Good tip. Until now (GR 121) Im Just entering and trying almost all rifts I enter. If I succeed, Just up one level…
Because of that I still cant manage the Pandemonium and need to improve the grouping. I believe I could push a lil’ harder if I manage those two points better.
Well, I still working on my Paragon and Augments, so Im happy with my progress until this point.
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In S19 the strategy is much simpler. All you need is to be under an elite at 100 and 150 points and drop your stacks right after 150 or 200 point. I did 130 from on my first try (1650 paragon) and never tried higher yet. I’m still need to craft 2 items for push.
I ran a test, and determined that the damage from Bloodbath alternates between weapons, and isn’t always based off the main hand damage. (I used a low level dagger as my main hand weapon. If this was where the Bloodbath damage came from, it would essentially do zero damage. This was not the case.)
In the course of testing, I discovered something interesting. The rate of alternation between hands when applying Rend via WW seems to be based on your sheet APS, not the Frames Per Animation of WW or DD.
So, for instance, in my main hand I was using a dagger with 1.50 aps, that did 7-18 damage, and in my off hand I was using a mighty weapon with 1.30 aps, that did 493-695 damage. With some attack speed thrown on top, my main hand aps was 2.04, and my off hand aps 1.77.
With those speeds, you should get a WW hit every 19 frames and a DD every 14 frames with your main hand, and a WW hit every 22 frames and a DD every 16 frames with your off hand. All of these numbers give you near or above 3 hits per second, and that’s not even considering the fact that both DDs and WW apply Rend, which I established in previous testing.
But: I recorded a video in which I kill my favorite test subject/victim, Manglemaw. In it, you’ll see that he takes damage in windows (from the Mighty Weapon), with pauses in between during which he takes virtually no damage (from the Dagger). Take a look:
So, your Rends applied via WW don’t alternate on every single WW or DD hit. Instead, you apply Rends only with your main hand for 1-2 seconds, and then only with your off hand for 1-2 seconds, even if in one of those 1-2 second windows, you hit the same guy 10 times with WW and DD ticks.
I don’t think this really makes a whole lot of difference, in terms of actually playing the game, but it’s interesting.
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Very interesting. I figured it worked that way, but thank you for confirming!
Very interesting! I agree–doesn’t mean much in terms of gameplay aside from making sure that both your weapons have high damage ranges.
Good stuff, Rage. I’ll add it to the OP!
How do you both feel about Ambo NOT being able to overwrite HC? If you’re in agreement, maybe it can be presented to Nev/Dev.
Well finally got an ancient ambos to wear with my primal doombringer, augmented them both then went to push a bit and gotta say it’s the least fun combo of all the possible variations
Losing the attack speed from either IB or BK made keeping perma wrath up a lot more difficult, and at times keeping up both wrath and BoM wasn’t possible if there was a big enough gap in the rift, and this was even with crimsons and only using stomp to refresh BoM.
Granted, this was really bad playing on my part, I should’ve bailed when I got such a lame rift, but i’m stubborn so I kept going and anyway ended up dying to stonesinger because wrath dropped off as he spawned, and I tried to escape but ended up running down a narrow corridor and hit the exit shrine then got charged while trying to double back.
Ripperoni.
~https://www.d3planner.com/981243107~ this is what I was running, complete with around what stats I can remember
Seems 117 is going from a hopeful dream to a lasting nightmare.
Just all of a sudden seem to be doing no damage, even when I can get some decent density together, it seems to take forever to get packs down, leaving no time for a boss kill.
Don’t even get me started on Blizzards horrible map RNG lottery 
Casually drops this in…
…and twirls away giggling like a schoolgirl.
Keep plugging away, eventually you’ll get a GG map / mobs / pylons.
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Well, I got 127 down at 11.4k Str. That’ll probably be my top end with no augments and still using Ambo/Doombringer. The seasonal buff is just silly - I had 2 failures not due to lack of damage but because rift guardians can one-shot me, so I think it’s time to swap to IB swords (which is sad because my Ambo’s and Doombringer are both primal…).
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Thanks for sharing your experiences. We need more info about how Ambo’s + Doom performs in higher GRs, so your story is quite valuable. One comment: don’t play bad rifts. You know the drill. Big, empty maps? Quit and remake.
Congrats! And yes, it is. The Seasonal killstreaks are worth thousands of Paragon on their own–between 1 and 8k worth of Paragon, in fact, as we can see from the Seasonal 150 clear.
Congrats on the clear. Thats awesome 
I need some of your luck 
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Yeah just thought i’d share my experience so other HC barbs can make a more informed decision on which combo to pick.
Honestly my opinion on it was that Ambos + Doombringer has the best damage raw damage of all the combos, however it’s a lot riskier to play as keeping up wotb is more difficult than either IB or BK
BK seems the easiest/lowest risk to play as you’re never really in danger of being fury starved or not keeping up wotb
IB seems to be more damage than BK, but less damage than Ambos+Doom.
IB is easier to maintain wotb than Ambos+Doom, slightly more difficult than BK but not hugely noticeable
So yeah IB sort of sits between the other combos but has extra mitigation which neither of the other 2 have.
BK remains my preferred combo, IB is something i’d consider using if I ever hit a high enough paragon to drop BoM, but Ambos + Doom is not a combo i’ll be trying again on HC, just a bit too risky for my taste, but it can definitely be pulled off
Edit: just noticed most of this info is in the OP anyway, haven’t read it in a couple week.
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Do you really want to drop Ground Stomp to get few percents of damage?
Well, about 30%, aka roughly 2 GRs.
When you replace BoM with Zodiac you lose 20 AD and 50 CHD. To keep two skills up you need another 1-2 CDR stats. So you sacrifice 35%+ damage. And you as well lose armor slot in the Cube.
p.s. Hard Cast Rend don’t benefit from MoC, does it?
This is off topic, but what do you think about Ambo NOT being able to overwrite HC?
If this were the case, we could HC and continue to WW without fear of Ambo overwriting our AD via HC.
That’s a fair point.
Nope. MoC shuts off pretty much immediately after you stop channeling.
Well… I guess I’d say that this could be tricky to implement.
If you go back through this thread or my post history you can find my conversation where I was trying to figure out how much damage you’d drop if Rend stacks were not getting “refreshed”. And if HC Rend became un-overwritable, this damage loss (though not that large) would become real. There might be other issues with coding one kind of Rend to be overwritable, and the other kind of Rend to be un-overwritable, that I’m not even aware of… like perhaps with Bloodbath procs…
Also, WhirlRend is already the 2nd strongest solo build in the game, and the 1st strongest is nearly 100% sure to be nerfed. I’m guessing the devs aren’t looking to improve the performance of this build any further… perhaps the opposite.
But if Mawg stumble steps, wouldn’t MoC be up for a good portion of the non-Wrend ambo 1 second detonations?
If you’re just channeling WW to apply Rend, then MoC works and all your Rends benefit. If you start hard-casting Rend, though, you drop the MoC bonus. And if you then start WWing again, you regain the MoC bonus, but your Ambo-Rend overwrites your HC Rend, shutting off your Area Damage.
So MoC doesn’t really benefit your HC Rends.
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How many tiers behind is a zero AD build?
The main reason I loved rend so much this season, was because I could forsake AD and play without the lag, and a couple week ago that seemed the optimal route, but now this Hard-Casting rend has sort of taken over as the meta its brought AD back to the top, not only do I really not enjoy the hard casting of rend, but i’m not looking forward to that AD lag again either.
So just wondering how many tiers behind a zero AD build is? I realize it will be significantly far behind as AD is just insane, but still… we talking 10 tiers? 15?
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