The Earthbounds Double Nado Barb

The Unnecessary Index to a small yet potent guide:

1.0 - Intro
2.0 - Build & Variations
3.0 - Gearing
4.0 - Strategy


1.0 Intro

I am Zod AKA Pop AKA Ice ex-raid lead and S11 Elite DK of the meta-gaming guild The Earthbound, and I have been givin D3 some real lovin with my nado build for a long while now with the assistance of my great fellow members! So I decided to write my FIRST EVER GUIDE! This is for those that just can't seem to figure out exactly what they are doing wrong.

The Double Nado is becoming a very popular build for Barbarians. Why? Because it's extraordinarily fast-paced and just straight up fun! With this build you can keep the badass look and power of Wrath of the Berserk up 100% and clear whole dungeon levels / zone plains in 5-10 minutes EASY. You will never get stuck in the lame slow run to find more things to bash n slash once you get the hang of it. Whole armies of mobs will be decimated in no-time, there are hardly any rare or champion packs that will cause you to shiver with fear, and you will never get bored! It's play style is like no other ever, in any game (that I've played) and really brought my spirits back up after the huge IAS nerf because I personally LOVE fast-paced destruction.

This build is not at all overpowered. It may seem so because you get to watch people that have spent tens of millions on gear blow through anything in Inferno, the thing is many builds for each class can do the same with unlimited funds. The difference is that this build is based off of Sprint and the speed from Sprint and Wrath of the Berserker so everything just looks so easy. It requires much more fury prioritization than pretty much any build I've played around with, which you won't realize through watching a video of someone who has it so practiced that mauling everything so easily seems like it takes no effort. It takes a good amount of gear and practice to reach laughing at inferno act 3, 4, or ponies. But this build is not useless without it! You can start it on a budget if you know what you're doing!

What most people have asked me, and what most people question on forums about this build will hopefully be answered in this guide. If it isn't, please ask away! I will update as necessary. I'm here to help my fellow Barbarian fanatics, young and old.

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2.0 - THE BUILD (and the not-so-variable variations)

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#hiQUPk!ZYd!ZYZZcc

-The only variable is Overpower. Some people that don't understand how to play this build as efficiently as necessary use Bash or something just as bad as their left click for Fury when they run out, some people use Leap to be able to survive a little better and be invincible for 4 seconds every once in a while.

-I would NOT change out Overpower, however. If anything, change the rune. With the fact that Overpowers cooldown is lowered one second for every crit, it is an amazing synergy to the build. I prefer the Killing Spree rune, but you could use Revel to create a much more reliable version of Revenge if you have rather low defensive stats and life leach.

(Some might argue that Frenzy with run speed rune is good for this build, on the contrary it's bad to have to stop for a regular melee swing for so long to keep it up.... Not worth it)

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3.0 Gearing

Gearing is extremely important for this to work. Stat priority is simple.

*You need acceptable life and all res depending on the act of course. There is no exact amount of each stat that you need for each act, it's simply a balance of each stat and you need the all res and HP first because you can't romp through stuff if they one shot you.

*You need Life Leach once you get over 50k dmg before wrath, Life on hit when under that amount. Or a mixture of both. You sort of have to "feel" it out with your gear on how much you actually need so you don't have more leach than necessary which will sacrifice damage unnecessarily. This is best accomplished with 2 weapons that have sockets and life leach so you can swap out gems.

10%+ Run Speed Boots
>
Crit chance
>
Crit Damage
>
Strength
=
Ias
>
Tyraels Might Chest Armor for run speed


*The biggest thing about making this build work is most definitely Critical Strike CHANCE. Critical Strike chance keeps your going longer and harder than the energizer bunny (90's kids...).

-You can reach a consistent 82.5% crit with this build I believe (without legendaries with crit that you shouldn't use anyways... If I missed something let me know)

Max from items = 39.5 w/o legendaries you shouldn't be using
Max from passives & base crit = 20%
Crit from Wrath of the Berserker and Overpower with Killing Spree = 20%

*Basically when you gear, you want a decent amount of all res and HP first (32k hp 500 all res with War Cry up in my cheap MF set gets me through act 1 like butter and Act 2 as well with caution against heavy hitters).
*You want weapons with AT LEAST sockets and life leach! Strength and Life on Hit are a great plus. Always put an Axe or Mace in your mainhand.

-Then you want at least 30% crit with Battle Rage up to be fury efficient (5% base, 5% from Ruthless passive, 3% from battle rage, 10% with an axe in your mainhand means you need only 7% from gear to start feeling how the build works)

-Never stop stacking crit chance though, the more you have the more fury you get, once you get over 40% before Wrath of the Berserker and Overpower you can keep Wrath up 100% of the time in proper areas like most places in Act 3 or anywhere in Act 4 and all through ponies. More is still much better! DO NOT sacrifice too much HP / All res to go above and beyond with your crit!!

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4.0 - Strategy

Strategy is the reason you DO NOT want to waste a slot on Bash or Frenzy for fury generation. It teaches you to be careless with your prioritization and wastes a whole slot that could be used for the much more powerful Overpower.

Starting: War cry just before you go into battle and then Battle Rage. Get enough mobs around you and overpower, you should by now have enough fury for sprint (if not, take a couple hits - which you should be able to take - for the fury needed for sprint).

Sprint is your main ability, as you drop tornadoes they crit and the Into the Fray rune on Battle Rage continues to generate massive fury for you! You will pretty much run around and "skip" normal mobs so your tornadoes continue to generate fury for you and you can keep sprint up and find rare/champ packs in no time. Once you run into these packs you should pop Wrath of the Berserker. In acts 1 and 2 while learning how to use this build they will die easily and you usually can't keep it up for a whole zone and have to play without it simply because of the low density of creatures.

Whirlwind is only for when you have 70+ fury and many mobs around. It allows you to blow fury so your tornadoes and crits can generate more which will keep Wrath of the Berserk up. You ALWAYS want to have enough fury for another sprint or 2 so you don't have to walk around like a jackass doing nothing and getting frustrated.


When you are to acts 3 and 4 you start as normal, pop Wrath of the Berserker once you have full fury and sprint and mow through mobs, using whirlwind so you don't have to go around and romp through the level gathering rare / champion packs. You will have to "take 2 steps forward and one step backwards" as you progress once you find elites to drop tornadoes and continue moving on, you don't want to sit there and finish off a single pack at a time because you will lose Wrath of the Berserk and hate life and stuff.

I like to pull everything to the end of the zone and usually end up taking out a pack or 2 along the way from my tornadoes while I finish off all the rest at the end running in circles with sprint up when there are not enough mobs to generate enough fury to whirlwind in tight circles around them.

-ALWAYS keep Battle Rage up
-ALWAYS have enough fury for Sprint

-NEVER sit and finish off single packs at a time else you lose the ability to generate enough fury to stay efficient
-NEVER Whirlwind with low amount of mobs and fury!

-Having Whirlwind in your left click takes some getting used to, but like driving a manual car it soon becomes second nature to master and much more efficient
-If you come down to having only 1 Champion/Rare mob left just sprint and run in circles around them, if your fury fills up use some Whirlwind until you get below half of your fury bar (Same goes for bosses but you should be able to keep Whirlwind up either way once you have the gear)

**TIPS: Hold shift to turn your normal run navigation into Whirlwind, let go of it without letting go of your left click to switch to running. This will enable you to better navigate as well as stop Whirlwinding by letting go of your left click while looking for a spot without mobs to click and run so you don't accidentally run out of fury.


If anything in this post is against the rules please edit it out or let me know asap to edit it out!
Questions? Suggestions? Some comments would be nice so we can pop this guy in the Guide sticky!

This post was edited by Tyrannical on Jul 19 2012 05:26pm

Can you explain why ww requires dual wield and not shield with crit?

Good question unfortunately I cannot edit my post now (thought that was only in trading forums to prevent scamming).

The reason you dual wield is because you get the + 15% attack speed bonus. The higher your attack speed the more ticks you get from your tornadoes.

These "ticks" are also based off of the last weapon swung while the damage is based solely on the mainhand weapon.



^Thanks to Nubtro at
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6037344497?page=1

Remember that the damage of tornadoes is based solely off of your mainhand weapon while the APS is based off of the last weapon swung, which alternates as you use whirlwind.

This means that you would want to use axes over maces for the higher base APS. You could also use a dagger in the offhand! (I prefer to use a mighty weapon Off-Hand for cool-factor) And I have a thesis which I will never honestly confirm myself... Which is that once you reach a ridiculous point in your gearing, a dagger in both mainhand and offhand could be better than the extra crit from your passive to simply reach higher breakpoints.

More ticks = more leach if you use LoH and more Fury generation and a more beautifully bright yellow screen.


Oh and always remember - your mainhand and offhand weapons need to be very similar in DPS no matter if you're a tornado barb or not, your dps could easily drop if they differ too much!

The double nado build you say this is, it is not. The double nado build uses the tornado rune for ww not hurricane.
Your tornados spawned from spirit only use your main hand damage.

And I didnt read the whole wall of text I only read the first and last sections which are both wrong.

GL!

This post was edited by RiskOfFire on Jul 19 2012 07:49pm

Yes, I mentioned in my reply how the tornadoes damage works and want to add it with a little more depth.

And thanks for pointing out my mislabel, I started as a double nado and tweaked the build significantly to suit my steamroller play style. There is a lot I need to add, organize and - for the labels sake - correct, so I will be getting a lot more in-depth when I repost a larger revised version. But anything anyone thinks could fit in what I'm looking to teach is welcome to be posted here to further beef up this guide.


But lets say I didn't mislabel... What is wrong in my overall strategy? Because it's been working like a charm for me. Maybe I should just claim this build as my own with whatever name i decide instead of directing a tornado/sprinter incorrectly?

Overall I hope this guide will help cut down on all of the 'i need help with my ww barb' threads.

Yeah I figured it covered the basics enough for them I just need to organize it a bit better.

Usually it seems seems that the problem is a build that doesn't make sense and almost equally as important their strategy when they play like they are still a frenzy barb where fury is always full.

But I really would like corrections on the strategy I explained unless you just didn't understand it because you didn't read the middle of my wall o text.

This post was edited by Tyrannical on Jul 19 2012 09:02pm

How can i keep my WOTB up when im only fighting a champion mob? I see my fury going up, but my WOTB's timer did not reset. Sometimes i thought my nados arent hitting so i just bash them from low fury to full fury, didnt work as well.

keep sprint and battle rage up (always make sure battle rage didnt drop off) and run in circles around them. Most likely you will still lose wrath of the berserker, but that's why you dont sit in one area to kill the last one or 2 and instead continue to move on while keeping them on your tail so you run into large packs to blow up with tornadoes and WW to refresh wotb. You need more than 1 mob to be able to gain enough fury to keep up WOTB usually. your best bet is to just run in circles though, overpower instead of bash would help immensely because 10% extra crit means your generate that much more fury.

this should be stickied. very informative thanks alot