running a 45% fcr poverty zon in the first couple weeks of ladder maybe. I wasn't going for any kind of optimization in that video, it was just to demonstrate to someone last year that even a pvp zon could easily do that boss circuit in the time of a baal run.
a 99% spirit zon build teles at 12 fpa, while a 63% barb goes 9 fpa. its definitely much faster, but for the first seal you're talking about shaving ~2.5 seconds of teleporting off the first seal which should only take ~10 seconds with a full pvm zon setup. Granted theres more teleing between seals, but after the 3rd seal you're bottlenecked by diablo's spawn time anyway. The zon probably saves as much time on diablo alone when the barb needs to dish out 512k damage in zerks.

I could probably show a hero editor version of a P8 chaos run with a pvm setup

hey so keep in mind I'm using the more suicidal version of both with no max block/dr, the zon using spirit, the barb using beast offhand, in order to compare max speed (still using reasonable tanking items / max resists). Neither of these would be suitable for level 94+ or hardcore, but neither sacrifices much by wearing a stormshield anyway.

but here's what the speed looks like for a chaos barb vs javazon in players 8. As I was saying, the kill speed is a big bottleneck compared to the teleport speed. Even with 8 fpa vs 12 fpa teleports, diablo alone makes up far more time difference
now both builds can run into struggles on the seal bosses. Barbs can get hung up on de seis when champion packs aren't howled and de seis runs laps around you with extra fast / holy freeze, while zons have the obvious slowdown of unbreakable immunes any time they spawn lightning enchanted, which means you're down to merc/throw/jab and adding a significant amount of time per each one, but at least she can instantly clear the trash mobs to focus down the big guy. Though if its a dual physical/lightning immune, its a wall. But even on regular seal bosses, the clear difference was enough the zon passed the barb. I mean, javas get such astronomical damage you often kill bosses with 1-2 furies and don't even need to poke them, and that's without a 20/20 shield or facet in griffs. Also missing +1 skill on zon by using crafted gloves not 3/20s, but I'm not going to redo it just for that

Paladins used to be terrible. Now they are easily best class at everything. Doesn’t mean you have to play them to be good tho.

thing is they are tanky (with bo barb invincible), mobile and deal craptons of dmg. also not merc dependant.
I want to try other things so bad, but it either:
- dies too fast
- has too low dmg
to get to desired p8 area and clear it in time

I guess I have to twink my light sorc or give wiz spike to my java

You only did one comparison based on 2 different map layouts for each character, there are many things you did wrong with your berserker barb build in my opinion, first off, I don't use Beast off hand, I use Pheonix with 350-400% enhanced damage, I also use a two cycle howl cast because of faster cast rate, I am assuming you are using Grief phase blade in that scenario [sorry was watching dual videos to try and take note of items and so on.]

Go to my Demonbasher barb build, this is NOT the Chaos barb build at all, but, it has the killspeed of a hammerdin vs a one on one scenario.

A phoenix offhand is worse than a beast for damage output. Every time firestorm triggers, berserk is disabled for 11 frames. If you just hold down the button, it will wait until berserk is re-enabled to start your next attack, pausing briefly every time you proc a firestorm. If you spam clicks instead, it will normal attack, which will lose you about 75% of your damage output. Now I don't know where the action frame is, I assume around 4/9 based on the animation and other skills, but its somewhere in the middle. That means you're pausing about ~6 frames or so every time you proc firestorm, which you can visually see in-game. So 40% of the time, you slow down from 9 fpa zerk to 15 fpa zerk, average 11.4 or so. Granted I'm pulling the action frame number out of my butt, but its something like that. Under decrep, it would be 12 fpa normal, maybe 16 or 17 on a proc? so ~13.6?
Beast gives +186% ed, +80% ar, and when you're decrepified, it speeds up your zerk from 12 fpa to 10 fpa on an 80% ias build, 9 fpa if you throw in another 40/15 on the CoA instead of a ber rune, letting you maintain your complete speed under decrep. Going only 46% dr, you can hit 9 fpa zerks while pounding de seis.

Phoenix redemption aura is also irrelevant if you're only killing 1 monster at a time, wouldn't be very relevant anyway on a 7k life barb.

In fairness to the video, I did do some things wrong because I wasn't being too detailed- hero editors template is the 1.11 torch with 25% firestorm, which looks visually silly, but doesn't disable zerk like the firestorm from phoenix, so it didn't actually impact the dps there, but I was using 2x wizspikes instead of suicide branches because apparently nobody bothered to put normal/exceptional unique wands into hero editor's templates and I couldn't be arsed. Theres an argument for wizspikes anyway, for extra mana teleporting instead of +2 BO

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jan 21 2018 01:03am

Instead of coming up with your own conclusions, how about trying it out? This is what I love about people that don't try it out and speculate based on their knowledge of the game mechanics... remember, this is a trial, and if you notice, the Demonbasher build is NOT based around FCR.

Pheonix 400% enhanced damage is better than beast because the setup ALREADY reaches the last IAS bp for the barb. As for the blocklock scenario because you are using Berserk, just remember, you stated why redemption aura is useless... you are only killing 1 monster, you are not getting attacked from a mob, which would undoubtedly enhance the activation of blocklock.

End Note: I was the second person to make a Berserk barb that was useful, and from that, people made the Chaos barb and also some PvP Berserk builds with the 1.10 patch rune items. Thanks to Blizz for that.

I did try it out. First, I already knew how phoenix works, but to double check how the game handles the controls I swapped that merc's phoenix onto the barb and yes, it caused a brief delay every time firestorm procs, which indicates its working exactly as I thought it did- disabling berserk for 11 frames starting at the action frame of when the CTC is procced, delaying when you can start the next zerk, but letting you spam attacks which causes normal attacks. Its quite plainly visible ingame, if you want I can create you a brief webm of the two side by side, but its noticeable when phoenix is slowing you down from 9 fpa to ~11-12 fpa and beast is speeding you up while decrepped from 12 fpa to 9 fpa.
In terms of damage alone, with the setup I listed, going from beast to phoenix raises your total damage multiplier (1+%ed) from ~19.5x to 21.6x (add another +0.4 if using the 40/15 in CoA, but thats pretty minor). So overall you're dealing about 10.7% more damage per hit. Except as I explained above, when not decrepified, you're attacking about 22.5% slower on average, and while decrepified you're attacking about 33.8% slower on average. Dropping from 2.78 APS to 1.84 APS is awful. I have no way to quantify how much of the time you'll spend decrepified vs not, but even not decrepified when beast is giving no %EIAS at all and the only difference is phoenix slowing you down, you're dealing 110.7% of the damage at 77.5% of the attack speed, so overall you're 85.79% of the DPS. The phoenix build has substantially lower dps even without counting beast's very useful EIAS vs decrep.
And blocklock is still a thing whether you're getting attacked by 1 mob, or a few stragglers who didn't scoot out of the way instantly and shift to attacking you, as is commonly the case. With a 7000+ hp barb who isn't going to get FHR'd by attacks, its better to not get interrupted at all then to block some, and that's in terms of survivability alone, whereas again, phoenix is reducing your dps due to blocking and I didn't even bother including that above.



And I was the first person to make half the 1.10+ builds in the game, do I get a medal? :S
I was both the first person to point out how grief works with smite (on battle.net forums, as patch was being datamined, before it went up) and first person when 1.10 came out to point out charged strike had gone from useless to overpowered. Of course, my first zon used an ariocs needle and was unsurprisingly garbage, but its a process, eh.

also I think I did those ias calculations wrong, WSM average/bugging should apply to berserk I think, even though its a one-weapon attack, the WSM averaging formula still applies if I think about it. I can see some very minor slowdown in zerk speed while decrepped testing out that setup, so its not 9 fpa. If I'm understanding it properly, since I was using a 0 base there, it was averaging a -15 WSM which was still easily hitting 9 fpa with fanat and without decrep, but was hitting at 11 fpa with decrep on. Since WSM bugging is impractical with swapping to teleport, that should be a beast war spike, averaging -20 base.
Guess I'll calculate it out since titanseal isn't doing it right:
Zerk hits 11/10/9 fpa at 34/46/61% EIAS, I don't know if theres any inbetween action frames and it doesn't really matter. So with -20 WSM from phase blade primary war spike offhand, -29 from fanat, +50 decrep, the breakpoints should be 35/47/62% EIAS-from-IAS for 11/10/9, which is given by 50/78/129% IAS from gear including on-grief but not including on-beast. Since we can't hit 129% with any reasonable setup, that means that just sticking with 78%+ ias from 38-40% grief, 20% loh, 20% highlords does the trick, ditch the 40/15 in CoA and keep it ber/ber

so amend whatever I was saying above about comparing decrep speeds from looking at 10 instead of 9 fpa while decrepped. But that's still a hell of a lot better than 12 fpa that delays to ~16 fpa on 40% of hits

You defenitely dont want phoenix in my experience as goomshill says.

Personally i tested a few things yesterday on SP.
A few things to say:
You want guillames "cham", for the cb in higher settings
You want arach and 2x 10fcr ring on beast/grief setup (37fcr bp helps, so u can make occasional tele in practice when needed to restomp or cast an extra howl, avoiding to run around like u did in vid)
You want to use dual hotos at switch
You are fine with 8%dr. You are a barb! The resist is easy with inv/nat res
I dont know what inventory ur barb used...
I find act2 might merc with reapers/guill/160/60 armor, outweighing act3 merc. Even when decr can mess abit with howl.
Act 2 merc and guill over arreats significantly improves the diablo kill time. Both mercs cb and ur own dmg gains.
You want to play efficiently, i dont think your video did barbarian playstyle justice. But that can be learned.
You want telekinesis charges. ama can also get, but wont gain as much due bps.
I didnt factor in the possibility of nonladder hybrid griefs with higher %CB

Conclusions:
I ended up making runs with diablo as fast or few (1-5) seconds slower than your zon in video. And youre right that its the diablo kill that causes this, jav hits too nice. (I finish seals aka spawn diablo 5-10s faster then ur ama).
This leads to the second conclusion: if you have a baalparty and a javazon comes with u for D kill for exp, it will be faster than a javazon doing the chaos.

Meaning more time at baal waves.

Final thing which idk how much it matters is the li+le double immunity for a jav. In p8 idk how gimped u get to have ur merc kill it, with infinity as wep, when it spawns, and what the spawnrate id.

But ya. I was overvonfident in the barb, so this was constructive for me

This post was edited by SpAz. on Jan 21 2018 08:13am