Botd War Pike Barb - Waste of Time...?

[SimmoK]

Ive recently acquired a 14ed eth war pike, and im going to make a (hopefully) silly high dam weapon out of it.

Its main purpose is for use on my 'glass cannon' charger pala. He currently does 12k dam with a 600dam weapon, so with the war pike he will 1 hit ko pretty much everyone (just need more ar charms, lol).

But anyway, a weapon like this would be too good to use just on a duel char, and since my girlfriend is going to be away for the weekend ill have time to make a new char, so I was considering a lance barb.

I can remember back in pre v1.08 these were all the rage, I had one myself, and used Iceblink (anyone remember that?). Anyway, I remember these chars being a lot of fun, and obv with a botd war pike hopefully 400ed+ he should do a helluva lot of dam.

However, since I never see any of them around anymore, im guessing there is a reason for this, since I never play barbs I was hoping for some info, or if people want to tell me im an idiot thats fine too. :D

[Painman]

Imbuing a pair of lances at lvl 29 and crossing your fingers, using your Hell imbue on an Ornate... yep those were the days.

WW is weapon speed dependent nowadays and that's why you don't see many Barbs running around with War Pikes - they're a bit too slow, even as an eBotD.

Give it a try, if you really want - he'll hit hard, but not really often enough is the problem. The king of 2H whirl weapons for those that wish to make old skool barbs is the eBotD Great Poleaxe.

I imagine that Pike would be quite sick on your Charger, though.

[SimmoK]

Imbuing a pair of lances at lvl 29 and crossing your fingers, using your Hell imbue on an Ornate... yep those were the days.

Lol, you got it man. Things were so much simpler back then. Although I do like a lot of the changes (runewords especially), some new things just annoy me (charms for instance, I like an empty inventory!).


Anyway, back to business. You made a very good point about attack speed influencing ww, this is something I forgot completely (been that long since I made a barb). Copy pasted from arreat summit:

"One-handed weapons
Breakpoints: 15, 10, -10, -35.
Number of frames in-between hit-checks after frame 8: 12, 10, 8, 6, 4

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

Examples:

#1 War pike of quickness (two-handed weapon)
Base weapon speed: 20
Weapon increased attack speed: 40
Whirlwind speed: 20 - 40 = -20
Breakpoint reached: -10
Number of frames in-between checks: 8
Hit-checks at frames 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, etc."


The IAS of botd is 60%, so that would automatically put the weapon at -40, only 20% away from the maximum possible for a two handed weapon. This is easily achievable with a good pair of gloves etc. So in that sense, it makes no difference which two handed weapon you go for, and since War Pike has > average dam than a Great Poleaxe it should be a better option (plus the fact thats the weapon im making anyway, and I cant afford 2x Vex and 2x Zod, lol).

So am I right in thinking I can get the maximum hit frames with a ebotd war pike with just 20% IAS from somewhere else? Or am I missing something...?

[struikje]

You'll not be able to hit last breakpoint with a ebotdwar pike. Only weapon ias matters with ww. If this is pvm, it'll still do some huge dmg, just because it isn't the most, doesn't make it worthless.
You will have to put away your plans to pvp though, it won't work as you'd want it to.

If you miss the old days, classic is still populated, and lancebarbs still work, as in classic you won't need ias for ww.

[Omikron8]

if you want a spear WW barb go with a botd ghost spear instead (elite spetum), it has base speed 0 so exactly hits the final breakpoint (similar to great poleaxe polearm)

the only downside is the high dex req for the weapon (122 for the runeword version) which can be partially compensated with arreats, dual ravens and torch (anni too if rich)