Several trials on Belial that failed made me try switching to Frenzy for the occasion to see if that helped and actually it did!
Question is: Should I keep using Frenzy or go back to Cleave again (I leveled the entire character with Dual Wielding Cleave and was quite happy with it. Now I am unsure what to do.
Any other experiences? I mean, you obviously can't compare Belial with The Butcher but The Butcher I get down in 20 secs with Cleave. Kulle was no problem either. First try down last week but Belial seems an exception? Or will everything be a lot harder from now on and is Frenzy really better from now on?
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i have become a big fan of frenzy myself. to me its all about killing elites and bosses and imo frenzy does that better. cleave is amazing vs whites but i have no problems with them anyway
Leveling my barb in nm right now, i prefer cleave for normal monster killing but frenzy is much better for boss killing IMO. By the time i hit 60 and get NV i will probably go for Frenzy as my left click.
My barb is by no means in the best gear but the LoH on Belial with frenzy's attack speed makes it shine on single target bosses like belial vs. cleave. With some fairly average gear I can just stand still on Belial except on the meteor storm section of the fight where I have to run around a bit. Combined with my other skills I can just keep near enough full HP on belial thanks to the LoH + IAS of dual wield. With Cleave I think I'd probably not get enough HP back. As I say my stats are far from awesome and that 1 skill is the difference for me when fighting him.
I used to not be a fan of Frenzy as I never really liked in in D2 either, despite its greater bonuses in D2. Now I have become fond of it within the right build.
The same build helped me kill Ghom in A3 (just) using the standard Overpower (crushing advance) build for the fight. Using frenzy is essential with that because of the faster attack speed = more regular crits = small er CD on overpower.
I'd stick to Frenzy, especially if you're dual-wielding because the fast attack speed lets you build up Frenzy stacks pretty quickly, in addition to proccing on-hit effects more often.
You can use Seismic Slam with the -15 rage cost rune as your AoE tool instead. That's what I did when I started doing Butcher runs and realized that boosting my single target DPS would make the overall biggest improvement to my build (used to run Cleave + SS).
I think I might stick with Frenzy indeed. After posting this I had already switched back to Cleave and tried A3Q1 for a minute or two and noticed that, while indeed, trashmobs were fairly easy to do, the first championpack (Winged Moloks) proved to be too hard. So this evening after work I will be trying again but with Frenzy, expecting or at least hoping for it to go better.
Against belial you can use battle rage (+fury on criticals), and frenzy (damage rune), with weapon throw (spend all fury rune). With this you can pop WOTB (extra time for fury gained), and use battle rage and frenzy to gain fury, and weapon throw to spend fury, and you will stay in WOTB the entire fight. Make sure you use weapon throw to use up fury otherwise it doesn't count as "gained fury" once you reach your max (which is 100 for most) and you won't prolong WOTB.
Frenzy and sidearm is always better than cleave in inferno because in addition to the attack speed, the sidearm also procs for Life On Hit, whereas with cleave there are modifiers which reduce your gained life depending on how many mobs you hit. In terms of damage, it's practically the same. I dare say that frenzy deals even more damage in inferno as barb, because you generally won't let mobs completely surround you for the cleave to maximize damage, especially when cleave can't leech life as efficiently.
If you have enough life on hit and decent gear (i'd say around 10 million in gear is easily sufficient), the more fun and faster farming spec would be to do a whirlwind barb. It lets you cut through dungeons way faster (e.g. act 3) until you find a champion pack, and the ability of WW to hit while dodging lets you leech life even when you're backing away from mobs (you can do it with frenzy as well, but a lot harder and less efficient). Generally the only time that kiting with WW spec is necessary is if you're against really hard hitters and you need to dodge their "charged up" hits every once in a while, or if they have fire chains (seriously, the DPS on fire chains is off the charts, even if they do 1 damage to you, the rate at which it damages you is nuts). Otherwise you just keep spinning, and gaining fury, and leaching life.
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