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#1
Dec 29 2012 05:24pm
Going to go more into detail on some frequently asked barb questions, focusing more on weapon choices

First off ill start by stating my opinion that for ww barbs, Mace mainhand with Echoing Fury OH is the best combo

The fear from Echoing Fury can be negated pretty easily ill go into more detail further down




What do I upgrade?

So tired of hearing this question, you should be able to figure it out its a matter of do you have the gold for the good upgrades, if not, just save up

First, set a goal for an APS breakpoint and make sure you hit it and also make sure you have enough survivability for what you are aiming to do

if you find yourself dying then focus on armor/res or sustain first whatever you are lacking in, having a high APS breakpoint will help a lot in surviving also

A high raw damage mainhand to make those nice high nado crits

Make sure you have around 50% CC unbuffed

After that, STR/AVGDMG/CHD will up your dps by a lot

STR/CC/CHD/IAS/AVG DMG up your dps, upgrade any of those stats and your DPS will go up





How much loh, lifesteal, armor, res do I need?

This is a hard question to answer, as it depends on a lot of different things.. most importantly what you are trying to do (farm low mp, high mp, ubers)

For farming low mp on a budget, you will be using warcry so you dont need THAT much armor/res from gear.. (check out link at the bottom of the post for a budget barb I made)

Armor around 6000-6500 and resists around 650 should be just fine for higher mps provided you have enough lifesteal/loh

for high dps barbs, around 6% lifesteal is just fine to stay alive, lower the dps maybe bump up to 9+% lifesteal or use some loh

yes loh got a hard nerf with tornadoes but it did not with frenzy/bash, and those can heal you up fast with some decent loh


How important is attack speed?

So very very important, with high crit chance and high attackspeed you should see blurs of yellow numbers so fast you cant tell how much they are hitting for

going from the high end breakpoint of 2.5 APS in WOTB to the 2.84 APS one adds 4 more ticks to EACH nado/ww per 3 seconds, if 2 nados are hitting one target and doing an average of 20k per hit (lowballing) thats around 55k more effective dps


Black Damage?

It means physical damage, not elemental on a weapon, currently +% element damage modifiers only affect "black" or physical damage, this is what makes it ideal. (Have heard this may be fixed in the future?)


Offhand DPS, how it works with different skills :

For a WW barb, offhand dps isnt as important, but that doesnt mean you want to get a rediculously low dps one either

I say keep it within 200-250dps of your mainhand. less the better.

Different skills will alternate from mainhand to offhand dps, like frenzy, bash, hammer of the ancients, whirlwind.

This is why you want to keep the two weapons relatively close and on pure HOTA builds you want very very similar DPS weapons.




Why is Mace + Echo best combo?

Tornados go on the raw damage of your mainhand weapon ONLY, maces provide 10% crit from weapons master and have high raw damage.

Since we know WW and Nado ticks are based on APS breakpoints (See link in sig for list of the breakpoints)

We want faster base weapons, this is why we use an Echoing Fury as our offhand, since the +.2x applies to both weapons, giving us a 1.4x base both weapons!

Another bonus of having Echoing Fury as offhand is that nado ticks will not cause the fear to proc.

The absolute ideal weapons would be:

Mainhand: 1200+dps mace, lifesteal or not (with lifesteal means you dont need bloodthirst passive) , high str, crit, socket

Offhand: Echoing Fury 1200+dps, high crit, socket, +.25 aps, low fear chance, 160+str (I can dream.. right?)






Next best combos for budgets:

many options here

1k+dps mace, with str, sacrificing base crit even for higher raw damage, socket is a must

echoing fury lower dps is fine (900-1k) make sure its +24-.25 though, socket is a must, base crit also if u can afford

If using Echo as MH then

1100+dps (higher the better ofc) echo with socket (+.24-.25) then Sword or dagger, or an ias axe, sword is better, just needs to be 1.4+base aps (so that you hit a higher bp on OH side)

If no echoing fury then you want an axe or mace as MH (Only using axe if it bumps you up a breakpoint)

then sword or dagger as OH or ias axe also works (1.4+APS) (If you find out 1.5+aps will bump you up a breakpoint.. USE ONE!)

If using a rare sword/axe/dagger offhand, you want dual crit and strength for sure, you cant skimp out on dps too much either, since bash/frenzy/WW still uses the offhands dps

Lifesteal/LOH should never be on a mainhand in my opinion, unless you are buying 1bil+ weapons in which case you dont need to be reading this..

With lower DPS (around 80-100k buffed) I suggest a 800+ LOH offhand sword or dagger.. with a bit higher dps barbs being able to switch to lifesteal or just rely on belt with bloodthirst passive for lifesteal





How to negate fear from Echo Fury:

Once you are used to it you can use it to your advantage most of the time when it does proc (If using as OH it wont proc nearly as much)

Having a Stone of Jordan with cold damage is extremely important in my opinion.. I wouldnt roll without one

Recently gave my scoundrel a Buriza xbow with Star of Azk amulet for freeze chance with multi shot.. and its amazing.. like having a mini CM wiz with me always.



The not so secret to success on a WW barb:

High APS and crit chance, you want 60-65% CC in WOTB, with ideally at LEAST 2.0/2.2APS breakpoints.. (I have 2.5/2.5 with my gear)

This will allow you to keep up permanent WOTB and kill very very fast

If you use frenzy, keeping up the 20% dmg buff from maniac rune also helps a LOT!

Check out the budget barb I made with under 4 mil gold and how effective it was!

http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=65865553&f=142


This post was edited by Tboner on Dec 29 2012 05:28pm
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#2
Dec 29 2012 05:55pm
Great thread!

Let me ask you something, can Bash/Onslaught compare to or even outperform Frenzy/Maniac if I have an SoJ and a Mighty Belt with bonuses to Bash % damage? Or should I be using Frenzy regardless?
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#3
Dec 29 2012 06:04pm
Quote (sakrai @ Dec 29 2012 04:55pm)
Great thread!

Let me ask you something, can Bash/Onslaught compare to or even outperform Frenzy/Maniac if I have an SoJ and a Mighty Belt with bonuses to Bash % damage? Or should I be using Frenzy regardless?


I used to use bash onslaught before I switched over, I would use bash punish over it for the 24% dmg buff, pretty hard to pass up, only thing that sucks is there is no timer yet for it, so I use maniac
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#4
Dec 29 2012 06:18pm
Oh yeah! I completely forgot about Punish, I'll give that a try, the knockback will be a little annoying. Thanks!

This post was edited by sakrai on Dec 29 2012 06:21pm
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#5
Dec 29 2012 06:25pm
Nice thread, but i'm actually stuck in my upgrade job. I have 400 mill gold but I dunno what to buy ~~
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#6
Dec 29 2012 07:47pm
Quote (sakrai @ Dec 29 2012 05:18pm)
Oh yeah! I completely forgot about Punish, I'll give that a try, the knockback will be a little annoying. Thanks!


yea I cant stand the knockback, so I use frenzy :)

Quote (Bremen @ Dec 29 2012 05:25pm)
Nice thread, but i'm actually stuck in my upgrade job. I have 400 mill gold but I dunno what to buy ~~


depends on what you want to do with the barb how you should upgrade, and if you make some mistakes initially gearing up it kind of limits single item upgrades and sometimes you need to change 2-3 items at once to get where you want to be

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#7
Dec 29 2012 09:18pm
Cant edit in now but ill add this in

common breakpoints and IAS needed to hit the breakpoints (in WOTB, dual wielding, add 25ias for not in wotb)

Using formula breakpoint you want to hit divided by base weapon speed minus 1.4

eg for myself, 2.5/1.45 - 1.4 = .324 (33 ias needed)







BASE weapon speed = 1.2 (Mace) = 27 ias needed for 2.0 APS, 44ias needed for 2.2 APS, 69ias needed for 2.5 APS

BASE weapon speed = 1.3 (Axe) = 14 ias needed for 2.0 APS, 30ias needed for 2.2 APS, 53 ias needed for 2.5 APS

BASE weapon speed = 1.4 (Sword) = 3 ias needed for 2.0 APS, 18ias needed for 2.2 APS, 39ias needed for 2.5 APS

BASE weapon speed = 1.45 (Mace with +.25 Echo, or echo itself) = 12ias needed for 2.2 APS, 33 ias needed for 2.5 APS, 58ias needed for 2.86 APS

BASE weapon speed = 1.5 (Dagger) = 7ias needed for 2.2 APS, 27ias needed for 2.5 APS, 51ias needed for 2.86 APS

BASE weapon speed = 1.65 (Sword with .25 Echo) = 12ias needed for 2.5 APS, 34ias needed for 2.86 APS, 63ias needed for 3.34 APS

BASE weapon speed = 1.75 (Dagger with .25 Echo) = 3 ias needed for 2.5 APS, 24ias needed for 2.86 APS, 51ias needed for 3.34 APS





This shows why if using Echoing fury as a mainhand using a sword as your OH is ideal (Since ias needed is 33/34 for 2.5APS breakpoint, very close)

or for some HOTA build that uses sword as mainhand for the 15% dmg increase if you dont need the crit chance, with echo OH

This post was edited by Tboner on Dec 29 2012 09:22pm
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#8
Dec 29 2012 10:12pm
if you cant get a buriza you can use azurewrath on the enchantress, and gain some ias aswell, to help reach bps
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#9
Dec 29 2012 10:36pm
I don't think a .24-.25 EF is absolutely mandatory. Each .01 equates to about 1% ias in breakpoint calculations. Obvious pros to having a .25 EF is gearing flexibility when upgrading, but it comes at an extremely large price premium, which may not be worth it if you're budgeting, since ias comes by default high on many of the legendaries and sets we tend to use.

For comparison's sake, trying to hit the 2.50 aps breakpoint:

Mace MH w/ .23 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.43) - 1.4 = .348 = 35% ias
Mace MH w/ .24 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.44) - 1.4 = .336 = 34% ias
Mace MH w/ .25 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.45) - 1.4 = .324 = 33% ias

Mace MH w/ .22 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.42) - 1.4 = .3606 = ??? might be 37% needed which would make it a 2% ias jump over the .23. So this might be the cutoff.

Even with a .23 Echoing Fury, you'd only need 35% to hit the breakpoint, which is 4 pieces of 9% ias gear. Getting a .25 EF will allow people to get the imperfect 8% ias roll on some legendaries, but IMO, the 8% ias to 9% ias jump in price is usually far less than the .23 to .25 jump on EF.

This post was edited by fentr on Dec 29 2012 10:39pm
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#10
Dec 29 2012 10:57pm
Quote (fentr @ Dec 29 2012 09:36pm)
I don't think a .24-.25 EF is absolutely mandatory.  Each .01 equates to about 1% ias in breakpoint calculations.  Obvious pros to having a .25 EF is gearing flexibility when upgrading, but it comes at an extremely large price premium, which may not be worth it if you're budgeting, since ias comes by default high on many of the legendaries and sets we tend to use.

For comparison's sake, trying to hit the 2.50 aps breakpoint:

Mace MH w/ .23 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.43) - 1.4 = .348 = 35% ias
Mace MH w/ .24 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.44) - 1.4 = .336 = 34% ias
Mace MH w/ .25 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.45) - 1.4 = .324 = 33% ias

Mace MH w/ .22 Echo OH (2.50 / 1.42) - 1.4 = .3606 = ??? might be 37% needed which would make it a 2% ias jump over the .23.  So this might be the cutoff.

Even with a .23 Echoing Fury, you'd only need 35% to hit the breakpoint, which is 4 pieces of 9% ias gear.  Getting a .25 EF will allow people to get the imperfect 8% ias roll on some legendaries, but IMO, the 8% ias to 9% ias jump in price is usually far less than the .23 to .25 jump on EF.


Yea i didnt mean to make it sound mandatory and I didnt actually kno it was only 1% ias difference.. so a .23+ is just fine, depending on gear, thanks for the info! :)

This post was edited by Tboner on Dec 29 2012 10:59pm
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