is there a point where IAS doesn't offer enough benefits?der=0>

[lanceuppercut]

At level 56 at the moment and been trying to stack IAS (even after the nerf, i love the fast attack speed) and sitting at 2.1 attacks per sec with a dual wield dagger combo, however i feel that i'm using things with IAS that are more mid range and rather than high end +str/vit/allres items.

For example, i'm using lacuni prowlers and pride of cassius, now i know there are better bracers and belts out there but none have IAS on them.

Is there an attacks per sec point where enough is enough and i should stop trying to stack IAS?

[Snerra]

For example, i'm using lacuni prowlers and pride of cassius, now i know there are better bracers and belts out there but none have IAS on them.

Is there an attacks per sec point where enough is enough and i should stop trying to stack IAS?

Stacking more IAS is good - there's no threshold where it gets bad. The only thing you have to worry about is if you're sacrificing other stats for it.

If your only concern is raising your damage; then simply stacking attack speed probably isn't the best way. For instance, getting a pair of bracers with 4.5% crit, str, and all res is cheaper and, I think, about equal to the Lacuni. It would also give you more survivability. I would not use an item just because it has IAS; the other stats have to be decent as well.

That said, you can definitely use the Lacuni and Pride of Cassius for now. But the belt is a pretty low level item, meaning the stat rolls are also low. It's a glass-cannon belt, and I bet it gives you a ton of damage. Later on, in Inferno, you're going to need some resistances, and belts are a great source of high all res.

The unique thing about IAS, however, is how strong it is together with Life on Hit. So I think if you want to go for high IAS, getting a lot of life on hit is essential. I wouldn't worry about these things until Inferno, though.

Some great pieces to consider once you reach 60, and collect some millions of gold:
- Andariel's visage (get one with a socket, str, 6% IAS if possible)
- Bul-Kathos's Wedding Band (with IAS)
- Tal Rasha's Guardianship
- Blackthorne's Medal (maybe the Breeches too, if you don't need more all res).
- Gloves would be rare gloves with IAS, crit chance, and all res.
- For your weapons, I would probably try to get one with LoH and one with crit dmg.

The challenge would be to get enough all res on the remaining pieces, since only the Guardianship has all res out of those legendary/set items.

[lanceuppercut]

I am trying for a LoH build, hence daggers for the attack speed. Only get one weapon with LoH and the other with crit damage? Interesting..

My Lacuni Prowlers aren't the best, they only have +45 STR but the all important IAS and movement speed, the same actually goes for the pride, +45 STR and movement/attack speed rolled into one.

As belts go, I have some higher level belts i will have available when i get to that level to possibly replace the Pride of Cassius, the lvl59 belt is 138 STR/50 DEX/46 all res/209 armor and the lvl60 belt is 220 STR/86 VIT/42 arcane/7% life/257 armor.

I do wonder how much a lack of all res on the lvl60 belt will affect my char (playing HC, so staying alive is good!), only at A1/Hell and those tree things that spawn the little poison flowers, they make my health drop at a more alarming rate than I'm comfortable with! My resists all around are at a paltry 30 or so.

I did pick up an Andariel's Visage a few days ago, 6% IAS and 112 STR, no socket however as the cheapest one on the HC GAH at the moment, is 1.7m more expensive than the 100k I paid for mine.

[Snerra]

HC, eh? Well, that certainly changes things.

HC means my gear suggestions will be way too expensive. The gear I mentioned you could probably get for around 10 mil on the SC GAH. Would take a while to farm, sure, but by no means out of reach. I just checked, and there's not even a single Blackthorne's Medal on the EU HC GAH, for goodness' sake xD So you can throw my suggestions out the window. HC also means you'll need a lot more resistances.

300 unbuffed all res would be a good starting point for A1. Since you're not using a shield, you're going to need higher resistances.

I suggested one weapon with LoH and one with crit dmg, because I figured you could get the LoH from rings+amulet instead. That's generally a cheaper option on SC, but the HC market is really weird, so I don't know.

[zakaluka]

The other questions to go with it.... Do you plan on using a standard dw double tornado build, in hc? What skills are you going to be taking that have an attached %-of-life heal?

My opinions are rather humble, as I haven't survived inferno yet. I always do something careless with a non-standard build, and wind up dead. But I DO know from experience that %-of-life heals can absolutely eclipse even a stacked LoH, if you think things through and get enough vit to make it happen (you're in HC after all, vit++++). I also know that a good shield will offer more damage reduction to you than any single skill or passive you can pick up.

And also that stacking IAS with DW (to max LoH) will make your rage globe bounce around like a superball. You WILL eventually find yourself rage-starved at a very inopportune moment, have you thought through how you will handle it? Does your build allow for it?

This is why I fall back on a high-crit axe/shield build with funnel. I know there are higher DPS alternatives out there but this is VERY rage-stable and keeps the life bar filling.... very fast.

That said: no. There's nothing stopping you from having all 4 DPS stats on every piece of gear that can carry them. Crit/CritD only outpace IAS if both are already very high. And even if you have reached that point, there's still no other way to fill that DPS void. Max DPS gear is still Crit/CritD/IAS/Str, regardless of how strong those 4 stats are relative to one another.

[lanceuppercut]

Its quite hard to find LoH stuff for cheap in the HC AH, I do have at the moment a +250 ammy, +80 and +60 rings and whatever I can scavenge on weapons (usually an open socket but can't afford to make anything over a +105 LoH gem) but anything over 200 LoH will cost a pretty penny.

My build is all about WotB, well okay not really but that is my only fury spender. Everything else generates or doesn't use fury.

LMB = frenzy/sidearm, only changed to this as I have had to drop down to DW swords as lvl58 daggers were so pricey, may keep frenzy as its growing on me, I miss cleave/rupture though.

RMB = revenge/proc

1 = ground stomp/wrenching smash = an extended range stun and a vortex
2 = leap/armour rune but will replace with the stun rune
3 = IP/ignorange for the healing
4 = WotB/insanity

Passives = tough as nails, nerves of steel and juggernaut, though I intend to replace juggernaut with "boon of.." as I feel wotb is a better CC prevention device than juggernaut.

I have 2 types of elite encounter, anything with frozen usually ends up with me popping wotb to prevent being frozen, then there is every other elite pack where rotating gs/leap/ip has served me well, even the occasional arcane.

Problem is both my crit stats are pretty low (10 or 15 and around 100%) and went for speed to make LoH "work" however my dps at lvl 58 is a paltry it seems 7k dps with DW swords.

I can tank most things so far with my health globe jumping up and down a lot and with frenzy once I get started, its nice but I feel like I'm not doing enough damage and need wotb to gun down elites.

Doesn't the life steal stat get nerfed the harder difficulty you're on?

And yes vit is quite high, about 10:8 in favour of str/vit.

Maybe this is why I'm not seeing the crazy dps figures other barbs have, becvause I'm playing HC maybe..?

[Snerra]

1 = ground stomp/wrenching smash = an extended range stun and a vortex
2 = leap/armour rune but will replace with the stun rune
3 = IP/ignorange for the healing
4 = WotB/insanity

I would stick with leap/armour rune, because there will be situations where you wont be able to stun (mobs running away etc), but you still need to take less damage. Leap/iron impact rune is as strong as Ignore Pain, with shorter CD.
Also, I'm going to STRONGLY recommend War Cry/Impunity once you get to lvl 60 and get some resistances. Drop Ground Stomp for it. You simply wont be able to do without it (even more so since you're not using a shield).

Problem is both my crit stats are pretty low (10 or 15 and around 100%) and went for speed to make LoH "work" however my dps at lvl 58 is a paltry it seems 7k dps with DW swords.

I can tank most things so far with my health globe jumping up and down a lot and with frenzy once I get started, its nice but I feel like I'm not doing enough damage and need wotb to gun down elites.

Doesn't the life steal stat get nerfed the harder difficulty you're on?

And yes vit is quite high, about 10:8 in favour of str/vit.

Maybe this is why I'm not seeing the crazy dps figures other barbs have, becvause I'm playing HC maybe..?

You're at level 58, still in hell, so your gear is obviously not going to give you 30k+ dps. HC gear is more sparse and/or more expensive. On top of that, since you're HC, you need 3 defensive passives, whereas I can get away with just 1 on SC.

Life steal does get weaker. Think it's reduced by 85% in Inferno. I have 2.90% on my belt, but I also have 40k dps - it's only good when you have very high dps, but then it also becomes amazing.
Zakaluka was referring to skills that heal you for a percentage of your max life, like revenge and WW/blood funnel. I wouldn't recommend WW for HC, though. Frenzy build is solid.

[liquid_mage]

Attack Speed is very good especially with LoH. I would look at balancing it with Crit Hit and Crit Damage if possible. Imo the biggest disadvantage to stacking all attack speed is to take full advantage it forces you to stand in and face tank. This strategy is fine for the most part but if you get some mobs that drop 2 types of ground damage forcing you to move a lot or monsters that run away a lot Crit Hit and Crit Damage become valuable because the few hits you do get in can hit harder.

Not sure if you have considered a slower MH weapon that hits harder, so your Revenges do more damage. Frenzy alternates which weapons hit, but Revenge works off of your MH weapon damage, not dps. I have a spear with attack speed on it right now as my MH and really want to switch it to a 1.2 or 1.3 speed weapon for the Revenge damage myself.

Snerra is right I have read that Life Leach is nerfed by 80% in Inferno, so LoH is better unless you move to a 2-hander.

[zakaluka]

All I was saying is you need a skill that heals you for % of your life to make up for low LoH. These skills don't feel the inferno downscaling.

Healing from revenge can totally eclipse LoH, if you have high vita. If you have high crit, one of the two healing runes from overpower can fill the same role. Try charge/juggernaut in place of leap/iron impact (one is an opener with high defense, other is an escape that will fill your health globe - just a slight shift in combat mentality). I still think shields are severely under-rated in dps builds. The 2nd wield rarely boosts damage by more than 15% (unless you have very high crit) - while a good shield can represent in the neighborhood of 50% overall reduction.

With juggernaut in place of iron impact the only big downfall is that you have to add Waller to the short list of dangerous situations. But, I find that as long as I'm using WoB correctly my only real problem there is waller/double AoE, waller/invul, or waller/shielding, especially if it's on a base mob type that hits slow/hard. Just have to recognize these and avoid the fight. Anything that slows my self-healing or out-damages it.

All are reasonable stopgaps to fix your healing deficit until your LoH stacks up quite a bit higher. Alternate solutions compared with dual wielding to max LoH.

But then again, I ww/funnel in hardcore. People generally consider that pretty crazy. I find it to be fairly stable, but I always discover an achilles heel in my build. Last time I didn't handle nightmarish well enough, in an area I outgeared substantially (so I was being careless).

[lanceuppercut]

Snerra: interesting take in the leap/armour rune about when stun is not feasible however if I were to drop GS for warcry which was always going to be likely then I need a stun from somewhere.

liquid Mage: I'm not sure I could drop to a slower attack speed weapon, am finding the 1.40 swords such a drag after using daggers since lvl22 or so.

Zakaluka: I guess for me by going to shield the thing I would miss the most is the DW bonus. At the moment leap would be my only waller counter and I'd be loathe to get rid of it.

Definately going to drop juggernaut in favour of the quicker wotb cooldown.

I've picked up two lvl60 600dps daggers in preperation as I'm now half a level away from 60. From memory, combined they have around 300 str, one open socket and either 400 or 600 LoH between them. Will be looking to replace the weaker one (that has 200 str, grr!) with something that actually has some LoH. To be fair the weaker one only cost me 2k so a bargain stop gap really from the current 350 dps swords I'm using now.

Shields don't have IAS, do they?