Just adding a note here in case some details might have been lost in the guide:
About Zei’s not being effective when mobs are nearby:
-Bloodshed: Recent critical hits causes an eruption of blood 20 yards around the player (Effective range 20 yards)
-No Escape: 30% Multiplicative to seismic slam above 15 yards (flat multiplier as long as outside of 15 yards)
-Zei’s Stone of Vengeance: about XX% increased damage at every 10 yards (At +100 levels it comes to 65% increased damage). Again another separate multiplier. The trick with Zei is that if you slam from whether 11 or 15 or 18 yards, it counts it as slamming from 20 yards.
-Zei+Bloodshed+BoD: Zei may not be effective if the mobs very close. However, those mobs will get hit by the buff of BoD. On the other hand, Zei’s will be effective for the mobs faraway. There are only two ways to utilize this properly:
a) We need to gauge the hitting distance
b) Using bloodshed: This will make use of the increased critical damage received by the mobs faraway and indirectly re-use Zei’s damage buff.
Some case studies were made to find the optimal fighting distance and it was found to be somewhere between 16 and 20 yards where every possible buff and bloodshed interact.
I think that either high or low p, the Zodiac version is better.
Can’t die but less damage: Band of Might build
Mid paragon: IP Lpfs rune + Cassius + Zodiac
High paragon: Iron skin + Morticks + Zodiac
Zodiac is super strong for consistent dps and removes the downtime.
If you go Band of Might build I think Leoric’s is better too. Band of Might is almost too much toughness so you should try to get damage in the cube through Leorics!
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That is what I felt like as well. Good luck man, really digging your pushes with it.
Much appreciated.
Note: I just noticed you turned off the damage numbers, I think you may try enabling it in one of the rifts, they kind of help gauge the distance (also you can observe the damage build up).
About Zei: Zei is rounding up the distance (11, 16, 18 yard are all counted as 20 yard hits. Similarly for 21, 22,…28 yards are all measured as 30 yard hits) measurement. We figured this in a post before with someone I forgot who. So 16 yard thingy is matching that observation as well.
Moticks and Zodiac is great for for leveling gems once your speed WW builds are no longer effective. I find it less effective for pushing right now because I die a lot more especially when you get multiple elites on a map.
The amount of damage is noticeably better. The amount of defense is less by around 35% at a minimum. You can offset this some by leaping every 4 seconds.
Other things I have tried to to increase my defense is to get rid of ruthless for a defensive passive, try stone gauntlets over mortick, stacking more RCR and swapping zeis out for Gogok.
Out of all these going to Gogok seems the best option because you get more attack speed, more CDR and it is easier to keep all your skill off down. Going with Gogok, you take around a 15% hit in damage output or possibly more.
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Build selection rubric (table) is added considering the recent modifications working across different paragon levels.
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Cool
I was doing some more testing and have come to the following conclusions:
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This is definitely the best mid tier farming build outside of WW, but better than WW since it needs a lot less time on the boss and does better than WW on bad / low density maps
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If Blizzard removes the bracer cap this will do 133+ without much trouble at high paragon, and definitely 126-130 at average paragon (3000+)
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Definitely the fastest boss kill time out of all the barb builds
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Right now, it will always suffer on a super good push map because it can’t dps down huge density fast enough. The bracer limitation needs to go
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Are you guys sure Bloodshed is even the way to go? I run StP and try to maximize Zei’s distance and No Escape uptime.
Had to say for sure which is the best way to go.
For Arch, because he has so much defense he just needs to take every offense ability possible. So for him yes.
For us mortals, we still have to pay attention to defense so we need some defensive abilities.
For me 2 healing abilities is overkill. When you have mortick or ignorance is bliss you don’t need something else.
After playing the build for a few months, I think the oculus ring is better than distance. So where ever the ring is, that is where you go. Sometimes it is great for distance, sometimes it is good for close up. So if you take both you really cannot go wrong.
Ahh. Due to Peak reducing life per Fury by 50%, I never ran with ignorance. Haven’t tried Morticks yet. But I figure Crimson is gimping life per Fury even more.
You need about 2500 Life per Fury to survive (3000-4000 in CC2). IP-IB is actually decent healing and the only healing possible in CC2 version.
If you go IK2 route (less dps), you wont have IP and thats why you need bloodthirst passive then.
If you look at Storm’s 121 clear he used POC in the cube with Ignorance is bliss. Even with the reduce resource cost you are pretty much a tank. Zero defense issue with Storms build.
I just started playing around with StPS. I got rid of IP and POC in the cube and I use Killing spree with Leoric either Brawler or Ruthless as a passive. I am staring to think Ruthless isn’t that great, the longer the fight (the more stacks of stricken), the worse it is.
On paper it look ok dps wise just need to see if the 30% down time on WotB is livable. So far I have cleared my 114s no problem with it, time to push a bit higher.
FYI I played around in CC’s version and I think after casting CoA you need to wait about 5 sec to cast WoTB. In this meanwhile, anciencts take a while to build fury, then when CoA is down you can slam a bit more with WoTB on. This reduced the CoA enable me to slam some more and usually, permanent slamming is possible in that variety then.
I have around 62% CdR. Since it has dimishing returns, you need just the right amount of CdR otherwise it wastes some damage.
For me 10% from paragon, 4x8% from shoulder, gloves and rings and 2x10% in both swords sufficed. I chose to go with elemental or Primal STR with the amulet.
StP is much more consistent healing though which is why I use it. I also use Iron Hide for 100% ip uptime.
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Could you explain the graph?
I see there is a tiny difference between 19 and 30 yards. So it looks like it doesn’t matter if mobs were hit by Bloodshed or not.
Also I see no difference between 30 and 40 yards. I believe there should be Zei’s bonus.
There is essentially zero increase in damage from 15y to 29y for the SS build.
Once you get to 15y, you get the no escape, bloodshed and Zeis bonus (1x). At 21y you loose the bloodshed bonus and pick up more zeis (2x). The difference in Zeis is approximately equal to the bloodshed bonus (depending on how many mobs are in the bloodshed area). It is not until you get beyond 30 yards that you see you damage increase again due to Zeis going to 3x.
Jako, just so I know your build is this what you have?
Standard stuff: 5 piece MotE; IB; EW; BoD; Cube Weapon FotVP; Passives (BK, Rampage, NE); Skills (Permafrost, Leap, CotA fury, WotB)
Optional stuff:
Cube armor: Mortics
Cube ring: RoRG
Belt: CC
Ring: Zodiac
Skill 1: Iron Hide
Skill 2: StPS
Passive: Brawler or Ruthless
Gem: Zeis
If so this is a solid build. I have ran this and I have yet to fail on a 115. Not as tanky as Storms build but it is pretty good. You take about 2x the damage but your healing is 2x better. According to my cals it does around 23% more damage than Storms build up to 30 yards, beyond that it goes up to to 36% more damage because you don’t lose any damage due to Bloodshed dropping off.
This build is much less forgiving. You don’t have any wiggle room on your skill timers. Hit too many skills at once and it is very easy to lose 50 or 75% of your damage reduction.
On a side not Arch may want to try this switch from Bloodshed to StPS. It only scrafices around 10% damage up to 30 yards for double the healing. Beyond that the damage is the same. Also if you have to leap twice in 8 seconds (to redude incoming damage) as opposed to once, you just threw away 15% of your damage because of the approximately 1 second animation for leap.
I understand the theory but don’t understand the graph.
From 19 to 20 we lose Bloodshed. On the graph we lose about 5% of damage. Bloodshed gives only 5%?
From 20 to 50 we get 3 bonuses from Zei’s. It’s about 32% for 120 level gem. On the graph we almost don’t get any dps increase.
I didn’t make the graph but in general you should only look at the additions and loses based on distance. At point blank you just get bloodshed and zeis (1x). At 15y you get a 30% increase from no escape. At 20y you lose Bloodshed and gain 1x of zeis (essentially no gain). At 30, 40 and 50 you should gain 1x of zeis every time.
Maybe pro had the space of mob increase the farther out they got which made the AD damage go down which in turn caused the graph look flat at farther distances? Just a guess, it is hard to get a tight pack of mob at 50 yards.
So the way I was running it, which let me stress, I’m not trying to say is better, was:
Cube: Leoric, RoRG, Peak
Rings: Compass, BoM
Gems: Zei’s, Trapped, Stricken
Iron Hide / StP
I just saw my Life per Fury Spent being too low to go with Ignorance is Bliss. We don’t have a Mighty Belt. Seismic Slam resource reduction is like 75%. Zei’s / No Escape don’t synergize well with Bloodshed either imo.
So when I was experimenting with this earlier in the patch, I kind of settled on a different approach. But I honestly don’t know if it’s better. I just see most of you debating Bloodshed and maximizing it with No Escape and Zei’s which I feel like is a lot of micromanaging and not a good synergy to begin with.
Ok, I haven’t run that yet. I added it to my spreadsheet of different SS builds.
Looks like your even Tankier than Storms build (same damage resistance and more healing) with a slight increase in damage due to more WotB up time from Leorics.
I will try run it later tonight to see if it is indeed better.