just to beg to differ, didn't I mention my barb did equally well with that sword of mine in main hand? I dun think it's the damage on my spear that makes the difference because my performance with sword shield excel too. In fact with the shield, I have even better fury generation and Loh proc more often, just by a lower amount.

using shield on a ww barb increase survivability. In order to replace that for more damage, one sacrifice armour; all resist; life and damage reduce for it. Therefore one must ensure he cannot compromise how much he can achieve from Loh and fury generation.

I hope you have not given wrong advise by not pointing out the problem on his off-hand.

This post was edited by Jaxz on Aug 20 2012 04:18pm

Whose offhand and what is wrong with it? I dont recommend particularly high dps or fast offhands, as long as they are minimum 700dps and have the stats on them like LOH critdmg vit str its all good! Your main killing speed comes from mainhand only! Ppl recommend fast offhands because of ww using last weapon swung thing, but ww is more of a nado placer / manoever skill rather than the main killer. It accounts for very little of overall dmg!

Of course shield gives you more survivability, but proper ww/nado dont use shields, maybe you can switch to it for ghom / diablo. We were discussing mainhands and offhands combos!

if you take spear and offhand wpn vs sword and shield, you see improved loh and fury generation proc from increased mainhand speed, nados generate fury from ITF and life from LOH at the same coefficient, its 20%, so more speed --> more ticks --> more procs. And nados only use mh.

And I was replying in response to this, not spear/oh vs shield but spear/oh vs sword / sword:

''Interestingly when equiped with a for instance a 1100dps/1.2aps spear and a 400dps/1.66aps dagger, and at only 30k damage overall, which the damage is even much lower than the sword-sword combo, performance (killing speed and survivability) improves vastly compared to the sword-sword build.''

Your killing speed is obviously coming from that massive dmg that spear is giving you. It has a higher dps than the sword and with a lower aps ...one thing comes to mind, raw damage. Like a 2h issue, 2 h is slow but man the raw damage is nice. As for survivability, if maybe you have some life leech to benefit the huge dmg gap and are killing things much much faster, you will obviously notice an improvement too.

This post was edited by markilbaldacchino on Aug 20 2012 04:47pm

Just reminder, my second sword has twice the dps than my dagger. Loh is almost same between dagger as oh or 2nd sword as oh. It's natural that killing speed increase, but also largely sure to the fact of dying less.

This post was edited by Jaxz on Aug 20 2012 05:57pm

Exactly, I think you can see the shift of emphasis from importance of offhand to importance of mainhand. Ignore the shield comparison now, this is dual hand comparison.


''Interestingly when equiped with a for instance a 1100dps/1.2aps spear and a 400dps/1.66aps dagger, and at only 30k damage overall, which the damage is even much lower than the sword-sword combo, performance (killing speed and survivability) improves vastly compared to the sword-sword build.''

You said oh sword has more dps than dagger, and loh is practically identical so that is better for comparison sake. A spear / dagger build with lower onscreen dps vs sword / sword build with higher onscreen dps is killing much faster, we can conclude

(a) onscreen dps is not always an indicator of outright performance
(b) mainhand is what is dictating your overall killing power and speed, especially the raw damage (the numbers xx-xx underneath the dps) on it, since sword is even faster than a spear (unless you use WM with spear and get attack speed buff)
(c) offhand dps is not that important because you were doing much better with an offhand dps that was halved (you said sword had twice the daggers dps)
(d) Attack speed importance is either overrated or completely irrelevant, at least for offhand.

For point (d), you could really try spear / dagger vs spear / sword and see which one comes on top, but specifically a sword with the same or close dps as the dagger so the test would only take into account how important off hand weapon speed is. Or maybe that 1100 dps with an axe or mace / other spear, as 1.5 aps vs 1.4 aps is too close to each other.

''It's natural that killing speed increase, but also largely sure to the fact of dying less.'' --> I see it the other way round, the latter promotes the former.



EDIT: Btw your weapons are SICK dude (that spear and sword, I drool over both), I love how you got all your loh from rings and amu and still have 43 crit after battle rage without weapons master. Very impressive for sure. I would love to try mighty weapon as mainhand with wmaster and lower some crit chance from gear in order to keep a good fury gen up anyway, but it would mean a complete reshuffle of my gear and i cba / cant afford right now.

This post was edited by markilbaldacchino on Aug 20 2012 06:24pm

are you sure OH doesnt improve the attack speed on your tornadoes?


I tryed it out and got the feeling that there was difference, but its very hard to tell and i dont wanna make any bold statements.



can some1 confirm this?



If ias doesnt matter for run like the wind than why not go with mace or axe on oh aswell?

In that case your oh will crit more often, which has an impact on your fury regen especially when you WW, but also for frenzy/bash. (Im pretty sure the passives dont only apply mainhand)

weapons master only affects mainhand
nado uses mh only, ww alternates between mh and oh
ww accounts for small % of your overall dmg
the attack speed on offhand is an ongoing debate, I never found it to be too important, tried everything in oh except axes and swords. no very noticeable change, so i prefer stats and a decent dps like 700+ over speed on my OH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qBCI70iFHo

This post was edited by markilbaldacchino on Aug 20 2012 06:54pm

For me there is a significant difference choosing between dagger or sword as off-hand. Imagine ww in the midst of mobs, a nado ticking at 6tps (1.66aps) and another at 5tps (1.4aps) , laying 4 nados, each lasting for 3 seconds, that is 12 ticks extra per creature, if it's a mass of 20+ mobs, one nado can easily take on three or more creatures at one go, and that's is more than 36 extra ticks within 3 seconds, come to think about it, Overpower is being refresh like no tomorrow, and WotB is like infinite..

This post was edited by Jaxz on Aug 20 2012 10:33pm

Question: Any higher end ww barbs tried passive "Pound of flesh"? good or totally silly?
In theory 25% more health globes with 100% bonus would mean just 1 item with like 10k more life from globes = full heal, little bit radius here and ...?
atm I use bloodthirst which gives 3% leech, dunno if this globe healing could be competitive

how important is 12% movement speed on boots?

definitely worth having