Barbarian WW Dual-Wielding: Use a Toothbrush
Posted 28 November 2012 by FluxIt’s pretty well known that some skills in Diablo III, when used while dual-wielding, only take their damage from the main hand weapon. One of the most prominent is the little tornadoes left behind by 
Sprint: Run like the Wind, and thus when using that skill for a main attack, players are able to avoid the classic problem of dual wielding builds; the fact that it’s harder to find two good weapons than one.
You almost feel sorry for Azmodan.
Happily, Hansenvi did and shared his results in a short guide posted in our Barbarian strategy forum.
The test is simple but fair; he took on Inferno Azmodan, on Monster Power 10, three times, while changing nothing but his off-hand weapon. All of the off-hand weapons had a socket and 100% Critical Damage, but none of them had any strength or other stats, and their DPS and speed varied widely. What was the result? Take a look; here are the weapons with their DPS, attack speed, the listed damage in the character window, and how long the total battle took.
Yes, that’s correct. The time to kill is identical, or at least within the margin for error of the test, despite the fact that the DPS listed is hugely different depending on the weapon. From this it seems pretty clear that if you’re going to dual wield in the popular and over-powered Barbarian WW/Sprint build, you don’t need to worry a bit about damage on your off-hand weapon. Just go for crit and stats and enjoy the slaughter, while saving up your every penny for the best main-hand weapon you can possibly afford, since it’s what really matters.
we took your main hand – and then we doubled it!!
I both like and dislike this.
On one hand it can potentially make a pretty crappy weapon to be extremely useful and powerful anyway which is kind of neat. I don’t know if there is any unique weapon that has very good stats but not so high dmg. That weapon could potentially be worth it’s weight in gold now.
On the other hand it feel like a bad design. Also it’s very hidden to the player. I mean, it took 6 months with the most common build for the community to figure this out.
They should add this info to the skill tooltip. “Dmg based on main hand weapon only”
Big strength vitality and socket with high crit damage – no use for DPS or IAS. But then surely if you are a WW barb you knew this already…
I sold a dagger last week for 15 million with the stats above despite it being 200dps, so some people already knew!
That’s just flat out ignorant development.
Not just because the WW barbs clearly own all other barb builds (and all other characters for that matter) but from a quality control standpoint.
It’s increasingly clear how poorly this game was play tested by people who are both GOOD at the game and intelligent enough to spot problems of this nature.
Couldn’t agree more with you Aug. Recommend button doesn’t work in internet explorer 9 otherwise i would have just clicked that on your post.
Wow. That’s a pretty decisive test lol.
Does weapon speed matter in the offhand, to get as many proccs as possible from the whirlwinds after sprint? If so, I guess a fast dagger with str, socket and critdmg should be the best to use?
Look at the test. Offhands varied from 1.3 to 1.66 attacks per second. Kill time did not significantly vary at all.
I feel a little sorry for what i’m about to say but i’ve waited JUST for a post like this…
this class is totally OP
Who cares if class is OP? Every class should be imo.
With the absolute best gear for your class and good game/skill mechanics, I would agree. However, that’s not what we have. What we have is retarded/broken, completely ridiculous. Melee/Tank that kills everything while running around or away from it, that cannot actually melee/tank. Spell caster that kills everything while it’s perma-frozen. Who designed this crap. Well, we all know who.
Exactly why Barbs are flat out broken/overpowered/poorly-designed. They kill best with broken/overpowered skill mechanics, while running around in circles and/or away from everything like big wussies, and cannot tank worth a crap and/or stand toe-to-toe with anything without the little dust-devils proc’ing effects/life-return from everything on the screen.
And while I’m here, the broken/overpowered/poorly-designed Wizard is just as bad with its perma CC/defensive spam via critical mass.
It’s sad the only viable/efficient builds for these two classes are completely retarded/broken/overpowered.
Exacly my thoughts too. Good post Galtrovan.
Wizard only having the broken/op/poorly-designed build has been debated for a long time in this thread: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?839319-Is-the-wizard-underpowered
While I agree with you, what would you have blizzard do? Just completely remove them? Then what? Barbs just start being revenge tanks, I can understand wizards endless CC, but these builds are alot of fun, and I think the fact that their OP is kind of what makes them fun, knowan wants to go back to just doing nothing. I personally think they should just tone these builds down a bit, and add more viable ones, because if they got rid of the barb and wizard builds completely, I would quit, no hesitation. I go on d3 to have fun, not spend 300+ hours on a character just to struggle for another 300+ hours using a build I don’t even like because its slow, bland, and involves me just clicking a bunch defensive skills and a single or two offensive ones.
I really don’t know that answer. Blizzard messed up. I would say it’s now to late for Blizzard to remove these builds. As you said, you find them fun. Even I found them fun for a few hours each, but after that, I quit playing them due to the reasons I stated in my posts above.
Again, as you said, about the only thing Blizzard could do is tone these builds down a bit and add more viable ones via skill and/or monster defensive tweaks.
I assume this is not true on other classes like the Monk? This is only for WW Barbs?