Is my build weak?

Barbarian
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i’m level 54. attack power 1400+ double swing/frenzy+death blow+ground stomp+call of ancients+war cry/berserk build.

stomp is good for hitting without fury cost, and crowd control.
death blow can get 14K almost 20 sometimes. double swing is just cool looking, not sure if it’s a good skill.

I guess what i’m asking if that’s a viable build that anyone has been using successfully?
I’m dying a few times in bosses, especially the city re-conquer ones.
but in general it’s pretty ok. not feeling nerfed. not feeling OP too.

anyone’s been doing this build too?

p.s.
only at act V now.

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The Death Blow value seems a bit low. What attributes have you focused on? Can you post a build?

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hi lord kaffa,

when you complete the campaign and get into the next tier of the world (T3) there is a unique legendary necklace that drops, i think at T3 might be world T4… “Battle Trance” i like the sounds of it and i think it could be nice for frenzy, though haven’t used myself.

Pairing this skill with double swing would be my concern. pairing the basic skill and the core skill to both use dual wield weapons would make me worry how you will scale your damage. i only know of one double swing legendary enchant and its a little under whelming (spawn dust devil), and it is difficult to see how you would buff the damage.

whirl wind, HOTA, leap, ground slamn, and bleeds. All have multiple buffing legendary aspects, and paragon glyphs/boards. They can also utilise a variety of weapons, so you can gain the benefits of weapon switching weapon buffs.

that said if you focus on the vulnerable aspect or particularly the berserk aspect, you can get some damage scaling from this in paragon and legendary gear aspects i think it could be viable. there are like 7 legendaries that focus on berserking. And by not being distracted on other legendary aspects for skills you dont use gives you a very good point to focus and scale on. do you already pick up unconstrained as your key passive or are you using unbridled rage?

have you checked out your paragon board options now you are over level 50? you can preview the boards by selecting the “gate” at the edges of the starting board

I certainly think viable yes. as long as you are enjoying it and know how to scale it. But i dont know how well you can scale it up at the higher levels. eg how many boards in the paragon system and glyphs will benefit this set up. I wish you luck and hope you make it work. off meta builds you make yourself always feel more rewarding when you finally get that piece of gear or key paragon board node that really buffs them up.

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why? because of weapon swapping aspects?

unconstrained. i still struggle with fury consumption.

i wasn’t aware of that thanks.

yes I’m so far avoiding it, and yes double swing looks extremly cool, but is a little bit underwhelming in damage, but it has benefits when you stun-you can get unlimited hits with it until stun is over. perhaps i should invest more on its core attack speed?
also, it looks very cool when you chop heads…

I agree, but i like only leap, and grand slam(not ground stomp?) i am using already. also- i would need a basic skill to match my skills. and i am currently attached to the more frenzy fast speed attacks.

what is a good damage for death blow in my level?

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Barbarian has a few ways to scale its damage through mechanics specific to barbarian and weapon swap is just one, berserking is another, and the key passive choice is another aspect. Theres also over power, vulnerable and stun options all can use. but the skills you mentioned: death blow, double swing, frenzy, leap. only really fulfill one of these options: beserking opportunity and only with the double swing. so I was just worried you were removing some of the options with skill combination selections to pick up damage amplification.

really, i would have thought the main benefit of 1h would be the fury generation. attack speed will help.

boots and amulet can give you reduced resource cost Affixes (its a bit of a waste on amulet).

if not already doing so you can use thorns/bleeds/bleeds slow at low level investment (1point in each passive)
then you 1H attacks with dual wield sword will give back more resources.

stuns are good. Theres some nice damage scaling to stunned enemies. its just you cant stun bosses that made me chose not to focus it. but how do you stun? upheavel? ground stomp? maybe i missed something?

leap has a few very nice enchants: 300% extra damge (600% on 2H), cooldown reduction, etc. and great utility.

looking into scaling your damage and paragon i had a little look at what boards there are and glyphs. I think you will be fine, there’s a glyph for 1H and for specific weapons, and although they scale at a lesser rate they do force you to focus into strength nodes which would also be adding to your damage.

I can only assume you must be making use of beserking? this seems like the best way you will be scaling damage and the stuns if you have a way to stun. If you can manage to do both there are paragon boards and glyphs for both i believe.

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I got war cry which allows me to berserk, and i can do that infinitely with the skill with double swing that adds 2 more seconds. so if i have continuous fights it’s easily all on berserk.

perhaps, but i have my hands full in X damage and damg reduction/fortifications. which is very cool tanking, I can sometimes go for lengthy fights without ever healing. and do a lot of dodging.

besides the frenzy which adds attack speed i have a +30% from some gloves. some good roll on the start. which i’m afraid to extract…

ground stomp yes. it saves me everytime. I don’t think i would survive.
also on boss fights, after a few stuns, the boss collapses and i have like 9 free hits on
him.

not sure if i understood the first part then? when you said about damage scaling?
I’m using vulnerable increases chance, and death blow to maximize it when the enemy is near death. basically the routine is estimate death blow damage, and lower it via frenzy or double swing, and then land it. I guess it fits the name too. if its more than 3 enemies i war cry for berserk. so the damage is increased with them other skills. is that what you mean?

i haven’t hit a wall yet, but i’m concerned about tier 3 after i finish the campaign…we’ll see

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Not sure if you are using it, but using a 1h mace and have 3 points in your talent tree that makes mace stun enemies is huge for double swing builds. Along with that, use legendary aspect that gives you a chance to stun bleeding targets, and lastly use the 2h sword as your main expertise which applies bleed with every attack.

This will make it crazy easy to stun things and let you you cast double swing over and over while getting back fury.

Death blow is fine to use, only prob is if you don’t kill something, then you have the cd and it’s a bit harder to keep up berserk. I use chains which is always available for every new fight and can use multiple times in case it drops off during a cc chain from enemies.

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Double Swing allow you to increase duration of berserk by 2 seconds.

So you can pick all berserk legendary into a double swing build.

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interesting, i’ll check it out, i think i maxed out all my talents in 1h.

I have no bleed skill. i haven’t invested in blood. I think it requires rend? or perhaps there’s other passives?

that’s true its annoying, but it’s part of the build i guess, that way i keep my fury on max most of the time.
it’s weird that i haven’t found no CD items…:frowning:

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Not weak, maybe un-optimized though.

I’ve been experimenting with Double-Swing builds and sadly they require more aspects, and paragon points to get going than the other builds do. Which sucks.

First off, I think Double-Swing as a Spender falls behind a great deal the other Barbarian spenders. It’s suppose to be king of single target damage but let’s be real, HoTA nukes targets faster than Double-Swing does.

My build revolved around Walking Arsenal and Iron Maelstrom. Walking Arsenal gives a constant 45% damage boost, and it was more consistent than the Unbridled Rage. Iron Maelstrom helps mitigate the Double-Swing’s inherent weakness which is AoE.

Lunge/Double-Swing, Ground Stomp, Rallying Cry, Deathblow, and Iron Maelstrom was the skills I rolled with. Use Deathblow to burst enemies and proc Berserkering and Double-Swing to sustain it. I think because we have to sacrifice a traversal skill taking Lunging Strike is an absolute requirement for the sake of DPS uptime.

Double-Swing builds require specific aspects too that you cannot aquire from Codex. You need the Encroaching Wrath aspect on a two-handed weapon so your Deathblow does 200% more damage, and Weapon Masters for the additional skill charge and a chance to stun the enemy. Deathblow has an inherently high Lucky Hit chance, and Weapon Masters pairs nicely and allows you sustain even more stuns.

Stunning and knocking down enemies is quite important with Double-Swing because it refunds fury cost. Going dual maces + concussion passive can improve stun uptime a great deal, but dual swords is also a good choice because it gives you tons of attack speed and once you solve your fury issues you can spam Double-Strike nonstop. Fury generation while Berserking, Umbral Ring, etc etc.

Get gear and aspects that are focused on making Berserking stronger and help with fury generation. Damage stats against crowd controlled enemies, buffs to close enemies, and buffs to primary skill damage. Round out your AoE weaknesses, and once you get the paragon board focus on the boards that gives damage on Berserkering and damage reduction, Carnage is a good starting board and Flawless Technique / Weapon Master are good secondary boards that give crit, damage, damage to elites, and fury generation.

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Its the only unique neck ive ever seen. Ive seen like 20 of them now. Amazing design.

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the 2H sword expertise gives you 20% of your direct damage as a bleed on the target you hit. so Frankus is saying using 2H sword as your arsenal expertise slot will ensure every bit of direct damage inflicts bleed (20% of the damage done). Then there is an aspect that can cause bleeding enemies take 40% of the bleeding damage on them as physical damage when stunned.

you can use the one 1H mace with the passive “concussion” (on ultimate skill node) to gain 10% luck hit chance (per point invested = 30% max) to stun on hit with bludgeoning weapon.

now when you swing the double swing or frenzy if you do say 10,000 damage it will inflict a 2000 bleed every time. then the stun from the passive can proc on this bleed as extra damage thanks to the aspect (40% = 80% on a 2H = 1600).

multiple skills will add multiple bleeds, and they can be translated into damage using the above mechancs. And unlike rend the bleed remains after the aspect procs. It would potentially be a 36% damage buff with max rolls on aspect and fully levelled 2H sword aresnal skill, and should be consistent uptime with your focus on the skills you mention and attack speed.

it also gives another option for damage reduction (against bleeding) roll option on defensive gear (damage reduction is the strongest form of defence and has a high ceiling like 85% cap i believe)

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But necklass as uniq is a very bad spot.

Amu gets +50% on legendary effect, so +40% armor legendary is on amu now +60% armor.

And there is a rar amu from a uniq elite in the open world, which can roll up to +2000 life at max item level, with +250 armor from jewel, which you can enchant with +60% more, if you want a tanky amu.

And as dmg amu, - cooldown, -CC

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IMO Unbridled is a bit overrated although highly dependent on the build. Most people seem to think it’s the only choice, but I disagree. I went back to unconstrained after trying it in a few nightmares today. I do think it’s very specific to the build, so I’m not saying it’s bad… I just don’t think it’s the only option.

I’m running both Limitless Rage and Edgemasters, and I can benefit from both when spamming double swing on a stunned mob because it gives me back a lot more fury than it generates… I think limitless rage more than offsets what I got from unbridled because with unbridled I was pretty much generating about the same as fury I was using against a stunned mob, so it was viable but I didn’t get the extra to trigger 30%x from limitless rage. Also, unbridled really fell behind when there weren’t as many mobs on the screen at once.

Regarding the Bleed Damage stuff above me… I do run an aspect where I deal Bleed damage when Berserking, but I only rely on my bleed damage to trigger stuns etc… I don’t run the extra bleed damage on a stunned enemy because once I stun a mob… I’m gonna kill em in those 2-3 seconds he’s stunned unless it’s like a 65+ nightmare. I personally run Two-Handed Axe Expertise for extra damage versus vulnerable targets… Since I’m pretty much never out of fury and frequently spamming double swing it also means I can keep 100% uptime on vuln.

However, play how you want. If what they suggest works for you, then go for it. I set out to make a non-shout, dual wield, Berserking barb, and it’s worked great for me so far. I even have a friend who made a build with zero core skills and it seems to work pretty well for him.

Regarding Amulet… .I will say that I think running armor aspect on Amulet is the only way to go if you want to push into higher tier nightmares etc. you need that extra armor. I even run Burning Rage aspect (fire damage while berserking) specifically so that I can trigger more procs for my Disobedience aspect and therefore either keep higher armor against a single target or reach max armor more quickly when fighting a group.

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