Endless Relentless?

[DarlosND]

So, right now I'm playing with a build that has Relentless and Ignore Pain + Iron Hide. Something I've found to be fun is letting my life go critical, then activating Ignore Pain and just going crazy with fury spenders during my 7 seconds of near invulnerability. The 50% damage reduction from Relentless plus the 65% reduction from Ignore Pain turns enemy attacks into fleabites, allowing me to just sit at critical with almost no fear for the whole 7 seconds, swinging away with HotA or what have you.

This got me thinking about how I might expand upon this idea, just for fun at least. I guess ultimately the idea is to go critical, and then just spew out big damage while using all of your defensive abilities, hopefully killing whatever you're fighting before you run out of them. What other skills do you think might work with this idea? Ignore pain is obviously only good for up to 7 seconds, every 30 seconds. I suppose other options might be Leap + Iron Impact, Threatening Shout, and using more defensive passives. Obviously you don't want to get TOO many defensive skills though, because then you'll start hurting your damage, defeating the whole point. Also, such a build wouldn't really favor LoH, since that would knock you out of critical pretty quick. Tricky tricky...

I'm sure somebody might argue that the best "use fury constantly" build is going to be the typical Into the Fray + Run Like The Wind + WW setup, but everybody does that and that irks the hipstergamer in me. Plus that limits you to Sprint and WW as fury spenders only, and also requires buying expensive high-demand LoH weapons. I just thought maybe Relentless could offer up some kind of alternative, if used correctly.

Thoughts?

[ScottieK]

Maybe furious charge (merciless assault) and rend or hota or something?
Guess it depends what act you are in. Or even even Seismic slam with strength from the earth (cheaper slams).
Furious charge works way way way better with sprint though so you'd probably want to use it.

You could always use sprint with the marathon rune (50% for 5 seconds) if you really don't want to use sprint tornado's, but if you want to stay in relentless for good and not die, you are going to want to be fast or you are much more likely to somehow die.

You could charge through a pack for fury, run back a bit, and seismic slam away until they reach you, then charge through them again, etc.

[DarlosND]

Hrm, good idea. I actually used to do something similar a while back, now that I think about it. I just never thought to combine it with Relentless at the time. I'll have to try that out. Furious Assault and Seismic Slam are both insanely fun to use.

That said, I was thinking more along the lines of a build that would let you stand toe-to-toe with enemies. And even when furious assaulting and seismic slamming, you're not always going to get away from enemies. (like elites with Waller, or elite versions of already fast enemies that also have the Fast attribute. ugh) So thinking about what other skills might synergise well with that 50% damage reduction from Relentless is still worth it, I think. I'm just wondering if there's options for that which are more clever than simply "more short-term defensive skills."

[Doppel]

I would suggest Seismic Slam with the Stagger rune. Even with all those defensive stats, being at 20% life is still very dangerous, so it's best to avoid taking damage at all (by incapacitating your enemies) then it is to try and soak it up.
For the rest, i'd say a single target fury generating attack (personally i like Smite).
Impunity ofcourse.
Insanity.
A skill you can move around with (i think Iron Impact is a good one that will give you some added defense when things get rough and you need to reposition).
And maybe another more or less defensive skill like Crushing Advance.
For the two other passives i'd go Superstition and Nerves of Steel assuming you have lot's of Vit (which i think is advisable).

The biggest flaw in this build i can see is the lack of a heal when you face enemies that just catch up to you doing massive damage, nomatter what you do.

[galzohar]

If only spenders weren't so damn weak this might have some purpose to it...

Even then, though, probably not nearly as strong as most other possible builds.

[ScottieK]

Hrm, good idea. I actually used to do something similar a while back, now that I think about it. I just never thought to combine it with Relentless at the time. I'll have to try that out. Furious Assault and Seismic Slam are both insanely fun to use.

That said, I was thinking more along the lines of a build that would let you stand toe-to-toe with enemies. And even when furious assaulting and seismic slamming, you're not always going to get away from enemies. (like elites with Waller, or elite versions of already fast enemies that also have the Fast attribute. ugh) So thinking about what other skills might synergise well with that 50% damage reduction from Relentless is still worth it, I think. I'm just wondering if there's options for that which are more clever than simply "more short-term defensive skills."

Furious charge is easy to get away from wallers..just wait for them to get close, then charge through them all back out the wall. You have to make sure you hold shift during the charge though, or instead of going through everything you will hit a monster you run into and then stop (and probably get caught and die).

Also you are immune to freeze orb nova during any part of the charge animation, even the end when you are stationary and swing your weapons.

Furious charge + sprint you will always escape, unless you screw up the charge and get stuck.

[aerial]

There are some problems with relentless, if you would like to keep it permanent, you can't regen health, and you need huge EHP. With health regen, once your hp is slightly above relentless activation point, you take full damage, and can easily get one shot. Also there is that annoying near death graphic (red screen).

[DarlosND]

There are some problems with relentless, if you would like to keep it permanent, you can't regen health, and you need huge EHP. With health regen, once your hp is slightly above relentless activation point, you take full damage, and can easily get one shot. Also there is that annoying near death graphic (red screen).

That red screen just makes me MORE ANGRY AAAAAAARKLHGS:LJRA

... but yeah. I'm thinking for now this build would be pretty hard to make work without amazing equipment. (at which point you could make any build work) I think galzohar is right in that fury spenders just don't pull enough weight to really make this worth it. The only way I could think to really enhance damage as far as it will go with fury spenders is maybe use a combination of Rend and HotA, where you use Rend, and then use HotA while that's causing bleed damage. This is assuming of course that you don't just want to run away. At a range, seismic slam and weapon throw are really your only options. I wish the 75% fury usage actually reduced the fury usage of Dread Bomb, so if you had 100 fury you'd get 300% damage but only use 25 fury. But no dice, lol.

Ah well. Maybe I'll think of something clever to do with this build after the big balance patch.

[Doppel]

I wish the 75% fury usage actually reduced the fury usage of Dread Bomb, so if you had 100 fury you'd get 300% damage but only use 25 fury. But no dice, lol.

Or act as if you have 4 times the fury, for 1200% damage. lol

I didn't know that if you have even 1 hp above 20% of your max hp, and you take damage, Relentless doesn't actually reduce the damage you take (minus 1 hp). That's terrible.

[DarlosND]

Or act as if you have 4 times the fury, for 1200% damage. lol

I didn't know that if you have even 1 hp above 20% of your max hp, and you take damage, Relentless doesn't actually reduce the damage you take (minus 1 hp). That's terrible.

Yeah, that is a flaw indeed. Like if your max hp is 40k and you currently have 8001 hp and you take like 10k damage from a single blow, you're just boned. As opposed to taking 4999 damage or something. So it doesn't really save you from getting clobbered by Belial or anything. I really wish they'd do something about that.