http://www.diablowiki.net/Armor show "All damage reduced by". If this remains true, the choice between extra armor and extra life becomes a question of mathematics; though from what I speculate regarding HP values I wouldn't be surprised if the health buff is a good direction to go in because it would allow more investment in strength before moving away from the maximum effective HP balance of your character.
Ancient Spear- Dunno, never picked it in any build, picked Revenge instead, with 27% chance to proc.
I feel that revenge is great against trash, but 5% heal against a boss probably isn't going to go very far. I find it unlikely that even with some good procs that revenge will outheal 175% on a 10 second cooldown. I'm guessing that the trash won't be SO hard that ignore pain/dread spear isn't enough; if I'm wrong I will certainly consider swapping it.
Whirlwind-useless in your build. It's an aoe spell for large packs. HotA is MUCH better against a boss, pick more damage of extra loot drops, your choice.
Indeed I picked up whirlwind so I could deal with packs in inferno. I see where you are coming from with HotA vs bosses but it is a hard one to call for me. Hammer is going to be dealing somewhere between 208% and 234% damage per cast depending on how you rune it; if you count the extra chance to crit it's effectively 223% to 250%. Molten Whirlwind deals 429% weapon damage per second for approximately the same cost as Hammer. You would need to be able to use two hammers per second to match the single target damage of whirlwind but it would cost you twice as much fury to do so. If D3 is anything like D2, there are bound to be physical immunes, how would one deal with them as a barbarian if they didn't have an elemental skill? It seems to me like whirlwind is better than hammer but I haven't actually played the game...what makes you think that hammer would be better?
Battle Rage- kinda underpowered and useless, WotB will be much better, should you decide to pick a skill to keep on.
I disagree with this. Offensively, battle rage provides 20% more damage than Wrath of the Berserker, when they are both runed for damage. Overall Wrath has the attack speed boost which might make it better, however, it has a 120 second cooldown and only 15 seconds up time. Battle rage on the other hand can be kept up indefintely; any boss battle that lasts longer than 15 seconds will benefit far more from battle rage than Wrath unless there is something I don't know about.
And the biggest problem with your build is no Threatening Shout. Its a must in Infermo I am afraid, takng half damage is crucial.
If it worked against bosses I would agree with you, unfortunately most speculation suggests that it will only work against trash. If it does work against bosses though, for sure this would be a must.
Thanks again for replying, I appreciate the feedback, I would be grateful if you expanded on why you think Wrath and Hammer are good choices here if you disagree with my logic.
If D3 is anything like D2, there are bound to be physical immunes, how would one deal with them as a barbarian if they didn't have an elemental skill?
Immunities are supposed to be a thing of the past in D3. I think different monsters are still supposed to have different resistance levels to damage types, so it may still be beneficial to have a mix of damage type in a build, but it should no longer be mandatory.
Immunities are supposed to be a thing of the past in D3. I think different monsters are still supposed to have different resistance levels to damage types, so it may still be beneficial to have a mix of damage type in a build, but it should no longer be mandatory.
QFT
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
If D3 is anything like D2, there are bound to be physical immunes, how would one deal with them as a barbarian if they didn't have an elemental skill?
Immunities are supposed to be a thing of the past in D3. I think different monsters are still supposed to have different resistance levels to damage types, so it may still be beneficial to have a mix of damage type in a build, but it should no longer be mandatory.
Hes right no such things as immune anymore blizzard wants any class to be able to kill any mob but based on lvl difference some mobs could have a high resistance to certain types of damage.
about lifesteal, i don't think it will work at 100% ratio against bosses, and this is a d2 based speculation
This could be the case. The fact that it was a skill based lifesteal rather than item based lead me to suspect that it might be unpunished; if it doesn't prove effective a swapout for inspiring presence might be in order.
You defy your own logic. You chose to skip revenge since it would be lacking against a single boss but you went with whirlwind since it would be greater against packs. Makes no sense.
Threatening shouts works against Skeleton King iirc.
Regarding Ignore Pain, I would most definitively aim for Bravado. More frequent usage to counter the heavy hitters of the bosses.
Other than that, it seems good.
In a way it does contradict my logic, but there is a difference. Revenge shouldn't be needed to tank trash with Ignore Pain and Dread Spear available, however, an offensive AoE skill would be desired to deal with mobs. I am going to take a look at what other fury spenders are available to find something that might be suitable for both purposes.
Hmm, if it works against the Skeleton King that goes against what I have read elsewhere, but they may have been speculating. I wonder whether the skill would continue to be effective later or whether we will find that in Hell the bosses have some forms of debuff length reduction or immunity.
Bravado looks great, it actually has a higher ratio of uptime than Iron Hide and gives you more flexibility in when you choose to activate. I wonder whether more rune levels reduce the CD further or only increase the other effects.
about lifesteal, i don't think it will work at 100% ratio against bosses, and this is a d2 based speculation
This could be the case. The fact that it was a skill based lifesteal rather than item based lead me to suspect that it might be unpunished; if it doesn't prove effective a swapout for inspiring presence might be in order.
Right now it looks like the max amount of lifesteal you can get is 9% as a dual wielding barbarian (max of 3% can spawn on weapons and mighty belts). There are plenty of skill-based sources as well, but overall it doesn't seem like there will be huge amounts of leech that need to be reduced for balance reasons.
On top of that, I'd be pretty surprised if they used any special player restrictions for boss fights. The Skeleton King is already significantly more powerful than what you're used to fighting when you get to him, and he's not even an act boss. On top of that, people shouldn't really be doing boss runs in D3 like they did in D2. Judging by the Skeleton King, the risk/reward is already at a point where you are better off farming champ/unique packs for loot (assuming the random packs spawn more often on the higher difficulties). It doesn't seem like there's any need or reason to make certain spells not work on bosses or reduce CC durations or lifesteal percentages.
Keep in mind that abilities may work against some bosses, and not others. I wouldn't plan to much around the fact that the Skeleton King is effected by a specific ability. He's found in the first act, and he's also not the act's final boss. It's likely that as the difficulty increases, so too will the bosses immunities to certain abilities.
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Playing a Wizard. Looking for Demon Hunters to play with.
It's nice when a thread is full of suppositions (sigh x_x)
Indeed. Well, let's just assume that we will die in inferno on the first monster no matter what so we can be buildless! : )
I doubt any ability will be rendered useless because it is a boss apart from knockbacks and such.
It will probably depend from one boss to the next. For instance, Leoric is not an act boss, and he can be frozen which was very surprising to me the first time I saw it work on him. I believe a lot of the effects work but have reduced durations.
Instead of Whirlwind, why not Earthquake? I do mine with a golden to reduce cost and cooldown. It doesn't say that it is channeled so if it is something you let go and it lasts 8 seconds while you can still beat on them, it seems a lot stronger against bosses as well.
A question I was wondering about. Do you go with a shield? I am sure there will come calculations of shield stats vs life leech and faster killing on a better weapon. Or maybe we will get lucky and they will release some fantastic 2-handed Mighty weapon that adds to defense as well.
I doubt that I will use a shield unless the benefits are outstanding.
It's still a little hard to pick between fury spenders at this stage since damage values are subject to change. Currently though, Earthquake + Frenzy does the same damage as Whirlwind does on it's own. The advantage with whirlwind though is that you can use it more often. I feel that in this build fury generation will probably be a bit higher than what earthquake can spend on it's own which makes me suspect a different choice would be more efficient.
There is also the fact that Earthquake kind of forces you into Boon Of Bul' Kathos, which isn't the end of the world, but I feel like if you are going to take it you should probably grab Wrath of the Berserker aswell or you are not getting the most from your skills. For your build I would probably drop terrifying shout in favour of 45% evade Wrath of the Berserker, afterall, there isn't much apparent difference between -50% damage and 45% dodge. The synergy is also alot higher and it gives you something to do with that extra fury.
Inspiring presence is still an uncertain pick; you are going to want to refresh your warcry often for the fury benefit so I feel that the 2% regen is really all that it is worth; I will be surprised if the 2% ends up beating Tough As Nails at any point in the game.
Frenzy- big yes and the rune choice is good.
War Cry- yes, but the rune choice is wrong. I can tell you now the majority of boss's attacks will be spells, except Butcher. So rune WC for extra HP and HP regen. HP helps against everything, spells and physical.
Ancient Spear- Dunno, never picked it in any build, picked Revenge instead, with 27% chance to proc.
Whirlwind-useless in your build. It's an aoe spell for large packs. HotA is MUCH better against a boss, pick more damage of extra loot drops, your choice.
Battle Rage- kinda underpowered and useless, WotB will be much better, should you decide to pick a skill to keep on.
Ignore Pain is good, as always if you gonna play Inferno.
All passives are good, except maybe Bloodthirst, as we do not know yet how much HP it will reward back. If 3% I'll skip it, if 10% then it seems like a must.
And the biggest problem with your build is no Threatening Shout. Its a must in Infermo I am afraid, takng half damage is crucial.
This is what i was thinking aswell, you hit the nail on the head with the whirlewind.. its design is focused on big groups of enemies, unless there are multi monsters during a boss fight that carry the same %Lv value as the boss i dont see it being effective.
Keeping your same build in mind but changing WW to make SS (Seismic Slam) or if you wish to have a bit of range which could be a benefit if a monster has an ability some what of what Baal did in D2... you could use Weapon throw?..it could help you dish out same damge from the range. Otherwise SS would be a good choice that will give you a nice weapon damage %+
Perosnaly i would use Weapon Throw, however once i run through D3 normal and understand what the boss fights will be like and what strategies might be most effective then it would be far easier to decide.. so to Theorycraft that's how i would approch it.
Other then that your post is very detaieled and this build with small pinchs of changes feels like something i would effectively use through the later levels ( NM, HELL )
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The concept behind this build is to create a boss slayer that should be able to tank any inferno boss
while also retaining the ability to deal high single target damage to kill them alone. The skills are also applicable for tanking mobs and one AoE skill is provided for dealing with trash.
Skills:
Fury Generators:
Frenzy - Maniac (15% damage per charge)
War Cry - Hardened Wrath (200% armor bonus)
Ancient Spear - Dread Spear (175% life steal)
Fury Spenders:
Battle Rage - Marauders Rage (40% damage)
Whirlwind - Volcanic Eruption (143% fire damage)
Situational:
Ignore Pain - Iron Hide - (8 seconds)
Passives:
Superstition
Bloodthirst
Tough as Nails
Build Discussion:
There are a couple of assumptions made in jusitifying the choices made in this build. The biggest assumption is that there will be bosses in inferno who are extremely difficult and cannot be tanked with a pure DPS build.
Defense vs Life:
The choice to focus on armor rather than life stems from the conclusions made in a thread on the official forums*. To summarise, the maximum amount of effective life a character can achieve is reached by maintaining a specific difference between armor and vitality. With a barbarian though there are other factors to consider when choosing between strength and vitality to gain effective life. Firstly, strength provides a bonus to both damage and survivability and secondly, there are advantages to having a high effective life and a low health bulb when it comes to flat integer healing from orbs and leech.
As a concrete example, having 1000 hp with 90% damage reduction grants you 10k effective life. If you
are leeching 500 damage per blow you are gaining 50% of your hp per strike, whereas if you had a 10k life bulb from pure vitality you are only gaining 5% of your max life per strike.
This means that by pumping strength you can potentially gain a large amount of damage reduction while keeping your health pool low, increasing the effectiveness of leech and also harnessing the added bonus of damage from strength.
Battle Core:
Passive damage reduction is sourced primarily from armor buffs in the form of Hardened Wrath and Tough as Nails; Superstition was chosen for general damage reduction as bosses are likely to spam a lot of elemental attacks. When going into a boss fight you will want to enter battle rage for the damage bonus and frenzy up on the enemy. The total damage buff should add up to 115%. Due to the benefits of effective health and good damage/speed from frenzy, Bloodthrist should be quite effective as a buffer against damage.
Presumably it will not be possible to leech lock the harder bosses. When they use their mega attacks or when you enevitably start losing hp you will want to pop Ignore Pain. During the 8 seconds of 65% damage reduction you should be able to not only live but ideally regain your life through leech. At higher levels Iron Hide can probably get up to 10 seconds, giving you 33% uptime on Ignore Pain. The challenge then becomes surviving till the next use of Ignore Pain.
During the 20 second cooldown you have to rely on leech and potions for a bit of staying power, once you get low you pop ancient spear for the 175% leech and hopefully refill your life. It is hard to say how realistic this will be without knowing the ratio of damage to life. The combination of these abilities are designed to create a survivability cycle that will allow the defeat of any boss eventually.
The only real fury spender in this build is whirlwind. I have specced it with volcanic erruption since it is the highest damaging modifier. It acts as the primary AoE skill for trash and is handy for dealing with physical immunes. At any point during a boss battle, possibly after using ancient spear or while ignore pain is active you might want to dump fury with whirlwind if it does more damage than frenzy.
Unknowns:
If Dread Spear proves ineffective for the purpose it was chosen or the bosses prove less difficult than anticipated I would consider swapping out either Ignore Pain or Ancient Spear for Wrath of the Berserker. In the event that bosses prove even more difficult than anticipated I think it would be worth investigating Wrath of the Berserker and War Cry specced for 60% evasion. I don't know much about the evasion mechanics but if it works as I expect it would be a considerable damage reduction.
This was my first build, I encourage you to give feedback on how to improve this build or point out it's flaws!
*http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3967597687?page=1
War Cry- yes, but the rune choice is wrong. I can tell you now the majority of boss's attacks will be spells, except Butcher. So rune WC for extra HP and HP regen. HP helps against everything, spells and physical.
Ancient Spear- Dunno, never picked it in any build, picked Revenge instead, with 27% chance to proc.
Whirlwind-useless in your build. It's an aoe spell for large packs. HotA is MUCH better against a boss, pick more damage of extra loot drops, your choice.
Battle Rage- kinda underpowered and useless, WotB will be much better, should you decide to pick a skill to keep on.
Ignore Pain is good, as always if you gonna play Inferno.
All passives are good, except maybe Bloodthirst, as we do not know yet how much HP it will reward back. If 3% I'll skip it, if 10% then it seems like a must.
And the biggest problem with your build is no Threatening Shout. Its a must in Infermo I am afraid, takng half damage is crucial.
I was under the impression that the damage reduction % that resulted from increased armor was applied to both elemental and physical damage. Some of the screen shots at http://www.diablowiki.net/Armor show "All damage reduced by". If this remains true, the choice between extra armor and extra life becomes a question of mathematics; though from what I speculate regarding HP values I wouldn't be surprised if the health buff is a good direction to go in because it would allow more investment in strength before moving away from the maximum effective HP balance of your character.
I feel that revenge is great against trash, but 5% heal against a boss probably isn't going to go very far. I find it unlikely that even with some good procs that revenge will outheal 175% on a 10 second cooldown. I'm guessing that the trash won't be SO hard that ignore pain/dread spear isn't enough; if I'm wrong I will certainly consider swapping it.
Indeed I picked up whirlwind so I could deal with packs in inferno. I see where you are coming from with HotA vs bosses but it is a hard one to call for me. Hammer is going to be dealing somewhere between 208% and 234% damage per cast depending on how you rune it; if you count the extra chance to crit it's effectively 223% to 250%. Molten Whirlwind deals 429% weapon damage per second for approximately the same cost as Hammer. You would need to be able to use two hammers per second to match the single target damage of whirlwind but it would cost you twice as much fury to do so. If D3 is anything like D2, there are bound to be physical immunes, how would one deal with them as a barbarian if they didn't have an elemental skill? It seems to me like whirlwind is better than hammer but I haven't actually played the game...what makes you think that hammer would be better?
I disagree with this. Offensively, battle rage provides 20% more damage than Wrath of the Berserker, when they are both runed for damage. Overall Wrath has the attack speed boost which might make it better, however, it has a 120 second cooldown and only 15 seconds up time. Battle rage on the other hand can be kept up indefintely; any boss battle that lasts longer than 15 seconds will benefit far more from battle rage than Wrath unless there is something I don't know about.
If it worked against bosses I would agree with you, unfortunately most speculation suggests that it will only work against trash. If it does work against bosses though, for sure this would be a must.
Thanks again for replying, I appreciate the feedback, I would be grateful if you expanded on why you think Wrath and Hammer are good choices here if you disagree with my logic.
Immunities are supposed to be a thing of the past in D3. I think different monsters are still supposed to have different resistance levels to damage types, so it may still be beneficial to have a mix of damage type in a build, but it should no longer be mandatory.
QFT
Hes right no such things as immune anymore blizzard wants any class to be able to kill any mob but based on lvl difference some mobs could have a high resistance to certain types of damage.
This could be the case. The fact that it was a skill based lifesteal rather than item based lead me to suspect that it might be unpunished; if it doesn't prove effective a swapout for inspiring presence might be in order.
In a way it does contradict my logic, but there is a difference. Revenge shouldn't be needed to tank trash with Ignore Pain and Dread Spear available, however, an offensive AoE skill would be desired to deal with mobs. I am going to take a look at what other fury spenders are available to find something that might be suitable for both purposes.
Hmm, if it works against the Skeleton King that goes against what I have read elsewhere, but they may have been speculating. I wonder whether the skill would continue to be effective later or whether we will find that in Hell the bosses have some forms of debuff length reduction or immunity.
Bravado looks great, it actually has a higher ratio of uptime than Iron Hide and gives you more flexibility in when you choose to activate. I wonder whether more rune levels reduce the CD further or only increase the other effects.
Right now it looks like the max amount of lifesteal you can get is 9% as a dual wielding barbarian (max of 3% can spawn on weapons and mighty belts). There are plenty of skill-based sources as well, but overall it doesn't seem like there will be huge amounts of leech that need to be reduced for balance reasons.
On top of that, I'd be pretty surprised if they used any special player restrictions for boss fights. The Skeleton King is already significantly more powerful than what you're used to fighting when you get to him, and he's not even an act boss. On top of that, people shouldn't really be doing boss runs in D3 like they did in D2. Judging by the Skeleton King, the risk/reward is already at a point where you are better off farming champ/unique packs for loot (assuming the random packs spawn more often on the higher difficulties). It doesn't seem like there's any need or reason to make certain spells not work on bosses or reduce CC durations or lifesteal percentages.
It will probably depend from one boss to the next. For instance, Leoric is not an act boss, and he can be frozen which was very surprising to me the first time I saw it work on him. I believe a lot of the effects work but have reduced durations.
Here is my fast build I did in 5 mins.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#fgYXib!cdh!ZZZbbb
A question I was wondering about. Do you go with a shield? I am sure there will come calculations of shield stats vs life leech and faster killing on a better weapon. Or maybe we will get lucky and they will release some fantastic 2-handed Mighty weapon that adds to defense as well.
It's still a little hard to pick between fury spenders at this stage since damage values are subject to change. Currently though, Earthquake + Frenzy does the same damage as Whirlwind does on it's own. The advantage with whirlwind though is that you can use it more often. I feel that in this build fury generation will probably be a bit higher than what earthquake can spend on it's own which makes me suspect a different choice would be more efficient.
There is also the fact that Earthquake kind of forces you into Boon Of Bul' Kathos, which isn't the end of the world, but I feel like if you are going to take it you should probably grab Wrath of the Berserker aswell or you are not getting the most from your skills. For your build I would probably drop terrifying shout in favour of 45% evade Wrath of the Berserker, afterall, there isn't much apparent difference between -50% damage and 45% dodge. The synergy is also alot higher and it gives you something to do with that extra fury.
Inspiring presence is still an uncertain pick; you are going to want to refresh your warcry often for the fury benefit so I feel that the 2% regen is really all that it is worth; I will be surprised if the 2% ends up beating Tough As Nails at any point in the game.
This is what i was thinking aswell, you hit the nail on the head with the whirlewind.. its design is focused on big groups of enemies, unless there are multi monsters during a boss fight that carry the same %Lv value as the boss i dont see it being effective.
Keeping your same build in mind but changing WW to make SS (Seismic Slam) or if you wish to have a bit of range which could be a benefit if a monster has an ability some what of what Baal did in D2... you could use Weapon throw?..it could help you dish out same damge from the range. Otherwise SS would be a good choice that will give you a nice weapon damage %+
Perosnaly i would use Weapon Throw, however once i run through D3 normal and understand what the boss fights will be like and what strategies might be most effective then it would be far easier to decide.. so to Theorycraft that's how i would approch it.
Other then that your post is very detaieled and this build with small pinchs of changes feels like something i would effectively use through the later levels ( NM, HELL )