Trying to finalize my Frenzy + Thorns build, and just curious if anyone has done any sort of extensive testing?
Currently on my sheet I have 26.1% attack speed bonus, but that’s not factoring in things like my my 2H Bludgeon that has 52/60% AS for basic.
At the same time it’s hard to tell if all my buffs are actually doing anything
There’s people who claim that it caps at 100% because that’s all they see on the character stat screen at max stacks, but they don’t realize that the stat screen doesn’t show basic attack speed.
These same people, and others, also claim there’s a cap because their character doesn’t appear to swing faster.
I’ve personally tried a basic build with 5 stacks, both with and without 15% ias gloves, and I can clearly see and feel the difference in how fast the character swings. Also with and without the Rapid aspect.
I’ve yet to find a video and/or explanation that gives substantial evidence or proof of an attack speed cap, nor one to explain how they came to the conclusion of a cap.
My guess is that there is attack speed breakpoints, as there is in every Diablo game, and most people aren’t reaching the next breakpoint, so they feel capped at their current. I’ve noticed significant increases after adding 220+ total attack speed. Seems like I hit a breakpoint.
Thanks for sharing! I’ll keep pushing onwards then.
I’m grabbing every IAS node I can on the Paragon boards, the sticking point has been whether or not I want to also go for basic speed on my helm, as well as a maxed 60% from the aspect on a 2H.
There’s also a legendary node for more speed with Crits while berserking I will try to pick up but it’s not easy balancing out everything I want (I especially need that Tenacity node for the 12% max life)
I have it on my hat, and use Rapid on 2h (for this build). You want to grab attack speed from everywhere you can. Rupture now gives 30% to all other skills. Battle Trance is mandatory in my opinion, and will go up to 45% after patch.
If you can fit in a core skill, Accelerating aspect will give you another 50% on a 2h.
2x swords will get you 30% after killing a cc’d enemy.
I’m doing a Thorns build and right now the thing ai’m fretting most over before I take the time to upload a build video (because I want to nail the proof of concept first) is whether or not I wanna go all in on speed (which yes, I can say I do)) but also Ignoring Pain vs The Barber.
My original plan was to use all that speed to fuel the explosions from Barber, but Barber is seriously screwing with my thorns
Does it screw with your thorns? Or is your thorns damage being absorbed before it gets shatted out at 250%+ damage?
That’s how it screws with it.
As soon as I Crit an enemy it’s like it shuts down, and I’d rather have my Needleflare going off.
Granted it is a sizeable BOOM when it goes off, and maybe it will work better if I find a better heart as the one I use currently has a 3.6 timer (2 would be ideal)
Even so, I did find a near-perfect Ignoring Pain but I am loathe to sacrifice it simply for testing purposes
The Barber is the only way Barbs can do considerable damage now. Don’t do it, mang.
You say that but I have seen my Thorns damage absolutely rip enemies.
Up to what tier? What if they don’t hit you often?
So far I’m still barely into WT4, doing 21-23 NMDs because my gear is far from optimized and I am missing a few key items - the build I’m making is extremely gear dependent unfortunately.
My Rage of Horrograth has been serving me quite well but I desperately need a Razorplate. Once I get one I will feel much more confident pushing higher.
It’s not that I can’t, it will just take too long. My Barb is ludicrously tanky, I was able to fight off level 75 Enemies at 60 without dying.
The other reason I am considering dropping The Barber is because it screws with too many interactions besides Thorns, and my whole gameplay is going full on Brigitte - “Turning Defense into Offense!”
I think just about everyone is running the Revenge Heart because it suppress damage, but I legitimately use it for the secondary effect because my bar is Frenzy, 3 shouts, Iron Skin and WotB - I don’t even use fury (I need a new Ramaladni’s actually have yet to find an Ancestral one)
So Barber screws with that by deferring the damage, as well as the damage from Retaliation (and I have 4 sources of Unstoppable including my boots lol) which I initially took out of blind curiosity and to give a nice day FU to spiders and their bind spam.
I may change that out for Prudent though in the event I deem the survivability necessary (4 seconds of immunity every 60s isn’t that bad)
Oh right, using the Crits do lightning one in the meantime because one of my rings unfortunately rolled Vicious and there’s still no way to change that (seriously bad design) which of course, Barber also messes with.
Plus I have a fair amount of +physical damage from my boards and Barber actually changes your damage to Shadow when it goes off.
If there isnt a cap then using axes while at 100% should clearly give you a sizeable attak speed boost. Go try it
Test axes. See if they multiply your total attack speed after increases.
Hmm don’t currently have a pair on me.
Why would axes multiply your attack speed?
Doesn’t Barber mess with a few on hit effects or something like that? Stuff like that could be pretty bad for Barb depending on how much you are going for bleed or thorns or something.
Because they have a multiplier on their expertise. Im assuming the tool tip is wrong though
Right that’s another thing, I have a number of bleed synergies that it is messing with as well.
I could just cut most of those but I’d rather not
If the dev really means it like they say in the last fireside chat, which is looking to buff quake, then it just might give frenzy build a chance to be viable…maybe…just maybe…
Was thinking of building :
Frenzy (max) - leap (+earthquake) - stomp (reset leap) - leap again - and frenzy (rinse repeat) & along the way maybe shout for beserking or steel grasp for vul or any skill that could multiply the damage.
I never tried it, sort of just thinking about it. 
Then again, just standing there face tanking the target can be quite challenging issue…hmmm
Frenzy should be fine as is using an almost identical setup to the one I am running now, but foregoing Thorns for emphasis on Double Swing and maintaining Berserking for as long as possible in tandem with The Barber - I think, the absorb effect screws with a lot of stuff, apparently it even affects other players regardless of whether they’re in your party.