Hey Yzer,
For the bracer, you can certainly use whatever feels good to you, whether that is Vit, AllRes, or LpH. Personally, I’ve liked having a bit of extra LpH there, but the other two options will work well too. The only exception would be a case where you don’t have LpH on either weapon, which would make LpH on a bracer pretty important.
Great! I will try to craft new good bracers for some testing. And I hope it will not take too long)))
How far behind would an IK/H90 hybrid be from pure H90?
Hmm, well, what kind of hybrid? No matter what kind of hybrid you cook up, you’re definitely losing something important-
If you carry Boulder Breaker, then you lose either Bastion’s (which costs you more than 90% of your damage) or Oathkeeper (which costs you 60-75% of your damage). If you wear IK belt, then you really want to put Undisputed Champion in the cube, but then you lose Depth Diggers, which costs you half your damage.
The least bad IK/H90 hybrid would be H906IK2, where you wear the IK belt plus one other piece, and lose those Depth Diggers, but all that gets you is perma-ancients, which is really not all that good. All the setups where you lose one of the normal Frenzy weapons, or the Frenzy belt, are way, way worse.
The best Frenzy setup in S27 will almost certainly be using the Tempest Rhythm- it’s just that you’ll use it as a pop of extra damage in a big fight, and you won’t be able to have it up all the time.
Edited the OP for Season 27, and also mentioned using Guardian’s when at lower paragon. I also cut out the section on playing as an RGK, since a) nobody actually has ever seemed to play Frenzy RGK, and b) based on my testing from a few months ago, the use of WW to build Stricken stacks seems non-productive.
This is such a great thread with plenty of in depth information and as someone who loves playing frenzy Barb I really enjoy the whole discussion here.
But there’s one idea I haven’t found information on yet so maybe you can help me on it.
When looking at the skillset of frenzy barb there is pretty much only 1 skill that goes on cooldown when playing; Wotb.
So what if I just decide to play with 0 cooldown reduction and replace wotb with something else? Not sure what would be the best replacement. Maybe ancient spear for easier pulls?
By replacing the cooldown rolls on shoulders, gloves and both weapons we can exchange them for Vitality on shoulders, area dmg on gloves and area dmg/ attack speed or even increased elite dmg on weapons allowing us to maybe hit a higher attackspeed breakpoint while having very high amounts of area dmg.
We can also change the diamond in the helmet for a amethyst further increasing our life.
And we get an additional damage boost by using a different passive than boon of bul kathos.
I don’t know if that is a dumb idea or actually viable. You basically trade the temporary damage steroid of wotb for more attack speed, area damage and toughness
Hey Vastitio, sorry about the delayed reply, I’ve been away from the game for a few weeks.
So, you definitely could go with the “low CDR, no WOTB” plan you’re pitching, the issue is that there isn’t really a whole lot of other good stuff you can pick up.
First off, you would still want to keep a diamond in your helm and your CDR from paragon, because you really need at least 20% CDR in order to make sure you can keep BoM up all the time. If that goes down, which is a very likely with less than 20% CDR, you’ll probably die.
AS for other rolls, there just isn’t a whole lot of other damage to be picked up. For passives, we could take either Rampage or Brawler, whichever one we aren’t currently using, but that is really only going to get us ~8% more damage. For an active skill on the bar, the only damage skills we could really take would be Overpower: Killing Spree or Revenge: Best Served Cold, either of which would get us 8% CHC, or maybe about 10-12% extra damage.
For rolls on gear, well, Area Damage doesn’t scale all that well with this build, due to the way the Bastion’s Chain splits up our damage in density. You’ll already have a pretty optimized (7/8 Frame) AS breakpoint, if you follow the rolls in the guide, and can’t really get a better one, even if you add more AS. And elite damage is going to be additive with the bonus you get from Aughild, so not a big gain.
Bottom line, you really aren’t going to make up for the damage lost by ditching WOTB. So, if you were going to do that, I think it would probably be better just to accept that you’re going to do less damage, and build for pure tankiness: maybe take IP instead of WOTB, NoS, Relentless, or Superstition instead of Boon, and instead of CDR, Vit on shoulder, AllRes on Glove, and LpH on both weapons (one of your weapons should already have LpH).
I don’t know if you remember this answer I gave you from a long time ago, regarding applying hard CC…
Well, it turns out that the actual picture is a little different!
I was looking at Maxroll’s guide to Crowd Control, and there they say that when you apply a hard CC of a certain duration, the game immediately applies CC resist based on the calculated total time of that CC. For instance, if you hit a mob with a freeze that lasts 5 seconds, they immediately gain 50% CC resist.
That’s contrary to what the other resources say, which is that the CC resist builds up slowly over time, as the mob sits under CC. But, I gave it a test, and Maxroll is correct! The CC resist is applied immediately, but it still only applies to subsequent effects (so, that 5 second freeze will still last 5 seconds).
This doesn’t really change the picture for how long the CC will ultimately last, it’ll still be the same time that all my different models showed, in that earlier answer. Just thought I’d share that tidbit of knowledge!
I bagged 137!
For the first time, I got a good clear using Echoing Fury, rather than Azurewrath. When using EF, you really want to look for mob types with lots of small, easy to kill targets, so you can keep up your stacks for a while. And take Rampage instead of Brawler as a passive (when using Azurewrath, many players choose Brawler, but here it makes less sense). If you make a big enough pull of mobs, it somewhat negates the problem of mobs running away from you due to the EF fear effect, since only mobs within 15 yards of you will be hit by the Frenzy “chain” and thus have a chance of getting feared. With that big pull, the mobs a bit further away trap those closer mobs and help to prevent them from running away from you.
This 137 is currently good enough for Rank 2 on the NA server, 14th worldwide. The lowest paragon of anybody above me on the board is… 9566. I might spend some keys on 138, we’ll see!
I did 138. Unlike the last one, this one was a proper nail-biter:
I did a total edit.
Now the question is, does the below provide better damage mitigation.
WotB: up 60% of the time
Dodge: WotB 20%
WC: 40% AR
Break Point: 7 / WotB 8.5 frames (replacing LoH for IAS 7% on AZ; LoH on helm & bracers)
https://maxroll.gg/d3/d3planner/971536706
Don’t know if my math is correct, but I have this setup doing 8% less damage than Main Build.
Hey DH,
I’m a little confused. I saw your post last night but didn’t get around to answering it before I headed off to bed.
I think you’re asking if this…
…provides better mitigation than what you’ve got in the D3 planner link… right?
Well, there are a few problems here. In the D3 planner, you’ve got your Compass Rose with an impossible combination of stats- you can’t have damage range / CHC / CHD / CDR, one of those would always be STR.
And, you have AS on your Azurewrath, which does give you a half frame in this setup, part of the time. But, ideally, you want to use the Enchantress’s Focused Mind ability, which adds 6% AS and lets you reach 7/8, without any AS roll on the Azurewrath. In fact, if you pick up Focused Mind, then having an AS roll on AZ doesn’t matter one way or the other- with it you’re at 7/8, and without it you’re also at 7/8, so you might as well take something else.
So, in “replacing” IAS with LoH on AZ, you’re just going back to the breakpoint that’s recommended in the main build.
The next thing to talk about is “WC: 40% AR”, by which I assume you mean running with Impunity instead of Veteran’s. This is always an option, but in my experience it is generally easier to die with this rune. Impunity does protect you better against some bad, undodgeable things, like arcane beams and Furious Beast charge attacks. But, a lot of the damage you take is just from normal, dodgeable attacks, from mobs pounding on you.
And on paper (and in real life, vs anything that can be dodged), Veteran’s provides a lot more mitigation than Impunity. 60% dodge is essentially a straight up 60% bonus to mitigation. The value of 40% AR depends a little on your starting value, but if you guess that you were starting at about 1200, then Impunity would take you to 1680, which adds about 24% mitigation- a lot worse than 60%.
I’m also not sure where you’re getting 60% uptime on WotB. Even if running CDR on both weapons, both rings, shoulder, glove, Diamond, Paragon, and Enchantress’s Prophetic Harmony, that only gets me to about 59% CDR, and 54% WotB uptime. Or if we drop Trapped for Gogok, which I think is what you were showing last night, then our uptime is up at 64%. So I’m not sure where “60%” is coming from.
Finally, we have “LoH on helm & bracers”. I do personally carry LoH on my bracer, instead of Vit, and find that it helps quite a lot for staying alive. For helm… what are you dropping? Str, Vit, and CHC are all pretty valuable. I guess that past a certain paragon level, you could drop Str. Dropping Vit is actually pretty inefficient, because Simplicity’s Strength heals you based on your maximum life. So 1000 Vit also provides the equivalent of 5000 LpH, which is almost half the value of LpH that you can get on a helm. At your paragon level, losing 1000 Str will probably cost you about 4% damage, plus about 3% toughness, from reduced Armor.
Bottom line: if you’re trying to increase your survival, the first thing I’d do is run LpH on both weapons. So, OK is AS / LpH / CDR and AZ is Cold% / LpH / CDR. Or if you want to have an easier time still at staying alive, just drop RoRG + Aughild, and run Unity on Cube + Follower, plus equip Mortick’s Brace. This will make you a good bit tougher all of the time, and essentially unkillable while WotB is up.
Good stuff! I agree with the majority of what you replied, except with:
Are we primarily talking physical damage and if so, could a great amount of physical resist gear stats off set not having 60% dodge (plus the 40% increase to physical resist that WC: Impunity provides, which would increase physical gear stats evenmore, not to mention all other resist stats, it would be like wearing a K9 suit)?
And then you have the 20% dodge when WotB is active, which adds to toughness (60% dodge is good until you fail to dodge, not picking a fight 
).
Well no, not necessarily. You can dodge most affixes too- Frozen Explosions, Electrified Bolts, Fire Chains, etc- just not Arcane. Against those others, 60% dodge is much better.
As for stacking up your physical resist (or any other individual resist), sure, that will help you out, but of course you could do the same thing when running Veteran’s rather than Impunity- grab Physical or Arcane secondaries wherever possible.
But anyway, I guess it’s “proof is in the pudding” time- give it a try and see how it feels!
Looks like the guardian set comes into play next season. Top clears in PTR look good at lower para for sure. I have 28+K strength at 1020 P.
Yeah I revised the OP a bit ago to recommend Guardian for low paragon players! Will be even more true next season if potion power does all the heavy lifting and we just need to stay alive…
The Guardian set pieces are belt and bracers with DD pants and cube the Frenzy belt since you are already running rorg. Also running the red unique gem in helm, which seems somewhat strange, but it does appear to help some.
How important is Azurewrath affix (“Undead and Demon enemies within 25 yards take 500–650% damage as Holy every second and are sometimes knocked back”)?
Is it like Pig Sticker secondaries ("% damage to Beats and Humans"): important, but way less important than the other rolls?
(Sorry if this question has already been asked!)
That Azurewrath affix basically doesn’t do anything for Frenzy. The only use I can really imagine for it is if you were running a CoE setup (instead of Aughild) and were also running Strongarms. I’m not sure how often the “sometimes knocked back” effect procs, but Strongarms will give you its damage bonus if you just hit with an effect that can knock back- the enemy doesn’t actually need to be knocked back. So if the AZ knockback is proccing frequently, then it would pretty reliably get you that extra damage from Strongarms.
This would be a hard setup to play, though. If you aren’t taking Aughild, then you usually need to get some defense out of your bracer slot, which means APDs or Mortick’s or Vambraces (though I think this last option is generally less good). And, Frenzy carries a ton of additive damage anyway, so 30% more from Strongarms only amounts to an actual ~12% dps increase.
Pig Sticker’s secondary is much, much better- it gives you a straight up multiplier vs beasts & humans, up to 1.3x. If you were willing to do a ton of extra fishing, it might even be a slightly better offhand weapon than Azurewrath- but you would need to find a rift where every level has one of the few mob types that are both fairly good in general, and where most of the progression comes from Beasts + Humans (for instance #21-Good Bogans, #23-Swarms, #32-Ice Clan, or #33-Petting Zoo). And, though it’s less important, you would also ideally like to fight one of the RGs who counts as a Beast or Human, which I think is just Agnidox, Stonesinger, Hamelin, and Sand Shaper.
Plus, you’d also, if possible, want to pick up some freeze or stun rolls on your belt, gloves, or weapons, in order to get the 2-piece H90 damage bonus at least a little bit.
So: Pig Sticker is definitely a solid option, but to really maximize its potential would require a lot of luck with RNG.
Many thanks, Rage!
I’ve dropped great pieces of gear for Frenzy this season: I can’t wait to try them in NS!