On June 13 2012 06:27 crms wrote: Your DPS is awfully low for being 2h, you're basically between two builds. You have low damage (low dps and only 5% crit?) but no real survivability with shield etc., resist are decent for a 2H spec but your damage is nonexistant. I think you need to refocus on what you want to do. with your current gear set I don't think you should be 2H. When I'm 2h spec doing act 3 I have between 60-80k dps depending on the build I do with little to no resist. Ideally you'd have high resist and high damage, but that's too expensive and I spent all my gold on tank gear. ~_~
to be feasible in act 3 you either need to 1) increase dps a TON and stay 2h, 2) buy a sword/shield and tank it up. You have decent baseline resists, a nice resist shield and a 900dps 1h (they are only like 300k right now for a random blue sword) you'll have about the same dps but live way longer.
On June 13 2012 06:27 crms wrote: Your DPS is awfully low for being 2h, you're basically between two builds. You have low damage (low dps and only 5% crit?) but no real survivability with shield etc., resist are decent for a 2H spec but your damage is nonexistant. I think you need to refocus on what you want to do. with your current gear set I don't think you should be 2H. When I'm 2h spec doing act 3 I have between 60-80k dps depending on the build I do with little to no resist. Ideally you'd have high resist and high damage, but that's too expensive and I spent all my gold on tank gear. ~_~
to be feasible in act 3 you either need to 1) increase dps a TON and stay 2h, 2) buy a sword/shield and tank it up. You have decent baseline resists, a nice resist shield and a 900dps 1h (they are only like 300k right now for a random blue sword) you'll have about the same dps but live way longer.
how does one get 60-80k dps with under 20m
2h, balls out dps gear is insanely cheap. I think I paid a total of 9M for my 2H set. I don't know which of my tanking items I could get for 9M in comparison. I did have some of the items already stashed that I found on my own but there are ridiculous bargains on straight up str dps gear. My shoulders, boots, belt were all 200k or less and have 150+ strength on them with vitality.
If you go the 'true' style of 2H with massive dps and tons of resist, you're going to be spending just as much if not more $$ than the current tanking items per piece of armor. The only difference is 2H weapons are insanely cheaper. A blue 2H mace with 1780+ top end for 2million is better for this spec than most if not all than the 1400+ dps 2h weapons for 25+ million.
Sidenote: because tanking isn't really the type of gameplay I look for in a diablo game, if the prices stay infalted when I get home from work, I'm going to sell all my tank gear on the RMAH. I don't need two builds for a barb and I might as well cash in while people are paying insane rates. Besides if we really want to hardcore farm, it's going to be 2h or reroll, tank spec is just too slow to have ilvl63 runs be efficient.
I've already got a couple mil saved and was looking to make some big purchases. If it's more cost-effective for me to get 2H gear, and if I can farm faster to boot, I might just swap over to that.
On June 13 2012 06:13 Tarias wrote: So I've been farming Zoltun Kulle and Belial for a while, but still can't seem to do act 3. The problem I'm having is that I'm just not sure what I should be spending my money on. If I want to buy straight upgrades I end up paying a lot of money for maybe 30 all resist and 20 str or vit. I was hoping you guys could give me some advice on what to look for on the AH.
I don't see why you're running what's effectively a 1H+Shield skill setup with a 2H build. Revenge is basically worthless for 2H builds--without a Shield, you can't afford to play that "revenge-tank everything" style that Revenge is really good for anyway, and outside of that, it's not worth a skill slot on 2H builds IMO. TBH 2H gets much more healing than Revenge could ever provide out of Seismic Slam + high LOH/Lifesteal.
What is the most common 2H build? Is everyone using weapon throw, seismic slam, earthquake, wrath.. how do you gain fury? ? I just bought some cheap gear and a 2 mil wpn gonna try it out since they nerfed Ishtaku farming really hard.
On June 13 2012 08:06 BlueBird. wrote: What is the most common 2H build? Is everyone using weapon throw, seismic slam, earthquake, wrath.. how do you gain fury? ? I just bought some cheap gear and a 2 mil wpn gonna try it out since they nerfed Ishtaku farming really hard.
Could you elaborate on that?
If you're referring to the "input limit reached" error + Show Spoiler +
there's a Blue post saying that it's not an intentional farming nerf and may address itself over time.
If you're referring to a change in the encounter, what is it? Less gold? Less loot? Lower quality loot?
I've been getting a higher proportion of level 50-59 gear compared to before but my sample size is small. Roughly 60% level 60 instead of 75% level 60 drops (including 59-60 on rings, amulets, follower items). Not enough data to accurately compare drops on rares, blacksmithing plans, and instances of more than 2 magic items dropped but those don't seem to be different based on what I've seen so far today.
EDIT: There's now a new post stating that the new game creation limit is intended.
So because I've lost total interest in the 'tanking' style of gameplay, I put my 4 best tanking items up on the RMAH! If they all sell I'd have made over 800! (before 15% paypal). Factoring playtime I'm sure it's something insignificant like $1.40/hr but if I'm never goign to play that spec again, I might as well try and cash in while people are paying insane rates. Nobody is ever going to pay this price again for some of this stuff.
To reiterate, If i had sell worthy gear of a spec I enjoyed I wouldn't be selling right now because 1) I don't play diablo to make money, 2) it's not cost efficient anyway. I make more than enough at work than to slave away to make $1.50/hr on RMAH.
On June 13 2012 12:25 Stratos.FEAR wrote: what kind of stats do you get for 2h style? i might consider it since everyone is hopping on the tank bandwagon and driving prices up
I went the cheap-ass route for 2H. I had some items already in my bags and supplemented the rest by buying any slot item with as much strength (#1) and vit/crit/as/crit bonus I could find. I had 2 friends a mage and a DH reroll barb for the upcoming patch just to play 2h and face roll act1/2. They can obviously clear those acts on their mains but they have to kite etc., they wanted to just be able to blast through the runs when they felt lazy and didn't want to pay attention and both are loving 2h barb.
With very minimal amount of gold you can get your dps up to 50-60k and literally faceroll act1. I don't think I even have a chance at dying in act 1 on my 2h barb. I just 1/2 shot everything and elites dies in 2 seconds, bosses in 5-6 seconds. I know most people don't care about farming act1/2 anymore, so truth be told with my current 2h gear, I cans also do act3 pretty easily. I need to be cautious and use cooldowns appropriately but elites and bosses are easier and faster than when I was a tank. However, white mobs are way harder than when I was a tank. This is because I went the cheapass route and didnt get any resist. Real 2h barbs with resist can take the hits and do well, see.. psystarcraft.
I also think after the patch act1/2 may end up being the best farming because of the ease and 0 risk of dying and delaying runs. Sure the drop rate is 4% but if you're clearing runs twice as fast or more, it's well worth it. I hope to get good enough 2h gear to run ponys. So I can 5 NV -> warden -> butcher -> ponys. That will take awhile though since as I said, I cheaped out and went the gimmicky kill everything before I die build.
*Just got confirmation my mage friend who rolled barb to faceroll act 1 next patch spent 6M total, he already had pants/rings and he can already face roll it pre-patch.*
On June 13 2012 08:06 BlueBird. wrote: What is the most common 2H build? Is everyone using weapon throw, seismic slam, earthquake, wrath.. how do you gain fury? ? I just bought some cheap gear and a 2 mil wpn gonna try it out since they nerfed Ishtaku farming really hard.
Based on my own research and on crms' earlier post, I'd say you'd want something like:
Frenzy+Sidearm/Maniac - Sidearm vs. Maniac is the same tossup as it is for 1H+Shield, though in this case it favors Maniac slightly more because you've got big stuff like Seismic Slam that benefits from Maniac +% damage Seismic Slam+Strength from Earth - Bread and butter damage dealer for 2H. Default Seismic costs way too much, so every build I've seen uses this rune. WotB+Insanity/Slaughter - Depends on your crit chance. Insanity is always good, Slaughter might be slightly better at higher crit chance. War Cry+Impunity - Same as 1H. Impunity is the clear winner at higher resist values, but if you don't have a ton of resist gear, Charge! is actually a really good fury generator (more fury = less need to be in melee, since you can just Seismic from far away). Ignore Pain+Ignorance is Bliss - Defensive CD. Other options work too (I'll probably try Leap+Iron Impact when I get the gear), but Ignore Pain scales well with your gear. Even with the Inferno lifesteal reduction, Ignorance is Bliss gives you a TON of healing when you're doing 60-80k baseline DPS. Tossup - Last skill slot is open to some options. crms uses Earthquake for burst damage. Battle Rage is also a decent option to put here if you feel you've got enough survivability to not need the EQ burst. The Into the Fray rune also works well with Seismic if you have high crit chance, because Seismic crits refunding 15+ fury lets you Seismic more.
Passives: Ruthless + Weapon Master are pretty cookie-cutter, and hard to really beat. Only other really good options here are Bloodthirst and Boon of Bul-Kathos, I guess, depending on your skill setup.
Weapon Throw requires its own build. It's a much more crit-centric build that tries to use some one-off fury generators like Ancient Spear and War Cry, and then use No Escape with Battle Rage+Into the Fray to use Weapon Throw crits to sustain constant Weapon Throws.
On June 13 2012 08:06 BlueBird. wrote: What is the most common 2H build? Is everyone using weapon throw, seismic slam, earthquake, wrath.. how do you gain fury? ? I just bought some cheap gear and a 2 mil wpn gonna try it out since they nerfed Ishtaku farming really hard.
Based on my own research and on crms' earlier post, I'd say you'd want something like:
Frenzy+Sidearm/Maniac - Sidearm vs. Maniac is the same tossup as it is for 1H+Shield, though in this case it favors Maniac slightly more because you've got big stuff like Seismic Slam that benefits from Maniac +% damage Seismic Slam+Strength from Earth - Bread and butter damage dealer for 2H. Default Seismic costs way too much, so every build I've seen uses this rune. WotB+Insanity/Slaughter - Depends on your crit chance. Insanity is always good, Slaughter might be slightly better at higher crit chance. War Cry+Impunity - Same as 1H. Impunity is the clear winner at higher resist values, but if you don't have a ton of resist gear, Charge! is actually a really good fury generator (more fury = less need to be in melee, since you can just Seismic from far away). Ignore Pain+Ignorance is Bliss - Defensive CD. Other options work too (I'll probably try Leap+Iron Impact when I get the gear), but Ignore Pain scales well with your gear. Even with the Inferno lifesteal reduction, Ignorance is Bliss gives you a TON of healing when you're doing 60-80k baseline DPS. Tossup - Last skill slot is open to some options. crms uses Earthquake for burst damage. Battle Rage is also a decent option to put here if you feel you've got enough survivability to not need the EQ burst. The Into the Fray rune also works well with Seismic if you have high crit chance, because Seismic crits refunding 15+ fury lets you Seismic more.
Passives: Ruthless + Weapon Master are pretty cookie-cutter, and hard to really beat. Only other really good options here are Bloodthirst and Boon of Bul-Kathos, I guess, depending on your skill setup.
Weapon Throw requires its own build. It's a much more crit-centric build that tries to use some one-off fury generators like Ancient Spear and War Cry, and then use No Escape with Battle Rage+Into the Fray to use Weapon Throw crits to sustain constant Weapon Throws.
sidearm wotb insanity war cry - charge (for fury generation) ignore pain earthquake seismic slam
I need slam for act 3 because I can't run up to white mobs and bonk them on the head. I replace slam with marauder shout when I do act1/2 because I don't ever need to worry and can just go hit stuff. For my build with no resistance, I need EQ. EQ with Ignore pain is what keeps me alive long enough to nuke elites. The amount of healing you receive when you have a group of elites stacked up while insanity + EQ is going off is absolutely retarded. I've seen real geared 2h (with proper defenses) skip earthquake because WOTB is more than enough, I'm just not at that place with my cheapskate build.
I use the 2 offensive passives, ruthless and weapon master, and then i use boon, armor, brawler or one other I can't remember depending on what I'm doing.
trying it out, so far its failed pretty hard in the area with all the scorpions (lack of aoe and loss of tankyness but will try in areas with less mobs
On June 13 2012 14:37 skyR wrote: Not sure why you're surprised since it was a ~900 dps weap with loh, strength, and vitality iirc. It could have easily fetched 20mil+ on the gah.
Yeah it's a nice tank weapon but.. I don't know, it6 seems kind of surreal what people will pay. It also wasn't close to BiS and fetched nearly the max RMAH price. You'd think items people would only spend $200+ for would be damn near perfect. Either way, I'm glad I sold now, I'm pretty sure in the next couple days, weeks, months the prices are going to crash. Hopefully my other tank items I put up for auction will sell before that happens!
Tried the Stupefy build. It seems well suited for Hardcore because of its safety, but it progresses too slowly on large packs, so its not that good for Softcore because in Softcore you want high clearing speed to farm quickly, even at the cost of safety.
That said, my experimentation with Weapon Throw has led me to the belief that, secretly, Weapon Throw/Seismic Slam Barbs are the most OP ranged class in the game: 1) Resource management. With the right gear and spec (crit chance, -fury cost on Weapon Throw/crit chance on Seismic Slam, No Escape + Into the Fray), resource management is a non-issue. Compared to Wizards and DHs that have to alternate their primary damage dealer with a non-resource spender, Barbs can continue using their prime DPS ability without having to resort to a basic ability. 2) Survivability. A pure ranged class with Barbarian's defensive CDs is straight-up impossible to kill. Fighting the same packs with my Wiz and my Barb, it's actually easier to kite with Weapon Throw Barb because Leap is up so damn often. Not to mention that even if Leap is down, Barb has more room for fall-back defensive CDs that are not linked to your DPS resource. 3) Steroids/Burst damage. I don't think Wizards/DHs have anything that can compare to a Barbarian's ability to simply nuke down an Elite pack. Nothing can match a 100% damage, 10% crit, 25% aspd steroid, and they don't have abilities that do 2000% weapon damage in an AoE.
The gear for this stuff is comparatively cheap now. I think I'm going to get my Wizzy started on Siegebreaker runs, and use the income to start really playing around with 2H Weapon Throw/Seismic specs.
On June 14 2012 01:28 TheYango wrote: Tried the Stupefy build. It seems well suited for Hardcore because of its safety, but it progresses too slowly on large packs, so its not that good for Softcore because in Softcore you want high clearing speed to farm quickly, even at the cost of safety.
That said, my experimentation with Weapon Throw has led me to the belief that, secretly, Weapon Throw/Seismic Slam Barbs are the most OP ranged class in the game: 1) Resource management. With the right gear and spec (crit chance, -fury cost on Weapon Throw/crit chance on Seismic Slam, No Escape + Into the Fray), resource management is a non-issue. Compared to Wizards and DHs that have to alternate their primary damage dealer with a non-resource spender, Barbs can continue using their prime DPS ability without having to resort to a basic ability. 2) Survivability. A pure ranged class with Barbarian's defensive CDs is straight-up impossible to kill. Fighting the same packs with my Wiz and my Barb, it's actually easier to kite with Weapon Throw Barb because Leap is up so damn often. Not to mention that even if Leap is down, Barb has more room for fall-back defensive CDs that are not linked to your DPS resource. 3) Steroids/Burst damage. I don't think Wizards/DHs have anything that can compare to a Barbarian's ability to simply nuke down an Elite pack. Nothing can match a 100% damage, 10% crit, 25% aspd steroid, and they don't have abilities that do 2000% weapon damage in an AoE.
The gear for this stuff is comparatively cheap now. I think I'm going to get my Wizzy started on Siegebreaker runs, and use the income to start really playing around with 2H Weapon Throw/Seismic specs.
I agree wholeheartedly about ranged barbs. The defensive passives, defensive buffs, and innate 30% damage reduction is unlike anything a ranged class can get for survivability. This is one of the reasons I think it'll be the best type of char to play in HC Inferno. You can get all the survivability for going toe-to-toe without actually needing to do that. I'm looking forward to getting there... eventually.