Free or orther barb masters?

Barbarian
#1

Question on WW sanctified power interactions.

Background: Completely casual player since original Diablo, played WW barb then too. Thanks for everyone’s write-ups and guides.

I am so old school I still use skull gasp while building char. I still have area dmg on one weapon. No crit on helm. No rend on chest. One sanctified weapon and the other is not even ancient. Bane and Taeguk 60 and a Powerful 35. Very early in char development for the season. Pretty poor gear so far. No paragon points in strength at all yet.

Playing WW rend and clearing GRs much faster than I think I should be with the gear I have. 90 in well less than 3 min. Clearing much faster than last season at this stage of gearing up.

The sanctified power pulling them along seams to be letting WW keep hitting them. It seamed to be triggering strong arm bracers when I had them before getting mortick’s. Is this pulling and grouping allowing WW to keep hitting them and thus proc the area damage and take advantage of skull grasp?

If so, should area dmg be added back to build? Maybe skull grasp?

I need some one much better than me to look at this.

Thanks

edit to add profile for seasonal char Grumpyfart does not show sanctified Solemn Vow in main hand.

dmg 3010.1
plus 10% dmg
1000 str
cool down 10%
plus 590 str from an early augment from echoing nightmare
+260 exp
+130 to crit dmg emerald

#2

Not a barb master, but AD is only procced if you cast manual Rends. Wastes top clears usually have a lot of AD on gear and cast manual Rends in big pulls.

Yes, all of your damage is coming from the Ambo’s Pride+Lamentation combo which is being applied during your pulls.

No, Skull Grasp is basically doing 0 damage, because WW damage is irrelevant compared to Rend’s damage.
Rends applied by WW do not proc AD.

#3

WW itself can kill stuff quickly up to gr110 w/o the rend rework stuff. You could in theory not use lamentation or ambo and go old school furnace or whatever. Throw skull grasp in there for fun.

But think of it as a race. Not using the rend items is like giving the other player a 9 second head start in a 10 second race.

#4

Right now I can’t do a GR105 in less than 5 minutes even with Ambo’s and Lamentation. I would be interest to see the gear/paragon of someone who can quickly clear 110 without both.

#5

Pretty easy to gear for. BK swords for speed. New age would probably use captains rather than 6 piece. So zodiac, COE, ring of royal grandeur, squirts. Cubing furnace & mantle of channeling.
Skills would be 1) Stomp 2) Ignore Pain Bravado 3) WoTB 4) Battle Rage
Mouse 1) WW Mouse 2) Falter

You would need decent gear and a little paragon to make it work.

#6

Depends on your goals. You wont get very far running skullgrasp. When asking about if the added damage you are feeling it is the fact that you have density almost 100% of the time. This is the Rend rune doing its job. Now in the sub 100 level WW might still be playing a part but Id suggest you put that notion aside as rend is a very large portion of the damage. This is what us spear masters strive for in top end pushes. Just now it can be achieved rather easily. In fact the harder part is understand just how puch to pull without breaking the game and killing yourself.

It is a good season to really get a feel for what those super large pull feel like in rank 1 push. Ive already claimed rank 1 at 124 and 130. Currently #7 on NA. almost no time to play all week.

Area damage is part of the build. You have to hard cast to proc it. Skull grasp is a no go
unless you are just playing a “for fun” build.

1 Like
#7

That is why I asked. I am NOT hard casting rend yet. Proc’ed rends don’t apply area damage, correct? Applying new rends through WW does not make all the damage instantaneous, just restarts the 1 sec over which the damage is applied, correct? And thus is a straight damage over time equation, correct?

I am a casual player, don’t use spear. I was not asking about gearing, crimson’s gardian’s or what ever. Normally I switch over to crimson’s after I have geared up better and run stone of jordan instead of CoE just because I hate timing things. I am old and on a Mac so no numlock for me. I like watching vids of high clears. I am not going to do it. Don’t have time, this is just fun for me.

What I had noticed was with my CURRENT gear and play style, literally just spinning and charging to keep up bane of might I am killing enemies fairly quicker. I am not really using charge except into yellows and rift guardian.

I am trying to figure out WHAT is allowing me to kill/clear faster now?

Thanks

#8

Not sure where the confusion is? I answered your concerns about season power.

To explain. Normally barbs need to spear enemies in order to create density. For casual players that don’t like to spear they may see normal density of 5-10 enemies and on a great map maybe 10-20 enemies. For top players we don’t even worry about that stuff we go for that dream map with fatty/zombie or the few other good combos. We see something like 50-100 mobs and have the borderline lag the game in order to achieve those top clears. What happens is when something dies it explodes hitting everything.
This is worth huge damage that a casual player never ever sees. You are feeling the beginning stages of that damage because you can drag everything around with little effort and without spear. Also the new map/mob spawn rates in season are ridiculously
amazing for any build that has area damage or an effect like area damage.

#9

OK. So it is the bloodbath rune that triggers another rend that does do area damage?

Did not think it would proc area dmg since the original proc was from WW. Your explanation would explain how the area dmg bonus was getting applied while not manually casting rend. I thought the grouping was ONLY for the manually casted rends.

Thanks

#10

No it does not proc area damage. It procs an explosion that acts like area damage.
That area damage stat on your gear does not increase the rend runes damage.

1 Like