If your going leap attack or ww barb trust me use ebotd
ghost spear its the best ww spear and leap attacks dmg suffers very little from not using warpike
you should have 1 point in ww with a leap attack barb trust me you
need it
and dont use tm on a leaper you need the range a spear has
Warpike and ww blows you just fail compared to ghost spear seriously the gap between the ias bps with these weapons is huuuuuge
quote from Spectre_187's spear barb guideQuote
Weapon: Ethereal Breath of the Dying Ghost Spear:
Figured I'd start with the most interesting topic of discussion in this section. Some people, when they think of a spear barb, automatically think "War Pike". Some have never even heard of a Ghost Spear and don't even know what it is. Basically Ghost Spear is the elite Spear class weapon right before War Pike. It does less damage than War Pike, but it has the same range, and most importantly, it has a base weapon speed of [0]. War Pike has a base weapon speed of [20]. What does this mean for us?
Lets take a look at Whirlwind. Whirlwind pulls IAS directly from your weapon, and from no other source. Whirlwind uses different breakpoints depending on if you're using a two handed weapon, or a one handed weapon. Here are the whirlwind breakpoints for a two handed weapon:
Two-handed weapons
Breakpoints: 15, 0, -10, -30, -60.
Number of frames in-between hit-checks after frame 8: 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4
Basically this means that for a ghost spear, which has [0] base speed and 60% ias on breath of the dying, we hit the 4 frame breakpoint. In other words, with a ghost spear, our barb will attack the enemy every four frames while he's in the whirlwind state. Whirlwind automatically does a hit check at the 4th and 8th frame, which is our "free hits". BOTD War Pike only reaches the 6 frame breakpoint. This means that compared to Ghost Spear, War Pike will only really get two hit attempts per whirlwind unless you're doing VERY long whirlwinds. With Ghost Spear, it's going to be hitting very well with each whirlwind you make. Again, for the non believers, I'll say it in no uncertain terms. There is a HUGE difference between the 2nd to last breakpoint and the last one. Barbs using War Pike simply fail, they are forced into making VERY short whirlwinds to try to and ride on the two free hit checks, and that makes it really difficult to capitalize on our increased weapon range.
In conclusion, the difference in damage between Ghost Spear and War Pike is simply not significant enough to warrant sacrificing an entire breakpoint. Their damage is close enough, that I can pretty much declare that Ghost Spear WILL cause more damage to your opponent than War Pike, based entirely on the fact that you will hit more often.
As for why Breath of the Dying? Simply, for a two handed weapon, it's the best. It has up to 400% enhanced damage, going up to 415% if you had a superior shell. +60 to all attributes is really nice boost for us: life, mana, attack rating.. etc. It also helps us wear our really heavy gloves
This post was edited by DanteBlack on Aug 21 2012 02:56am