Area damage is not bad for lightning barbs. Perhaps they mean that your weapon procs won't trigger area damage, which seems to be true (because they don't have a proc coefficient). Regardless, people love the Bloodshed rune and that is just area damage by another name. The 20% area damage equates to about 4% bonus damage per target in the area (after the first).
Neither area damage nor vitality are optimal weapon roles in my opinion - I try to go for all weapon damage affixes, myself. I guess if you're comfortable with your toughness, you can keep the area damage for a bit of extra damage vs multiple targets (or quite a bit on big groups). The vitality is pretty useless if you already have a decent health pool (maybe 350k or higher for non-hardcore, depending on personal comfort.)
One thing to consider is that mods such as +% elemental damage, +% critical damage, and +% area damage on weapons are somewhat more effective in dual wield builds because they apply to both weapon swings. Affixes such as +attack speed and +% weapon damage are only used about half the time (more for main hand weapons but less for off-hand).
My BK swords both have about 630 strength individually. This is actually less than my SoH, but about the same as my Odyn Son. The set bonus of 250 strength does add some extra damage (about 3% if you have 8500 strength).
The BK set should be affected by berserker rage and brawler, but not affected by % whirlwind skill damage / whirlwind runes. Graphically it uses the whirlwind particles (flying axes/swords and spiraling winds), but it's not actually a "whirlwind" skill - your barbarian doesn't actually spin around, move at 75% speed, ignore unit collision, etc.
If I had to guess, I'd say the range is about the same as whirlwind, maybe 8-10 yards?
There are a couple of problems with these assuptions, I think:
1) Total damage reduction (DR) from difference sources is generally a product, not a sum. 50% DR from one source and 50% DR from another source is 75% DR, not 100%.
2) Boon of Bul-Kathos is applied before cooldown reduction. This means that Boon of Bul-Kathos reduces the cooldown of Wrath of the Berserker to 90 seconds and then CDR is applied. You would need ~78% cooldown reduction to have continuous Wrath of the Berserker. I don't think that this number is possible to achieve for barbarians.
It's quite possible for SOH procs to not connect, and thus lower the effectiveness of the proc, but when I whirlwind back and forth directly through most medium or large monsters, it's possible to make all 3 bolts connect instantly with the enemy.
I also agree that the BK set seems designed to work exceptionally well with the Whirlwind skill.
I think the reason why BK ticks seem so high right now is because it appears that the actual damage per "hit" scales with your attack speed and critical stats. A tick is either 162.5% weapon damage (the derived value of one 'tick') or possibly 260% weapon damage (if the weapon reports its damage every 48 frames, as has been said of other DoT-type effects). I'll assume the former, because the proc shows yellow numbers, which doesn't usually occur with DoT-style damage.
With the 162.5% weapon damage per tick, we apparently multiply our critical stats and attacks per second to determine the actual, non-crit damage per tick. Let's say you're fairly geared and have ~1.82 attacks per second (40% attack speed), 50% crit chance and 500% crit damage. Let's say you're also using WotB - Insanity. So your critical chance during WotB is 60%, damage is still 500%, and attacks per second go up to 2.145 (65% attack speed). During WotB - Insanity, factoring in the scaling for attack speed and crit, the 162.5% damage becomes 162.5 * 2.145 * (1 + 0.6 * 5) * 1.5 =
~2091% per tick (every half second)
So, assume you have a BK sword that does 1600 average damage and 8500 strength. One tick will do 1600 * 86 * 20.91 =
~2.877 million damage (non-critical hit)
This is a white hit, though, even though we used critical damage stats once, a crit will do more damage: 2.877 million * (1 + 0.6 * 5) =
~11.5 million damage (on a critical hit)
Odyn Son actually works similarly, and hits 3 times for a slightly lower value (100%-120% weapon damage, x3, instead of 162.5% every half second).
BK theoretically more or less ignores proc rates, triggering almost every 12 seconds (I think), hitting 12 times per proc (or an average of 1 tick per second) and hits every mob in a radius.
If you use the stats above during Insanity, Odyn Son with a perfect proc rate (40%) would trigger about 2.145 * (0.39) * (0.4) = 33% of the time each second, or about 1 proc per 3 seconds.
1 proc of Odyn Son is 3 'ticks', so Odyn Son also averages out to about 1 'tick' per second (with a perfect proc %, when using whirlwind).
So, using whirlwind with a perfect proc % Odyn Son, both Odyn Son and BK set would 'tick' about once per second (on average, factoring in the cooldown on BK set). However, the BK set hits harder (162.5% vs 120%). The number of targets doesn't matter, because more targets gives Odyn Son more ticks (but each 'tick' only hits one target). More targets means that each BK 'tick' does more damage (because it's an AoE).
A noticeable difference is that the BK set does reliable consistent damage when its proc occurs, and Odyn Son is rather random- the chance to trigger, targets selected, etc. Even if on average they both 'tick' with roughly the same frequency, BK set will be much smoother and Odyn Son procs could be very punctuated.
Also, I think Odyn Son and BK set both benefit greatly from WotB or any other attack speed / critical hit / critical damage buffs (Crusader Law of Valor - Critical), because they "double crit" and factor attack speed into their damage per hit.
One question though. You work with a 39% proc cance. Is that your assumption for three whirlwind ticks during one second ?
And we should include odyns 20% lightning damage to the equation.
I did not include the 20% lightning damage in any equations.
The 39% proc chance (for non-Internal cooldown weapons) is based on Whirlwind ticking 3 times per "regular attack" roughly. In a continuous model (ie: not the real way the game works with frames and break points), whirlwind would tick at 3x your attack speed.
(I'll add more stuff later, I was just bored at work today.)
Yeah it looks like that's the conclusion of BK vs Odyn/SOH, at least given the dummy stats that I used. In general, it looks like BK offers superior AoE and SOH is great damage, but it has a functional target/attack speed cap due to its internal cooldown.
I didn't account for other factors like Odyn Son's +% lightning damage, or using different skills, as well.
Shard of Hate(lightning build)
Shard of Hate apparently does not scale twice with critical hits or attack speed, but it does scale with % lightning skill damage. It also has a roughly 1 second (I think) internal cooldown.
If you have a 225% damage proc on Shard of Hate and 80% lightning skill damage, the proc does 405% weapon damage per bolt and fires three bolts per proc. This makes its damage per proc strikingly similar to Odyn Son using my sample stats. However, Shard of Hate has an internal cooldown, so it doesn't scale infinitely with more targets. It should do about 405 * 3 = 1215% weapon damage, split among 3 targets in the maximum possible case.
So I estimate the damage at:
1215% (1 - (1 - proc coefficient)^((number of targets + 1) * attacks per second) ) (split among 1-3 targets)
Maximum: 1215% weapon damage/second (split among 1-3 targets)
(This means Shard of Hate looks really good with a high proc rate or smallish number of targets, but other procs start to surpass its total damage per second when there are large groups).
Preface: I want to theoretically compare the value of some weapon combinations for barbarians after the 2.0.5 patch. The impetuses for this thread were other recent threads talking about the BK weapon set and Nubtro's Game Mechanics (barbarian) spreadsheet on google docs.
Bul-Kathos's Set
After patch 2.0.5, Nubtro reported that, not only can the whirlwind proc from the BK set now critical hit, but also that the damage itself scales with your critical hit damage and chance (before it crits). The damage amount also scales with your attack speed, but because the BK set seems to have an internal cooldown, attack speed doesn't influence the amount of procs.
Your critical hit chance and damage apply twice to the BK whirlwind proc, so bascially those stats are squared when factoring the average damage. The damage is reported as 1950% weapon damage / 6 seconds, or 325% weapon damage / second. This 325% is multiplied by your attacks per second and critical hit/damage, so if you have 1.55 attacks per second, 40% critical chance, and 400% critical damage, you can expect to do:
325% * (1.55) * (1 + .4 + 4) ~= 1310% weapon damage/second in a circular area around your character
However, the BK proc seems to be on an internal cooldown of roughly about 12 seconds (in my personal experience- 2.0.4, so this may have changed). This means that the average damage over time will be about half the active damage/second, or about 655% weapon damage per second. Because of the internal cooldown, attacking multiple targets doesn't really increase the value of the proc.
So the estimated damage of the BK set proc in these circumstances is roughly:
Odyn Son
According to the information gathered in Nubtro's Barbarian spreadsheet, the reason why the Odyn Son proc seems so powerful is because it apparently scales with critical hit chance, critical hit damage, and attack speed twice.
i.e.: Your attack speed and critical chance/damage values are squared when multiplying the damage of an Odyn son proc.
The base damage of the proc is only around 100-120% weapon damage, but the base damage itself is multiplied by your critical hit stats and your attack speed. After this, the damage amount can be a critical hit, which uses your critical stats again, and of course the higher your attack speed, the more procs you can create (thus scaling with attack speed twice as well).
Let's say you have 40% critical chance and 400% critical damage. You also have 1.55 attacks per second and your Odyn Son does 100% weapon damage per hit (3 hits per proc). Each hit of the proc will do 100% * (1.55) * (1 + 0.4 + 4) =403% weapon damage.
(I think the above calculation is why a lot of people estimate that Odyn Son's proc does about 400% weapon damage. It does about 400% with those values of attack speed, crit damage, and critical chance, but it could do more or less.)
After you get this value, in our case 403%, the proc will hit 3 times, possibly all on the same target. These 403% damage procs can then critical hit again, boosting their damage further (by another 2.6 times in our case, on average), and the faster you attack (and the higher your proc coefficient), the more often you can trigger the proc.
So, say you have a 30% proc rate Odyn Son with the above stats. It does 1209% damage split between 1-3 targets. It will proc 30% of the time on every hit, modified by proc coefficient. Your attack speed dictates the number of proc chances, because there is no internal cooldown, so the damage/second is multiplied by your attacks/second.
That's an interesting point, but even though bloodshed doesn't proc from weapon procs, it still adds a lot more damage to your actual skills than Into the Fray. I guess you'd need to compare (lower) bonus proc and skill damage versus (higher) bonus skill damage.
If you have 40% crit and 400% crit damage, Into the Fray adds (1 + 0.41 * 4) / (1 + 0.4 * 4) ~= 1.015, or about 1.5% bonus damage per target (this devalues slightly for each additional target), including the first target / single target
With the same stats, Bloodshed adds 20% * 40% = 8% bonus damage per target after the first
So, from your skills, Bloodshed will deal 1.5% less damage vs 1 target, but deal 5% more damage on two targets, 11.5% more on 3, and so on
Say you're fighting 10 targets. Bloodshed will deal about 57% additional skill damage compared to Into the Fray.
If you're fighting 10 targets, Into the Fray will deal about 15% additional proc damage compared to Bloodshed.
So, if your proc DPS is 4x greater than your skill DPS, Into the Fray would be better. If your odyn son/TF/SOH contributes less than 4x the DPS of your Whirlwind/Frenzy/HotA/etc, Bloodshed is still better for AoE.
Into the Fray will always be slightly superior for single target, but even with proc weapons, it looks like Bloodshed will be better for AoE.
I can say you that no. if u use disintegrate, u see a lot of diferent numbers (just like wd bat) i mean, with 50% crit u're not gonna do 40 ticks crit in a second, but with these set weapon skill u ALWAYS do the same damage with the same stats, that means that u CANT crit with them.
The DOT comment was actually about the Maximus sword proc, not the BK swords.
BK swords shouldn't be a DOT, they should work similarly to whirlwind or most other attacks. To be honest I haven't tested them extensively to notice whether or not they crit. I can't imagine why they wouldn't crit, but if they can't do so then it makes them pretty weak and probably not worth using (above and beyond the fact that the whirlwind proc has only about a 50% up-time).
Ok, the guy who doesn't understand math aside, I don't think people use Into the Fray because in general Bloodshed is better for AoE and Marauder's Rage is better for bosses or single target.
phuzi0n is spot-on. The only time to use Into the Fray is if you really really want to crit more, at the expense of a little bit of damage loss or you want some sort of hybrid rune that does slightly more damage than Bloodshed on single targets and slightly more damage than Marauder's Rage on groups, but significantly less in the other situations.
If you want to try cold and you're worried about the damage/crit difference between Hammer and Seismic Slam, why not use the Devil's Anvil? It's cold-elemental and does more damage/fury than Permafrost, albeit in Hammer's smaller AoE. It would also retain the crit bonus from Hammer of the Ancients.
Most things that barbarians use do scale just fine with attack speed: If you're doing a set-based build, it becomes less important, but our main spenders (Hammer of the Ancients and Whirlwind) do just fine with attack speed. The ones that don't really care about attack speed are Furious Charge, Rend, and Earthquake.
I'm going to assume the OP has a Sun Keeper or something for his main hand, or possibly is using a shield, because he is debating replacing one fire damage weapon with another one. In such a case, if this weapon is going in the off-hand, then the damage per attack is not important, because the skills that don't use attack speed also don't use off-hand weapon damage (most of the time).
If the OP is in fact dual wielding, the strength becomes even more valuable in comparison to the weapon DPS, because the weapon DPS will be averaged with his other weapon, but the strength is always functioning to increase both weapons' damage.
Off-topic: Are you/were you also a Guild Wars 2 player? That's the only place I've seen the term "meta" used like this.
On-topic: You can rune Earthquake to do fire, cold, or lightning damage, although the lightning rune seems rather weak with the Earth set.
Raekor's set will always make Furious Charge deal fire damage, I think. However, you could still design your other skill choices around a different theme. If you're doing boulder toss, you probably care less about the damage from Charge and more about the physical damage from Boulder Toss.
IK set doesn't really benefit from cold, but you can do fire for a damage-focused build or lightning if you're using Together as One. Otherwise, physical sorta works for them. For IK set, moreso than Raekor's, your other skills will probably impact your element more than Call of the Ancients (unless you're doing fire/tasker and theo/etc.).
Sesimic Slam and Hammer of the Ancients can be runed to fit pretty much any element as spender, assuming you actually like the benefits the runes grant you.
Edit: As a lightning (whirlwind) barb player myself, I'm not really interested in the Raekor's and Might of the Earth sets for that character. I am interested in IK though, more for the 3 piece bonus than the 4 piece - although I may as well eventually incorporate the 4 piece bonus when I find enough pieces.
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Neither area damage nor vitality are optimal weapon roles in my opinion - I try to go for all weapon damage affixes, myself. I guess if you're comfortable with your toughness, you can keep the area damage for a bit of extra damage vs multiple targets (or quite a bit on big groups). The vitality is pretty useless if you already have a decent health pool (maybe 350k or higher for non-hardcore, depending on personal comfort.)
One thing to consider is that mods such as +% elemental damage, +% critical damage, and +% area damage on weapons are somewhat more effective in dual wield builds because they apply to both weapon swings. Affixes such as +attack speed and +% weapon damage are only used about half the time (more for main hand weapons but less for off-hand).
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The BK set should be affected by berserker rage and brawler, but not affected by % whirlwind skill damage / whirlwind runes. Graphically it uses the whirlwind particles (flying axes/swords and spiraling winds), but it's not actually a "whirlwind" skill - your barbarian doesn't actually spin around, move at 75% speed, ignore unit collision, etc.
If I had to guess, I'd say the range is about the same as whirlwind, maybe 8-10 yards?
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1) Total damage reduction (DR) from difference sources is generally a product, not a sum. 50% DR from one source and 50% DR from another source is 75% DR, not 100%.
2) Boon of Bul-Kathos is applied before cooldown reduction. This means that Boon of Bul-Kathos reduces the cooldown of Wrath of the Berserker to 90 seconds and then CDR is applied. You would need ~78% cooldown reduction to have continuous Wrath of the Berserker. I don't think that this number is possible to achieve for barbarians.
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I also agree that the BK set seems designed to work exceptionally well with the Whirlwind skill.
I think the reason why BK ticks seem so high right now is because it appears that the actual damage per "hit" scales with your attack speed and critical stats. A tick is either 162.5% weapon damage (the derived value of one 'tick') or possibly 260% weapon damage (if the weapon reports its damage every 48 frames, as has been said of other DoT-type effects). I'll assume the former, because the proc shows yellow numbers, which doesn't usually occur with DoT-style damage.
With the 162.5% weapon damage per tick, we apparently multiply our critical stats and attacks per second to determine the actual, non-crit damage per tick. Let's say you're fairly geared and have ~1.82 attacks per second (40% attack speed), 50% crit chance and 500% crit damage. Let's say you're also using WotB - Insanity. So your critical chance during WotB is 60%, damage is still 500%, and attacks per second go up to 2.145 (65% attack speed). During WotB - Insanity, factoring in the scaling for attack speed and crit, the 162.5% damage becomes 162.5 * 2.145 * (1 + 0.6 * 5) * 1.5 =
~2091% per tick (every half second)
So, assume you have a BK sword that does 1600 average damage and 8500 strength. One tick will do 1600 * 86 * 20.91 =
This is a white hit, though, even though we used critical damage stats once, a crit will do more damage: 2.877 million * (1 + 0.6 * 5) =
Odyn Son actually works similarly, and hits 3 times for a slightly lower value (100%-120% weapon damage, x3, instead of 162.5% every half second).
BK theoretically more or less ignores proc rates, triggering almost every 12 seconds (I think), hitting 12 times per proc (or an average of 1 tick per second) and hits every mob in a radius.
If you use the stats above during Insanity, Odyn Son with a perfect proc rate (40%) would trigger about 2.145 * (0.39) * (0.4) = 33% of the time each second, or about 1 proc per 3 seconds.
1 proc of Odyn Son is 3 'ticks', so Odyn Son also averages out to about 1 'tick' per second (with a perfect proc %, when using whirlwind).
So, using whirlwind with a perfect proc % Odyn Son, both Odyn Son and BK set would 'tick' about once per second (on average, factoring in the cooldown on BK set). However, the BK set hits harder (162.5% vs 120%). The number of targets doesn't matter, because more targets gives Odyn Son more ticks (but each 'tick' only hits one target). More targets means that each BK 'tick' does more damage (because it's an AoE).
A noticeable difference is that the BK set does reliable consistent damage when its proc occurs, and Odyn Son is rather random- the chance to trigger, targets selected, etc. Even if on average they both 'tick' with roughly the same frequency, BK set will be much smoother and Odyn Son procs could be very punctuated.
Also, I think Odyn Son and BK set both benefit greatly from WotB or any other attack speed / critical hit / critical damage buffs (Crusader Law of Valor - Critical), because they "double crit" and factor attack speed into their damage per hit.
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The 39% proc chance (for non-Internal cooldown weapons) is based on Whirlwind ticking 3 times per "regular attack" roughly. In a continuous model (ie: not the real way the game works with frames and break points), whirlwind would tick at 3x your attack speed.
(I'll add more stuff later, I was just bored at work today.)
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I didn't account for other factors like Odyn Son's +% lightning damage, or using different skills, as well.
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I play a lightning WW barbarian (~39% proc chance), so using the fake stats and estimates above, I can expect to do:
655% (per target) weapon damage/second with BK set
220% (per target) weapon damage/second with Odyn Son
882 - 1215% (varying with number of targets) weapon damage/second with Shard of Hate*
(*assuming it has a chance to trigger off every tick of whirlwind activation and whirlwind hit)
So, using these assuptions (not accounting for other weapon affixes or weapon DPS, just the procs):
BK set does 655% per target per second.
Odyn Son + Shard of Hate does (880 ... 1215)% + 220% per target per second.
Assuming no problems with geometry (grouping enemies into AoEs, missing with charged bolts, etc.)
1
Shard of Hate apparently does not scale twice with critical hits or attack speed, but it does scale with % lightning skill damage. It also has a roughly 1 second (I think) internal cooldown.
If you have a 225% damage proc on Shard of Hate and 80% lightning skill damage, the proc does 405% weapon damage per bolt and fires three bolts per proc. This makes its damage per proc strikingly similar to Odyn Son using my sample stats. However, Shard of Hate has an internal cooldown, so it doesn't scale infinitely with more targets. It should do about 405 * 3 = 1215% weapon damage, split among 3 targets in the maximum possible case.
So I estimate the damage at:
(This means Shard of Hate looks really good with a high proc rate or smallish number of targets, but other procs start to surpass its total damage per second when there are large groups).
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Bul-Kathos's Set
After patch 2.0.5, Nubtro reported that, not only can the whirlwind proc from the BK set now critical hit, but also that the damage itself scales with your critical hit damage and chance (before it crits). The damage amount also scales with your attack speed, but because the BK set seems to have an internal cooldown, attack speed doesn't influence the amount of procs.
Your critical hit chance and damage apply twice to the BK whirlwind proc, so bascially those stats are squared when factoring the average damage. The damage is reported as 1950% weapon damage / 6 seconds, or 325% weapon damage / second. This 325% is multiplied by your attacks per second and critical hit/damage, so if you have 1.55 attacks per second, 40% critical chance, and 400% critical damage, you can expect to do:
325% * (1.55) * (1 + .4 + 4) ~= 1310% weapon damage/second in a circular area around your character
However, the BK proc seems to be on an internal cooldown of roughly about 12 seconds (in my personal experience- 2.0.4, so this may have changed). This means that the average damage over time will be about half the active damage/second, or about 655% weapon damage per second. Because of the internal cooldown, attacking multiple targets doesn't really increase the value of the proc.
So the estimated damage of the BK set proc in these circumstances is roughly:
Odyn Son
According to the information gathered in Nubtro's Barbarian spreadsheet, the reason why the Odyn Son proc seems so powerful is because it apparently scales with critical hit chance, critical hit damage, and attack speed twice.
i.e.: Your attack speed and critical chance/damage values are squared when multiplying the damage of an Odyn son proc.
The base damage of the proc is only around 100-120% weapon damage, but the base damage itself is multiplied by your critical hit stats and your attack speed. After this, the damage amount can be a critical hit, which uses your critical stats again, and of course the higher your attack speed, the more procs you can create (thus scaling with attack speed twice as well).
Let's say you have 40% critical chance and 400% critical damage. You also have 1.55 attacks per second and your Odyn Son does 100% weapon damage per hit (3 hits per proc). Each hit of the proc will do 100% * (1.55) * (1 + 0.4 + 4) =403% weapon damage.
(I think the above calculation is why a lot of people estimate that Odyn Son's proc does about 400% weapon damage. It does about 400% with those values of attack speed, crit damage, and critical chance, but it could do more or less.)
After you get this value, in our case 403%, the proc will hit 3 times, possibly all on the same target. These 403% damage procs can then critical hit again, boosting their damage further (by another 2.6 times in our case, on average), and the faster you attack (and the higher your proc coefficient), the more often you can trigger the proc.
So, say you have a 30% proc rate Odyn Son with the above stats. It does 1209% damage split between 1-3 targets. It will proc 30% of the time on every hit, modified by proc coefficient. Your attack speed dictates the number of proc chances, because there is no internal cooldown, so the damage/second is multiplied by your attacks/second.
This damage is estimated at:
0
If you have 40% crit and 400% crit damage, Into the Fray adds (1 + 0.41 * 4) / (1 + 0.4 * 4) ~= 1.015, or about 1.5% bonus damage per target (this devalues slightly for each additional target), including the first target / single target
With the same stats, Bloodshed adds 20% * 40% = 8% bonus damage per target after the first
So, from your skills, Bloodshed will deal 1.5% less damage vs 1 target, but deal 5% more damage on two targets, 11.5% more on 3, and so on
Say you're fighting 10 targets. Bloodshed will deal about 57% additional skill damage compared to Into the Fray.
If you're fighting 10 targets, Into the Fray will deal about 15% additional proc damage compared to Bloodshed.
So, if your proc DPS is 4x greater than your skill DPS, Into the Fray would be better. If your odyn son/TF/SOH contributes less than 4x the DPS of your Whirlwind/Frenzy/HotA/etc, Bloodshed is still better for AoE.
Into the Fray will always be slightly superior for single target, but even with proc weapons, it looks like Bloodshed will be better for AoE.
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BK swords shouldn't be a DOT, they should work similarly to whirlwind or most other attacks. To be honest I haven't tested them extensively to notice whether or not they crit. I can't imagine why they wouldn't crit, but if they can't do so then it makes them pretty weak and probably not worth using (above and beyond the fact that the whirlwind proc has only about a 50% up-time).
0
phuzi0n is spot-on. The only time to use Into the Fray is if you really really want to crit more, at the expense of a little bit of damage loss or you want some sort of hybrid rune that does slightly more damage than Bloodshed on single targets and slightly more damage than Marauder's Rage on groups, but significantly less in the other situations.
0
0
I'm going to assume the OP has a Sun Keeper or something for his main hand, or possibly is using a shield, because he is debating replacing one fire damage weapon with another one. In such a case, if this weapon is going in the off-hand, then the damage per attack is not important, because the skills that don't use attack speed also don't use off-hand weapon damage (most of the time).
If the OP is in fact dual wielding, the strength becomes even more valuable in comparison to the weapon DPS, because the weapon DPS will be averaged with his other weapon, but the strength is always functioning to increase both weapons' damage.
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On-topic: You can rune Earthquake to do fire, cold, or lightning damage, although the lightning rune seems rather weak with the Earth set.
Raekor's set will always make Furious Charge deal fire damage, I think. However, you could still design your other skill choices around a different theme. If you're doing boulder toss, you probably care less about the damage from Charge and more about the physical damage from Boulder Toss.
IK set doesn't really benefit from cold, but you can do fire for a damage-focused build or lightning if you're using Together as One. Otherwise, physical sorta works for them. For IK set, moreso than Raekor's, your other skills will probably impact your element more than Call of the Ancients (unless you're doing fire/tasker and theo/etc.).
Sesimic Slam and Hammer of the Ancients can be runed to fit pretty much any element as spender, assuming you actually like the benefits the runes grant you.
Edit: As a lightning (whirlwind) barb player myself, I'm not really interested in the Raekor's and Might of the Earth sets for that character. I am interested in IK though, more for the 3 piece bonus than the 4 piece - although I may as well eventually incorporate the 4 piece bonus when I find enough pieces.