DiabloFans

Cantor is just a title based on post count. Don't worry, I think almost everyone makes that mistake at first.

I can't really commit to helping people in game as I only have limited playtime and it's a lot easier for me to check forums here and there during the day. Feel free to ask any questions you may have, though I probably won't be on the forums either for the next few days.

I'm not really an expert on prices, but here are my thoughts:

If you've got the dough, an EF with high crit damage and a socket (with a high-end emerald) is certainly an upgrade. If not, the EF you have isn't terrible -- it's just not optimal.

You currently have 8.5% lifesteal when anything much over 5% is kind of overkill, assuming you are able to generate decent DPS, and I think you should be able to get there. I'd replace the belt with a Witching Hour, and you can make up the lost IK 3-set by getting some crit damage IK gloves. The other option would be to drop Bloodthirst for Brawler. While I'm no longer really sold on that for WW due to the delay, other people disagree with me, so it's worth seeing how it feels to you.

If you do get a Witching Hour, it has attack speed built in so the IAS on the ring will probably not be helping much at that point. Options would be to get IAS on fourth slot or to swap that ring for something like crit chance > min-max damage > crit damage. I'd probably go with the latter option. If you go with the former option, make sure to look up the details on breakpoints so you aren't wasting IAS for no benefit to tornado damage.

If you want to keep the Hellfire, that's up to you, but I think it's bringing you down. Also, keep in mind that the XP bonus isn't as great as it sounds since it's additive with MP rather than multiplicative.

If you want to farm high MP, your health is kind of low. I'd shoot for at least 40k and ideally 42-45k. You could resocket your armor and/or helm to help somewhat.

I'd swap your boots. For your budget, I'd go with Zunimassa's. Natalya's are slightly better at high gear levels, but they require the ring too in order to be good, and good Natalya's rings are expensive.

You should be able to grow out of Warcry at some point, but until you feel comfortable with that, you are most likely better off with Hardened Wrath since your armor is much higher than 10 times your resistances. If you want to do the math to prove it, mouse over your resistance of choice and your armor values with Impunity active and then with Hardened Wrath and write down the percentages (0.55 instead of 55%, for example). Next, compute the following for both sets of numbers:

(1 - resist%)*(1 - armor%)

The result will be the percentage of damage you take from attacks after armor and resists are applied (not counting melee reduction, barb class reduction, etc.), so you want to use the rune that gives you the lower value.

Swapping you main and off-hand weapons will provide an immediate DPS increase to your tornadoes since they rely on main-hand damage range and don't care about the off-hand damage range. It will also fear mobs a lot less for a similar reason which makes it a lot easier to keep them in your tornadoes.

Random thoughts:

I notice you are currently running 4 IK items, so you could swap one and still keep the bonus if you wanted to. The best candidate would be to swap the belt for a Witching Hour if you can afford that. EDIT: You'd probably want to get a lifesteal weapon if you did this, though Bloodthirst alone is probably enough if you aren't farming high MP.

Don't worry about faster attack speed on your mace imho unless you are really trying to optimize for a specific breakpoint and have put in the research to do so. Even then, it's not recommended because of the main-hand damage range being so important, and a high damage-range weapon with other good affixes and IAS is insanely expensive.

Your health is super low, assuming you want to do anything approaching high MP. Aim for 40k+. Your crit chance is also really low which is probably making it hard to keep ToC going.

Beyond that, I'd recommend reading this thread which has most of my advice in it already including what to focus on in each slot. If you have any specific questions after that, feel free to ask.

http://www.diablofan...d-items-better/

Interesting, I hadn't seen that build. The part I was missing before was that you were running a mighty weapon. Watching the videos, I wonder if the build wouldn't be better off with Sprint: Marathon since he appears to do almost zero tornado damage as he's neither kiting nor whirling / running back and forth.

Anyway, I get why you have such a high attack speed focus now. Unfortunately, as the thread you linked notes, that means this is a very expensive build. I'm not sure what sort of budget it's going to ultimately take, but here's what I'd be looking at slot by slot if it were me:

• Helm: Mempo or IK -- Normally I'd recommend IK over a non-crit Mempo, but I think the IAS is necessary enough in this build to justify the non-crit Mempo. If you find you are able to get enough attack speed on other slots to make the build work though, it may be worth running an IK instead until you can afford a crit Mempo because it allows you to run trifecta gloves and a Witching Hour without losing the IK 2-set bonus and the crit chance will make up for the DPS loss from the IAS.
• Chest: IK -- This is really the only option in my opinion unless this was the only IK slot you were going to run. In that case, I'd probably try to craft this slot, but that would really demand a very high gear level since that extra 60 all resist is so strong.
• Shoulders: Crafted of Vit, Crafted of Strength (my recommendation) -- Of Vit has a higher max roll, but until the rest of your crafted slots are near perfect, you're better off with Strength. Vile Wards aren't terrible though, so this slot can definitely wait.
• Gloves: Trifecta (preferably crafted of strength) or IK -- You may end up needing to sacrifice either attack speed or crit damage in this slot in order to get the 2-set IK bonus if you stick with a Mempo and run a WH.
• Bracers: Crafted of Strength or Lacuni's -- This is a tough call. If any build wants to run Lacuni bracers, it's this one. Still, crafted bracers are really strong and Natalya's two-set also seems made for this build.
• Belt: Witching hour -- This is hands down the best belt for this build in my opinion. It should be a lot cheaper to get comparable DPS pairing a WH with an IK helm than by pairing a mempo with IK belt and you can maintain the same attack speed. This does mean you need at least one weapon with lifesteal though, unless you want to run Bloodthirst which is not ideal.
• Pants: Inna's -- Since this build thrives on attack speed, this seems like a no-brainer. Heck, it's usually the best choice even when you don't care about attack speed due to the movement speed bonus.
• Boots: Natalya's (with ring) -- This will net you some extra crit chance and the ring comes with attack speed. The other option would be something like Ice Climbers if you went with Lacuni bracers and Inna's pants since that'd be 24% movement speed already.
• Rings: Natalya's (with boots), other rare / unique -- IAS / crit chance / crit damage / min-max damage are all strong here. If you can get enough IAS elsewhere, that would be my stat of choice to drop on your rings.
• Amulet: Crafted of Strength -- Once you get reasonable bracers / shoulders if you craft those slots at all, it's probably worth burning all of your essences here since this build could benefit from an amazing amulet even more than most barbs.
• Weapons: Mighty + EF obviously -- Picking up lifesteal on at least one of these lets you run Witching Hour.

Your current build doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Are you able to maintain Thrive on Chaos without BR: Into the Fray? I think you'd be better off with either a different WotB rune or switching to BR: ItF. The latter option is what I'd recommend, though it might also require a slightly bigger focus on crit chance, which is fine since crit chance / crit damage is the best way to increase DPS anyway. If you do a significant portion of your damage with RltW tornadoes, it may also be worth dropping either Overpower or Cleave for WW: Hurricane since it lets you move through enemies and drop RltW tornadoes directly on top of them.

Gear-wise, you've got a higher attack speed focus than I think I've ever seen on a Barb, but very low health, low-ish crit chance and very low crit damage. It's hard for me to give you much specific advice here because your build and current gear are so non-standard. For my general thoughts on gearing barbs, check this thread: http://www.diablofan...d-items-better/ Also, note that when I talk about WW in that thread, I'm referring to WW builds and primarily to RltW tornadoes, so much or most of it would apply to you if you do a large portion of your damage that way.

It depends on your build.

For WW: Main-hand rare mace or axe (usually mace), offhand EF. This controls the fear in the tornadoes and makes hitting EF breakpoints easier. Since RLtW tornadoes only care about main-hand damage range (not so much the DPS number, particularly when comparing to EF), you are almost always better off putting the EF in the off-hand, and you are often well-served by a marquise ruby in the main-hand.

For non-WW, it depends. Rend prefers a Skorn, or a rare mace / axe with a high damage range as a second-tier alternative. HotA works well with Skorn, or with the EF in the main-hand and whatever high-dps weapon in the offhand, or with a main-hand rare axe/mace and an off-hand EF. Theoretically you could do a main-hand sword with HotA, but you'd better have close to max crit chance on every slot it's available if you want this to be optimal, particularly if you rely on Into the Fray for fury.

For the rare maces mentioned above, you're generally looking for some combo of lifesteal / crit damage / socket / high damage range.

EDIT: Also, obviously three-hundredth spear needs a mention for ranged builds.

Quote from Shinryu

Cheers for the help, tbh the gear I have is just made of bits and bobs that I bought without knowing much about the class, just watching budget videos, or bits that dropped naturally for me, like both of my rings.

With the drop in rmah gold im going to be buying 200 mils worth, so am happy to switch things around wherever seems best. I bought the mempo and as gloves because I'd seen a video saying to aim for 2.5 aps for a ww barb, not sure if this is ideal for my budget range, otherwise i'd have bought an ik helm.

Ideally I was thinking of going with an IK chest, as that seems to work out cheaper overall as well as providing much more defence.

Regarding IAS and WW builds with EF: You can't rely on sheet DPS regarding IAS because RltW tornadoes have breakpoints which the sheet DPS does not account for. So basically, you have three reasonable options imho, though the first and third are the best in my opinion.

First, you can ignore IAS altogether (you still may get some from places like Inna's) and focus on other sources of damage, which specifically is crit chance > crit damage > min-max damage > strength. In my opinion, this is the way to go for budget builds if you don't want to do much research as it gives high DPS for less effort.

The second option is to focus on IAS to hit a specific breakpoint, but this requires research to know where they are and it must be calculated separately for each hand, though you can short-cut it if you use a non-IAS mace and a non-IAS EF together since this way the attacks per second on your character sheet (while TOC is up) is correct for both weapons. The general stat allocation in this school of thought is something like crit chance > IAS / crit damage > min-max damage > strength while making sure to hit the IAS tornado breakpoint you want for each hand. In general, this will mean a lower overall damage output, but more procs of ItF for slightly smoother runs. I personally don't think this is the best way to go.

The third option is the middle ground and the best option imho. In this case, you basically go for option 1 while still paying attention to IAS. In other words, you might pick one (probably not more) item with IAS rather than another with something like crit damage because you've done the research to know it will get you to the next breakpoint. At low gear levels, this probably puts you between 16-18 IAS assuming mace + EF, and how much you need for the breakpoint depends on how high your EF bonus is. At high gear levels, you start doing things like buying +5% crit chance mempos which probably gets you to the 33-36ish IAS breakpoint depending on EF bonus. Going for more than that is probably not worth it as the next breakpoint requires too much sacrifice imho.
-------------

FYI, for anyone looking for a barb set on a small budget, Epheria's list is a good way to go, though I wouldn't avoid elites even if you have to turn down the MP a bit since the essences can help budget builds a lot. As you improve gear or if you have more cash / essences up front, you can replace the pants with Inna's and the bracers with crafted of strength, and/or the chest for IK, the gloves for crit damage IK and the belt with WH (though this requires you get the lifesteal from Skorn or the Bloodthirst passive). Both of these swaps allow you to maintain the same IAS through Inna's in the first case and WH in the second. Also, I'd suggest spending the least money you can reasonably get away with on shoulders, amulet and bracers as they are all strong candidates for barbs to craft once you get some essences.

Hey all. I've been busy lately and didn't notice this thread got more responses. Also FYI, Cantor is a tile based on post count rather than a name, but it's a common mistake. Also, for the below, make sure you are using a calculator to test this stuff and not just relying on advice as I just don't have time to individually test pieces of gear for everyone. Check out d3rawr.com/d or d3up.com

Quote from Swordsman75

Tanis,

With the above list of gear that you have outlined in mind, would you have any suggestions for what I should go after first/next? I'm currently doing ok in MP7, but would like to move up to MP10 with a WW build, but I find myself lacking. I know I need to boost my health, but I seem to be stuck with being unable to decide where to pick up more health.

http://us.battle.net...159/hero/589466

Thank you very much for any possible help and your time in reading this.

I see you got help already for the health, but I notice your crit chance is a bit low. I'd pick up an IK helm to boost it if it were me which also provides more melee reduction. I'd probably also swap either the pants or boots to pick up the extra run speed, and eventually both when you can craft some bracers and swap out the Lacunis.

Quote from Shinryu

Sorry for double post wouldn't let me post links.

I have 200 mil to spend to improve my barb, can survive in mp10 but don't have the dps to farm it effectively, any tips on upgrades, currently I farm mp5.

http://eu.battle.net...0/hero/13335254

As above, I'd swap the mempo for IK to pick up the crit and melee reduction. This would also let you drop the IK belt for WH if you can get the lifesteal on your weapons or passive. You're a bit of a budget build though, so you might consider swapping some pieces around. If you are running Tyreal's Might, you have the choice to make about whether to grab run speed from boots or pants. Nat's is a great way to go and probably my preference and this means high-stat defensive pants, but this is a more expensive option than IK chest / inna's pants for similar benefit.

Also, your IAS doesn't make much sense unless it's for the axe. For the mace, iirc the breakpoints for a +.23 EF are at 17ish and 35ish IAS and you have 27%. If it makes sense for the axe, more power to you, but it may be worth looking into if you are going to value IAS for a WW build.

Quote from free0rda

Thanks for all the great advice Cantor. With your help and a lot of play testing I managed to come up with my current set which is a huge a improvement over my last. What I'm considering is getting the 2 piece Nat's at this point as it gives 7% crit, and dropping my Lacuni's for crafted bracers.

Here's my Barb now :

http://us.battle.net...88/hero/4334119

Thanks again for all the suggestions; I'm open to any more.

free0rda

I see you already went with the Nat's, and that was probably a good choice. As you get the cash, it's probably worth trying to pick up crit or min-max damage on the ring, but you may want to compare that in a calculator before laying out the cash.

BTW, it looks like the gear is definitely coming together for you. I might try to pick up an IK helm with resist all if you can afford it and if you feel your defense could be better. If you need a bit more health, you can swap some of the gems.

It depends. If you play self-found on all of your characters, it makes sense to be able to trade stuff between them and still call yourself self-found. If you spend a bunch of gold gearing up one character on the AH and use that one to farm gear for another character, I'd say you don't get to call the second one self-found, despite it technically being true. Crafted = found to me though so long as you found all of the mats and gold yourself on self-found characters. Heck, I'm ok if you got the gold from selling on the AH since you've still got to find all the mats, tomes, etc. yourself.

Really, it's a bit moot to me though. People ought to play however they find the most enjoyment. All defining this stuff is really good for imho is looking down on other people's playstyles if they aren't "pure" enough (says the guys who buys on the RMAH).

Quote from MetabolicFrolic

So I've been playing consistently with groups and found that Frenzy seems to really suck for groups. Everyone plays MP0 pre-60. Can't keep stacks up. I've switched to Bash w/ Punish and use HotA w/Smash. Combined with everything else its been a really awesome Dual Wield build. Anyone know if Frenzy gets better in Inferno with higher MP?

Not typically since it's not going to match the single-target DPS of something like HotA: Smash, and it won't generate the fury of Bash (especially with Instigation) or the damage bonus of Bash: Punish for secondary skills. It will do more single-target damage than Bash if you can keep it 5-stacked long enough, but those situations are rare enough that I think Bash is just better.

Quote from Diavolo222

What are these vasts benefits from group play besides completely irelevant MF ?

Here's a silly, overly simplistic answer, but it should illustrate a point. Consider a high DPS barb using a HotA: Smash build and a low DPS monk using an Exploding Palm build doing ubers. The bosses have 150% of their normal health, but they take 60% more damage as long as the Monk keeps Conviction and Exploding Palm up, so even if the Monk does 0 DPS, the barb still kills the first boss in 93.75 percent of the time it took on his own, and that's not counting Guiding Light. If we assume the bosses have equal health, exploding palm will take off 74% of the second bosses current HP. Assuming that mob has somehow not been hit at all yet, the entire fight would be over in 65.16% of the time it would take the barb to kill the bosses alone.

That's with the monk doing zero damage for the entire fight (except the Exploding Palm explosion obviously, but that skill ignores all gear except bonus damage to elites and possibly bonus % elemental damage). It's also not optimized since I'm not counting buffs like Guiding Light which would make it faster, and it's also ignoring the MF / XP / GF bonuses and the fact that incoming damage is now split among two people instead of one.

Again, this is an oversimplified example and forgive me if any of my numbers are off (I took most of it from Invis's Speed Palm guide), but similar concepts hold when farming non-ubers in groups. There are certain buffs which have multiplier effects in parties and exploiting them, along with the inherent bonuses of group play, make farming with a reasonably competent group more efficient than solo play as long as you aren't having to drag poorly geared / played characters along with you.

I'm a bit late to the party, so to speak, but I'd probably do something like the following if I wanted to keep the same gear (including rare 1-hander + EF) I use for whirlwind / HotA: http://us.battle.net...YURP!ZYg!aYZcYZ

The idea is to group enemies up and lock them down via Wrenching Smash and Thunderstrike so that the rest of the party can nuke them more easily and with less danger. Brawler supports that effort by making Thunderstrike more likely to get killing blows. Clobber is there to perform a similar task for single targets as well as to generate extra fury for Thunderstrike when needed. I went with Insanity over Thrive on Chaos since it's easier to stay with the party this way but you still have Insanity to shine when needed. The rest is probably self-explanatory, but the stuns should help with any annoyance people usually have when using EF's in parties.

If I was willing to regear a bit to pick up an SoJ and Skorn with reduced HotA cost, I might try something like this instead: http://us.battle.net...YgRP!ZYg!aYZbaZ

With HotA only costing 10 Fury with a slow weapon and no Thrive on Chaos, we should be able to run Marauder's Rage over Into the Fray for a significant damage increase. This makes Sprint less spammable since we don't generate as much fury, so I included Grim Harvest to make up somewhat for the lost mobility and slower runs while providing a little extra fury to power HotA.

EDIT: On further reflection, I think Bash: Clobber is going to be superior to Frenzy: Smite, so I changed it out.

I'm basically with captaincha0s. The gear is pretty much the same between the two specs so you can pretty easily try both. HotA: Thunderstrike is probably more group-friendly than WW though since you can lock mobs down so people can nuke them more easily.

Quote from Heaven2189

tanis0 if you play on American server could you add me Heaven#2189 I could use some help with gearing thank you!

I don't have much play time lately so I can't really commit to helping people in game. Feel free to ask any questions you have though or start your own thread for more focused advice. I checked your profile, but it doesn't look like your barb is 60 yet so there's not much I could recommend beyond what I've already posted here and in other threads in this forum.

2 and 3-piece IK is pretty standard. Almost nobody goes to 5 anymore because the set is way too defensive, plus Into the Fray typically makes the fury bonus irrelevant. Since this keeps coming up, I might as well write a general guide.......Done Here's what I'd generally recommend with each item in order by what I consider best to worst:

• Helm: high-crit Mempo, IK helm (my recommendation), Andariel's Visage -- Good crit Mempos are way out of most people's price ranges and other Mempos aren't worth it imho. We don't usually need all that much attack speed and it's usually not worth optimizing for it until you are close to perfect on other stats.
• Chest: IK or Tyreal's Might -- Usually IK. Tyreal's Might frees up a slot from needing movement speed, but it's a more expensive build overall. Crafted chests might deserve to be on the list as well, but I haven't put in the research to know for sure.
• Shoulders: Crafted of Vit, Crafted of Strength (my recommendation) -- Of Vit has a higher max roll, but until the rest of your crafted slots are near perfect, you're better off with Strength.
• Gloves: IK -- generally with crit damage, possibly with attack speed if you are exactly 8-9 IAS short of a certain (high) tornado breakpoint and can't get it elsewhere for some reason.
• Bracers: Crafted of Strength, Lacuni's -- Usually crafted with crit chance and all resist. Lacuni's are available if you need the run speed but are not the recommended way to get it.
• Belt: Witching hour, IK -- Usually WH, IK generally only if you can't get enough lifesteal or the 2-set IK bonus somewhere else for some reason, or if your build needs one of the barb skill bonuses.
• Pants: Inna's, rare / Depth Diggers with very high strength and vit, all resist and 2 sockets -- Almost always Inna's, usually with vit, possibly with strength. The exception is if you are running Tyreal's Might, but that's a much more expensive setup.
• Boots: Natalya's (with ring), Zunimassa's, Ice Climbers -- Almost never Ice Climbers, but you could go that way if you are getting 24% movement speed elsewhere or want to pay through the nose for a good pair with movement speed.
• Rings: Natalya's (with boots), other rare / unique, cold damage SoJ -- Stat priority is roughly crit chance > crit damage / min-max damage > attack speed > all resist > strength / vit. Life on hit is useful if your DPS is below 100k and you aren't using WW, but otherwise it's generally best to rely on lifesteal from other sources.If you already have extremely high crit chance and crit damage from other sources or need the slow from the cold damage (and possibly the fury / stat bonus though not necessarily), SoJ is incredibly strong against elites though less strong against trash.
• Amulet: Crafted of Strength -- Stat priority is roughly crit damage > crit chance > min-max damage > attack speed > all resist > vit. LoH is useful if your DPS is below 100k and you aren't using WW, but otherwise it's generally best to rely on lifesteal from other sources.
• Weapons: varies by build -- Skorn, echoing fury, rare maces and three-hundredth spear top the list. Generally you want lifesteal, a socket and/or crit damage with other things being bonuses.

The following are more or less bare minimums for high 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%)