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Barbs are in a rough place right now. I suspect part of that is a ploy to get strength-based-melee-type players to buy the expansion so they can play crusaders. Regardless, it's just not fun anymore.

Quote from miles_dryden

Hammer of the Ancients Cost: 20 Fury / Call forth a massive hammer to smash enemies directly in front of you for 535% weapon damage. Hammer of the Ancients has a 1% increased Critical Hit Chance for every 5 Fury that you have. (Damage up from 325%)

Because if ANYTHING needed a buff, it was Hammer of the Ancients!

QFT, but still.. Most of the Barb changes read like they were afraid some people still might want to play one even without double-tornado or life leech.

I suspect the disconnect between various factions on this may come down to how players view death differently. To me, death is a failure. I don't need the game to punish me since the death is its own punishment to me. I'd still be doing my best to avoid death even if there was a reward every time you died. If there is a stiff penalty for death, then I tend to get frustrated and go find something less masochistic to do. This is why I steer clear of games like Dark Souls, for example.

If, on the other hand, death doesn't bother a player and they're perfectly content to die 25 times per hour, then I could understand potentially wanting a stiffer death penalty so that they would be "rewarded" for playing more conservatively.

I have to say, all of these ideas focus on making trading (imho) annoying, complex and advantageous for people who study the economy and spend a lot of time working the system. The first two are a bad idea for obvious (I hope) reasons and the last is pretty much the same problem as now.

I think it'd be far better if they just eliminated trading entirely than doing anything like the ideas in this thread. That way, they can balance the game around everything being self-found. If I still have to spend 10 hours trying to trade for an item I want at a decent price, then what's the point of ditching the AH again? I'd rather be killing and finding my own awesome loot.

Right now, it looks like the only things whose caps include non-gear sources are magic / gold find and block chance. Everything else specifically includes "from items" in the datamined strings.

Quote from Pkoch19

Since every character gets a base of 5% CHC, does that mean our "CAP" would be 45% with items? Add in the 3% from Scoundrel and we can max at 48%. I'm fine with that.

Assuming nothing changes from what we know right now, 48% + paragon 2.0 CHC + skills (varies by class)

At 8% CHC per item, that's 5 slots max which isn't so bad imho. I think the CHD cap of 250% from items is more likely to hurt than the CHC cap. On fast dual-wield setups, +min/max damage can help make up a lot of that loss. However, barring a damage increase to two-handed weapons, I think two-handers will be a relatively weaker choice after the patch than now because of this.

Quote from shaggy

Quote from itirnitii

Everyone has different goals they want to achieve, and competing on a seasonal ladder is just not one of mine.

Quoted and /agreed, just so that you're not standing alone on this one.

My desire to "start over" every X months is exceptionally low. I never had that urge in D2, I don't have it in D3.

Agreed as well. It'd take some pretty awesome exclusive content to get me to play ladder. If I had unlimited time to play I'd be more likely to do it, but at my 5-10 hours per week of playtime (on a good week), by the time I got to 60 and got mediocre gear, it'd be time to restart again.

Quote from Meloku

@tanis0 Thanx for clarifying, your point makes a lot more sense now and I agree. It's just that the EHP requirements are quite low cause of all the self healing via LL and Blood Lust. As long as you don't get 1-shot by charging bulls in Fields of Misery for example you're ok to farm that place EHP-wise (which is why Blood Lust is going the way of the dodo in RoS)

It's been a while since I played, so the market may have changed to the point where this doesn't happen too often anymore. However, there was a time where I had this problem and I've seen a lot of other people with it on the forums as well. Also, it depends on how many deaths you are comfortable with (my limit is about 2 per hour but even that annoys me) as they can really cut into your XP / loot per hour.

Quote from Fess

Quote from tanis0

I'm completely guessing here, but if I had money at stake, I'd predict the following for the expansion:

1. Higher tier gems will drop than can drop currently
2. Either a lot more gold will drop, items vendor for a lot more and/or gold gets used for less stuff / stuff costs less

I think it's likely that having some extra gold / high-tier gems will help in the expansion, but I think it's also likely Blizzard will try to even the playing field somewhat between people with billions of gold and people playing for the first time, particularly with paragon 2.0 to give the older players a strong starting advantage there. I'd say if you want to spend a small amount of cash in the short term to have fun and give a small advantage in the expansion, have fun with it. Otherwise, I'd wait to at least see what Blizzcon reveals.

first of all, of course higher tier gems will drop in the expansion. we're going to be level 70.
second, why are we going to need a lot more gold, so much so that you expect items will vendor for more and purchaseables will be cheaper? With no auction house, gold will not remain the standard of currency. People will be bartering items, and most likely a new item will become the new currency, the same as the stone of jordan did in diablo 2.

Re gold, reread my post. I'm certainly not advocating buying up billions of gold. Having a few hundred million (a guess, maybe more, maybe less) might give a small advantage for whatever sinks there are post-expansion, but I suspect that much more than that will probably never be spent. That might be too much already, but it's not like it's hard to build up that much if you've been playing long or have $2 to spend.

Re gems, my point was that stocking up on gems right now probably won't be as beneficial as it would seem if you didn't take upcoming higher-tier drops into account.

I'm completely guessing here, but if I had money at stake, I'd predict the following for the expansion:

1. Higher tier gems will drop than can drop currently
2. Either a lot more gold will drop, items vendor for a lot more and/or gold gets used for less stuff / stuff costs less

I think it's likely that having some extra gold / high-tier gems will help in the expansion, but I think it's also likely Blizzard will try to even the playing field somewhat between people with billions of gold and people playing for the first time, particularly with paragon 2.0 to give the older players a strong starting advantage there. I'd say if you want to spend a small amount of cash in the short term to have fun and give a small advantage in the expansion, have fun with it. Otherwise, I'd wait to at least see what Blizzcon reveals.

Quote from Meloku

Quote from tanis0

Also, as a general tip, focus on upping defense before upping damage since you can always move up in MP if your defense is higher, but if your damage outstrips your defense, it becomes very hard to maintain fury (though you can supplement survivability with skill choices if absolutely necessary).

Upping defense before upping DPS? If you go higher MP cause your defense already outstrips your damage it'll take forever to kill elite packs in the new MP. On the other hand improving your DPS directly improves your defense as well cause you heal more through LL and Blood Lust (especially assuming Skorn). Even if you only have 3% LL you can easily grab Bloodthirst as 3rd passive and have all the self-healing in the world.

The problem is fury generation. If everything dies in only a few tornado ticks, it's extremely difficult to keep WotB active since things die too quickly for your tornado ticks to trigger Into the Fray and in extreme cases, can even make it tough to generate enough fury to keep Sprint active. The normal solution to this is to raise the MP level, but if your defense isn't up to snuff so you can't raise the MP, the build basically stops functioning on the MP levels you can survive in.

None of the above should be taken to say that it's optimal to farm higher MP with sub-par DPS just because your defense can take it -- optimal MP will be primarily based on your killing speed, but your defense must be adequate to survive there or you can be in a position where no matter what MP you choose, the build doesn't really work.

tl;dr It's better to have the right balance, but if you're going to be out of whack, it's better to have too much defense than not enough relative to DPS.

Good advice here, but I may as well toss in my thoughts as well. For gear (budget and otherwise), I'd suggest reading this thread: http://www.diablofan...d-items-better/ I'm sure it's a tad out of date and some of the pricing may have changed, but it should still give you a general idea. I also talk a little bit about IAS there and other things there which can be confusing to a new WW barb.

As a general rule, a Skorn build is going to be the cheaper way to go, and that lends itself strongly to Rend. My knowledge of prices is out of date, but something like this should be reasonably doable on a small budget:

- Skorn - strength - prioritize weapon damage range and choose two of crit damage, socket or Life Leech depending on if you want IK belt or WH
- Inna's pants - probably with vit, possibly with strength
- IK chest
- IK helm
- Crafted Shoulders of Strength - vit and all resist
- IK belt - (high str and vit) if using non-LL Skorn and you don't use the bloodlust passive, otherwise Witching Hour
- Crafted Bracers of Strength - crit chance and all resist, vit is nice too
- Zunimasa's boots - str
- IK gloves - crit damage
- Rings - crit chance and crit damage, and either all resist, str and/or vit (or avg damage only if it's underpriced since it's not as good with Skorn)
- Crafted Amulet of Strength - crit damage, crit chance and either all resist or vit (this is the best slot to focus on when you have extra essences and other slots are decent)


The appropriate breakpoint to hit with this build imho is at 18% total IAS from gear (assuming WoTB is up) which means picking up 9% IAS on both Inna's and WH (or somewhere else if not using WH, probably a ring). If you have the cash and feel the need for speed, the next breakpoints for a 1.0 speed Skorn will be at 29% (4 slots) and 42% (5 slots), but you're almost certainly better off focusing on other stats like crit chance / crit damage / strength / all resist (and vit if it's low).

I've recommended the following before as a bare-minimum for high MP farming (MP10 is very tough at these numbers, but doable), so scale down a little for lower MP farming:

• 400+ all resist
• 40k+ health
• 5000+ armor
• 10%+ melee damage reduction
• 5%+ lifesteal (you can get by on 3% most of the time, but sometimes that extra 2% helps a lot at higher MP)
• 24% movement speed (no more since it caps at 25%, possibly less though I think it's worthwhile to get 24%)

Also, as a general tip, focus on upping defense before upping damage since you can always move up in MP if your defense is higher, but if your damage outstrips your defense, it becomes very hard to maintain fury (though you can supplement survivability with skill choices if absolutely necessary).

I voted no, but that's because they are currently talking about leaving non-AH trading in game. If they nix that too, then my vote will change to don't care.

Quote from cw30000

replace your head piece with a mempo with either pick up range or armor

While this might be a reasonable idea for other classes (or one very specific Barb build posted recently), it is not great advice for a budget WW Barb in my opinion. His crit chance already isn't that high, so ToC would probably become a lot more difficult to maintain. Also, the attack speed bonus wouldn't help his tornado damage at all without changing at least one other piece of gear in order to hit the next breakpoint, so he'd lose true DPS in the process even if he gained paper DPS.

I do agree, however, about the amulet (and bracers/shoulders too for that matter). I also agree that Skorn makes for a cheaper build overall, so that is a strong option at lower gear levels.

Wow, I did not expect to see this thread make a comeback. Nice necro.

Quote from Brakthir

Should I be looking for high CD% on Witching or just h igh str/vit combos?

Generally, both, though the crit damage is the main thing that makes that belt best in slot. When in doubt, try a calculator like the one at d3rawr.com/d . Just import your character, copy it to another tab and then put one belt in one tab and the other in the second, then hit calculate.