Decided to give this build ago, and fell love straight away. Much more fun to play than boring WW build or sword and board. Had to buy some new gear pieces thou but it was worth it. Can burst through Act 3 now quite fast and with ease.
I've done some math regarding battle fury rune bloodshed, and it appears that if you have some crit and critdmg, you will almost always gain more benefit from using the rune bloodshed compare to marauder's rage.
Disclaimer: This is not for those ww barb/range barb out there that uses Battle Rage only for Into the fray proc.
First, let's consider the two runes of Battle Rage:
Marauder's Rage: +3% critical chance, +30% damage done.
Bloodshed: +3% Critical chance, +15% damage done. When critical does 20% of damage done to nearby enemies.
I got curious as to whether bloodshed can become more favorable against Marauder's Rage, and if so at which point? So I did a little calculation. Things to consider:
Weapon damage (dmg) - This includes all the buffs, weapon dmg% modifier from the skill you use.
Critical hit Chance (cc) - This is your critical hit chance from your gear, passives, as well as 3% from battle rage.
Critical hit dmg (cd) - This is your critical hit bonus dmg granted by gear and passive.
Mobs hit (n) - The number of mobs affected by your skill that is capable of critical hit and proc Bloodshed.
Spread (p) - The number of how many mobs affected by the proc generated by Bloodshed rune.
*WARNING* Heavy math inc
First, let's consider the dmg done by an ability with Marauder's Rage buff:
Marauder's Rage dmg = (dmg)*(1+cc*cd)*n*1.3
Next, let's consider the dmg done by the same ability, but with Bloodshed rune. Each hits has (cc) chance to proc additional aoe hitting (p) enemies for (dmg)*(1+cd)*1.15*.2 damage.
You can see that how much critical chance is needed to equalize the dmg bonus depends on critical dmg bonus and the spread from your proc (the more packed the mobs are, the more mobs the proc will hit). On the other hand, it does not depend at all on whether how hard your skill hits, or whether it's aoe or single target skills, as long as it is capable of critting (rend for example, while can tick with "critdmg bonus", is not considered crit for the sake of proc).
Let's take a more concrete example. Say your frenzy hits for 50k dmg on a mob unbuffed and you have 50% chance to critical hit with 100% critical dmg bonus (you crit for twice the damage).
With marauder rage you hit one normal and one crit, you do 65k+130k = 195k damage
With Bloodshed you hit one normal and one crit that procs a nearby enemy (p=1) for 57.5k+115k+23k = 195.5k damage.
You can see that Bloodshed does slightly more damage at 50% critical hit and 100% critdmg with spreading to only 1 mob. This scale even better if the proc can hit more than 1 mob, requiring less critical chance and critdmg to equalize the benefit.
Putting the formula to calculate the required critical chance for other spread and critdmg we get
20% crit chance is easily attainable with weapon master+ruthless+battle fury buff alone, so with only expecting to spread to two or more mobs, bloodshed gives superior damage. In a more packed situation the crit requirement is even less and bloodshed keep doing even more damage.
Conclusion
If you have some crit stats on your gear, bloodshed will almost always give superior damage in aoe situations, regardless on whether you're using single target or aoe spells. Bloodshed also has the perk of being able to hit that mob that just missed your aoe or gives some aoe effect to your single target spell. Obviously, bloodshed give no bonus damage against single target, so if you plan on bursting on the last elite standing or the bosses marauder's rage will still be the best option for you.
On a side not...which follower should I use? Currently running with the enchantbitch.
And again....awesome build...give ups.
Follower for barb should only be enchantress just from the 15% armor aura alone. Templar only works if you're super geared and would like to benefit slightly for more mf offered by snb templar.
Perk about this build that I don't think anyone has mentioned:
When charging or leaping, you cause an animation interrupt for enemies. Last about .5 seconds. Pretty much enough time to leap into a group, rend, then start the charging process. A leap, rend, charge combo after 4/5 seconds and the group should be < 1/2 health to dead.
I did mentioned charge gives you "limited crowd control" But yeah, as long as you keep hitting 5 or more enemies and keep doing the charge, it's just impossible for you to die. Elites are exception because they are not affected by the small knockback and can still hit you midcharge. That's why against elites you switch to rend.
I want to add tornadoes (Sprint RLTW) into this build. One problem of this build is if leap is on CD, rend is not up, and you charge into a group, the possibility of dying is high due to dodge animations when trying to get off a rend. I want to see if tornadoes add the extra survivability when trying to get a rend off. Kiting for 6 seconds for the next leap can add unwanted time to farming. I wish there was a way to reduce animation times. I will edit this post to comment on how tornadoes work with this build in all acts.
I have experimented with manyy sprint runes, including RLTW. All sprint will also increase your charge speed (which was already fast before, tbh). Gangway actually offers additional hit as you charge through them, although the "proc" is rather random and the dmg is just negligible at best. RLTW actually leaves tornado as you charge, so it's a nice dmg addition. Problem is that you have to probably drop leap in order to get RLTW and leap offer you much higher survivability. Gettins second fury spender means you also can't get berserker rage passive. Dropping rend for RLTW just isn't worth it. If you're already geared enough and would like to speed up the run, marathon rune for sprint actuallyy fits the bill the best anyway since you won't be needing that extra dmg from RLTW.
You can reduce rend animation time by using faster weapon or ias, but that comes with the cost of lowering your dmg (or wasting stat slot or pay more for ias). You could always play it a little safer against tougher pack by rending from the side instead of the middle of the pack (like against elite colossal golgors).
I found this build not to long ago and I'd have to say..its a blast. I was using a WW spec but it got boring and didn't make me feel liek a true Brab. Now with this build I'm having the time of my life watching mobs fly off screen or just blow up out right. I'm currently farming AC1 and moving onto AC2 shortly..just not having luck with drops.
I know what you mean. WW spec feels as if I'm trying to draw something on the screen to me. I'd prefer to feel like I'm bashing my way through demons. This is part of the reason why I try to come up with a 2h build that works.
I've never purchased a single gear on my first playthrough until I reached inferno level. People who says "you need to AH to progress this game" at any point before inferno should be slapped.
If you're being 2 shotted then you just need more vit. Simple as that. Don't even bother going to AH, just farm what you can and keep an eye out for vit gears.
How can you even ask this? read the skills "weapon damage" where does it say "DPS" .. DPS means damage per second. its a calculation on the how much damage with the weapon damage you will do every second. So many ppl fail to understand this.
What you fail to understand is some skills DO, in fact, scale off dps even though it says weapon damage in the tooltip. Examples are hydras and some of the monk abilities. You can easily test by noticing that your dmg from that abilities goes up after picking up frenzied runes. Fortunately, (or unfortunately for 1h spec) testing shows that this isn't the case with barb abilities.
you cannot just add it to the 175% why dont you then just go ahead and add your 1000str as well and say your cleave does 1000%+175%+20% .. then your also saying that the +20% does not matter more than +20str, you really think so? no you didn't think .. i see.
If you just want to compare 2 build where in one build you have +20% and on the other you don't, then it's sufficed to say that in the new build your bash will do 175%*1.2 = 210% weapon swing compare to old spec 175%. This is also roughly accurate if you want to roughly calculate how much your new bash will do based off character dps sheet and ias.
Of course, it's won't be perfect as dmg buff are not multiplicative from each other (berserker rage is additive with marauder rage, for example), but for the purpose of comparing 2 builds, this rough calculation does more than enough.
Seriously though, there is no need for the hostilities against everyone. People actually pay more attention if you say it nicely.
Slam build works great. Problem is you have to play a bit like a medium range class. This means you can't charge head on into a group, tanking everything and expected to be the last man standing.
Playstyle revolving around slam is you slam without getting hit back. Move in to bash one enemy and retreat before you got surrounded. It's basically hit&run until there's nothing left standing.
Elites can give you a bit of trouble and it might just be best to burn them using some combination of wotb/EQ/IIB.
Or you could just also use rend and stand in the middle of the pack as they melt. But then again rend with bloodlust is so good there is very little reason to spend fury on anything else.
- Rend scales off only the base weapon damage, so given the same dps, the slower the weapon the harder it will tick/heal.
- Although faster weapon will result in (slightly) faster rend animation. This is largely irrelevant in terms of dps but can impact your kiting ability a bit.
- Rend do not "crit" per say, as in the number will never turn yellow, but rend will occasionally tick harder by a factor of your critdmg at the chance equals to your crit chance. Therefore, for all intent and purpose rend do "crit", but you just won't notice the bigass yellow number unless you pay attention to the numbers.
Very Nice Post !!! However I still think it is more fun to WW like an idiot. I'm addicted to speed. For some reason now that I use tornados and run everywhere, its just to hard to spec back to a slow moving hard hitter.- speed speed speed. Paragon levels will take for ever walking around slow as a slug.
Subbing out leap for sprint-marathon also works well :). Marathon gives you even faster run speed and with charge, it lets you kill mobs faster than ww build.
Fun facts: Sprint also speed up your charge speed to even faster!
I'm guessing there isn't a big need for life on hit/life leech with this build then.
LoH is pretty terrible for 2h, so don't even bother with it. Life leech however, can help tons. Furious charge and bash does so much dmg a tiny amount of life leech can help a lot. But yes, with rend you can definitely do without life leech.
I just time the cleave, rend, revenge in a way that i am always dealing aoe damage.
I'd recommend swapping out nerves of steel for berserker rage. The extra 20% makes so much different.
You won't really have to worry about not capping your fury, it fills up much faster than you think. Besides, if you're not filling up as fast as you'd like, try switching revenge rune to vengeance is mine for fury+more heals.
How is crit chance working with rend? don't have time to read the whole post now but was just wondering if the rend ticks can crit.
I got 56% crit on my gear, it would be quite a waste if crit doesn't benefit rend.
Yes, rend can crit, and it's affected by critdmg as well. In my video normal rend ticks for about 32k but occasionally will tick for 130k. Only thing is the "crit" does not show in yellow text so it could be easily misleading.
This is my first time ever frapping though, so I apologize in advance about the quality/lack of editing. However, this should give you a nice idea how this spec is played. Maybe it might interest some of you to give it a try.
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Love the name of your youtube vid
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See calculation details here: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/67201-battle-rage-marauders-rage-vs-bloodshed-rune-contains-math/
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First, let's consider the two runes of Battle Rage:
Marauder's Rage: +3% critical chance, +30% damage done.
Bloodshed: +3% Critical chance, +15% damage done. When critical does 20% of damage done to nearby enemies.
I got curious as to whether bloodshed can become more favorable against Marauder's Rage, and if so at which point? So I did a little calculation. Things to consider:
Weapon damage (dmg) - This includes all the buffs, weapon dmg% modifier from the skill you use.
Critical hit Chance (cc) - This is your critical hit chance from your gear, passives, as well as 3% from battle rage.
Critical hit dmg (cd) - This is your critical hit bonus dmg granted by gear and passive.
Mobs hit (n) - The number of mobs affected by your skill that is capable of critical hit and proc Bloodshed.
Spread (p) - The number of how many mobs affected by the proc generated by Bloodshed rune.
*WARNING* Heavy math inc
First, let's consider the dmg done by an ability with Marauder's Rage buff:
Marauder's Rage dmg = (dmg)*(1+cc*cd)*n*1.3
Next, let's consider the dmg done by the same ability, but with Bloodshed rune. Each hits has (cc) chance to proc additional aoe hitting (p) enemies for (dmg)*(1+cd)*1.15*.2 damage.
Bloodshed dmg = (dmg)*(1+cc*cd)*n*1.15 + ((dmg)*(1+cd)*1.15*.2)*p)*cc*n
We want to see when bloodshed dmg > Marauder's Rage dmg, so the turning point is when
(dmg)*(1+cc*cd)*n*1.15 + ((dmg)*(1+cd)*1.15*.2)*p)*cc*n = (dmg)*(1+cc*cd)*n*1.3
Simplifying the equation gives:
(1+cd)*0.23*p*cc = (1+cc*cd)*0.15
or,
cc = 0.15(0.23*p(1+cd)-0.15*cd)
*MATH MODE OFF*
You can see that how much critical chance is needed to equalize the dmg bonus depends on critical dmg bonus and the spread from your proc (the more packed the mobs are, the more mobs the proc will hit). On the other hand, it does not depend at all on whether how hard your skill hits, or whether it's aoe or single target skills, as long as it is capable of critting (rend for example, while can tick with "critdmg bonus", is not considered crit for the sake of proc).
Let's take a more concrete example. Say your frenzy hits for 50k dmg on a mob unbuffed and you have 50% chance to critical hit with 100% critical dmg bonus (you crit for twice the damage).
With marauder rage you hit one normal and one crit, you do 65k+130k = 195k damage
With Bloodshed you hit one normal and one crit that procs a nearby enemy (p=1) for 57.5k+115k+23k = 195.5k damage.
You can see that Bloodshed does slightly more damage at 50% critical hit and 100% critdmg with spreading to only 1 mob. This scale even better if the proc can hit more than 1 mob, requiring less critical chance and critdmg to equalize the benefit.
Putting the formula to calculate the required critical chance for other spread and critdmg we get
Critdmg\Spread 1 2 3 4
100% 0.48 0.19 0.12 0.09
200% 0.38 0.14 0.08 0.06
300% 0.32 0.11 0.06 0.05
400% 0.27 0.09 0.05 0.04
20% crit chance is easily attainable with weapon master+ruthless+battle fury buff alone, so with only expecting to spread to two or more mobs, bloodshed gives superior damage. In a more packed situation the crit requirement is even less and bloodshed keep doing even more damage.
Conclusion
If you have some crit stats on your gear, bloodshed will almost always give superior damage in aoe situations, regardless on whether you're using single target or aoe spells. Bloodshed also has the perk of being able to hit that mob that just missed your aoe or gives some aoe effect to your single target spell. Obviously, bloodshed give no bonus damage against single target, so if you plan on bursting on the last elite standing or the bosses marauder's rage will still be the best option for you.
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Follower for barb should only be enchantress just from the 15% armor aura alone. Templar only works if you're super geared and would like to benefit slightly for more mf offered by snb templar.
Thanks for the ups
I did mentioned charge gives you "limited crowd control"
I have experimented with manyy sprint runes, including RLTW. All sprint will also increase your charge speed (which was already fast before, tbh). Gangway actually offers additional hit as you charge through them, although the "proc" is rather random and the dmg is just negligible at best. RLTW actually leaves tornado as you charge, so it's a nice dmg addition. Problem is that you have to probably drop leap in order to get RLTW and leap offer you much higher survivability. Gettins second fury spender means you also can't get berserker rage passive. Dropping rend for RLTW just isn't worth it. If you're already geared enough and would like to speed up the run, marathon rune for sprint actuallyy fits the bill the best anyway since you won't be needing that extra dmg from RLTW.
You can reduce rend animation time by using faster weapon or ias, but that comes with the cost of lowering your dmg (or wasting stat slot or pay more for ias). You could always play it a little safer against tougher pack by rending from the side instead of the middle of the pack (like against elite colossal golgors).
0
I know what you mean. WW spec feels as if I'm trying to draw something on the screen to me. I'd prefer to feel like I'm bashing my way through demons. This is part of the reason why I try to come up with a 2h build that works.
1
If you're being 2 shotted then you just need more vit. Simple as that. Don't even bother going to AH, just farm what you can and keep an eye out for vit gears.
1
P.S. I LIED. I actually won't stay. I just want id all.
1
What you fail to understand is some skills DO, in fact, scale off dps even though it says weapon damage in the tooltip. Examples are hydras and some of the monk abilities. You can easily test by noticing that your dmg from that abilities goes up after picking up frenzied runes. Fortunately, (or unfortunately for 1h spec) testing shows that this isn't the case with barb abilities.
If you just want to compare 2 build where in one build you have +20% and on the other you don't, then it's sufficed to say that in the new build your bash will do 175%*1.2 = 210% weapon swing compare to old spec 175%. This is also roughly accurate if you want to roughly calculate how much your new bash will do based off character dps sheet and ias.
Of course, it's won't be perfect as dmg buff are not multiplicative from each other (berserker rage is additive with marauder rage, for example), but for the purpose of comparing 2 builds, this rough calculation does more than enough.
Seriously though, there is no need for the hostilities against everyone. People actually pay more attention if you say it nicely.
0
Playstyle revolving around slam is you slam without getting hit back. Move in to bash one enemy and retreat before you got surrounded. It's basically hit&run until there's nothing left standing.
Elites can give you a bit of trouble and it might just be best to burn them using some combination of wotb/EQ/IIB.
Or you could just also use rend and stand in the middle of the pack as they melt. But then again rend with bloodlust is so good there is very little reason to spend fury on anything else.
0
- Rend scales off only the base weapon damage, so given the same dps, the slower the weapon the harder it will tick/heal.
- Although faster weapon will result in (slightly) faster rend animation. This is largely irrelevant in terms of dps but can impact your kiting ability a bit.
- Rend do not "crit" per say, as in the number will never turn yellow, but rend will occasionally tick harder by a factor of your critdmg at the chance equals to your crit chance. Therefore, for all intent and purpose rend do "crit", but you just won't notice the bigass yellow number unless you pay attention to the numbers.
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I wrote a guide about the build here: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/66797-2h-barbarian-build-merciless-assault-build/
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Subbing out leap for sprint-marathon also works well :). Marathon gives you even faster run speed and with charge, it lets you kill mobs faster than ww build.
Fun facts: Sprint also speed up your charge speed to even faster!
0
LoH is pretty terrible for 2h, so don't even bother with it. Life leech however, can help tons. Furious charge and bash does so much dmg a tiny amount of life leech can help a lot. But yes, with rend you can definitely do without life leech.
I'd recommend swapping out nerves of steel for berserker rage. The extra 20% makes so much different.
You won't really have to worry about not capping your fury, it fills up much faster than you think. Besides, if you're not filling up as fast as you'd like, try switching revenge rune to vengeance is mine for fury+more heals.
0
Yes, rend can crit, and it's affected by critdmg as well. In my video normal rend ticks for about 32k but occasionally will tick for 130k. Only thing is the "crit" does not show in yellow text so it could be easily misleading.
0
This is my first time ever frapping though, so I apologize in advance about the quality/lack of editing. However, this should give you a nice idea how this spec is played. Maybe it might interest some of you to give it a try.