Hello barb forums, after about a month hiatus from the game due to being frustrated with it, I came back to try out the WW barb. I've been trying to farm act III but some elite packs are still very difficult/nearly impossible to kill, particularly ranged mobs that run away like speargoats, quillbeasts, etc. I've got a couple million to play with (22 million) and was wondering what upgrades I should look for. I know my crit is a bit low but it seems really hard to find gear with crit that is an actual upgrade to what I have. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
That honestly looks like an old Sword and Board Revenge Barb's gear that suffered an attempt into a Double Tornado. Your main problem is that your gear isn't particularly suited to this build, and it seems you've focused on upgrading the wrong things in the wrong order. Namely, it seems you tried to pump strength to up damage and just hope to kill crap before it kills you. And although that can work, I've never thought of it as the most efficient way to play the game. Far easier to upgrade defensive stats first til you reach a point where whatever build you're using rarely dies, then upgrade damage, than the other way around. Main problems of your current gear:
1. You have an atrocious lack of Life on Hit for that to work reasonably well in Act3. You want to use somewhere around 1200+ to play with, then you can shave it down as you feel more comfortable. With your current DPS, your life leech isn't doing very much at all, and 744 LoH isn't gonna be enough for anything but big melee packs that swarm together, which is why you're having such issues with the ranged monsters. Pick it up on your jewelry.
2. Your critical rate is awful for an axe user. Outside of Legendaries/Sets, you only have there are only six pieces of gear that can offer crit, and you have crit on only two of them. And not even particularly high values at that.
3. Your priorities are way off. You seem to be fixated on Str and Vit. With your current setup, 1 str will yield roughly a 16.35 dps increase. 1 crit rate will yield 453.78 dps increase. Meaning it takes 27.74 str to give you the same effect as 1 crit rate. You also don't need to have that much HP for Double Tornado to work, most of your survivability comes from constantly regenerating life, not a big pool, and no Revenge or Dreadnaught means higher HP pool doesn't help you heal more either. Because the survivability of build relies on heavy constant healing, focus more on armor/resist than HP if given the choice. If you need to drop STR to get some more crit, do it. If you need to drop Vit for more LoH/armor/resist, do it. Prime example is your bracers. Loads of str and vit, no all res or crit.
4. I usually try very hard not to be a snob about ghetto gems, but Flawless Squares when you have 22m is a little on the silly side.
Honestly, every slot could use an upgrade, but for now, your weapon/offhand, shoulders, body and pants can hold you over for awhile. They could all use more defense, the shoulders more allres, but they're serviceable enough. Stout Lantern ring, the gloves, bracers and amulet are what I'd personally focus on first. Grab LoH + crit on your jewelry
Thanks for the in depth analysis, Deced. The barb is indeed being rehashed from a sword and board barb, however, it's only been about 5 days since I came back to the game so he's still a work in progress.
For getting to 1200+ LoH, should I swap out one of the gems in my weapons for a LoH gem or should I focus purely on getting LoH from jewelry? I know you mentioned defense > offense but I'm worried that if I swap out the gem my damage will drop too much. Also, can you give me an idea of how much HP I can afford to trade away for LoH/armor/resists? Thanks
Amethysts in weapons is an option for a starter WW. Not a long term solution, but it can work well enough for the time being.
When I first started Act3 runs on Double Tornado, the stats I ran were like 15k dps, 27k life, 1250 LoH, 800 allres, 7.5k armor, buffed with enchantress, warcry-impunity, and battle rage. Pretty much all melee mobs were a joke (champ melanchors and tremors needed to be kited with tornadoes), and most ranged were irritating, but not an issue. Champ pack fights were roughly 60-90 sec affairs although much of that is inflated cause I factored in time I spent waiting for Wrath, the only types of mobs that would rage before I could kill them were shielded or molten ranged monsters w/ other crappy affixes. Whom I largely learned to just skip until my gear got upgraded. And even most of those were doable, I just didn't feel like stressing myself with them. I essentially just skipped goblins altogether, because only the ones dumb enough to run into a corner could I pop before they ported at that dps, but there was nothing I could really do about that.
I currently run only 32k HP, which is definitely on the low end of what I would consider reasonable to suggest to someone. 40k HP is probably a nice safe target that's not too low to comfortably play with and not so high it's annoying to reach. I personally consider 35k a perfectly reasonable amount if you're comfortable with the build.
If you're looking to make a handful of quick adjustments without yet committing all your money at once, I'd suggest:
- A cheap 400 LoH w/ 7.5 crit or higher amulet. This should run you a little under 2m if you just find a blue one. 500/8 blue ammys are more than double the price. Then either:
- A crit + 250ish LoH ring and keep your crit gems, or
- An all resist, crit rate ring with some tertiary stats + ONE 400 LoH Gem.
After that, your general stat priority on upgrades should look something like
Allres/armor => Critical Rate => Str => Vit, while trying to maintain 35k+ HP and 1200 LoH.
Leave critical damage for weapons + gems for now, cause any equipment that can spawn crit damage can also spawn critical rate, which is better to focus on. And it's not cost efficient to buy double crit gear until you're at the point you're willing to drop 10-50m+ on one slot.. In terms of cost efficiency, attack speed should also be largely ignored on rings and amulet again til you're willing to spend large sums on one slot. It's great, just terribly expensive. But definitely look for high attack speed + crit rate gloves with str and vit. Because of the overflood of crafting, gloves is the one place you can get high attack speed, high crit and str + vit for relatively cheap compared to other slots.
Looking for some WW barb upgrade tips
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