nice guide, i want to ask, about how much life and armor one should aim for? i did try this spec but have some problems with elites in ponyland. and i know in a3 thers alot of ranged mobs so i imagine it will be much harder. so any tips on stats and gear? cause other then the weapon info you didnt cover alot of it.
I did not cover stats and gear because it depends a lot on which act you are farming. However, I can provide you some rough stats.
For act1: Well.... anything should work for act1 nowadays.
Act2: around 30k hp minimum. 600+ ares (with warcry). around 30k dps unbuffed should work (after buff you will be shooting near 60k anyway)
Act3: 40k hp, 800 ares, and 35k dps.
These are probably the bare minimum at which you could survive. Of course, getting more will make it faster and with less death.
Balancing between offensive and defensive stat for 2h can be quite tricky. If you focus too much on damage then you might be too easily 2 shotted. However, turtling too much on defensive side and it will take too long to kill mobs and you end up actually dying more.
I'd say just keep testing to see what works for you. If your gear is a bit lacking then you might want to consider rend and kite some more until you are a bit more geared. You can just kill pack of elites with just rend/charge/leap if the affix becomes too deadly (phasebeast with fast+desecrate can be pretty tough...)
Range actually doesn't give you as much trouble as you think. You have so many mobility skills it's so easy to chase them down. However you might have to be a bit patient and wait after they stop running to apply rend.
For the mace, I felt like they were dieing in about 2.5 to 3 Mississippis.
I dunno.... Mississippis sounded pretty legit to me
I also did some test on my own and slower weapon ticks much heavier rend dot despite being slightly lower in dps. Also, activating frenzied shrine does not seem to boost either rend or charge dmg, so I stand corrected that only min-max dmg matters for both skills.
The single most important piece of gear is the 2h weapon. For 2h weapon you will only want to look at the min-max damage number and not the dps. This is because furious charge and rend takes the same animation time regardless of your attack speed. I would suggest going for 0.9 speed mace here for the damage and the weapon master bonus. However, if you find bash animation taking too long to avoid some damage, this also works with slightly faster weapon.
Good guide. I'm not sure about this part though. Can anyone verify this? I was under the impression that static-speed attacks based their damage on DPS and not on damage per hit. It should be relatively easy to test though by using a two-hander with no strength / crit and a one-hander (or two of them) with roughly the same dps and no strength/crit.
If anyone can verify this I would be interested to hear as well.
With the new 1.04 I've been toying around with variation of builds to see what works best. 2h barb was already a viable spec before the patch (I wrote another similar 2h spec pre 1.04 here: http://www.diablofan...house-2h-build/), but with the 1.04 it has made 2h even better and fun way to slaughter demons. After a week of testing I've finally streamlined the build down to this final build.
Why this works
Insane big crits. Why spin around mobs and wait for little tornados to pick them off when you can just plough right through them? Can kill elites consistently without relying on cooldown. Great mobility and survivability. Not dependent on procs. Easily adaptable to any gear you currently have (with sufficient dps and survivability of course).
Skills
Bash - Onslaught: "Kaboom"
This is your main attack. You mostly use this against single target and a filler ability when all else is already applied/on cooldown. Now, "filler" is a relative term because with this build, this ability hits REALLY hard. With my gear it easily crits for over 300k dmg. With a bonus of sending enemies flying off the screen (literally) when you kill them.
The Onslaught rune is the go-to rune if you want to focus on single target, which you most likely will be if you're following this guide. If the bash didn't kill the mob in one hit, the 2 reverberations will.
Rune variations: Pulverize feels pretty awesome, and little aoe element is nice if you can line them up. Punish also works great if you can manage to keep 3 stacks up the entire time, but from my testing it rather disrupt the rhythm too much to consistently keeping it up. Spamming punish alone gives comparable dps to onslaught only at full stack. Unless you can mange to keep 3 stacks of punish up for other abilities then onslaught will work better in most cases.
Furious Charge - Merciless Assault: "Hits like a truck, where YOU are the truck"
Furious Charge is the most damaging abilities before the buff to seismic slam and hammer of ancients. However, after the patch it still hits pretty hard, does not cost any rage to cast (generate some, rather). It also gives you great mobility, with a get out of jail free card as a bonus. Knocks enemy down in the path. This will be your main aoe ability. With one ability you get a heavy hitter, mobility, defensive ability, and limited crowd control. What more can you ask for?
The only drawback for furious charge is the cooldown, however with Merciless Assault rune this drawback is eliminated. If you hit 5 or more enemies and/or destructible objects then your cooldown is refreshed. Allows you to constantly spam this abilities nonstop, until everything falls dead. When encounter a large pack, all you really need to do is to carve your way through the enemies until they are all dead. With the damage buff you'll be getting though, it usually take no more than 2 charges until there's nothing more than a few stragglers left.
Rune variations: Not really recommended as the whole point is to use furious charge as your main aoe ability.
Rend - Bloodlust: "Just freaking OP"
This single ability is the main star of patch 1.04 for 2h barb. One cast of it does 700% weapon damage over 5 seconds IN AOE. With a slow 2h weapon this will hit for a TON of damage and every white mobs will die from a single application of this. If you're still not convinced how good rend is, here's a little mathematical formula:
Rend > Earthquake+Ignorance is a bliss
Rend does roughly half the dps of Earthquake, has no cooldown and does not require the enemies to stay in the aoe. If you have played 2h barb before 1.04, you must be familiar with how barb can cast earthquake and then ignore pain - Ignorance is a bliss to basically gain invulnerability as long as EQ is still ticking. Well, the bloodlust rune kinda folds that healing portion in a package deal. With sufficient dps and defensive stat on your gear, a single application of bloodlust will allow you to stand in the middle of elite pack, between fire chains, on top of molten and desecrate, and just not die as long as bloodlust is up. Bloodlust made rend both your most damaging abilities, and one of the greatest heal/defensive ability. Bloodlust rune is so OP that sometimes I wonder if some dev forgot to twist a knob down when they buff its damage...
Rune variations: I've only tried out one rune of rend so far and to be honest, I have no intention in trying out any other runes. From now on I'm just going to call rend-bloodlust just "rend" and assumes other runes don't exist.
Leap - Iron Impact "Mini Ignore Pain, with mobility, damage, and fury generation"
With how OP rend is, you don't really need EQ+IIB combo anymore. This free up an active skill slot. In all my testing I found that iron impact offer the smoothest run. It gives mobility. Gets you out of crazy situation. Offers a mini Ignore Pain with the 400% armor buff, but at a much shorter cooldown. I found that Iron Impact can save me against Fallen Maniac many times in the keeps. It also generate rages and does small aoe damage as a bonus.
Rune variations: The whole point of getting leap was for the defensive cooldown buff. For this purpose Iron impact fits the need the most. An alternative might be Death from Above rune.
Battle Rage - Marauder's Rage: "RAWRRR!"
Even after all the buff to other abilities, Marauder's Rage is still pretty good because it boosts ALL your damage. It made all your bash, furious charge, leap and rend hits harder. Battle Rage conveniently lasts the same duration as the cooldown of warcry. Hitting both buttons will net you +10 fury. Now all you need to do is to pretend the two buttons are the same, and hit it whenever they're off cooldown. Marauder's Rage is the trivial rune to go to for just flat damage boost.
Rune variations: Bloodshed is the only other viable replacement. It might be worth it if you have insane crit chance.
Edit: Calculation has shown that Bloodshed will net you more damage if you have at least 30% critical chance upon spreading the proc to 2 or more nearby enemies.
Warcry - Impunity: "The sixth active skill slot that barbs don't have"
I usually pretend this ability doesn't exist and treat it as the same button as Battle Rage.
Passive: Ruthless, Weapon Master, Berserker rage:
The first two passives are obvious choices. 2h barb performs better with huge damage buff. The more damage you do the faster the enemies will stop hitting you and the more you will heal with lifesteal/rend. With this build you will only be spending fury on rend, which only needs reapplying every 5 secs so this makes berserker rage a very good option (remember that if you combine battle fury with warcry then you don't ever need to worry about spending fury on it). Rend also benefits from Berserker rage once you refill up your fury to maximum, which should only take 2 furious charge or a couple swings from bash. Berserker Rage combined with Marauder's Rage give you a flat 55% dps increase with almost 100% uptime.
Playstyle
The playstyle can be broken down into 2 parts: with elites and without elites.
For trash: The reason I break down the playstyle into 2 parts is because, with the dps buff you're having a lot of the mobs will die within 1-2 hits. In most situations rend will be overkill and you're best just keeping your fury at max for berserker rage buff. For this situations all you need to do is CHARGE! CHARGE! CHARGE! until you cannot charge anymore. Then ideally there should only be a few stragglers left unless you really messed up your merciless assault. Just bash the stragglers to death or until charge is back off cooldown again. If charge is on cooldown and somehow you find yourself surrounded by enemies don't be afraid to cast a rend or two and just watch as your hp fills up to full in 1 second and they all drop dead.
The only case where you open with rend against trash mobs is against big guys like colossal golgor or phasebeast. Simply rend them once to make sure you get a constant supply of healing (even though they hit hard, rend will heal you back to full in no time), then just either charge or bash them to death. Of course, move out or just let rend do the tick if they are hitting too hard.
For elites: Against elites you don't really have to worry about berserker rage at all. Just apply rend as you need to. Remember that rend does two most important things against elites: It kills them and make them not kill you. As long as you keep rend up on all the elites you shouldn't have to worry about dying. Avoid getting frozen/jail. With both charge and leap this should be an easy task. For some deadlier combo you might not be able to do much besides running. However, as long as you keep applying rend as they fall off you can just kite and they will die within a few applications of rend.
As long as you're safe and in no immediate danger of arcane sentry/desecrate/plague/molten/firechains, simply charge or bash as it seems fit.
The only fury spender in this build (besides battle fury/warcry combo) is rend. Since you only cast it once every 5 seconds and any mobility abilities you have all generate some rage, you shouldn't really have to worry about berserker rage buff at all and your fury will stay at max most of the time. You should, however, try to position so that rend will hit the most enemies per cast. This not only allow you to max your fury faster but also waste less time applying rend stack here and there. It also heals you for more enemies you hit with rend.
Gear
Good thing about this build is that it works with any type of gear, unlike some build that requires a lot of loh or crit chance. The only thing is you will need enough dps for this to work (and of course, some minimal survivability). Remember that the goal is to kill the enemies before they kill you, not outlasting them.
The single most important piece of gear is the 2h weapon. For 2h weapon you will only want to look at the min-max damage number and not the dps. This is because furious charge and rend takes the same animation time regardless of your attack speed. I would suggest going for 0.9 speed mace here for the damage and the weapon master bonus. However, if you find bash animation taking too long to avoid some damage, this also works with slightly faster weapon.
Another stat that actually helps a lot with this build is lifesteal. With the 1.04 change 2h weapon can now have up to 6% lifesteal on them. If you can also grab an additional 3 from a mighty belt that makes it 9% lifesteal maximum. The lifesteal will allow you to never have to worry about dying during your crazy chain furious charge as the damage you will be dealing will be insane.
Conclusion
The addition of rend buff favors 2h build very well. Rend scale really well with more weapon damage from 2h, and the heal it provides will make a 2h build virtually indestructible, as long as rend is up. In this build we combine rend with mobility and crazy damage buff. The elimination of any other fury spender make you never again having to worry about not having enough fury to refresh that rend dot.
Build Variations
In my testing I've come up with many build variations, all has its own perks and benefit. Most build variations center around replacing leap with some other offensive or defensive abilities according to your need.
http://us.battle.net...cVRk!ZYX!ZZZaac Revenge variation - Revenge actually fits really well with rend. You need to be surrounded by enemies to rend them. Revenge hits really hard, and it hits even harder on 2h with huge dmg buff and passives. Vengeance is mine rune is chosen here to refill maximum fury as fast as possible right after application of rend.
http://us.battle.net...cTRk!ZYX!ZZZbac The Burst variation - If you'd rather just melt the elite before they melt you. EQ+rend = dead elites in almost all the case. Works best if you have high dps.
http://us.battle.net...cURk!ZYh!ZZZbac The Sprint variation - If you're already very geared and would like to just speed up your run. You will lose 20% dmg buff from berserker rage, but now you can spend all those rage sprinting from one pack to the other even faster! Marathon can speed up your run by a maximum of 50%, depending on how much time you spend killing/running. Forced march rune is also a great help if you play with friends. The speed bonus is also a great help for escaping from dire situations especially now you have one less mobility skill. If you don't need the extra rage from Unforgiving you can replace it with Bloodthirst.
http://us.battle.net...ciRk!ZYV!ZZZZac The Defensive variation - If you're dying a lot. Maybe you're lacking defensive stats and leap isn't your style or just does not cut it. I have not actually tested this out a lot as I've found lron Impact to be more than sufficient to keep me alive. Without berserker rage passive you are now free to spam more rend to your satisfaction. Can also replace Iron impact with Overpower - Crushing Advance.
People are forgetting that 2 handers scale better on some abilities. Examples are most fury spender (seismic slam, rend) or abilities with cooldown (furious charge, revenge, earthquake). These abilities are barely affected by weapon speed so it doesn't matter how fast you swing you're still going to do the same amount of damage. EQ in particular can make a huge different between 1/4 of champ pack hp bar to one shotting everything.
Another important aspect of 2 hander is the front load damage. Let's say dw and 2h have the same dps. DPS wise it will kill a mob in one second this means you hold down frenzy for one button and a mob will die, you might trade a hit or two with the mob.
Now switch to the 2hander with the same dps, the difference is now you smack the mob once and it's dead before it can even hit back. This way you don't even take a single hit from it. For mobs that takes more hit you can hit once and run back before you hit again.
Sure, there will be builds that favor dw more than 2h (like ww double tornado build), but all the patch is trying to do is to make alternate build more competitive in damage. I for one can't wait to see how much buff 2h is getting.
"In my nearly 100 hours playing Inferno (which have been almost exclusively in Acts I & II)" "Sure, I also gathered about 15 million gold during the same stretch - enough to upgrade perhaps three of the thirteen items that just one of my characters uses via the Auction House"
Spending 5 million on a single piece of gear is completely unnecessary, unless he was just that bad of a player, was very inexperienced with the ah, or is simply exaggerating.
I want to make a pet based demon hunter with no attacks but a wide range of curses at my disposal to aid my army of minions.
I want to create a ranged monk that uses traps and turrets.
I want a melee wizard that "casts" melee attacks using her health instead of her mana.
I want a barbarian battle mage that shoots fireballs and meteors at range before closing in for melee.
Why not roll a:
Witch Doctor, and call it your "demon hunter"
Demon Hunter, and call it "monk"
Barbarian, and call him "wizard"
Wizard, and call her a "barbarian".
The reasons you are able to identify these classes were because of the gimmicks and limitations they possess. Homogenization of classes are fine, but then you risk being boiled down to one "adventurer" class that can spec into anything. If you prefer that system then I suggest you find some other game since diablo series have stray off the path a while ago.
But seriously, if you want a melee class that casts melee attack and uses no mana, then why should it bother you that the class is called "barbarian" and not "wizard"?
For damage reduction from elites, you can get up to 7% on only shield and chest (excluding legendaries), so maximum possible is only 14%.
For melee and range damage reduction, you can get up to 6% from shield chest bracers, and 4% from amulet up to a total maximum of 22%. Excluding legendaries, of course.
This only apply to random rares of lvl 63. In reality you can potentially get more from some particular legendaries. The nice thing is that there is no "diminishing return" for these reduction, so getting 1% more as you already stack a lot of them becomes increasingly powerful. For example, going from 99% to 100% reduction will gives you infinite increase in reduction as you no longer take any damage.
Of course getting 90%+ is not possible with the gears we have, but the closest thing possible is probably melee reduction with the help of 20% string of ears. With rares+string of ears you can get up to 42% melee damage reduction which applies to both elites and boss attacks that are not ranged. Perhaps you can get more from some legendary rings, but I don't remember which other legendaries offer this stat.
Maybe start up a new character and give him some ridiculous gear? A switch in playstyle / class can see the game from another point of view, which can be fun.
I've been thinking about that, and the thing is there is very little to no incentive for me to level up other char. So far I've lvled up my wiz to 60 and able to do act2, but then I kill stuff much faster on my barb and since my wiz can't get any other upgrade besides gear/gold to buy gear, it's most efficient to "gear up" my wiz by playing on my barb...
I though leveling would be fun, but the fact that I have repeated act1-2-3-4 for millions of time already made that kind of moot. Then, once I lvl up another char to 60, what then? I just bank them again and continue gearing them up by playing on my barb and never use them for any reason?
Other then that, don't feel obliged to log on for some reason. Go do something else in the mean time. Eventually the urge to slay demons will come back, we've all experienced that with Diablo 2
Yeah, that's kind of what I do right now I only log to check my AH from time to time and if I feel like doing a quick run, I might. But it's been harder and harder to find incentive to log esp when stuff on AH rarely sell anymore.
First of all, let me say that this is not a QQ post.
I've played this game since released and log over 300 hours on my barb alone. I've killed all bosses and have dropped the boring sword and board build and been gearing towards 2h build and now I can farm act2 with my eyes closed and act3 with some difficulties, but I've been slowly trying to gear up to do better. I've also slowly stocked mf over time.
However, I've found that it's been harder and harder for me to find a reason to log into the game. Most of my usual "runs" either solo or with friends consisted of killing elites getting 5NV, farm some more, then go kill boss or multiple of them. I TP to town when full to de/vendor the gears I've got and at the end of the run I usually find myself netting maybe some 50k gold and some essence, but it's been hard finding a piece of gear even worth wasting my AH slot. Most runs average to 0 sellable gear and some lucky ones will net me maybe 1 piece that can sell for over a million.
Each of my upgrade now costs 10M upwards and at the average of 50k gold per run it would take forever to earn enough money to get a single upgrade. I don't even hope to get upgrade for my own anymore since it requires very specific rolls with high values.
I keep telling myself every time I do a run I keep hoping this time I would run into that awesome 30M+ item that I can sell or if I'm lucky is a huge upgrade for myself. But over time, it becomes harder and harder to keep believing (the most expensive item I've gotten is one 20M amulet).
But then even if I do get to upgrade, then what? I just repeat the farm with slightly faster run but each netting mostly vendor/de items and rarely something I can sell.
Now, I know how the argument goes: "D3 is a farm game" "If you don't enjoy farming, then don't play" "It was the same in D2", etc. So please, spare me the lecture. I know it's supposed to get increasingly harder to find upgrades. I used to joke that D3 is an AH game with a bit of ARPG minigame to pass the time. However, as gear becomes increasingly harder to sell and harder to find upgrade, the reward comes at a much longer even gearing from AH takes very long time to progress. The rewards in this game comes at a much greater interval and I find it really hard to keep me hooked into logging this game. Most of the time I just log and collect my unsold items and repost them before I log out.
Again this is not a QQ post, I'm just curious: Does anyone else having this problem? Why do you log into the game? What keeps you going?
One thing to also keep in mind is that, after a certain point more dps won't really speed up things by much.
I mean if you're taking forever to kill a white pack, then yes get more dps before you get mf. However, once you start 1-2 shotting all the mobs then bumping your dps up 20% won't really speed up your kill that much. Sure it makes you kill elite faster, but that also depends on how much of your time are actually spent killing elites.
Ideally, you'd want to experiment it out and try to get as much mf gear as possible while still allowing you to sufficiently breeze through an act. There is no diminishing return for mf (at least not within the range attainable by gear), so each point of mf will net you on average the same rare/hr.
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I did not cover stats and gear because it depends a lot on which act you are farming. However, I can provide you some rough stats.
For act1: Well.... anything should work for act1 nowadays.
Act2: around 30k hp minimum. 600+ ares (with warcry). around 30k dps unbuffed should work (after buff you will be shooting near 60k anyway)
Act3: 40k hp, 800 ares, and 35k dps.
These are probably the bare minimum at which you could survive. Of course, getting more will make it faster and with less death.
Balancing between offensive and defensive stat for 2h can be quite tricky. If you focus too much on damage then you might be too easily 2 shotted. However, turtling too much on defensive side and it will take too long to kill mobs and you end up actually dying more.
I'd say just keep testing to see what works for you. If your gear is a bit lacking then you might want to consider rend and kite some more until you are a bit more geared. You can just kill pack of elites with just rend/charge/leap if the affix becomes too deadly (phasebeast with fast+desecrate can be pretty tough...)
Range actually doesn't give you as much trouble as you think. You have so many mobility skills it's so easy to chase them down. However you might have to be a bit patient and wait after they stop running to apply rend.
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I dunno.... Mississippis sounded pretty legit to me
I also did some test on my own and slower weapon ticks much heavier rend dot despite being slightly lower in dps. Also, activating frenzied shrine does not seem to boost either rend or charge dmg, so I stand corrected that only min-max dmg matters for both skills.
0
If anyone can verify this I would be interested to hear as well.
1
Not every barb is ww barb, u know.
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Video (Disclaimer: This is my first time frapping, so I apologize for the quality/lack of editing)
The Build
http://us.battle.net...cXRk!ZYX!ZZZaac
Introduction
With the new 1.04 I've been toying around with variation of builds to see what works best. 2h barb was already a viable spec before the patch (I wrote another similar 2h spec pre 1.04 here: http://www.diablofan...house-2h-build/), but with the 1.04 it has made 2h even better and fun way to slaughter demons. After a week of testing I've finally streamlined the build down to this final build.
Why this works
Insane big crits. Why spin around mobs and wait for little tornados to pick them off when you can just plough right through them? Can kill elites consistently without relying on cooldown. Great mobility and survivability. Not dependent on procs. Easily adaptable to any gear you currently have (with sufficient dps and survivability of course).
Skills
Bash - Onslaught:
"Kaboom"
This is your main attack. You mostly use this against single target and a filler ability when all else is already applied/on cooldown. Now, "filler" is a relative term because with this build, this ability hits REALLY hard. With my gear it easily crits for over 300k dmg. With a bonus of sending enemies flying off the screen (literally) when you kill them.
The Onslaught rune is the go-to rune if you want to focus on single target, which you most likely will be if you're following this guide. If the bash didn't kill the mob in one hit, the 2 reverberations will.
Rune variations: Pulverize feels pretty awesome, and little aoe element is nice if you can line them up. Punish also works great if you can manage to keep 3 stacks up the entire time, but from my testing it rather disrupt the rhythm too much to consistently keeping it up. Spamming punish alone gives comparable dps to onslaught only at full stack. Unless you can mange to keep 3 stacks of punish up for other abilities then onslaught will work better in most cases.
Furious Charge - Merciless Assault:
"Hits like a truck, where YOU are the truck"
Furious Charge is the most damaging abilities before the buff to seismic slam and hammer of ancients. However, after the patch it still hits pretty hard, does not cost any rage to cast (generate some, rather). It also gives you great mobility, with a get out of jail free card as a bonus. Knocks enemy down in the path. This will be your main aoe ability. With one ability you get a heavy hitter, mobility, defensive ability, and limited crowd control. What more can you ask for?
The only drawback for furious charge is the cooldown, however with Merciless Assault rune this drawback is eliminated. If you hit 5 or more enemies and/or destructible objects then your cooldown is refreshed. Allows you to constantly spam this abilities nonstop, until everything falls dead. When encounter a large pack, all you really need to do is to carve your way through the enemies until they are all dead. With the damage buff you'll be getting though, it usually take no more than 2 charges until there's nothing more than a few stragglers left.
Rune variations: Not really recommended as the whole point is to use furious charge as your main aoe ability.
Rend - Bloodlust:
"Just freaking OP"
This single ability is the main star of patch 1.04 for 2h barb. One cast of it does 700% weapon damage over 5 seconds IN AOE. With a slow 2h weapon this will hit for a TON of damage and every white mobs will die from a single application of this. If you're still not convinced how good rend is, here's a little mathematical formula:
Rend > Earthquake+Ignorance is a bliss
Rend does roughly half the dps of Earthquake, has no cooldown and does not require the enemies to stay in the aoe. If you have played 2h barb before 1.04, you must be familiar with how barb can cast earthquake and then ignore pain - Ignorance is a bliss to basically gain invulnerability as long as EQ is still ticking. Well, the bloodlust rune kinda folds that healing portion in a package deal. With sufficient dps and defensive stat on your gear, a single application of bloodlust will allow you to stand in the middle of elite pack, between fire chains, on top of molten and desecrate, and just not die as long as bloodlust is up. Bloodlust made rend both your most damaging abilities, and one of the greatest heal/defensive ability. Bloodlust rune is so OP that sometimes I wonder if some dev forgot to twist a knob down when they buff its damage...
Rune variations: I've only tried out one rune of rend so far and to be honest, I have no intention in trying out any other runes. From now on I'm just going to call rend-bloodlust just "rend" and assumes other runes don't exist.
Leap - Iron Impact
"Mini Ignore Pain, with mobility, damage, and fury generation"
With how OP rend is, you don't really need EQ+IIB combo anymore. This free up an active skill slot. In all my testing I found that iron impact offer the smoothest run. It gives mobility. Gets you out of crazy situation. Offers a mini Ignore Pain with the 400% armor buff, but at a much shorter cooldown. I found that Iron Impact can save me against Fallen Maniac many times in the keeps. It also generate rages and does small aoe damage as a bonus.
Rune variations: The whole point of getting leap was for the defensive cooldown buff. For this purpose Iron impact fits the need the most. An alternative might be Death from Above rune.
Battle Rage - Marauder's Rage:
"RAWRRR!"
Even after all the buff to other abilities, Marauder's Rage is still pretty good because it boosts ALL your damage. It made all your bash, furious charge, leap and rend hits harder. Battle Rage conveniently lasts the same duration as the cooldown of warcry. Hitting both buttons will net you +10 fury. Now all you need to do is to pretend the two buttons are the same, and hit it whenever they're off cooldown. Marauder's Rage is the trivial rune to go to for just flat damage boost.
Rune variations: Bloodshed is the only other viable replacement. It might be worth it if you have insane crit chance.
Edit: Calculation has shown that Bloodshed will net you more damage if you have at least 30% critical chance upon spreading the proc to 2 or more nearby enemies.
Warcry - Impunity:
"The sixth active skill slot that barbs don't have"
I usually pretend this ability doesn't exist and treat it as the same button as Battle Rage.
Passive: Ruthless, Weapon Master, Berserker rage:
The first two passives are obvious choices. 2h barb performs better with huge damage buff. The more damage you do the faster the enemies will stop hitting you and the more you will heal with lifesteal/rend. With this build you will only be spending fury on rend, which only needs reapplying every 5 secs so this makes berserker rage a very good option (remember that if you combine battle fury with warcry then you don't ever need to worry about spending fury on it). Rend also benefits from Berserker rage once you refill up your fury to maximum, which should only take 2 furious charge or a couple swings from bash. Berserker Rage combined with Marauder's Rage give you a flat 55% dps increase with almost 100% uptime.
Playstyle
The playstyle can be broken down into 2 parts: with elites and without elites.
For trash: The reason I break down the playstyle into 2 parts is because, with the dps buff you're having a lot of the mobs will die within 1-2 hits. In most situations rend will be overkill and you're best just keeping your fury at max for berserker rage buff. For this situations all you need to do is CHARGE! CHARGE! CHARGE! until you cannot charge anymore. Then ideally there should only be a few stragglers left unless you really messed up your merciless assault. Just bash the stragglers to death or until charge is back off cooldown again. If charge is on cooldown and somehow you find yourself surrounded by enemies don't be afraid to cast a rend or two and just watch as your hp fills up to full in 1 second and they all drop dead.
The only case where you open with rend against trash mobs is against big guys like colossal golgor or phasebeast. Simply rend them once to make sure you get a constant supply of healing (even though they hit hard, rend will heal you back to full in no time), then just either charge or bash them to death. Of course, move out or just let rend do the tick if they are hitting too hard.
For elites: Against elites you don't really have to worry about berserker rage at all. Just apply rend as you need to. Remember that rend does two most important things against elites: It kills them and make them not kill you. As long as you keep rend up on all the elites you shouldn't have to worry about dying. Avoid getting frozen/jail. With both charge and leap this should be an easy task. For some deadlier combo you might not be able to do much besides running. However, as long as you keep applying rend as they fall off you can just kite and they will die within a few applications of rend.
As long as you're safe and in no immediate danger of arcane sentry/desecrate/plague/molten/firechains, simply charge or bash as it seems fit.
The only fury spender in this build (besides battle fury/warcry combo) is rend. Since you only cast it once every 5 seconds and any mobility abilities you have all generate some rage, you shouldn't really have to worry about berserker rage buff at all and your fury will stay at max most of the time. You should, however, try to position so that rend will hit the most enemies per cast. This not only allow you to max your fury faster but also waste less time applying rend stack here and there. It also heals you for more enemies you hit with rend.
Gear
Good thing about this build is that it works with any type of gear, unlike some build that requires a lot of loh or crit chance. The only thing is you will need enough dps for this to work (and of course, some minimal survivability). Remember that the goal is to kill the enemies before they kill you, not outlasting them.
The single most important piece of gear is the 2h weapon. For 2h weapon you will only want to look at the min-max damage number and not the dps. This is because furious charge and rend takes the same animation time regardless of your attack speed. I would suggest going for 0.9 speed mace here for the damage and the weapon master bonus. However, if you find bash animation taking too long to avoid some damage, this also works with slightly faster weapon.
Another stat that actually helps a lot with this build is lifesteal. With the 1.04 change 2h weapon can now have up to 6% lifesteal on them. If you can also grab an additional 3 from a mighty belt that makes it 9% lifesteal maximum. The lifesteal will allow you to never have to worry about dying during your crazy chain furious charge as the damage you will be dealing will be insane.
Conclusion
The addition of rend buff favors 2h build very well. Rend scale really well with more weapon damage from 2h, and the heal it provides will make a 2h build virtually indestructible, as long as rend is up. In this build we combine rend with mobility and crazy damage buff. The elimination of any other fury spender make you never again having to worry about not having enough fury to refresh that rend dot.
Build Variations
In my testing I've come up with many build variations, all has its own perks and benefit. Most build variations center around replacing leap with some other offensive or defensive abilities according to your need.
http://us.battle.net...cVRk!ZYX!ZZZaac Revenge variation - Revenge actually fits really well with rend. You need to be surrounded by enemies to rend them. Revenge hits really hard, and it hits even harder on 2h with huge dmg buff and passives. Vengeance is mine rune is chosen here to refill maximum fury as fast as possible right after application of rend.
http://us.battle.net...cTRk!ZYX!ZZZbac The Burst variation - If you'd rather just melt the elite before they melt you. EQ+rend = dead elites in almost all the case. Works best if you have high dps.
http://us.battle.net...cURk!ZYh!ZZZbac The Sprint variation - If you're already very geared and would like to just speed up your run. You will lose 20% dmg buff from berserker rage, but now you can spend all those rage sprinting from one pack to the other even faster! Marathon can speed up your run by a maximum of 50%, depending on how much time you spend killing/running. Forced march rune is also a great help if you play with friends. The speed bonus is also a great help for escaping from dire situations especially now you have one less mobility skill. If you don't need the extra rage from Unforgiving you can replace it with Bloodthirst.
http://us.battle.net...ciRk!ZYV!ZZZZac The Defensive variation - If you're dying a lot. Maybe you're lacking defensive stats and leap isn't your style or just does not cut it. I have not actually tested this out a lot as I've found lron Impact to be more than sufficient to keep me alive. Without berserker rage passive you are now free to spam more rend to your satisfaction. Can also replace Iron impact with Overpower - Crushing Advance.
My profile: http://us.battle.net...54/hero/7474396
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Another important aspect of 2 hander is the front load damage. Let's say dw and 2h have the same dps. DPS wise it will kill a mob in one second this means you hold down frenzy for one button and a mob will die, you might trade a hit or two with the mob.
Now switch to the 2hander with the same dps, the difference is now you smack the mob once and it's dead before it can even hit back. This way you don't even take a single hit from it. For mobs that takes more hit you can hit once and run back before you hit again.
Sure, there will be builds that favor dw more than 2h (like ww double tornado build), but all the patch is trying to do is to make alternate build more competitive in damage. I for one can't wait to see how much buff 2h is getting.
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You must be a wizard or demon hunter.
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Why not roll a:
Witch Doctor, and call it your "demon hunter"
Demon Hunter, and call it "monk"
Barbarian, and call him "wizard"
Wizard, and call her a "barbarian".
The reasons you are able to identify these classes were because of the gimmicks and limitations they possess. Homogenization of classes are fine, but then you risk being boiled down to one "adventurer" class that can spec into anything. If you prefer that system then I suggest you find some other game since diablo series have stray off the path a while ago.
But seriously, if you want a melee class that casts melee attack and uses no mana, then why should it bother you that the class is called "barbarian" and not "wizard"?
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Now I'm just logging D3 to sell stuff and use the $$$ I earned from RMAH to pay for WoW.
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For melee and range damage reduction, you can get up to 6% from shield chest bracers, and 4% from amulet up to a total maximum of 22%. Excluding legendaries, of course.
This only apply to random rares of lvl 63. In reality you can potentially get more from some particular legendaries. The nice thing is that there is no "diminishing return" for these reduction, so getting 1% more as you already stack a lot of them becomes increasingly powerful. For example, going from 99% to 100% reduction will gives you infinite increase in reduction as you no longer take any damage.
Of course getting 90%+ is not possible with the gears we have, but the closest thing possible is probably melee reduction with the help of 20% string of ears. With rares+string of ears you can get up to 42% melee damage reduction which applies to both elites and boss attacks that are not ranged. Perhaps you can get more from some legendary rings, but I don't remember which other legendaries offer this stat.
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I've been thinking about that, and the thing is there is very little to no incentive for me to level up other char. So far I've lvled up my wiz to 60 and able to do act2, but then I kill stuff much faster on my barb and since my wiz can't get any other upgrade besides gear/gold to buy gear, it's most efficient to "gear up" my wiz by playing on my barb...
I though leveling would be fun, but the fact that I have repeated act1-2-3-4 for millions of time already made that kind of moot. Then, once I lvl up another char to 60, what then? I just bank them again and continue gearing them up by playing on my barb and never use them for any reason?
Yeah, that's kind of what I do right now
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I've played this game since released and log over 300 hours on my barb alone. I've killed all bosses and have dropped the boring sword and board build and been gearing towards 2h build and now I can farm act2 with my eyes closed and act3 with some difficulties, but I've been slowly trying to gear up to do better. I've also slowly stocked mf over time.
However, I've found that it's been harder and harder for me to find a reason to log into the game. Most of my usual "runs" either solo or with friends consisted of killing elites getting 5NV, farm some more, then go kill boss or multiple of them. I TP to town when full to de/vendor the gears I've got and at the end of the run I usually find myself netting maybe some 50k gold and some essence, but it's been hard finding a piece of gear even worth wasting my AH slot. Most runs average to 0 sellable gear and some lucky ones will net me maybe 1 piece that can sell for over a million.
Each of my upgrade now costs 10M upwards and at the average of 50k gold per run it would take forever to earn enough money to get a single upgrade. I don't even hope to get upgrade for my own anymore since it requires very specific rolls with high values.
I keep telling myself every time I do a run I keep hoping this time I would run into that awesome 30M+ item that I can sell or if I'm lucky is a huge upgrade for myself. But over time, it becomes harder and harder to keep believing (the most expensive item I've gotten is one 20M amulet).
But then even if I do get to upgrade, then what? I just repeat the farm with slightly faster run but each netting mostly vendor/de items and rarely something I can sell.
Now, I know how the argument goes: "D3 is a farm game" "If you don't enjoy farming, then don't play" "It was the same in D2", etc. So please, spare me the lecture. I know it's supposed to get increasingly harder to find upgrades. I used to joke that D3 is an AH game with a bit of ARPG minigame to pass the time. However, as gear becomes increasingly harder to sell and harder to find upgrade, the reward comes at a much longer even gearing from AH takes very long time to progress. The rewards in this game comes at a much greater interval and I find it really hard to keep me hooked into logging this game. Most of the time I just log and collect my unsold items and repost them before I log out.
Again this is not a QQ post, I'm just curious: Does anyone else having this problem? Why do you log into the game? What keeps you going?
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I mean if you're taking forever to kill a white pack, then yes get more dps before you get mf. However, once you start 1-2 shotting all the mobs then bumping your dps up 20% won't really speed up your kill that much. Sure it makes you kill elite faster, but that also depends on how much of your time are actually spent killing elites.
Ideally, you'd want to experiment it out and try to get as much mf gear as possible while still allowing you to sufficiently breeze through an act. There is no diminishing return for mf (at least not within the range attainable by gear), so each point of mf will net you on average the same rare/hr.
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Lycia The Repentant
Ex-prostitute on her knees for the Lord
Now that she's Saved©, Priceless
True Christian™
and look at those badges.... "Ex-Slut" "Born again Virgin"