Well, the problem with that setup is that it’s the legendary affix that’s good, not the weapon. And all that would do is shoehorn folks into using that weapon, when right now, we have 3 different viable options.
The real problem with 2H weapons boils down to base design. Dual-wielding offers 130% more CHD, more stats, and potentially more affixes. I’m sorry, Hadd, but the 2H ship has sailed. Maybe in D4 you’ll be able to play a viable 2H build–and for the record, I hope that’s the case.
But it got me thinking about what it would take to make 2H weapons viable in D3. Just to compete, they’d have to offer the following:
Additional socket
4 additional stats
Even then, it would boil down to issues with attack speed and legendary affixes.
BTW, y’all remember when I kept saying that “WW applies Rend” was a bad idea? Well, here’s yet another reason–the interaction between attack speed, WW, and the application of Rends.
if i get that right rend explode every 1 second. therfore you need weapon setup that does at least 2 attacks per second. with furnance or reaver i cant get 2 APS, therfore istvan paired blades are sperior because they count as x2 multiplier for they deliver two stacks per second. with furnance i pull 27 T dps ,with istvan i pull 17 T dps. but paired blades put 2 stacks therfore they pull 34 trillion dps in the end i would say
This may be true for hard cast rend but not with ambos applied rends. Dust devil’s within 9 yards also apply rend. So you should be getting two stacks with ease.
The key thing is legendary affixes. Currently, you get 3 orange affixes (or 1 + weapon set bonus, or 2 + elemental/elite damage bonus) for the main hand, off hand, and cube slot, collectively. There is also an additional complication caused by the heavenly strength passive for crusaders.
The other modifiers are somewhat irrelevant as one can simply modify 2 hand weapon damage to compensate. How damage is calculated is a mathematical formula where simple algebra can be used to calculate the “necessary” weapon damage to compensate for loss of such things as a socket (in most cases 130% critical hit damage), loss of main stat, based on Blizzard’s decision of a model character that they consider.
Yes, I do. I strongly disagree with your opinion. In my mind, WW applying Rend is one of the key elements that makes ww/rend gameplay smooth.
Except the optimal way to play depends on hard-casting Rend in density.
So, the style of play for which I’ve long advocated for is in fact what we do when we want to optimize the build. We gather GG density, hard-cast Rend 2x, WW for a few seconds, hard-cast Rend 2x, and repeat until density thins. We also sporadically hard-cast Rend to accrue additional Zodiac procs, just like we also stop to Spear (more often than we hard-cast).
If you’re playing Zodiac Rend properly for GR pushes, you’re not just holding down a mouse button and managing cooldowns. You’re constantly interrupting your WW to hard-cast or Spear or Stomp, etc, etc. Take a look at my 125 clear done at 17k main stat. Success with Zodiac Rend =/= non-stop WW for the “smoothest” possible game play. It’s about constant, purposeful interruption since hard-cast Rends deal significantly more damage than Ambo’s Rends.
So, like. You’re wrong.
If you’re going to throw in your 2 cents, do your homework first.
True! But one thing does not exclude the other. Auto applied Rend is good. The devs did good this time. That doesn’t mean you are wrong in all your other points.
It’s a major improvement over the previous iteration of the build, but it has its own problems. It’s hard to test since the two different Rends overwrite one another, and it confuses a lot of players; just look at all the baffled questions and misinformation going around about the build. It also firmly locks 2H weapons out of the build. If you’ll recall, we found a way to make 2H weapons viable in our original proposal, but that’s never going to happen if Rend is auto-cast by WW.
So, it’s a mixed bag. I love the new build’s damage, and I love how the build is suddenly more flexible in terms of item usage, but it’s not without certain problems.
Oh, well, that kinda screws it all up,. doesn’t it? What if they fixed the highest Rend stacks until they end? Pretty much like the bleed mechanic from Path of Exile.
That would actually hurt the build since, as I discussed above when dunking on table guy, we need to hard-cast Rend to proc AD. If our Ambo’s Rends were pinned until detonation, we couldn’t overwrite them with hard-cast Rends, get those juicy AD procs, and then go back to spinning for a second before getting in more hard-casts. In other words, it would cripple our damage output.
And–again–it’s stuff like this why I’ve always maintained that auto-cast Rends are a bad idea. In fact, if one wanted to buff Zodiac Rend, the easiest way would be to let Ambo’s Rends proc AD. We would almost never have to hard-cast again, but I quite prefer the strategic use of the hard-cast. Passive builds are no bueno unless it’s T16.
Ok, I understood what you said. Regardless of the damage calculation it would still require the hard cast to proc AD, but I cannot see how that would hurt the build. If damages scales from 1-10 (for the sake of simplicity), auto overwriting Rend’s damage (regardless of AD) would be a direct buff for the build. It would still require hard casting, though