I've read a few threads on the subject, but most were pre-patch or very gear-specific. I don't have any LoH and most of my gear is a mix of low-roll ilvl 60-61 rares with strength, vitality, and all resistance. Most of my time is spent in groups so I prefer to be tanky.
So far I have tried changing my frenzy rune to maniac, which I liked. I also played around trading out leap for seismic slam, which I found to be largely ineffectual and not worth the defensive loss of iron impact. I'm told SS is a nice tool for later acts, but I currently need to farm act1 so that isn't so important.
Feel free to share your own 1h/shield builds, tips, tricks, or suggestions. I will be updating as I try new things and attain better gear (I hope).
Any suggestions for getting some sustain into my build without dropping several million gold for an LoH weapon? I tried shopping around for LoH/Life Steal, but it appears both are now in the mega-inflated range. I tried furious charge (dreadnaught) for another revenge-like reactionary heal, in place of leap attack, but I don't think that the heal there is worth loosing the free mega armor boost.
Well, I find Overpower with Crushing advance to be way way way more useful than WotB, just personal experience, it's like an extra ignore pain, with dps and some aoe to beat down some zerging melee.
But in the end, you're definitely going to need some loh, I've tried everything to get life steal to work but in it's current form with the -80% inferno modifier (if that is right), it's basically useless as any type of main stat to shoot for.
Overpower might seem weak if you have a low crit % chance, but I am using it pretty consistently at 30% crit.
I find it amazing because it's not really range that kills you, or melee, but those combinations of both, where you're stuck plowing through melee just to get to that range shooting fireballs at you. If you pop overpower it buys you time to get through them and or buys you time to get that extra revenge proc, to buy you more time.
If you get some LoH as well, it can really save you when you get stuck in a desecration for a bit (everything reflected gives you that loh proc as well) and does a decent chunk of dmg to the mob that cast that desecration.
I've spent 10s of millions of gold trying to figure out a spec that allows me to not go full on tank and still do decent dmg to mobs, so I'm not going through the content too slowly, trying to farm act III. It's working so far with 9k armor 950-1050 resists buffed.
Same build with a few different passives, brawler, nerves and ruthless, and overpower vs. wotb. I also changed ignore pain to iron hide, for the extra duration, again, just buying time to get another revenge proc off.
TLDR: Biggest tip I can give you is to be content with taking things with smaller steps. Of course you want a bracer with 120STR and 150VIT and +70 RA, but one with 80STR and 90VIT and 40RA would still be great and propably cost you 2M less :-) I am sure you can find your new weapon for around 100k.
My current weapon has 900 dps, 100 str, 100 vit, and some amount of dex. I picked it up for 500k which was pretty much a steal I haven't seen repeated (i've been looking for another 1h to try dual wield). The best LoH I could buy with 4x that budget would be in the 600 dps range and wouldn't have those primary stats. I haven't been convinced that the tradeoff is worth it, especially with the sub-2mil LoH weapons being mostly +100-200 Life/hit.
Yeah, weapon prices are dropping dramatically now that people are farming act III pretty regularly.
Weapon prices in general are dropping fast, but I haven't noticed that same trend in LoH or LS weapons. LS appears to be holding pretty steady and LoH weapons are actually up per two weeks ago.
Easy question: can you get your loh elsewhere cheaper?
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Build: instead of superstition i'd go with berserker rage passive, that's 25% more damage dealt basically all the time. And if you're only farming act 1 you might be able to get even more offensive stats to speed things up (like dropping ignore pain for earthquake and one armor passive for either ruthlessness, boon of bul'kathos or weapon master).
Actually no, it's not possible to get much LoH cheap anywhere without making huge cuts to my primary stats. Amulets and rings with 100+ LoH and str or vit are in the 1m+ range. Buying a weapon with 500 LoH is actually cheaper than buying a pair of rings with that much combined in most cases. Of course, I am shopping for deals when I can, but the process of picking up LoH and other valuable stats on a budget is going to take a long time.
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My current build was recommended as a cookie-cutter: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WVRXkP!Vbe!acbacZ
So far I have tried changing my frenzy rune to maniac, which I liked. I also played around trading out leap for seismic slam, which I found to be largely ineffectual and not worth the defensive loss of iron impact. I'm told SS is a nice tool for later acts, but I currently need to farm act1 so that isn't so important.
Feel free to share your own 1h/shield builds, tips, tricks, or suggestions. I will be updating as I try new things and attain better gear (I hope).
But in the end, you're definitely going to need some loh, I've tried everything to get life steal to work but in it's current form with the -80% inferno modifier (if that is right), it's basically useless as any type of main stat to shoot for.
Overpower might seem weak if you have a low crit % chance, but I am using it pretty consistently at 30% crit.
I find it amazing because it's not really range that kills you, or melee, but those combinations of both, where you're stuck plowing through melee just to get to that range shooting fireballs at you. If you pop overpower it buys you time to get through them and or buys you time to get that extra revenge proc, to buy you more time.
If you get some LoH as well, it can really save you when you get stuck in a desecration for a bit (everything reflected gives you that loh proc as well) and does a decent chunk of dmg to the mob that cast that desecration.
I've spent 10s of millions of gold trying to figure out a spec that allows me to not go full on tank and still do decent dmg to mobs, so I'm not going through the content too slowly, trying to farm act III. It's working so far with 9k armor 950-1050 resists buffed.
Same build with a few different passives, brawler, nerves and ruthless, and overpower vs. wotb. I also changed ignore pain to iron hide, for the extra duration, again, just buying time to get another revenge proc off.
Interesting, i'll have to try that out.
My current weapon has 900 dps, 100 str, 100 vit, and some amount of dex. I picked it up for 500k which was pretty much a steal I haven't seen repeated (i've been looking for another 1h to try dual wield). The best LoH I could buy with 4x that budget would be in the 600 dps range and wouldn't have those primary stats. I haven't been convinced that the tradeoff is worth it, especially with the sub-2mil LoH weapons being mostly +100-200 Life/hit.
Weapon prices in general are dropping fast, but I haven't noticed that same trend in LoH or LS weapons. LS appears to be holding pretty steady and LoH weapons are actually up per two weeks ago.
Actually no, it's not possible to get much LoH cheap anywhere without making huge cuts to my primary stats. Amulets and rings with 100+ LoH and str or vit are in the 1m+ range. Buying a weapon with 500 LoH is actually cheaper than buying a pair of rings with that much combined in most cases. Of course, I am shopping for deals when I can, but the process of picking up LoH and other valuable stats on a budget is going to take a long time.