Hey Gilthas, keep at it, you’ll find all those pieces you’re looking for!
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Hey Rage,
Just wanna say amazing guide, got me started and after testing some variants, I managed to clear GR 117 in S20 at 1085 Paragon (3 Augments).
Just want to point out a few observations:
Echoing Fury > Azurewrath based on the fact that attack speed kindof rules here (fear can be a little irritating though)
Aquilla Cuirass - it is a must wear for me, at least for now. I could not survive any hits from GR 115 onwards without it. Makes me wonder how do players survive with higher paragon levels? More armor from the strength?
I tried to have CDR at every piece possible, sacrificing some other important stats. If you ask me, it is kind of worth it for kiting around, gathering mobs while waiting for WOTB to be up again.
Anyone else to share your high GR pushing with Frenzy during this season?
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Still trying to duplicate this 120 clear. I hate how things can go south really fast.
Hey Sengerene, great to see you here, always good to have another serious player come back to the forums!
Well done! How much mainstat?
I’ve played a good bit with both AZ and EF, and in my experience I definitely prefer AZ. That said, EF is also very good. Some of it may come down to personal playstyle. Sometimes a certain item just “fits” for an individual player, and then they do better with that item, even if it is not “mathematically” the best (this could be true of either you or me).
Speed from EF is definitely good, though I think it only adds about 33% damage at max stacks, assuming you’ve got good AS rolls in the right places. I have found that stacks drop fairly often, though. EF also has sort of a stat crunch in the way it rolls- always with dmg% and IAS. The IAS is worthwhile, but dmg% not so much… prevents you from getting both Life per Hit and CDR on the weapon, which means you probably need to forego AD on the Oathkeeper to pick up LpH instead.
I also find that the AZ Freeze + Parthans combo keeps me alive a lot. It’s true that the freeze only lasts for a short time, but in big fights, you can strategically exploit different parts of a big mob to get a relatively large amount of benefit from those Parthans.
Anyway, EF is certainly very good, and if you’re feeling in a groove using that weapon, then I think you should keep on using it.
More armor from STR from Paragon definitely helps. You could think about trying WC: Impunity over WC: Veteran’s. The mitigation profile is different. You’re less likely to die from undodgeable things like arcane beams and beast charges, and more likely to die from electrified bolts and goatman spears. I think Veteran’s is “mathematically” better, especially if you pay close attention to those undodgeable things that may be coming your way (most of these can be spotted and avoided). But again, much of this comes down to personal preference, and so you may want to think about giving Impunity a try.
If you’re not running CoE, then more CDR is relatively better. With CoE, it’s always best to pop WOTB in line with your damage element, so amounts of CDR outside the 47-50% range are suboptimal.
Not many people seem to be playing the set very hard. Which is a shame, because it’s pretty fun! I have not really been doing what I consider “pushing very hard” as of yet, but have recorded some ok clears (with mainstat in the 16k range).
Again, welcome back, and keep us posted on your progress!
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Hey just a thought I was mulling over, has anyone thought of trying to use the IB set with the seasonal theme by cubing Oathkeeper instead of CoE?
Like this
https://www.d3planner.com/349910934
Using the enchantress it lets you hit 6 breakpoints on frenzy, and if you drop a roll of CDR or elemental damage you jump up to 6 & 5(wrath) breakpoints
Also toyed around with dropping trapped for Gogok which then lets you jump up to 130% AD with the 5 breakpoint while still maintaining 50% CDR
Might be something glaringly obvious that I’ve missed since I haven’t had a chance to play this set yet (haven’t levelled my seasonal barb yet) but was just thinking thanks to the seasonal theme maybe IB could be incorporated
Seeing 12 APS on the breakpoint calculator also looks like it would be really damn funny
Hey Berronax, I have not tried it as I’m not really doing this season, but let’s take a look.
First thought: obviously have to spam BR to keep up IB stacks, since Frenzy isn’t a spender.
You’ll need a good freeze roll on belt and stun roll on gloves, otherwise you’ll be dropping a good bit of damage via H90 2-piece. Unfortunately both those rolls are quite hard to get.
If you do get those freeze/stun rolls, then you can probably keep using Parthans for you bracer. If not, you’ll obviously want to go with Vambraces or Mortick’s.
Going from an 8 frame Frenzy to a 6 frame is a 33% damage increase. Coupled with the 30% damage bonus that’s 73% more damage, which is pretty comparable to what you get from CoE via synchronization with WOTB.
On each IB you’ve got STR-IAS-CDR… I think that at any paragon, one of those STR’s needs to be LpH, to keep you alive (possible exception if you are using Vambraces). At mid - high paragon, the other STR should probably be AD.
Going from 6 to 5 gives you 20% increase in damage, about half the time, let’s call it a roughly 10% net increase… that’s slightly worse than the Elemental. Could be about break-even with the CDR.
This one definitely won’t be worth it, losing Trapped is just too much damage lost. You’ll actually end up doing less damage via AD, despite the higher AD%, not to mention lowered aoe from Bloodshed and weaker single-target.
All in all, looks like it could be a fun setup. Ultimately I think it will be a bit worse than the “main” build unless you can get those very tough hard CC rolls on gloves and belt, at which point it’ll be about even. If you put it together, let me know how it goes, I’ll be very interested to hear!
Keep at it buddy, it’ll happen!
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Yeah that was my first thought when toying around with this, this setup looks like it would be the hardest to gear out of them all.
Yeah morticks could be good for the LPFS from spamming BR, especially if a situation got really hairy and you had to charge out to avoid damage, you could keep healing through that a bit if you had no target to smack, at least that’s how the scenario plays out in my head.
That’s more than I was expecting actually, the extra damage reduction as well makes it more appealing to me for HC (though i’d probably go with the unity variant in the OP)
Yeah and I guess keeping the CDR in that 46-50% range wouldn’t be as important without CoE cycles to line up
Yeah not sure why I seem to be allergic to trapped, but also wasn’t sure just how good AD would be for this build
Definitely wanting to try it, though I have doubts on my ability to luck out on the rolls xd
A note on this build: I’ve run about a dozen GR 120’s in the last couple days, all using the “main” build. No failures. Zero. Several of the clears have taken under 10 minutes. Haven’t tried 125 again in that time, but in the few attempts I did make, it was very hard. I’m 100% sure I’ll get it, and also that 125 is not my limit at 16-17k mainstat, but even so, quite hard.
So: 120, not very hard (100% success rate). 125, very hard (<25% success rate).
This build has a very low “spread” between “highest consistent clear” and “highest possible clear”. This is as you’d expect, considering how much single target damage it does, and how little it scales with density. Still, coming from my Leapquake-centric perspective, it’s quite shockingly different.
Having some AD is pretty good, but the total amount of AD dealt doesn’t really scale up with density. You would need an impossibly large amount of AD to actually make up for 40-60% lost damage from dropping Trapped. (Off the top of my head, you’d probably need 300+% AD for it to actually be worth it).
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Is it just me, or does it seem like the spread damage of Bastion’s is pretty inconsistent? I’m not even talking about the chains because I barely see them, but sometimes mobs that are next to the one I’m killing don’t get damaged.
Regardless, the AoE of the build feels better now with Bastion’s and a better CHC. Love the added speed too.
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Hello, for this build i have a question i cant adress myself :
This 33% increase is only from attack speed no ? Can you evaluate the impact of more stricken stack over time with greater breakpoints ?
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Hey Tromka,
So the 33% I mentioned here is just from the breakpoint increase. Stricken also adds more damage as you attack faster.
It’s much easier to account for when you’re only talking about a single target. For instance, let’s say you were doing 1000 damage per attack, and trying to kill an enemy with ten million (10,000,000) life. Also assume your Stricken gives you +2% damage per stack.
I often use this online sigma sum calculator to wrap my brain around this kind of stuff: https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/sigma-calculator.html
What this does is add up all the numbers in a series that you generate, and in this case that series is each damage number you deal to that enemy. So in this case, in the box I put 1000(.02n)+1000. Where it says n=, I put 0, and above the sigma sign, in this case, I put 951. So then what this does is it counts up “n” from 0 to 951, and for each number in-between, it runs the calculation we put in the box.
So for “n=0”, it calculates 1000(.02 * 0)+1000 = 1000
Then for “n=1”, it calculates 1000(.02 * 1)+1000 = 1020
For “n=3”, it calculates 1000(.02 * 2)+1000= 1040
etc…
And it adds up all these numbers, shown in the grayish box. That’s how Stricken works. Your first hit just does your base damage (in this case, 1000), your second does 2% more (1020), your third 4% more (1040), and so on. And we know that when the total damage gets to ten million, the enemy will be killed (that’s where I got the “951” I put above the sigma, I just raised this number until the total damage was above 10,000,000.)
So that means it’ll take us 951 hits to kill this enemy. Since we increased our attack speed but not our base damage, that means that it’ll still take 951 hits to kill this enemy, but we’ll apply those hits faster.
Before, it would take us 951 * 8 = 7608 Frames = 126.8 seconds to get those hits.
Now, it’ll take us 951 * 6 = 5706 Frames = 95.1 seconds.
So, 95.1 / 126.8 = .75, or in other words, it takes us 25% less time to kill this enemy. With a different level of Stricken, a larger or smaller amount of base damage, or a tougher or weaker enemy, the numbers change, but hopefully you get the general idea.
So that’s the situation with a single target. When fighting a group, it’s way more complicated.
The Bastion’s Revered chain effect ends up spreading Stricken stacks around between all the mobs within 15 yards of you, and your direct hits with Frenzy will also end up applying a bunch of stacks to the enemy you are directly attacking.
When Frenzy or the chain hits an enemy, it takes into account whatever Stricken stacks might be on that enemy when it rolls for damage, and then this increased damage number has an effect on your AD (if it procs) and your Bloodshed (if that hit is a crit). So if you are fighting a yellow elite, surrounded by a bunch of trash mobs, and hitting the elite with Frenzy, the largest number of stacks will go on that elite, with other stacks scattered among the trash. Ultimately, all of those stacks will increase the aoe from your AD and Bloodshed somewhat.
Eventually, though, that aoe will kill those trash mobs, and whatever Stricken stacks have accumulated on them disappear along with the enemy, so some of the damage you’ve built up via stricken will go away. Each time this happens, however, your damage will be focused more and more directly on the elite, who should also have the largest number of Stricken stacks, meaning that both your damage to that elite, plus your aoe to surrounding enemies who are still alive, should increase.
Eventually you’ll be down to just the elite, at which point you’ll be stacking Stricken at the single-target rate, meaning you should kill him very quickly.
Anyway, it’s very hard to give you any specific numbers on a fight in density, since there are so many variables, including the number of mobs, their density within the 10, 15, and 20 yard radii (the ranges of AD, the Bastion’s chain, and Bloodshed, respectively), the health of the elite relative to those trash mobs, and lots of other stuff.
In short, more attack speed = more Stricken stacks = more damage, even if the exact amount of extra damage is hard to calculate.
I hope this makes sense to you, let me know if you need further clarification!
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Hey Rage,
Very nice guide!!! I love the Frenzy build. I tried the LoN version a while ago in seasons it was much harder with the thorns rolls and ancients :D.
Manager to clear GR105 in season, but in 106 I got oneshotted all the time.
Almost paragon 1000 and this is my current build.
https://www.d3planner.com/584648908
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It was perfect, Thanks Rage.
Stricken is a pretty linear boost, but really complicated to compare.
I’m currently Under 800 pargon, my stuff is garbage, my weapons are not ancient ones. I can complete a GR105, with different setups.
Currently my favorite setup is with Auguild and gogok (7 frame/6 frame with zerk). I lose damage from trapped and COE, but i dont die (only if i stand in unavoidable damage). From my experience, i prefer the high attack speed setups, for Survival purpose. Higher AS is also higher Healing.
I will test the IB setup, witch seems really cool it that way. i’m just worried to lose Azure.
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Got my 125 done. Maybe 15 keys spent, total. Can definitely go at least 1 higher without any further augments.
Hey Barudi, well done! As you keep playing, gaining both experience and paragon, you’ll definitely go further.
While WC:Veteran’s Shout is definitely better overall than WC:Impunity, this latter rune is more helpful against many one-shots. You may want to give it a try.
Yeah, if you go with that setup, you will definitely want to find both gloves and belt with good native rolls, so that you can roll for Freeze on belt and Stun on gloves.
Glad I could help. I actually ended up running a few more tests, and here’s what I found:
I conducted this test using 2 daggers, giving me a 13 frame Frenzy. My Stricken gives +2.05% per stack. I attack for a while, then stop attacking, and swap to Azurewrath, which has that legendary affix that deals aoe damage to undead+demons.
The initial Azurewrath damage, before any Stricken stacks, is 5502k. After attacking for a while, the Azurewrath damage varies a bit between enemies, showing you the relative number of Stricken stacks on each enemy.
Of particular note is the fact that the directly targeted enemy (the big Demonic Tremor) only winds up with about 36 stacks (he ultimately is taking 9562 from AZ, a 73.8% increase in damage. 73.8 / 2.05 = 36 stacks), while one other enemy meets this number (9562 damage), and another exceeds it (9900 damage).
I attack for about 67 seconds, taking into account a couple times I get knocked in the air, plus it takes me a couple seconds to get to 10 Frenzy stacks. All told, I figure that against a single target in this amount of time, I would get about 319 Stricken stacks.
So that directly targeted enemy, with 36 stacks, only accumulates about 11% of the total. There are 12 enemies total, so if the total number of stacks was still 319, and the stacks were totally evenly distributed, each enemy would have 26-27 stacks, about 8.33% of the total.
But basically, the stacks end up pretty evenly distributed. This is interesting, because in my tests on the PTR, a higher proportion of stacks were going on the main target. BUT, there I was only testing on up to 3 enemies.
I then made a second attempt, this time using Oathkeeper, to make sure the results weren’t drastically different when using this weapon, which gives such a big increase to your Frenzy attack speed:
The results were basically the same. In fact, in this case, the directly targeted enemy (if you look closely, you will note that he is the skull cleaver who has 339,881,856 total life) actually ends up with less stacks than several of the other enemies around him. AZ starts at 3464k, and after that Stricken stacking, he takes 6778k, whereas several other enemies are taking well over 7000k.
So the Stricken stacks really are pretty much just randomly strewn around. IMO, it is still probably worth it to focus on attacking an elite, since he will take at least a little bit more damage as a result of your direct Frenzy hits. But if it’s inconvenient to do that, it’s very nearly just as good to just attack any other nearby enemy, as long as that elite is within chain and Bloodshed range (15 + 20 yards, respectively).
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Rage - congrats on your 125. Ive been following this thread pretty closely, and slowly accumulating H90 gear on seasonal. Early, low paragon attempts at pushing have been disappointing with the “main build” as there are some toughness issues.
The flexibility and multiple avenues of gearing combined with an engaging playstyle have kept my interest thus far. Ill contribute here when I have something to add. I may do some mid level pushing this weekend after I scratch together a few more augments.
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Hey Trikalicious, thanks for the kind words. A few notes that might help you out at your current paragon (we’re talking about your seasonal character with 1271p, right?)
1: Try hard to get a life on hit roll on one weapon. This really helps keep you alive.
2: Think about trading out Rampage/Brawler for Nerves of Steel. This can let you survive some bad stuff long enough to kill a big pile of trash, finish off an elite, etc.
3: Don’t fight terrible elites. Just run away. Make sure you’re a couple screens away, or they may chase you.
4: Shift your focus, somewhat, to trash. You can actually burst down groups of high-density, low-health trash pretty quick with this build. These mobs are way less dangerous than elites, and it’s easier to move yourself into Oculus circles, since there’s not 1 or 2 particular enemies you are trying to target. Just try to stay in the circle, and let Bloodshed/AD do the rest.
5: Tolerate deaths. This one took me a while to learn. I’m so used to playing other builds in which falling even a bit behind the timer is really bad. But with this build, you can be a good bit behind the timer, happen on a conduit pylon in good density, catch up and spawn the RG with under a minute remaining, and still kill him.
6: Practice. My first 120 with this build felt pretty challenging. But, I’m now up to around 20 consecutive 120’s without a failure. In one of them yesterday, I hit the sub-9-minute mark. Experience helps with everything, of course, but with this build, it seems to make an especially large difference.
I hope some of this is helpful. Good luck out there!
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Thanks! Ive tried just about every combination of things in the guide including LoH, vambraces, aughilds setups, even tried Wudijo’s version with Sankis (I have a spicy one with LoH, 20% fire, and 10% CDR).
The “dying” part is good to know, and your videos support that it just sometimes happens.
From surveying the seasonal boards on all 3 regions, most people are either using Aughilds, unity instead of CoE, or stacking lots of vitality. My takeaway was to just farm more with WW/zbarb until I have better gear options and paragon and then revisit.
edit: grammar
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So the suggestion is that we should get Life per Hit on at least two pieces of equipment? Bracers and one weapon?
I think it’s better for the gameplay if all the stacks can go on our main target. The set is designed to be an elite hunter, i understand the spread mechanic of bastion for dealing with trash in solo play. But, it will be much more efficient as a RGK to concentrate all the bonus stacks on one target.
I suggested 2 rolls (bracer and weapon) in the guide, but you may have to adjust based on how much STR and VIT you’ve got at the moment. Like, if you have a good LpH roll on an ancient weapon, and are thinking of rolling for more LpH on a bracer, but you have only 3000 VIT… well, in this case, it’s probably better to roll VIT. If you have a case-specific question just send me a D3Planner of your current setup and I’ll take a look.
In order for that change to be good rather than bad, you would also have to make another change, which would be to make the damage of the Bastion’s chain based entirely off the main target. Otherwise, you’d have all the Stricken on your main target, but the damage of the chain would be rolling separately for each mob hit. As a result you’d only be getting about 10% of the benefit from those Stricken stacks.
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