Here is the build I would like to discuss. My hope is to receive some feedback from all the experts here as to whether my decisions are sound and that this build is viable in the later difficulty levels. This build is meant for PvM and for soloing.
I like Cleave as my primary fury generator. It does good damage, is an AoE, and with the Golden Rune it generates lots of Fury very quickly so I can change my focus back to more devastating attacks like Hammer of the Ancients.
I think Leap Attack is a signature skill of the class and is just too much fun to pass up. Not only is it a good opener to get past the trash mobs and get to that spell caster in the back, it is an escape mechanism should the situation necessitate a retreat (and being able to leap to higher or lower areas of a dungeon allows you to kite via staircases to really regroup or escape). I chose the "Call of Arreat" rune for this skill to ensure I have many targets near me so that my Cleave attacks will have greater effect and thus I can rapidly generate lots of fury -- again to allow the usage of my Fury dump ability which is Hammer of the Ancients. It seems that fragile caster mobs like to separate from one another but this rune brings them to you which is a very valuable ability and should not be underestimated.
I went back and forth choosing my final skill, but eventually I settled on Furious Charge. I watched some video of the Monk character moving quickly (and frequently) from one pack of mobs to another and thought this would be very valuable for a Barbarian as well. Not only is Furious Charge a fury generator, it is another great opener and escape mechanism along the lines of Leap Attack. As a particular fight evolves, you may reprioritize certain mobs and having both Leap Attack and this ability (used interchangably with their 10 second cooldown means one or the other is available every 5 seconds) at the ready gives you lots of tactical options. I used a very defensive runestone, for once, so that a significant amount of health can be regenerated when using this ability which hopefully adds survivability in later difficulty levels. The fact that this does a knockback also paves the way for escapes and gives you some breathing room should things start to look dire.
Back to the damaging stuff...
Hammer of the Ancients is simply a wonderful skill. It takes only 20 fury (and I have a passive that increases my pool to 120 so that means with a full pool I can chain cast it SIX times) and is itself an AoE attack. Not only does it do 180% weapon damage (to ALL mobs in front of you, not just your primary target), but it has a 15% chance to crit. When I Leap Attack and gather lots of mobs due to that rune, I can use this ability to full effect on a large pack of mobs. 15% chance to crit synergizes with my favorite ability called Overpower which I'll talk about below, but suffice it to say that it is crucial that you get Overpower to proc and my plan is to do that with this ability and its flat 15% increased chance to crit. The alabaster rune gives me a defensive ability with an AoE stun (no limit to how many may be affected). Stuns are powerful and not everything should be optimized for damage in my opinion. A 65% chance to stun while I spam this ability means I should get a bunch of stuns, which allows me to recharge fury with Cleave, which then allows for more Hammers which leads to move Overpowers and more stuns.
I like the idea of using at least one skill for a "buff" and Battle Rage is the best for my purposes. Using a Crimson rune you increase the bonus damage to 100% and this applies to everything you do. All attacks, everything, damage is increased by 100%. I like that simple math. The other synergy is the 4% chance to crit which increases the chance to proc Overpower which, again, is the fury-free AoE massive damage attack I want to happen as frequently as possible. It only costs 20 fury so it can be cast before each fight begins (by attacking a structure nearby or simply waiting due to the passive called Unforgiving) and it lasts for 30 seconds which should be sufficient. Previously I had chosen Inspiring Presence since it makes this last 60 seconds and also gives a 1% health per second benefit, but I think I can manage keeping this buff up and once I chose Furious Charge with the Indigo rune I no longer felt it necessary so thus chose other passives.
Overpower is great except for the fact that you cannot dictate when you can use it. I like this aspect of the skill in that it will keep me on my toes since I need to react when it procs, but the benefits reaped when it does are significant, especially when runed with Crimson as I have chosen. I have done many things to increase the chance to crit (and will likely gear with +Accuracy to further increase this chance as opposed to other stats that might otherwise seem more beneficial) via skills, runes, and passives. This skill consumes ZERO fury. It attacks ALL mobs within 9 yards (and with Leap Attack gathering things up for me, this should reap a solid return on investment) and does 150% weapon damage to ALL of them (as compared to Cleave which does 120% to the primary target and only 60% to those nearby). With the Crimson rune I will then be energized with another 22% chance to crit for 6 seconds. This means that my Cleaves are going to be more potent and my Hammer of the Ancients with its own 15% will now have a 37% chance to crit. And if I crit again, then Overpower will proc and it should reset the 6 seconds of 22% chance to crit. Again, the synergy here makes the possibilities pretty amazing and lots of fun.
Passives:
Ruthless is a solid passive for this build. It adds a flat 5% crit which is good all the time but more importantly it increases the chances for Overpower to proc. As long as I'm going to be hoping for critical strikes as much as possible, getting another 50% damage bonus when this happens is just icing on the cake.
Unforgiving changes the whole play style for me. Not only does a constant trickle of Fury sound good on every level, but never having it dissipate ensures that I have a full (or near-full pool -- I might Leap Attack when I am 15 shy of full since that generates my missing 15 fury) pool when I engage. I want to leap into combat (or Furious Charge in), be surrounded, and start using my Hammer to proc Overpower and go to town on my opponents.
Animosity not only increases the pool from 100 to 120 (I think -- correct me if I'm wrong) it increases the rate at which fury is generated by 10%. This means that the trickle from Unforgiving is a little stronger and that I can do a few fewer Cleaves before I can move back to Hammer and Overpower.
Strategy:
Get a full pool (Unforgiven passive) of rage at 120 (Animosity passive). Buff myself with Battle Rage so all damage is increased by 100% and crit chance is increased by 4%. Leap to prioritized mob and have many nearby mobs pulled to me by the rune. Spam Hammer of the Ancients doing solid AoE damage with an added 15% chance to crit. If any attack of this AoE skill should crit (which may cause several mobs to be stunned for 3 seconds), then use Overpower to unleash big damage, fury free, and increase crit chance another 22% for 6 seconds. If not, then either Cleave to regenerate fury or Furious Charge out of the pack and into another group while recovering 5% of my health per mob attacked during this charge (which also knocks enemies back). At my new destination use Cleave if I need fury, Hammer otherwise, and Overpower when crit occurs. Use Leap Attack once off cooldown to escape or retarget (and bunch up with the rune) my original pack and repeat. Hopefully mobs die due to Hammer which also causes them to be stunned for 3 seconds to limit damage taken (each mob that dies from Hammer causes ALL nearby mobs to possibly be stunned for 3 seconds so if 2 mobs die, each mob may have 2 65% chances to be stunned, that's a lot of stuns!).
That's it!
I like having a solid fury generator (runed to make it generate much more so I don't have to use it as often since the fury consuming abilities are where the fun is at) along with two more generators that provide good engagement options (the caster hiding behind the melee) that can also be used as escape mechanisms. Barbarians are the ultimate AoE attacker and I don't have an ability that acts upon a single target (which may be a weakness for bosses in which case I can swap out a skill for those occasions perhaps) and in fact have Leap Attack runed to ensure I'm surrounded. One skill for a buff, one skill as a fury dump and another that procs and unleashes massive damage with zero fury cost. Pretty cool.
I'd love to hear any feedback you guys may have. Thanks for your time.
Fairly decent, but if you want to focus on crit with overpower then I would suggest two changes
1: taking the indigo rune for battle rage which increases its duration for every crit meaning you are more likely to crit more in the future (and thus compensate for the 70% damage you no longer have from the crimson rune)
2: replacing Unforgiving with weapons master and duel wielding Maces/axes as you have 2 great fury generating initiators as well as cleave with the 10% increased Fury generation passive (i dont think you really need unforgiving)
This way you can focus on precision and crit effects on items
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
Fairly decent, but if you want to focus on crit with overpower then I would suggest two changes
1: taking the indigo rune for battle rage which increases its duration for every crit meaning you are more likely to crit more in the future (and thus compensate for the 70% damage you no longer have from the crimson rune)
2: replacing Unforgiving with weapons master and duel wielding Maces/axes as you have 2 great fury generating initiators as well as cleave with the 10% increased Fury generation passive (i dont think you really need unforgiving)
This way you can focus on precision and crit effects on items
Thanks very much for your constructive criticism Raptorbonz42.
Battle Rage:
After giving this some thought, I'm going to switch to the Golden Rune for this ability. Every attack I make is an AoE or otherwise affects multiple targets which means there should be lots of opportunity to crit. Every time I actually do get a crit, I will earn 7 more Fury which could lead to so much fury that I don't have to use Cleave much at all. Cleave is a guaranteed fury generator which will be important when I start combat without a full tank of fury (since I no longer have Unforgiven or Animosity) but with this generator and Leap Attack and Charge also helping along the way, I hope to have a fairly good amount of fury generation coming from critical strikes. Finally, extending the duration of Battle Rage is no longer an issue since I changed one of my passives to Inspiring Presence which extends it to 60 seconds by default.
Passives:
I think there is merit to your suggestion that I do not benefit much from Unforgiven and I have thus removed it.
Now that Battle Rage is runed with Golden I have changed my opinion about Animosity so that has been removed also. Having a larger pool of 120 fury instead of 100 is nice, but since Rage depletes over time now I think it will be rare that I benefit from this pool since I plan to use fury as soon as it is generated for the most part. Also, the increased generation rate is nice, but if I crit as often as I hope, big chunks of fury (7 per crit) should help even moreso than the 10% offered by this passive.
In their place I have chosen Weapons Master as you have suggested. I originally felt that 5% chance to crit wasn't that much to warrant using this as a passive, but it's actually a fairly large number and since critical strikes are the cornerstone of this build, I think it should be utilized. What I want to mention to you is that the description for this passive states that the benefit gained is based upon the weapon type of your main hand weapon. From what I've read it's best to have a single 2H weapon rather than two 1H weapons, but yes I plan to limit myself (now) to Axes and Maces in order to gain the crit chance benefit. I just wanted to make it clear that dual wielding will not grant 10% chance to crit via this passive since it is determined by main hand only.
The other passive is now Inspiring Presence. This truly makes the Indigo rune for Battle Rage unnecessary since the skill will last 60 seconds on its own -- clearly long enough for most fights. I have also been concerned about viability in higher difficulty levels when I Leap Attack with my Crimson rune and pull mobs from even 45 yards away towards me -- that could bring some serious pain. I may eventually change this passive to Tough as Nails for 100% more armor, but for now I think regenerating 1% of maximum health per second should help mitigate a good amount of damage that I will inevitably take. Both benefits (longer Battle Rage and life regeneration) are very welcome and are also quality of life improvements for me in that I can heal automatically when out of combat and I don't need to maintain an essential buff every 30 seconds.
Thanks again for showing interest in my proposed build. I welcome any and all criticism should anyone want to chime in with their thoughts about whether this is a good or bad build and how to make it better.
no problem, and it looks good! I didn't think that the duel wielding would double the passive, but I figured you weren't interested in using a shield. I did think that mighty weapons were the only 2 handers for barbs (as in normal 2 handers they could duel because they are barbarians ;)) Overall looks very nice and I hope it works out!
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
If I had anything to comment on it would be the 60% life over a minute passive, I'd assume your looking at gearing slightly like I am, with all those high DMG criticals and sustained combat I would think the 10% of your overall DMG over 60 seconds could easily outweigh 60% of your total health in a 60 second time frame, not to mention the stacking effect per hit of whatever lifesteal you had on your gear already. I realize u could use this to regain health outside combat, but that's kinda meh for me. Builds like ours I think defensively will rely on lifesteal and resistances to stop those bursty magic mobs from smokeshowing us in 1 hit.
Also until you hit an acceptable level of crit I would think about the 10 percent crit for 15 seoconds from zerker, that would allow you to lay down some serious DMG in the first 15 seconds of a rough fight and get your overpower chaining going possibly sooner. Just something to think about, other than those few things I thought to mention its an awesome build, well explained and thought out.
Goodluck
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My Build
Skills:
I like Cleave as my primary fury generator. It does good damage, is an AoE, and with the Golden Rune it generates lots of Fury very quickly so I can change my focus back to more devastating attacks like Hammer of the Ancients.
I think Leap Attack is a signature skill of the class and is just too much fun to pass up. Not only is it a good opener to get past the trash mobs and get to that spell caster in the back, it is an escape mechanism should the situation necessitate a retreat (and being able to leap to higher or lower areas of a dungeon allows you to kite via staircases to really regroup or escape). I chose the "Call of Arreat" rune for this skill to ensure I have many targets near me so that my Cleave attacks will have greater effect and thus I can rapidly generate lots of fury -- again to allow the usage of my Fury dump ability which is Hammer of the Ancients. It seems that fragile caster mobs like to separate from one another but this rune brings them to you which is a very valuable ability and should not be underestimated.
I went back and forth choosing my final skill, but eventually I settled on Furious Charge. I watched some video of the Monk character moving quickly (and frequently) from one pack of mobs to another and thought this would be very valuable for a Barbarian as well. Not only is Furious Charge a fury generator, it is another great opener and escape mechanism along the lines of Leap Attack. As a particular fight evolves, you may reprioritize certain mobs and having both Leap Attack and this ability (used interchangably with their 10 second cooldown means one or the other is available every 5 seconds) at the ready gives you lots of tactical options. I used a very defensive runestone, for once, so that a significant amount of health can be regenerated when using this ability which hopefully adds survivability in later difficulty levels. The fact that this does a knockback also paves the way for escapes and gives you some breathing room should things start to look dire.
Back to the damaging stuff...
Hammer of the Ancients is simply a wonderful skill. It takes only 20 fury (and I have a passive that increases my pool to 120 so that means with a full pool I can chain cast it SIX times) and is itself an AoE attack. Not only does it do 180% weapon damage (to ALL mobs in front of you, not just your primary target), but it has a 15% chance to crit. When I Leap Attack and gather lots of mobs due to that rune, I can use this ability to full effect on a large pack of mobs. 15% chance to crit synergizes with my favorite ability called Overpower which I'll talk about below, but suffice it to say that it is crucial that you get Overpower to proc and my plan is to do that with this ability and its flat 15% increased chance to crit. The alabaster rune gives me a defensive ability with an AoE stun (no limit to how many may be affected). Stuns are powerful and not everything should be optimized for damage in my opinion. A 65% chance to stun while I spam this ability means I should get a bunch of stuns, which allows me to recharge fury with Cleave, which then allows for more Hammers which leads to move Overpowers and more stuns.
I like the idea of using at least one skill for a "buff" and Battle Rage is the best for my purposes. Using a Crimson rune you increase the bonus damage to 100% and this applies to everything you do. All attacks, everything, damage is increased by 100%. I like that simple math. The other synergy is the 4% chance to crit which increases the chance to proc Overpower which, again, is the fury-free AoE massive damage attack I want to happen as frequently as possible. It only costs 20 fury so it can be cast before each fight begins (by attacking a structure nearby or simply waiting due to the passive called Unforgiving) and it lasts for 30 seconds which should be sufficient. Previously I had chosen Inspiring Presence since it makes this last 60 seconds and also gives a 1% health per second benefit, but I think I can manage keeping this buff up and once I chose Furious Charge with the Indigo rune I no longer felt it necessary so thus chose other passives.
Overpower is great except for the fact that you cannot dictate when you can use it. I like this aspect of the skill in that it will keep me on my toes since I need to react when it procs, but the benefits reaped when it does are significant, especially when runed with Crimson as I have chosen. I have done many things to increase the chance to crit (and will likely gear with +Accuracy to further increase this chance as opposed to other stats that might otherwise seem more beneficial) via skills, runes, and passives. This skill consumes ZERO fury. It attacks ALL mobs within 9 yards (and with Leap Attack gathering things up for me, this should reap a solid return on investment) and does 150% weapon damage to ALL of them (as compared to Cleave which does 120% to the primary target and only 60% to those nearby). With the Crimson rune I will then be energized with another 22% chance to crit for 6 seconds. This means that my Cleaves are going to be more potent and my Hammer of the Ancients with its own 15% will now have a 37% chance to crit. And if I crit again, then Overpower will proc and it should reset the 6 seconds of 22% chance to crit. Again, the synergy here makes the possibilities pretty amazing and lots of fun.
Passives:
Ruthless is a solid passive for this build. It adds a flat 5% crit which is good all the time but more importantly it increases the chances for Overpower to proc. As long as I'm going to be hoping for critical strikes as much as possible, getting another 50% damage bonus when this happens is just icing on the cake.
Unforgiving changes the whole play style for me. Not only does a constant trickle of Fury sound good on every level, but never having it dissipate ensures that I have a full (or near-full pool -- I might Leap Attack when I am 15 shy of full since that generates my missing 15 fury) pool when I engage. I want to leap into combat (or Furious Charge in), be surrounded, and start using my Hammer to proc Overpower and go to town on my opponents.
Animosity not only increases the pool from 100 to 120 (I think -- correct me if I'm wrong) it increases the rate at which fury is generated by 10%. This means that the trickle from Unforgiving is a little stronger and that I can do a few fewer Cleaves before I can move back to Hammer and Overpower.
Strategy:
Get a full pool (Unforgiven passive) of rage at 120 (Animosity passive). Buff myself with Battle Rage so all damage is increased by 100% and crit chance is increased by 4%. Leap to prioritized mob and have many nearby mobs pulled to me by the rune. Spam Hammer of the Ancients doing solid AoE damage with an added 15% chance to crit. If any attack of this AoE skill should crit (which may cause several mobs to be stunned for 3 seconds), then use Overpower to unleash big damage, fury free, and increase crit chance another 22% for 6 seconds. If not, then either Cleave to regenerate fury or Furious Charge out of the pack and into another group while recovering 5% of my health per mob attacked during this charge (which also knocks enemies back). At my new destination use Cleave if I need fury, Hammer otherwise, and Overpower when crit occurs. Use Leap Attack once off cooldown to escape or retarget (and bunch up with the rune) my original pack and repeat. Hopefully mobs die due to Hammer which also causes them to be stunned for 3 seconds to limit damage taken (each mob that dies from Hammer causes ALL nearby mobs to possibly be stunned for 3 seconds so if 2 mobs die, each mob may have 2 65% chances to be stunned, that's a lot of stuns!).
That's it!
I like having a solid fury generator (runed to make it generate much more so I don't have to use it as often since the fury consuming abilities are where the fun is at) along with two more generators that provide good engagement options (the caster hiding behind the melee) that can also be used as escape mechanisms. Barbarians are the ultimate AoE attacker and I don't have an ability that acts upon a single target (which may be a weakness for bosses in which case I can swap out a skill for those occasions perhaps) and in fact have Leap Attack runed to ensure I'm surrounded. One skill for a buff, one skill as a fury dump and another that procs and unleashes massive damage with zero fury cost. Pretty cool.
I'd love to hear any feedback you guys may have. Thanks for your time.
1: taking the indigo rune for battle rage which increases its duration for every crit meaning you are more likely to crit more in the future (and thus compensate for the 70% damage you no longer have from the crimson rune)
2: replacing Unforgiving with weapons master and duel wielding Maces/axes as you have 2 great fury generating initiators as well as cleave with the 10% increased Fury generation passive (i dont think you really need unforgiving)
This way you can focus on precision and crit effects on items
Thanks very much for your constructive criticism Raptorbonz42.
Battle Rage:
After giving this some thought, I'm going to switch to the Golden Rune for this ability. Every attack I make is an AoE or otherwise affects multiple targets which means there should be lots of opportunity to crit. Every time I actually do get a crit, I will earn 7 more Fury which could lead to so much fury that I don't have to use Cleave much at all. Cleave is a guaranteed fury generator which will be important when I start combat without a full tank of fury (since I no longer have Unforgiven or Animosity) but with this generator and Leap Attack and Charge also helping along the way, I hope to have a fairly good amount of fury generation coming from critical strikes. Finally, extending the duration of Battle Rage is no longer an issue since I changed one of my passives to Inspiring Presence which extends it to 60 seconds by default.
Passives:
I think there is merit to your suggestion that I do not benefit much from Unforgiven and I have thus removed it.
Now that Battle Rage is runed with Golden I have changed my opinion about Animosity so that has been removed also. Having a larger pool of 120 fury instead of 100 is nice, but since Rage depletes over time now I think it will be rare that I benefit from this pool since I plan to use fury as soon as it is generated for the most part. Also, the increased generation rate is nice, but if I crit as often as I hope, big chunks of fury (7 per crit) should help even moreso than the 10% offered by this passive.
In their place I have chosen Weapons Master as you have suggested. I originally felt that 5% chance to crit wasn't that much to warrant using this as a passive, but it's actually a fairly large number and since critical strikes are the cornerstone of this build, I think it should be utilized. What I want to mention to you is that the description for this passive states that the benefit gained is based upon the weapon type of your main hand weapon. From what I've read it's best to have a single 2H weapon rather than two 1H weapons, but yes I plan to limit myself (now) to Axes and Maces in order to gain the crit chance benefit. I just wanted to make it clear that dual wielding will not grant 10% chance to crit via this passive since it is determined by main hand only.
The other passive is now Inspiring Presence. This truly makes the Indigo rune for Battle Rage unnecessary since the skill will last 60 seconds on its own -- clearly long enough for most fights. I have also been concerned about viability in higher difficulty levels when I Leap Attack with my Crimson rune and pull mobs from even 45 yards away towards me -- that could bring some serious pain. I may eventually change this passive to Tough as Nails for 100% more armor, but for now I think regenerating 1% of maximum health per second should help mitigate a good amount of damage that I will inevitably take. Both benefits (longer Battle Rage and life regeneration) are very welcome and are also quality of life improvements for me in that I can heal automatically when out of combat and I don't need to maintain an essential buff every 30 seconds.
This is the revised version of my planned build:
My Build
Thanks again for showing interest in my proposed build. I welcome any and all criticism should anyone want to chime in with their thoughts about whether this is a good or bad build and how to make it better.
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/30913-massive-crit-farmer-barb/
If I had anything to comment on it would be the 60% life over a minute passive, I'd assume your looking at gearing slightly like I am, with all those high DMG criticals and sustained combat I would think the 10% of your overall DMG over 60 seconds could easily outweigh 60% of your total health in a 60 second time frame, not to mention the stacking effect per hit of whatever lifesteal you had on your gear already. I realize u could use this to regain health outside combat, but that's kinda meh for me. Builds like ours I think defensively will rely on lifesteal and resistances to stop those bursty magic mobs from smokeshowing us in 1 hit.
Also until you hit an acceptable level of crit I would think about the 10 percent crit for 15 seoconds from zerker, that would allow you to lay down some serious DMG in the first 15 seconds of a rough fight and get your overpower chaining going possibly sooner. Just something to think about, other than those few things I thought to mention its an awesome build, well explained and thought out.
Goodluck