View Full Version : BvB with beast/duress?
after reading the following thread and doing some math myself, beast/duress looks very good on paper for BvB... yet no one is using it, weird. i want to know if some of you have tried it before i go forward and build it myself...
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=301690
let me repost the net PvP damage for each combo:
Rank1; Fury Zerk/Fort: Raw damage:258::Ow damage:533::Total:791
Rank2; Grief Zerk/Fort: Raw damage:598:: Ow damage:186::Total:784
Rank3; Grief Zerk/Duress: Raw damage:415::Ow damage:362::Total:777
Rank4; Grief Zwei/Fort: Raw damage:574::Ow damage:186::Total:760
Rank4; Grief Zwei/Duress: Raw damage:398::Ow damage:362::Total:760
Rank5; Beast/Duress: Raw damage:221::Ow damage:495::Total:716
Rank6; Cleaver/Duress: Raw damage:335::Ow damage:362::Total:697
Rank7; Cleaver/Fort: Raw damage:482::Ow damage:186::Total:668
Rank8; Botd/Duress: Raw damage:303::Ow damage:362::Total:665
Rank9; Botd/Fort: Raw damage:436::Ow damage:186::Total:622
Rank10; Beast/Fort: Raw damage:296::Ow damage:320::Total:616
in these calculations CB is completely ignored. i understand CB damage depends on you opponent's life but its possible to make a good estimation, and that is at least closer to reality than nothing at all.
a conservative one would be that the other guy has 5500 life and that you will kill him :), so his "average" life for the duel will be 2750. CB takes away 1/20 health in PvP, so 2750/20 = 137.5 life is taken by each crushing blow hit, on average.
gores and duress have 15% CB, so each, on average, will take out 137.5*0.15 = 21 life
beast has 20% CB, so 137.5*0.2 = 28 life
if you add those to the list, it now looks like this:
griefz/duress: 819
furyz/fort: 812
griefz/fort: 805
beast/duress: 786
now fanaticism from beast gives you 80% more AR, and fury 20%... say you have 20k AR with grief and fort/duress, you would have 23k with beast and almost 21k with fury. by multiplying the damages with the respective chance to hits, you get this (30k def opponent, same level, formula is 100*AR/(AR+DR)):
beast/duress: 341 (!)
furyz/fort: 334
griefz/duress: 328
griefz/fort: 322
not only that, but say you want to wear an ebugged sacred duress, requiring 222 str, you would save a whopping 34 str by equipping beast. and when you dont feel like breaking eths... i guess you could wear a nice eth/up'd toothrow, giving you 100% ow flat - as opposed to 93% with duress - and a lot more defense than any non-eth fort or duress.
lol what the ****, this seems too good to be true, did i miss something? what do you guys think? eth/upd arreats to go with that? (draculs, dungos, gores and angelic being implicit). what to put in SS, eld? (not sure a 40ed/9dex or 100AR/9dex would be be better than an eld with that build)
on a side note, i also tried to estimate what these rankings would look like with AR/lifers (23k, 24k and 26k AR...), using the fact in the thread i posted, they did their testing with 60 max dmg from charms at first, then 117 max dmg (whats used here), allowing me to know what kind of physical damage would be had with 0 max dmg charms. i'm not sure i got right but probably, and it looks like this:
beastz/duress: 342
griefz/duress: 336
furyz/fort: 329
griefz/fort: 321
furyz/fort is slightly worse, while griefz/duress is quite a bit better. i like griefz/duress here personally cuz its always nice to be able to switch to griefz/fort to quickly spank bad BvBs, BvCs, zealots and smiters, against which, BvBs aside, the run-away-and-watch-bleed technique doesnt really work :). with beast/duress you're kinda stuck because of the saved strength, but then again you could use grief, ap fort and non up'd arreats i guess.
mephiztophelez
12-09-2008, 02:38
the "general" rule of thumb for BvB is:
use a Grief weapon, you can use any armour you like (duress, toothrow, stone(o.O)).
use a Fortitude armour, you can use any weapon you like (fury, grief, some insane rare....).
remember, grief/fort damage is damage NOW, not damage over time. so hit twice in the 8 seconds of the open wounds counter, and your damage output is really ramping up.
for my mind, either grief/duress, grief/up'd-e-toot or fury/fort is the way to go for Open Wounds bvb builds (i have a lot of fun with a fury/dracs/gores 101% ow setup and a fort armour vs pub barbs, against gfg bvb's, it's back to grief/fort).
a major downside of the Beast runeword, when compared to Grief or Fury, is that Beast lacks an eth rune in it for -25% target defense. that -25%def is applied to total defense (so that 30k def opponent is now 22.5k def on AR calcs), this probably helps more than the AR boost from fanatacism.
in any case, beast's damage is kinda meh wielded one handed. beast shines when paired with a greif on a bvc.
there's a REASON you don't see beast/duress bvb's: they get wtfpwnt by grief/fort ones.
sigh, cut the professor attitude; i'm not new to BvBs.
indeed the -25% target defense is a big advantage, even though its nerfed 1/2 in PvP. beast still potentially saves you a lot of strength.
anyway, thing is, i've spanked a few beast BvBs but they seemed to have bad/average gear. i've never seen a properly built one, so i'm wondering whether this omg-wtf-bbq-beast-sucks-noob stuff is true, blown out of proportion, or a bit of a myth even.
i think a lot people go for grief/fort because, performance aside, its better vs other chars and makes BvBs duels go faster, so i'm not gonna conclude from the absence of beast BvBs that they necessarily suck. trikstalker's thread and mine are proof that, generally speaking, different setups are closely matched, so imo BvB comes down to quality of gear and especially charms a lot. as rare as beast BvBs are... i even wonder whether an elite one even exists out there lol.
so when you say "they get wtfpwnt by grief/fort ones", have you actually seen a good one duel or are you just making an educated guess?
mephiztophelez
12-09-2008, 04:50
sigh, cut the professor attitude; i'm not new to BvBs.
ok then, i won't try and answer your questions in future.
ok then, i won't try and answer your questions in future.
:P
most BvB people know about most of what you typed and it wasnt really related to the subject, so it gives the impression you assume people are idiots.
so, have you ever seen a GOOD/ELITE beast BvB do his thing or not?
mephiztophelez
12-09-2008, 05:48
so, have you ever seen a GOOD/ELITE beast BvB do his thing or not?
no.
678910
just to be sure, i mean one with top-notch gear, not necessarily one that is doing well :)
anyone else?
With top notch gear it all down to a lucky hit and how you duel. Now-a-days Fort/Grief is winner because people duel fast and to the point. Raw damage is king in today's BvB world.
I have tried grief paired with fort/duress/eth tooth/enigma and I have found that enigma/fort is the best. Although to make the enigma work, you must build around it. Duress is a close second, but as I said earlier it depends on how you duel and who you duel.
I have also tried to use a fury/beast with all the different armor combinations and found that grief is the king. Again, it highly depends on how and who you duel.
If you want to think outside the box, try using Guilluame's face. I'm considered rebuilding around it because adding in the CB/DS bonus you can have a mean hitting hitting barb. Paired with a grief/gores you will have a 60% chance to do double damage, meanwhile the CC arreats/grief/gores combo only gives you 48%.
mephiztophelez
15-09-2008, 03:19
If you want to think outside the box, try using Guilluame's face. I'm considered rebuilding around it because adding in the CB/DS bonus you can have a mean hitting hitting barb. Paired with a grief/gores you will have a 60% chance to do double damage, meanwhile the CC arreats/grief/gores combo only gives you 48%.
err, 50% ds with guilly face (15 gores, 15 guilly, 20 grief, not counting critical strike from mastery)
another option is a highlords + 2x Ravens and use ar/life charms instead of maxers. i've duelled highlords builds that still manage ~18k+ar. they tend to hit pretty hard. if i had a swish ar/lifer charmset i'd try it out myself.
If you want to think outside the box, try using Guilluame's face. I'm considered rebuilding around it because adding in the CB/DS bonus you can have a mean hitting hitting barb. Paired with a grief/gores you will have a 60% chance to do double damage, meanwhile the CC arreats/grief/gores combo only gives you 48%.
yes 61 with CS from mastery, not to mention 35% CB = ~49 damage on average if you look at my estimation of it.
another original build that does decent is fury/eth stone, eth/up'd arreats, ar/lifers and 20 ironskin/rest ww. only for people that like to run like *****es and watch the other guy bleed :). the dimishing return on defense smacks you in the face pretty hard in this era of eth bugged armors though.
what do you use with enigma exactly? hsarus or ow belt seems tempting cuz you already have 8% dmr from enigma...
I find that the OW from Drac's 'n Gores alone, fires quite often in duels from myself and my opponents. So basically, once it does fire, not only do you get that full damage bonus, you've got the huge physical damage from greif/fort on top.
I have an eth upped CrowCaw which I like alot. I have used this with Beast, but still I prefer Greif with it, since the OW damage fires almost all the time, the extra physical damage with it helps-alot.
I'm not saying that Beast/Duress wouldn't be good. It's hard to decide sometimes on one set-up that rules them all, since I'm not sure that it actually exists (due to the overall randomness in the game). For example. ebotdz has been poo-poo'd by alot of people as a BvB weapon (bottom of the list), and still it's not my preference either. However, I've had numerous duels with it and won vs well built greif/fort Barbs. Again I'm not saying I prefer it, but there are times when you can flip a quarter 5 times and get heads 5 times in a row.
Given all that, it comes down to the same reasoning behind a grief/fort drac/gore user. If OW happens to fire, then add in the physical damage and you've got a possible damage number thats hard to beat.
crowcaw, the mini toothrow :)
i think these two pretty much beat everything else among non-breakable armors (cept maybe eth bugged prudence in an ow/defense build).
beast's doom is probably that, unlike grief, fury or botd, it doesnt have -25% target defense as meph pointed out.
indeed botd with duress is far from being bad, as long as you use ar/lifers and not max/ar/lifers (like with any duress setup). it kinda sucks with fort though.
crushing blow only applies to the foe's remaining life, so your calculations wouldn't hold after you'd hit them once..
crushing blow only applies to the foe's remaining life, so your calculations wouldn't hold after you'd hit them once..
hence why i used a life median, try reading it all next time.
what do you use with enigma exactly? hsarus or ow belt seems tempting cuz you already have 8% dmr from enigma...
No my dear friend. The mods on gores are too good to pass on, even if you do get a lot more ar from hsarus. Your only real option is a nice OW belt, but this also means that you will have to sacrifice either a socket on your helm or SS for a Ber rune. 50% dr is a must.
The only way enigma is is truly effective is when you build around it. The whole point of an enigma is for the huge vita bonus you can get. Not only do you save points in strength, but you also gain +2skills and a nice 5%bonus to your health.
Remember D2 is just a numbers game. High life and nice mods give you a better chance of knocking the teeth out of your opponent.
Hmmm all this talking about enigma has just given me an idea. Time to hit the drawing board, e.g. good ol pen and paper !!
well i did some calcs and enigma SUCKS. the damage for life tradeoff isnt bad at all, but giving up ~2500 BASE def to an eth sacred barb is just way too much. thats ~20K def in the end, lol.
maybe it wasnt so bad before the "ebugged era", but i sure wouldnt use it now.
well i did some calcs and enigma SUCKS. the damage for life tradeoff isnt bad at all, but giving up ~2500 BASE def to an eth sacred barb is just way too much. thats ~20K def in the end, lol.
maybe it wasnt so bad before the "ebugged era", but i sure wouldnt use it now.
Yeah, ebugged armors just killed it. My two cents is that eth non-repair,as well as enchant is bm in ww duels. It ruins legit armors like prudence or stone. Enigma was good, one of the best barbs I ever dueled used enigma. 6k life, 22k ar, and 25k def, around there.
it did ruin bvb a bit; everything is crap vs ebugged fort/duress now (cept maybe eth stone). before you had all these nice uniques... and ow/defense builds were more viable, because the diminishing return on defense wasnt as bad.
it did ruin bvb a bit; everything is crap vs ebugged fort/duress now (cept maybe eth stone). before you had all these nice uniques... and ow/defense builds were more viable, because the diminishing return on defense wasnt as bad.
Tell me about it. Thats why I strongly believe that temp-eth is bm in ww dueling. It makes so many good armors obsolete. Nevertheless a good fools weapon paired with tons of ow will keep the ebugged fu*kers at bay. Of course it's not every day that you come around a godly fools weapon that is viable for ww, remember only the ias from the weapon counts :crazyeyes:....
Btw: If you play on east/sc/nl whisper me at *hun_master.
I'm on the verge of making my new BvB and I'm always looking for worthy opponents.
mephiztophelez
22-09-2008, 05:17
yuh, ***-bug armours are pretty meh imho. the z-bug AP forts on west NL (and east nl? idk) have become the de-facto BvB armour, which is sad as it's killed so many other armours.
differences in BvB builds (on west nl anyways) are limited to charmsets, dracs vs rends, the occasional highlords build, socketing options and the occasional use of an up'd e-toot instead of the zbug fort.
i wouldn't object to all the z-bugs going popola. it would bring some variety and spice back to bvb.
i think i may have found a nice compromise which im gonna build this ladder season, especially with the pretty good SS rare jewel i just got for almost nothing (27ed/8dex/-15%req for a guillaume's face or something, next lol!).
its optimized for eth/up'd toothrow but will still do very well with an ebugged fort or duress kraken/archon/whatever armor with ~500+ base def, cuz although i'll have less defense then i'll have more life. kinda feel like keeping to myself but here it is anyway :)
grief
eth/up'd toothrow
non up'd arreats (40ed/9dex, cant use str here so no 30ed/9str/9dex, see below)
SS (jewel i mentioned, -15% req is key here)
ar/life SCs
rest = standard stuff
eth/up'd toothrow str req is 164, arreats 118, so 118 + 20 = 138, + 30 from SS (without -15% req on it this wouldnt work) = 168.
with p torch/anni i'm looking at 118 - 40 = 78 base str, way better than the 132 eth sacred barbs typically have (142 for non-eth sacred...).
also has the practical advantage of not relying on sacred, meaning i can use whatever eth i find among kraken/archon/balrog (or other armors if the base def is awesome). with ar/life instead of ar/max/life duress will be about just as good as fort, so whether i get 3 or 4 sockets i wont care either :)
downside to me is i wont be able to use grief/doom/fort/coa/clegaws to BM rape exile-using smiters which i think all deserve to die. you need 134 base str for that setup. oh well :)
i was tempted by fury/eth up'd arreats/ebugged sacred prudence (eth stone for the tough duels...), but it relies on the ebug and 20 ironskin kinda sucks for anything but BvB, so meh.
another thing that makes BvB a bit homosexual in NL is the 3/20/20s, which give fort users an edge. i did some calcs and duress can be just as good with perfect ar/life charm (it kinda sucks with ar/max)... but obviously, unlike a bunch of 3/20/20s, thats pretty much impossible to get.
mephiztophelez
23-09-2008, 03:18
fyi: my bvb uses a 40ed/-15%reqs jool in the SS and a 25maxer in my non-upd arreats along with dracs over rends. low strength, high vit build with decent OW.
charmset is a mix of ar/lifers and max/ar/lifers that i'm still working on.
yes i remember your build from some random bvb thread :). life usually wins unless the other guy has some insane def from arreats/armor.
why a maxer though? i'm pretty sury 40% ed does a lot more than 13 more average base dmg?
btw according to some math i did, grief/fort is the only setup for which having ar/max or ar doesnt matter, its basically the same exact damage in the end. thats a very nice practical advantage, especially on ladder.
for duress/stone ar > ar/max and for fury/fort, ar/max > ar (seems strange, but then again fury has 13 more DS than grief...)
mephiztophelez
23-09-2008, 04:31
yes i remember your build from some random bvb thread :). life usually wins unless the other guy has some insane def from arreats/armor.
yes and no. the damage range on a cookie-cutter bvb is actually a lot wider than one might think. this is one of the reasons that a grief CB is a better weapon than a zerk (but good luck getting 39ias AND a good damage roll on a cb...)
getting lucky with a few DS strikes can win a duel. get a DS on a low damage roll and it's kinda frustrating.
why a maxer though? i'm pretty sury 40% ed does a lot more than 13 more average base dmg?
the maxer adds considerably more damage than the ED jool.
ed jools in helm/shield add to our off-weapon %ed, which includes the %ed from skills (ww and mastery) along with the %ed from our fort. basically, we're already swimming in off wep %ed, an extra 40% tacked onto it isn't the huge boost you might think it is. the maxers get boosted by our off weapon %ed. play with a damage calc.
iso: 18max/9min/-15%reqs jools X 2!!!
btw according to some math i did, grief/fort is the only setup for which having ar/max or ar doesnt matter, its basically the same exact damage in the end. thats a very nice practical advantage, especially on ladder.
please believe me when i tell you that a barb with a full suite of 3/xx/xx's hits considerably harder than a barb with full ar/lifers (unless the AR barb is a highlords build.....)
please believe me when i tell you that a barb with a full suite of 3/xx/xx's hits considerably harder than a barb with full ar/lifers (unless the AR barb is a highlords build.....)
well yeah, they also hit less often, so it evens out.
about the maxers, take a non-sup 395 grief's base damage: 395 + 48 from the zerk itself = 443
40% ed:
443*0,4 = 177
177*1.49 (DS) = 264
264*0.17*0.5 (pvp penalty and 50% dmr) = 22 more dmg
15 max/10 min jewel i.e. 13 more average base dmg
total ed: 174% (29 ww) + 158% (27 axe) + 222% (str eth sacred) + 300% (fort) +40% (other jewel = 40% ed :P) = 894%
13 + 13 * 8.94 = 129
129*1.49 = 192
192*0.17*0.5 = 16 more dmg
40% ed with perfect max from charms (120):
563*0.4 = bla bla = 28 more dmg
I have not looked into the math behind it, but ar/max lifers will usually lose vs your C/C Grief/Fort. From experience what I have seen is Vita > Damage > Ar.
The best piece of advice I can tell you is that this is a game of chance. As long as your %chance to hit is > than the % chance to hit for your opponent to hit you, you are in excellent shape.
Remember its not always about how much damage you can do to then, but how much can your opponent hurt you.
ar/max lifers will usually lose vs your C/C Grief/Fort. From experience what I have seen is Vita > Damage > Ar.
??? that doesnt make sense :P
i'll add that more AR also means you trigger ow and the -25% target's defense more, its not just a raw damage thing. even grief/fort barbs still have ow...
the great thing about having huge damage is that you can beat basically anyone by getting lucky, i.e. scoring a few massive hits in one fight. that inconsistency also means you can get beat by some crappy barb in the next...
i find that a bit silly; personally i like consistency. ar/life gives you a bit more of it, and ow a lot more, since it always does the same damage.
mephiztophelez
26-09-2008, 00:04
the great thing about having huge damage is that you can beat basically anyone by getting lucky, i.e. scoring a few massive hits in one fight. that inconsistency also means you can get beat by some crappy barb in the next...
i find that a bit silly; personally i like consistency. ar/life gives you a bit more of it, and ow a lot more, since it always does the same damage.
most BvB duels (well, the ones that count for anything) are first-to-five or even first-to-ten wins.
??? that doesnt make sense :P
I know it doesn't make sense, but it's D2, a lot of things about this game do not make any sense.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.