DizzyRend, The New Libra Zodiac
Libra because the Season launches on the 22nd which is still technically Libra (barely)
There are some unanswered questions when it comes to Rend in the new build, but I think it’s clear that WW is, at present, applying Rends about as quickly as they can be applied, and that jacking up attack speed isn’t going to do us any good.
The big fish left to fry revolve around whether X or Y Rend overwrites the other, or whether hard-cast Rends have different interactions in and out of density. I’m working on some tests and hope to have some video evidence later this week. In the meantime, I gotta write quizzes for my students and catch up on reading!
For the record: Anyone who plays non-Season is welcome to add me in game: Free#1746
I’ll be farming Bounties until the new patch drops.
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So, I gave it some thought, and I think the best way to test for the “fall-off” effect is this:
You use a 2H mace with 1.00 base APS. Ambo’s in the cube, no Lamentation.
No AS anywhere, including paragon. This gives you a 30 frame DD and a 40 frame WW tick.
0.0-Rend applied… Though, now that I think of it, what point is this, exactly? I guess the DD is spawning before the actual WW hit, and it’s this that applies Rend. Which means that the WW tick at “0.4” is actually occurring at “0.1”…
So:
0.0 - Rend applied (by DD)
0.1 (WW), 0.3 (DD), 0.5 (WW), 1.0 (DD)* - hits that could apply Rend
1.0 - Rend drops. The trial here splits here into “Case A” where Rend is reapplied by the DD hit with the *, above, at 1.0, and “Case B” where it can’t reapply at 1.0, and instead is reapplied at 1.3, by WW or DD (both should take place at 1.3)
“A”: continues to refresh Rend exactly every 1.0 second
“B”:
1.3 - Rend reapplied (by WW or DD) 30 lost frames
2.0 (DD), 2.1 (WW), 2.3 (DD) - hits that could apply Rend
2.3- Rend drops. Note that the DD at 2.3 can’t reset Rend in this scenario, since if it could, we’d be in “Case A”, where Rend can be reset at an even count.
2.5 - Rend reapplied (by WW) 20 lost frames
3.0 (DD), 3.3 (WW), 3.3 (DD) - hits that could apply Rend
3.5 - Rend drops
4.0 - Rend reapplied (by DD) 10 lost frames
4.1 (WW), 4.3 (DD), 4.5 (WW), 5.0 (DD) -hits that could apply Rend
5.0- Rend drops
5.3- Rend reapplied (by WW or DD) 30 lost frames
I believe that the cycle of “B” is essentially repeating, with 60 lost frames every 4 seconds. This should cost you a full 25% of your damage.
“A”, in comparison, should lose no frames at all, and suffer no damage loss. Because Rend deals the same damage on every cast, you can calculate out how much damage it should be doing over a certain period of time, if fall-off is not a factor.
For instance, you might calculate, based on your weapon damage, crit chance, crit damage, and strength, that Rend should deal 1 Billion damage per minute. Then you Whirlwind an enemy (I always use Manglemaw for testing) for a minute, and see how much damage you’ve done. Assuming you’ve got no buffs to WW going, the vast majority of your damage should be coming from Rend (since it is getting a 15x multiplier from Ambo’s)
So, in this example, if “A” is true, you should do slightly more than 1 Billion damage in one minute (the Rend damage, plus some minor WW damage).
If, on the other hand, “B” is true, you should only deal a little over 750 Million damage in that minute.
If you get “B”, you know fall-off is real. If you get “A”, there’s still more testing to do, since Rend getting refreshed exactly every second, and being continually refreshed by WW (aka, “fall-off” doesn’t exist) should produce the same results.
So, for “Case C”, you repeat as in the first set of trials, except now you put 1 point in Attack Speed in your paragon. This will give you 1.0001 aps, dropping your WW from 40 frames to 39, and your DD from 30 frames to 29.
So:
0.0- Rend applied, by DD… the WW tick at “0.39” is actually occurring at “0.09”.
0.09 (WW), 0.29 (DD), 0.48 (WW), 0.58 (DD) - hits that could apply Rend
1.0 - Rend drops
1.27- Rend reapplied (by either WW or DD, both of which happen at 1.27) 27 lost frames
1.56 (DD), 2.06 (WW), 2.25 (DD) - hits that could apply Rend
2.27 - Rend drops
2.45 - Rend reapplied (by WW) 18 lost frames
etc, etc… the point is not the exact amount of damage lost in this case, but rather the fact that by increasing our attack speed, even by an incredibly small degree, we have de-synced WW and Rend, and, if “fall-off” is real, we will lose a non-trivial amount of damage (considering that in less than 3 seconds we have already lost 45 frames, I would look for at least 15% damage loss compared to the calculated maximum).
So, do another test on your chosen enemy, and note the damage after a particular length of time. If the damage you deal in this case, “C”, is less than was dealt in “A”, then you know that fall-off is real. If the damage is nearly identical to “A”, then WW is probably refreshing Rend stacks, resetting the duration of each instance of Rend to the maximum (1 second) each time it hits.
Simple, right?
Edit: I ran a much quicker and less painful version of this trial. Since in “Case B” we should be losing as much as 30 frames (half a second) at a time, and in “Case C”, as much as 27, this should be evident from a simple visual inspection. I WWed a skeleton with a 1.00 aps mace with no bonus to aps, and then with 1 point of paragon in AS, and in neither case did I see the Rend icon drop at any point.
So, that’s not 100% conclusive, but I’m guessing that the duration of Rend instances is actually being refreshed with each WW/DD hit.
Now, what that means, will involve further testing. For instance, hard-cast Rend can proc AD… so if you hard-cast Rend in density, then start WWing, is the AD-dealing ability of those Rend instances preserved, and refreshed repeatedly? (Edit: no, it’s not. When you start WWing, your HC Rend is overwritten).
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Free, now that a fan favourite build (and certainly yours) is about to be top shot again, pls don’t forget about others that needs further buffs. I feel that, although Remorless have put IK HotA in a good position, it still needs further buffs, maybe to IK6 directly. It’s a newbie friendly build and lots of fun, I’d like to see it in the top 3 barb builds. You’re our voice here, so keep the good work
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The problem with buffing IK6 is charger build. Top clear NS was 135, so I guess a 3 gr buff to around 6000% won’t disturb the intraclass balance and will only benefit IK among the three HotA builds.
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Yeah, I would like to see HotA stronger, but I really dislike R6 HotA, TBH. It’s a freak build that relies on a broken mechanic (Wall charging) and to my eyes looks like an exploit that devs won’t fix because they don’t know what to do.
For me Raekor needs to be changed completely, to be all about Furious Charge, and IK needs to be all about HotA.
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Raekor at this point is only good for one thing. Push Zbarb build. I can’t stand Raekor HOTA. I am planning to try out IK HOTA this season to see what it can do. Plus IK set dungeon is the easiest to do.
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I love spin to win, but smash and exploding 'em with those fast hammer hits, feels satisfying, man
Wep Throw/ BT still need a lot of luv, along with Primaries in general.
Hadd: I replied to you here: 2.6.8+ Barb Buff Proposal II
Just wanted to keep this thread on topic. Looking forward to fresh, invigorating discussions and ideas in the new proposal thread!
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Hello. Question on Passive Skills.
Why Brawler and not Berserker Rage? If you exchange Boon of Bul-Kathos with Weapons Master the rage bank will always be full, Berserker Rage will always work. Using Ancient Spear is more convenient.
Sorry if the answers have already been.
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You need Boon to maintain perma-Wrath. You could try to get rid of it in the Crimson’s variant, and it does work if you have enough CDR, but if you die, you might be stuck waiting for Wrath’s cooldown to wear off before you can respawn.
Brawler is guaranteed to be up for most of the rift, but if your Fury falls below 95%, you’ll lose the benefit of Berserker Rage. In my opinion, Brawler, which is not dependent on resources, is the more consistent DPS passive.
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Yes, I mean the Crimson’s option, CDR is enough.
But if I put Weapons Master, then Fury will always be 100%, right?
If you’re running on heavy density all the time and have 55%+ CDR + Crimson + Orotz, you won’t need Boon. Since that will not always be the case, you may find a bad floor, or a long corridor with few enemies here and there, Boon you help you keep Wrath up. No Wrath = death when pushing.
That’s why Boon and Brawler. But you can certainly push Weapon Master and Berserker Rage though. Just look at your cooldowns carefully.
Another thing I forgot to mention: when in hairy situations, you may want to spam battle rage to heal you up (via Morticks’s all rune to Wrath - Thrive on Chaos one). That may drop Berserker Rage off, specially against the RG
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Ok, thanks for the explanation.
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should update gear priorities for rcr with crimson set, it’s bis on weapons, shoulders and gloves and for obsidian ring
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CDR stacks with diminishing effects, depending on how much you have it’s not worth sacrificing crit damage, chance or even average damage. As I said: it depends. I suggest 55% to 60%. More than that any cdr roll will provide 3 or 4% increased CDR (and therefore, damage)
Did some more testing on WW/Rend. I’ll just give my results first, so people who are only interested in that can get the quick takeaway.
Results:
- Hard cast rend and Ambo rend cannot stack separately, i.e., you can’t have 2 stacks of hard-cast (HC) Rend and 2 of Ambo-rend.
- Ambo-Rend seems to overwrite hard-cast Rend, i.e. if you’re fighting in density, throwing in occasional HC Rends to proc AD is not going to help you. If you want to get significant AD out of Rend, you have to sit there manually spamming it for several seconds (not more than 3, since then Wastes 4 will drop, cutting your damage to 1/3).
- I am not sure if HC rend overwrites Ambo-Rend, will have to test more later. (Edit: it does overwrite)
Method
To test whether Ambo-Rend and HC Rend can stack side-by-side, I ran trials on damaging enemies using two procedures. In procedure 1, I just used WW to apply Rend, and in procedure 2, I pretty much continuously HC Rend, tapping WW every half second or so to apply Ambo-Rend. I nerfed my damage, so as not to kill my target too quickly, by removing all damage passives and legendary gems, and using 2 BK weapons with the damage range rolled off and no sockets.
I did 3 sets of trials, on Manglemaw, Rakanoth, and Ghom. For Rakanoth and Ghom, who are bosses that spawn with the same amount of health each time, I timed taking their health from 100% to 0%. Manglemaw’s health is variable each time he spawns, so I timed 100% to 50% health, and then 50% to 0%, on the same instance.
Manglemaw, procedure 1: 27 seconds
Manglemaw, procedure 2: 27 seconds
Rakanoth, procedure 1: 2 minutes, 58 seconds
Rakanoth, procedure 2: 3 minutes, 0 seconds
Ghom, procedure 1: 4 minutes, 3 seconds
Ghom, procedure 2: 4 minutes, 17 seconds
If Ambo-rend and HC Rend could each stack separately, you’d expect mixing the two together to produce significantly more damage. It sure doesn’t look like that’s happening.
To test whether Ambo-rend can overwrite HC Rend, I headed to the tomb of the skeleton king, where I spawned the four towers that summon skeletons. After killing all the surrounding enemies and 3 of the towers, I again nerfed my damage, and applied HC Rend to the tower. As expected, this procced AD on the couple of surrounding skeletons. Then I applied Ambo-Rend to the tower. As expected, this did not proc AD onto the skeletons.
Then I applied HC Rend to the tower, immediately followed by Ambo-Rend, and didn’t see any AD procs hitting the skeletons. I repeated this 20-25 times, and saw 0 AD procs after I’d applied Ambo-Rend. So it looks like Ambo-Rend is overwriting HC Rend.
Like I said, I’m not sure if it goes the other way: whether HC Rend can overwrite Ambo-Rend. I may test that later, or if somebody else feels like doing it, knock yourself out. (Edit: a few days later I re-tested, and HC Rend does seem to overwrite Ambo-Rend, as well.)
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Thanks for the testing Rage! Seems then there is really no point to hard cast Rend at this point. Might as well leave the AD rolls off for better stats and just let Ambo’s do its thing.
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Well, anytime you’re in density, the best thing would technically be to just spam HC Rend for 2-3 seconds at a time, especially when you’re in a Physical CoE cycle. There are a couple issues with that, though:
- Without those fast hits from WW/DDs healing you via Blood Funnel, LpH, you may die pretty quickly.
- That means you’ve got to have considerable AD rolls on your gear, which costs you other rolls.
- That’s a terrible, incredibly clunky feeling playstyle.
So, for anybody who wants to enjoy playing the build, I’d advise just forgetting about both AD and HC Rend, and stick to WWing. For extreme min-maxing and pushing, the AD / spam HC Rend route could be best… unfortunately.
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