I've tested similar build before, problem is furious charge and seismic slam is kind of redundant. They both serve the same aoe purpose and you're probably going to do just as well using one or the other.
With enough fodder mobs to hit you could chain furious charge forever, eliminating the necessity of having to use seismic slam. When charge is on cooldown it usually mean there's only 1-2 mobs left to be finished off with bash anyway. Plus if you mess up on charge cooldown, you could at most wait for less than 10 seconds before it's ready to go again.
Slam build also works, but then again you're probably better off replacing furious charge with something else. Usually you just go for wotb/eq/iib to burn through elite pack quickly.
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.
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.
This information is most likely outdated. A rare is a rare. The number of affixes should be rolled separately after the yellow quality has been determined.
Just think about it. What happens to the guarantee rare after 5NV? Does it also take into account of your mf? If it does then you can easily test by wearing mf gear and no mf gear and compare the guarantee rares to see if you get any more affixes.
This is somewhat expected and how I've always imagined the game works. Still, this is a lot of work. Thank you for taking data
This is how I've always imagine the drop works:
First, it roll if you get a drop.
Then, it roll ilvl and item type for the drop. (ilvl distribution is posted by blues)
Then, it roll for the quality of that drops, whether it's white, blue, yellow, or legendary. Each monster type (trash, goblin, champion, boss) has their own base chance for a particular type of each drop quality. Each chance is modified by mf value (For example, if a goblin has 0.5% chance to drop a rare and 0.05% chance to drop a legendary, 100% mf will give you 1% chance for rare and 0.1% chance for legendary instead)
The affixes and its values are rolled afterwards.
Some of the orders could've been different.
While your finding doesn't quite confirm this, it doesn't disprove it either and for now I see no reason to believe otherwise.
edit: Thanks to suggestion from Leh I'm going to call this build the "Vanguard 2h barb build", due to similarity in playstyle with vanguard class from ME universe.
Introduction
After gearing up normal sword and board tank barb until I can tank all the way to diablo, I've decided to start gearing up 2h dps spec for faster farming. I've experiment around with a lot of build and eventually came up with my own build: http://us.battle.net...RTik!ZYc!cZbbac
With this build you are no longer a tank and spank barbarian. You do not stare into enemies until they die of boredom. With this build you are the unstoppable juggernaut. Blood splatter and explode as you spearhead through ranks of enemies. Wherever you charge into, you leave a trail of destruction littered with dead demon corpses.
The main key around this build is the passive berserker rage (gives +25% damage when full fury) and Battle Rage (gives 30% damage buff and 3% additional crit chance). Both of these combined gives you 55% damage boost with 100% uptime. One thing this build is really good for is inflating your paper dps to make you feel better about yourself. My paper dps went up from 39k to a whopping 61k.
Now, let's get into the specifics.
Skills
Bash - Pulverize:
I choose bash over frenzy because, let's face it, if you use 2h you won't be standing still and let the stack builds up. If you are doing 2h build correctly, mobs will be falling left and right and you will not be able to let it build up anyway. You will be doing hit and run for single target most of the time so bash is the clear choice here.
For the rune, I choose Pulverize mostly by personal preference. Onslaught gives the best single target dps so that's also an option. However if you haven't tried Pulverize, I strongly recommend it mostly because it feels AWESOME. Seriously, it has one of the most satisfying animation/sound effect ability in the game, imo. Pulverize also offers you option to finish off multiple weakened mobs and also combo well with Bloodshed and Slaughter rune if you have high crit. Punish rune might also work if you can find the window to stack up.
Furious Charge - Merciless Assault:
This will be your main nuking ability. It has one of the hardest hitting ability in barb's arsenal. It does a whopping 195% weapon damage in a straight line (compare to only 155% from slam), dash into/out action, gets you out of jailer, and even do a mini knockback to enemies in the path. Merciless assault rune allows you to spam this abilities when you hit 5 mobs or more. If there's only a few mobs you will want to bash them into smithereens anyway.
Battle Rage - Marauder's Rage:
I know what you're thinking: Why have a rage spender when you're using berserker rage passive, right? The thing is that Battle Rage lasts for 30 seconds, consume 20 fury. But I've found that Warcry (which is a must have skills for all barb anyway) is also on 30 seconds cooldown and generates 30 fury. This means whenever warcry is off cooldown, you can hit battle rage, then warcry again to regain fury back to full, giving 100% uptime for berserker rage passive buff.
For the rune, Marauder's Rage is the simplest choice if you just want to have mad dps powerhouse. Another possible option is the Bloodshed rune if you have high amount of crit. This also combo really well with Furious Charge since Furious charge does so much damage, the chain explosion will basically wipe out anything near the path of your furious charge.
Warcry - Impunity:
Self explanatory. The 30 seconds cooldown works great to refill your fury whenever Battle Rage needs to be refreshed.
Ignore Pain - Ignorance is a Bliss:
Emergency button that gives you heal and reduce damage done. Basically whenever you find yourself low on health, pop this bad boy and use furious charge at as many mobs as possible and you should heal back to full.
For the last ability, we need a "burn" skill that will take down elite quickly (ideally before ignore pain runs out), I present to you two options:
#1st option => Earthquake - The Mountain's Call:
Earthquake offers a highest burst damage in barb abilities. In fact, I dare to say that it is the hardest hitting burst damage among all the classes. It also stacks with the current damage buff you already have. With the 2 passives giving you 55% damage, most elite packs will die before the Earthquake duration is up, freeing you the burden to figure out their abilities and silly notion like avoiding damage. The rune also works perfectly since the free cost will not ruin your berserker rage passive and the reduced duration is also nice when you found the next elite pack so quickly because stuff die so fast. The downside with this ability is against range mobs and shielded mob (but if you time it correctly shielded mob still dies before their shield could come up again).
#2nd option => Wrath of the Berserker - Insanity:
Used to be my #1 burst ability only until I've discovered that EQ actually gives better burst. The main appeal for this, however, is the crowd control immunity. If you want to just kill stuff fast, then EQ is slightly better, but if you want more controlled fight, wotb is also great. Test both out for yourself and choose one that suits your style better. If you have very high crit, slaughter rune is also something nice if you're hitting many mobs with furious charge or pulverize rune.
Passive: Ruthless, Weapon Master, Berserker rage:
All these buffs should be self explanatory since the goal is to ditch out as much damage as possible. Remember that dead enemies do not deal damage.
Playstyle
The playstyle is relatively straight forward. You open with CHARGE! CHARGE! CHARGE! until you cannot charge anymore. Aim your furious charge so it pass through as many mobs as possible. Try to make it so that you don't land somewhere nasty as the animation lock after charge can kill you sometimes (Desecrate arcane etc.). Once you charge back and forth most of the mobs will be dead on the floor. Good thing with furious charge is that most mobs will be temporarily stunned when hit so you won't be taking much damage from them. Finish up the remainders with some well aimed pulverize.
For elites, first make sure you have battle rage up and your fury is full. Then, walk into as many elites as possible, pop EQ and ignore pain and watch as they fall besides you. If after EQ mobs are still alive you might want to save furious charge for those frozen/jailer/nasty ground aoe. use IiB to heal up whenever you need to. Shielded mob might give you a hard time but with a well timed EQ they can still be burned down no problem.
Since there really isn't any fury spender, you don't have to manage your fury at all. Just make sure you use warcry right after refreshing battle rage and your berserker rage buff should be 100% up while fighting.
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 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. I know you're thinking "but lifesteal is only 20% effective on inferno". The thing is even with 3%*.2 = 0.6% lifesteal, with the amount of damage you're dealing you will heal you about 1-3k for each furious charge (lifesteal works really well with aoe). Lifesteal stat is mostly ignored at the moment so it shouldn't be too expensive to fetch those gears on the AH. You can only get lifesteal on weapon or mighty belt. Try to get the one with close to maximum 3.0% as possible. Life on hit will not be as effective given how slow the swing timer is, but lifesteal will heal you more than life on hit could possibly give you with this build.
Conclusion
While this might not be the best spec in terms of survivability, it has very high maneuverability and gives you very high damage number. If you're bored with going sword and board and watch as mob dies from boredom, pick up your 2h and dash forward to enemy lines and start mowing them like a true barbarian would!
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I've created a 2h build revolving around charge over this thread: http://www.diablofan...-assault-build/
With enough fodder mobs to hit you could chain furious charge forever, eliminating the necessity of having to use seismic slam. When charge is on cooldown it usually mean there's only 1-2 mobs left to be finished off with bash anyway. Plus if you mess up on charge cooldown, you could at most wait for less than 10 seconds before it's ready to go again.
Slam build also works, but then again you're probably better off replacing furious charge with something else. Usually you just go for wotb/eq/iib to burn through elite pack quickly.
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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.
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P.S. I LIED. I actually won't stay. I just want id all.
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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.
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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
1
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.
1
Just think about it. What happens to the guarantee rare after 5NV? Does it also take into account of your mf? If it does then you can easily test by wearing mf gear and no mf gear and compare the guarantee rares to see if you get any more affixes.
5
This is how I've always imagine the drop works:
First, it roll if you get a drop.
Then, it roll ilvl and item type for the drop. (ilvl distribution is posted by blues)
Then, it roll for the quality of that drops, whether it's white, blue, yellow, or legendary. Each monster type (trash, goblin, champion, boss) has their own base chance for a particular type of each drop quality. Each chance is modified by mf value (For example, if a goblin has 0.5% chance to drop a rare and 0.05% chance to drop a legendary, 100% mf will give you 1% chance for rare and 0.1% chance for legendary instead)
The affixes and its values are rolled afterwards.
Some of the orders could've been different.
While your finding doesn't quite confirm this, it doesn't disprove it either and for now I see no reason to believe otherwise.
3
edit: Thanks to suggestion from Leh I'm going to call this build the "Vanguard 2h barb build", due to similarity in playstyle with vanguard class from ME universe.
Introduction
After gearing up normal sword and board tank barb until I can tank all the way to diablo, I've decided to start gearing up 2h dps spec for faster farming. I've experiment around with a lot of build and eventually came up with my own build: http://us.battle.net...RTik!ZYc!cZbbac
With this build you are no longer a tank and spank barbarian. You do not stare into enemies until they die of boredom. With this build you are the unstoppable juggernaut. Blood splatter and explode as you spearhead through ranks of enemies. Wherever you charge into, you leave a trail of destruction littered with dead demon corpses.
The main key around this build is the passive berserker rage (gives +25% damage when full fury) and Battle Rage (gives 30% damage buff and 3% additional crit chance). Both of these combined gives you 55% damage boost with 100% uptime. One thing this build is really good for is inflating your paper dps to make you feel better about yourself. My paper dps went up from 39k to a whopping 61k.
Now, let's get into the specifics.
Skills
Bash - Pulverize:
I choose bash over frenzy because, let's face it, if you use 2h you won't be standing still and let the stack builds up. If you are doing 2h build correctly, mobs will be falling left and right and you will not be able to let it build up anyway. You will be doing hit and run for single target most of the time so bash is the clear choice here.
For the rune, I choose Pulverize mostly by personal preference. Onslaught gives the best single target dps so that's also an option. However if you haven't tried Pulverize, I strongly recommend it mostly because it feels AWESOME. Seriously, it has one of the most satisfying animation/sound effect ability in the game, imo. Pulverize also offers you option to finish off multiple weakened mobs and also combo well with Bloodshed and Slaughter rune if you have high crit. Punish rune might also work if you can find the window to stack up.
Furious Charge - Merciless Assault:
This will be your main nuking ability. It has one of the hardest hitting ability in barb's arsenal. It does a whopping 195% weapon damage in a straight line (compare to only 155% from slam), dash into/out action, gets you out of jailer, and even do a mini knockback to enemies in the path. Merciless assault rune allows you to spam this abilities when you hit 5 mobs or more. If there's only a few mobs you will want to bash them into smithereens anyway.
Battle Rage - Marauder's Rage:
I know what you're thinking: Why have a rage spender when you're using berserker rage passive, right? The thing is that Battle Rage lasts for 30 seconds, consume 20 fury. But I've found that Warcry (which is a must have skills for all barb anyway) is also on 30 seconds cooldown and generates 30 fury. This means whenever warcry is off cooldown, you can hit battle rage, then warcry again to regain fury back to full, giving 100% uptime for berserker rage passive buff.
For the rune, Marauder's Rage is the simplest choice if you just want to have mad dps powerhouse. Another possible option is the Bloodshed rune if you have high amount of crit. This also combo really well with Furious Charge since Furious charge does so much damage, the chain explosion will basically wipe out anything near the path of your furious charge.
Warcry - Impunity:
Self explanatory. The 30 seconds cooldown works great to refill your fury whenever Battle Rage needs to be refreshed.
Ignore Pain - Ignorance is a Bliss:
Emergency button that gives you heal and reduce damage done. Basically whenever you find yourself low on health, pop this bad boy and use furious charge at as many mobs as possible and you should heal back to full.
For the last ability, we need a "burn" skill that will take down elite quickly (ideally before ignore pain runs out), I present to you two options:
#1st option => Earthquake - The Mountain's Call:
Earthquake offers a highest burst damage in barb abilities. In fact, I dare to say that it is the hardest hitting burst damage among all the classes. It also stacks with the current damage buff you already have. With the 2 passives giving you 55% damage, most elite packs will die before the Earthquake duration is up, freeing you the burden to figure out their abilities and silly notion like avoiding damage. The rune also works perfectly since the free cost will not ruin your berserker rage passive and the reduced duration is also nice when you found the next elite pack so quickly because stuff die so fast. The downside with this ability is against range mobs and shielded mob (but if you time it correctly shielded mob still dies before their shield could come up again).
#2nd option => Wrath of the Berserker - Insanity:
Used to be my #1 burst ability only until I've discovered that EQ actually gives better burst. The main appeal for this, however, is the crowd control immunity. If you want to just kill stuff fast, then EQ is slightly better, but if you want more controlled fight, wotb is also great. Test both out for yourself and choose one that suits your style better. If you have very high crit, slaughter rune is also something nice if you're hitting many mobs with furious charge or pulverize rune.
Passive: Ruthless, Weapon Master, Berserker rage:
All these buffs should be self explanatory since the goal is to ditch out as much damage as possible. Remember that dead enemies do not deal damage.
Playstyle
The playstyle is relatively straight forward. You open with CHARGE! CHARGE! CHARGE! until you cannot charge anymore. Aim your furious charge so it pass through as many mobs as possible. Try to make it so that you don't land somewhere nasty as the animation lock after charge can kill you sometimes (Desecrate arcane etc.). Once you charge back and forth most of the mobs will be dead on the floor. Good thing with furious charge is that most mobs will be temporarily stunned when hit so you won't be taking much damage from them. Finish up the remainders with some well aimed pulverize.
For elites, first make sure you have battle rage up and your fury is full. Then, walk into as many elites as possible, pop EQ and ignore pain and watch as they fall besides you. If after EQ mobs are still alive you might want to save furious charge for those frozen/jailer/nasty ground aoe. use IiB to heal up whenever you need to. Shielded mob might give you a hard time but with a well timed EQ they can still be burned down no problem.
Since there really isn't any fury spender, you don't have to manage your fury at all. Just make sure you use warcry right after refreshing battle rage and your berserker rage buff should be 100% up while fighting.
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 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. I know you're thinking "but lifesteal is only 20% effective on inferno". The thing is even with 3%*.2 = 0.6% lifesteal, with the amount of damage you're dealing you will heal you about 1-3k for each furious charge (lifesteal works really well with aoe). Lifesteal stat is mostly ignored at the moment so it shouldn't be too expensive to fetch those gears on the AH. You can only get lifesteal on weapon or mighty belt. Try to get the one with close to maximum 3.0% as possible. Life on hit will not be as effective given how slow the swing timer is, but lifesteal will heal you more than life on hit could possibly give you with this build.
Conclusion
While this might not be the best spec in terms of survivability, it has very high maneuverability and gives you very high damage number. If you're bored with going sword and board and watch as mob dies from boredom, pick up your 2h and dash forward to enemy lines and start mowing them like a true barbarian would!