Why does Ariocs Needle suck?

[Galabab]

Ariocs Needle seemed a nice weapon to me so i made a spear barb for it.
But the result was more then disappointing.
Compared to IK Maul its not half that good! And i dont understand why.
It has a little lesser average damage but it has 50% deadly strike, it also has Ignore Target Defense.

Ik Maul has elemental damage alrite but not that much and should be partly resisted by monsters in hell so it even less effective.

I even put a shael in ariiocs needle to reach 4frame WW and still i can hardly do RQ myself. And i have more then enough leech too.
So why is it so?
Can it be that Ik Maul's 200% increased damage to demons and undead is THAT important?

ps: oh the Needle also has TWICE the reach of IK maul...

[krischan]

An IK maul has a 35-40% chance to deliver a crushing blow which is dealing a fraction of the enemy's life (1/4 for a regular monster, 1/8 for a boss) on top of its regular damage and if the enemy has lots of life, it will speed up killing it a lot. CB is subject to physical resistance, so PIs are immune and e.g. 50% resistant ones will just suffer half of that damage.

[Galabab]

Is CB so important for WW then? It felt like the Needle is half as good as IK maul.
Those monsters have around 5k life so a successfull CB hit would make 1.25k extra damage with the first strike. Hm probaly you are right. Thanks!

[Doctor Clock]

CB is useful for nearly all physical PvM builds that attack multiple targets (ie, WW barbs, Zealots, Fury druids, etc). Crushing blow can be had from many sources (Gorerider, Goblin Toe, Duress, Guillaume's Face, crafted blood gloves). Best of luck.

[Naab]

An Eth ariocs needle is very potent merc weapon actually,the all skills on it boost merc's aura(might for example) and it has very good damage due to the DS.

[krischan]

Regarding ITD, it only eliminates the ar/dr part of the to-hit chance equation, so if your level is lower than the enemy's level, you still won't hit all the time. ITD doesn't work on bosses at all BTW.

Regarding DS, a barb already has a bit from the mastery and you might get more of it from items like Goreriders and Highlord's, so a barb with an IK maul will deal a lot of deadly strikes as well. It can trigger just once BTW, spo percentages beyond 100% don't make sense and as the chance from the mastery works in separate (let's assume it's 22%), you won't benefit from equipment 22% of the time because it already triggered.

[aj2000]

a +4 arioc is particular good for boosting merc aura (prayer, might, defiance maybe) particularly if you run a commander style build, ex. Harmony/bloodraven zon, summon nec ...etc

[Blood_And_Iron]

To add to what's been provided here so far, IK maul does not come with elemental damage. You're not comparing Arioc's against the IK partial set bonuses, are you?

Besides that + CB, speed is another crucial factor between these two weapons. I can't imagine Arioc's comparing against the standard full IK + 30ias in the maul setup.

This would seem like a good time for you to get into weapon speed calculations. I'll leave it to you to browse this forum and others who know better than I to point you the way.

[krischan]

Arioc's with shael hits the final WW speed breakpoint as well.

[Galabab]

some recent testing with Guliaums Face for CB didnt show noticable improvements.
So its still not really clear to me why Ariocs is so bad.

speed - equal
damage - nearly equal even without DS
elemtental damage - none but not very relevant on hell if im not wrong
range - twice of IK mauls
to hit chance - much better than Ik mauls

de facto efficency - 50% of IK mauls at best! Why?
Im comparing killing speed of a Full IK barb vs my barb with ariocs and guilaums face.

Regarding ITD, it only eliminates the ar/dr part of the to-hit chance equation, so if your level is lower than the enemy's level, you still won't hit all the time. ITD doesn't work on bosses at all BTW.

Regarding DS, a barb already has a bit from the mastery and you might get more of it from items like Goreriders and Highlord's, so a barb with an IK maul will deal a lot of deadly strikes as well. It can trigger just once BTW, spo percentages beyond 100% don't make sense and as the chance from the mastery works in separate (let's assume it's 22%), you won't benefit from equipment 22% of the time because it already triggered.

I was doin the testing on monsters around my level so i should still hit like 95% of the time (lvl 82 in act4).
According DS there was some weird thing about it cuz barbarian masteries dont provide DS but CS so extrra DS from Ariocs should defintly be somehow usefull.

[krischan]

Yes, I simplyfied the DS vs. CS issue a bit, but my point was that if the CS from the barb mastery triggers or if you have more then 100% DS anyway, the effect of Arioc's DS will be less than expected.

It's a bit hard to estimate the effectivity of a weapon with WW. Try an attack skill which targets just a single monster, like conc. That will not take range into consideration properly, but range shouldn't be that that significant when WWing into groups, as there are probably enough targets in close range to make an attack once every 4 frames. I'm not sure if I'm understanding WW correctly, however. Also, avoid bosses and their packs when testing, to eliminate the randomness of their additional abilities between different packs.

[Painman]

As stated above, I believe this weapon shines the most when it's on an act 2 NM Might merc for a phys dmg toon. My currently lvl 83 WF Zon gets another 150 max Strafe damage and 198 max GA damage with a +4 Arioc's in his hands (on top of his default Might bonus). That's not shabby, and the weapon itself is quite sufficient to keep him poking and leeching away at a decent clip.

[Blood_And_Iron]

I don't understand how you can compare 2 items with a full set. A set that's arguably the best in the game at that.

Are you counting elemental damage? That adds up to be a lot.

Are you at the last breakpoint for WW? IK set adds additional IAS outside of weapon speed.

Is your sample size from a situation where the defensive set bonuses do not matter? 1 on 1 with conc or something sounds like a better testing method.

Are you attacking undead?

Etc., etc. There are so many apples to oranges. Has every IK bonus been provided for? I assume it's the same barb you're using.

Edit: Oh and pardon me for forgetting one of the most important factors. Yes +200% to Demons and Undead matters a lot. That's doing 200 extra damage if your base damage was 100, as in 500 damage to Demons compared to 300. Add in a couple of hundred elemental damage that's easily twice the damage.

[Galabab]

I don't understand how you can compare 2 items with a full set. A set that's arguably the best in the game at that.

Are you counting elemental damage? That adds up to be a lot.

Are you at the last breakpoint for WW? IK set adds additional IAS outside of weapon speed.

Is your sample size from a situation where the defensive set bonuses do not matter? 1 on 1 with conc or something sounds like a better testing method.

Are you attacking undead?

Etc., etc. There are so many apples to oranges. Has every IK bonus been provided for? I assume it's the same barb you're using.

Edit: Oh and pardon me for forgetting one of the most important factors. Yes +200% to Demons and Undead matters a lot. That's doing 200 extra damage if your base damage was 100, as in 500 damage to Demons compared to 300. Add in a couple of hundred elemental damage that's easily twice the damage.

Well actually i put together a set of items which all together simulate the IK set. In the first place it is supposed to simulate damage an IK barb does with WW.
As i explained i get almost all things IK maul and the set provide offensive wise.
Now where you bring up that +200dam to demons/undead it seems to me its really the only thing that i dont have aside of elemental damage. Now lets look into it:

First for the +200% to demons/undead:
As far as i know that damage is applied together with +dam from WW and mastery thus resulting in around 30% actual damage increase. Hmm thats a lot actually ...

Now for the elemental damage.
Ik barb hits with 250 of each elemntal damage on average. The monsters in act4 resist at least one of these so we get about 1000 damage more with each WW hit. The monsters have 5~9k life. Hmmm

Thats it :) both factors together are quite significant!

Thx people finally with your help i understand :)

[krischan]

I don't understand how you can compare 2 items with a full set. A set that's arguably the best in the game at that.

Are you counting elemental damage? That adds up to be a lot.
No, just the weapons on their own, without set bonuses. At least I'm doing that.

Are you at the last breakpoint for WW? IK set adds additional IAS outside of weapon speed.
The IK maul needs an additional 30% on-weapon while Arioc's needs another 20%, both of which I'm expecting to be solved by appropriate socketing.

Is your sample size from a situation where the defensive set bonuses do not matter? 1 on 1 with conc or something sounds like a better testing method.
See above. And yes, comparisons are better made in 1 on 1 fights with something like conc, as I already said.

Are you attacking undead?

Etc., etc. There are so many apples to oranges. Has every IK bonus been provided for? I assume it's the same barb you're using.

Edit: Oh and pardon me for forgetting one of the most important factors. Yes +200% to Demons and Undead matters a lot. That's doing 200 extra damage if your base damage was 100, as in 500 damage to Demons compared to 300. Add in a couple of hundred elemental damage that's easily twice the damage.

Both go to the off-weapon part of the damage calculation, even when on a weapon. The typical barb has several hundreds of percent of off-weapon bonuses already, but it will have a noticable effect.

[Blood_And_Iron]

Well actually i put together a set of items which all together simulate the IK set. In the first place it is supposed to simulate damage an IK barb does with WW.
As i explained i get almost all things IK maul and the set provide offensive wise.
Now where you bring up that +200dam to demons/undead it seems to me its really the only thing that i dont have aside of elemental damage. Now lets look into it:

First for the +200% to demons/undead:
As far as i know that damage is applied together with +dam from WW and mastery thus resulting in around 30% actual damage increase. Hmm thats a lot actually ...

Now for the elemental damage.
Ik barb hits with 250 of each elemntal damage on average. The monsters in act4 resist at least one of these so we get about 1000 damage more with each WW hit. The monsters have 5~9k life. Hmmm

Thats it :) both factors together are quite significant!

Thx people finally with your help i understand :)

Ok I trust you have the mods all set up. Your calculations for the extra damage look right, so have fun :)