It’s ok. Mistakes are made by all.
Thanks for all you do…
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Hey Rage,
Thanks for your insightful contributions as always. I’ve been trying to simulate some scenarios with stricken stacking, but I got stuck on a few points.
First of all you seem to be using a FPA of 7.3 and 19 for WW:DD and HOTA respectively, how can one find these numbers? I tried to import a ‘perfect’ LOD barb from maxroll in d3planner, but got different values that don’t seem quite right (9 and 13).
Also, how does the interaction between normal WW and dust devil hits work in practice? Assuming that you also directly hit the boss with WW, will the internal cooldown of stricken be calculated with the WW FPA instead of the dust devil FPA for a significant fraction of the time?
Curious for your thoughts, or anyone else that has thoughts on the matter
Hi Zyozu,
So, the 9 and 13 frame marks you are seeing for WW/DD and HotA are because you still have the Echoing Fury slider at max (5) stacks. In a single-target boss fight, you will not be able to keep those stacks, and of course in a boss fight with adds, those adds will eat a lot of Stricken, so the actual rate of stacks applied to the boss will be much lower.
The 7.3 frames per stack for the combo of WW and DD comes from my own test, which you can see here: Stacking Stricken with WW - YouTube. Basically, 493 stacks in 60 seconds, which works out to 7.3 frames per stack.
As for WHY it’s so fast: it’s because both base WW and the DDs can each stack Stricken independently. In addition… well, you’re probably aware that the ICD for Stricken is 0.9 * fpa (which is the frames per attack/animation of the proccing skill). Usually, the actual rate of stacks accumulated is just the actual attack rate of the skill in question, since that skill can “only attack as fast as it attacks”, no matter how low the ICD might be. But in this case, WW can hit on the frames after the DD icd elapses, and DD can hit on the frames after the WW icd elapses.
So, the actual rate for WW is 19 frames, and for DD, 14 frames. But, both of those can get stacks, and the icds are 17 and 12 frames, respectively. So, in 60 seconds, you could theoretically get 3600 / 17 = 212 stacks from WW and 3600 / 12 = 300 stacks from DDs, for 512 stacks total. Now, those WW and DD hits aren’t always going to fall perfectly, right after the icd elapses, which is why I got “only” 493 in my test. If you just used the base rate of WW and DD (19/14 frames), you’d end up with 447 stacks. So I believe the result will always fall between 447 and 512 stacks per minute, which is a stack between 7.03 and 8.05 frames.
Not many skills and effects operate this way. One of the only other places I’ve seen this sort of thing is with the Frenzy “chain” created by Bastion’s Revered, which can cause a higher overall stacking rate of Frenzy than its actual breakpoint- though only when applied to multiple targets.
I hope this is helpful!
Thanks Rage! that was very helpful and exactly what I needed. You were right on the echoing fury being enabled. Based on these numbers I did a few simulations. I made a post on the diablo3barbarians forums showing some of the results.
So… do I understand correctly that the WW skill and the DD rune stack stricken separately, with each their own ICD? Would this also mean that if I spam 6 different skills, each one has its own separate ICD and they don’t interfere with each other, or is this specific feature of the WW:DD skill? That seems to very interesting
It’s an unusual feature of WW:DD. With Leapquake, for instance, where you are hitting with Leap, EQ, AV, and SS all at once, the regular set of rules apply, and you get only one icd for Stricken, and only one set of stacks.
Edit: also, excellent work on that reddit post, it’s got me thinking. My gut is telling me that both your calculation and my own may need a little more work… I think your way of looking at “time you have remaining to kill boss” vs “time spent WWing” is right on the money. But, I think these two elements will interact dynamically as the fight proceeds.
And I’m guessing that the actual ideal boss kill will be produced by first WWing only, then switching to “hammer on fire”, interspersed with WW, and finally going to only HotA, with no WW.
Because, think of the value of stacking Stricken at any given point in time. With a max rank stricken, it takes about 44 hits to double your damage. Then another 88 to double it again, then 176, etc. So the value of spending our time stacking Stricken at a higher rate, while doing no damage (i.e. WW), starts very high and goes down as the fight proceeds. So there’s got to be points where first it becomes more valuable to start doing 1/2 the damage by spending 1/4 of our time (“hammer on fire”) and then when it becomes more valuable to just deal damage (HotA all the time), rather than stack more Stricken.
Give that some thought and let’s confer tomorrow.
So, I’ve put some thought in what you said, here are a few ideas:
First, completely agree on delaying fire cycle hammering, all sims showed faster kill times with this strategy. Also following your logic, COE gives 3x damage multiplier, thus it would probably start being worth it after building a third of the ‘WW stricken stacks’. Although it’s probably optimal to do it a little later.
Also agree on your assessment that is will need a little bit more work. The current strategies I have focus on killing the boss in the remaining time, but this will obviously be suboptimal when you want to kill it asap for a leaderboard position. The problem here is that the optimal WW time will always depend on the total amount of stricken stacks in a fight. I haven’t figured out how to build some intuitive solution for this, probably a matter of experience.
Another obvious problem is adds. I have been trying to add them, but there is a large variety on the number of adds and their health pools. I don’t want to have separate strategy for each boss, rather I’d have a general guideline for this as well. I could try a probabilistic approach or a manual one. And I have to find a way to incorporate the damage increase of AD into it too. This seems a tricky beast, which I suspect will only give minor improvements in kill time.
Interesting about the WW:DD stricken interaction. I wonder if there are more of these skills, something like giant’s stride and EQ for example.
Yeah, I’m having a hard time working out the best way to determine the optimal timing of going from WW → Hammer on Fire → Just HotA. Figuring WW–> Hammer on Fire or WW–> HotA are relatively easy, but when you add the multiple layers, it gets confusing.
Intuitively, I think you’re right that it’s probably best to initiate “Hammer on Fire” about a third of the way through your “extra stacking period”, which is itself ~40% of the total time. So if you have 4:00 to kill the boss, you want to spend roughly 90 seconds doing “WW-ish” stuff, maybe pure WW for the first 30 seconds, “Hammer on Fire” for the next 60 (so, 90 total), and then just HotA for the remaining 2:30.
Well, I guess in an instance where you know the timing you need to reach the desired leaderboard position, you can assume that time, rather than the actual end of the rift timer, as your time available. For instance, if you spawn the boss at 10:00, and know you need a 13:20 to take rank 1 on the leaderboard, then you can think of your time available as 3:20, rather than 5:00. But that still isn’t completely optimal.
Yes, adds will be tricky, because they spawn very differently with different bosses. And factoring in AD (which isn’t affected by Stricken stacks, at least not in terms of damage dealt to the boss) will also be tough.
Edit: I’ve been working with this slightly crazy spreadsheet I built to compare kill times…
Take a look, if you’re interested. You can change the cell with the total time of the fight to see how the fields respond.
For most fight lengths, this is actually giving me the most damage during the fight duration using a method that starts with “hammer on fire” and then proceeds to “just HotA”- so no pure, uninterrupted WW. But, as I said, I haven’t yet figured out how to model WW–>Hammer on Fire–>Just HotA. Also possible I messed up some formula somewhere in here, as my brain feels a bit like it’s melting!
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It’s interesting to note that the top Adjusted Clear for LoD HotA Barb this season (27) is holding pretty steady around 153- we have two 153.0s and one 153.1 at the top of the board. All three of those clears, plus just about everything else near the top of the boards, is using the HotA Crucible.
But during the PTR, the top two adjusted clears were both recorded with the WW crucible, and were 154.0 (Nexrate) and 153.0 (Kozmik). So clears with the HotA crucible have definitely not pulled ahead of what can be done using the WW crucible.
Nexrate’s 154 is also kind of a special case- an insane single-floor clear with Illusionist Nightmares. Basically the whole rift takes place on maybe 5 or 6 screens worth of real estate, and the WW power does basically nothing for him here, since Mallet Lords can’t be stacked. In this situation, he almost certainly would have cleared faster using the HotA power.
I’ll be curious to see if anybody busts out the WW crucible for serious LoD HotA pushing during the remainder of the season.
After playing it feels like 90% of my damage is from the shockwave not the hota spot in front of me that my fire damage hits. Imagine all of the ducks you need to line up to use the WW crucible, but be able to actually kill the huge ball of elites and trash at the end. How many pylons ya gonna need? lol The shockwave makes it fun.
Saluter put up a really fun speed build if anyone is interested.
Most SATISFYING Speed Build Ever - Hota Barb GR 120 In Under 2 Min [D3 Season 27] - YouTube
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Yeah, modeling interactions that are a little more complex is going to be hard in a spreadsheet. But I like your approach to make it doable.
I want to farm a little more paragon before attempting to push for 150. But I’ve also been thinking about trying both crucibles, I did in fact not know the adjusted clears are still highest for the WW crucible. Though I find it very hard to imagine a big clear without the shockwave. Like apache said I feel like most of my damage comes from shockwave .
Well, they’re very similar. Like I said, that adjusted 154 from Nexrate is kind of a special case- he almost certainly would have gotten a faster clear with the shockwave in that case.
As for the shockwave doing more of your damage- well, there is a distribution of targets, with a lot beyond 20 yards, that might produce that result. But it also may just be that the single big “splat” of damage is more exciting to see than all the little fast hits of HotA added up.
Hey Rage, or anyone who knows,
Is it okay to split fire & physical damage on shockwave gear? My squirts is phy & I already have 60 fire on pants, chest & bracers. At that point diminished returns comes into play right?
Plus if i use a stone of jordan would it affect the Shockwave?
So, Stone of Jordan will only help you if you’re able to drop BoM. Dropping CoE costs you more damage than you’d get from SoJ, as would dropping Zodiac, which is how you keep all your buffs active.
That’s probably only possible in groups. I know Kozmik was running that setup on PTR. For solo, I dunno, maybe possible at 10k paragon or something, but I don’t recommend it for you.
As for splitting the elemental% on your gear, let’s see…
The shockwave does about 70% the damage of your HotA hits, due to its not having 100% CHC, unlike your direct hammers. And, we have 3x 20% rolls of elemental damage to work with, so that could be 0 and 60, or 20 and 40, aligned either towards Fire or Phys.
So:
60% fire: (100 * 1.6) + 70 = 230
40% fire, 20% phys: (100 * 1.4) + (70 * 1.2) = 224
40% phys, 20% fire: (70 * 1.4) + (100 * 1.2) = 218
60% phys, 0% fire: (70 * 1.6) + 100 = 212
Answer: don’t split, keep it all in Fire.
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What if the squirts is 20-10-100 & my fire squirts is crappy & non ancient lol.
Well, the damage difference between giving all 60% for fire and going 40/20 is about 5.5%.
Having one non-ancient item with LoD costs you about 4% damage. So if you’ve also got crappy CHC and CHD rolls on there, then it would probably be better after all to take the perfect rolls and go 40/20.
Some interesting stuff here. It sounds like the shockwave power probably saw some edits after PTR, before going live. Because the whole “crit everything or nothing” mechanic would be pretty hard to misidentify, especially for a smart tester like Rob.
In the PTR, I remember that the wave would roll over mobs without producing any damage numbers, but would then deal damage to everything simultaneously when it reached its maximum extent. Is that still the case? Or does it now deal its damage the moment it touches a mob?
Sure. When I say that the damage of the shockwave is 70% of direct HotA hits, that’s just the discount, vs a single target, due to non-100% CHC. In a case where you have lots of mobs in the 20-50 yard range, the damage caused by the shockwave proccing Bloodshed can become the largest single damage source vs all the mobs you have packed within the 20 yard range.
As for WW crucible vs HotA crucible: so, have you started pushing with WW crucible yet? When you do, please record video!
And: have you been playing much HotA TK in groups? What sorts of times have you been able to achieve?
I tried using Stone of Jordan instead of CEO for fun. It worked better than I expected although it’s not in the COE ballpark for damage.
It’s hard to play Raekor now with Hota being so strong. It features all the fun AOE damage but takes away 100% of the squishiness. You can add in the WW power very easily without losing weapon throw. Just lose your open skill (warcry/falter/IP/whatever) in favor of whirlwind. You dont really need the defense because you are CCing the entire screen. Honestly Its just hard to put any time into raekor because the other builds are so fun. WW/rend, IK HOTA, obviously LOD and even MOTE. I just got my gems to 150. I dont have a lot of patience for fishing but I can throw a few keys at it every so often.
You doing ok? I’ve noticed you… coming and going… a few times lately…
Cool. You still pushing this season, or taking a break, or calling it quits?
Oh, haha, the “you doing ok” portion of my previous comment was directed at Melon, who seems to keep appearing and then disappearing.
But, I’m glad you’re doing alright too! And good on you for helping out a buddy. 
Glad to say that I’m alive and well. The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
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