For the basic setup, I see the following pieces being used:

• Full Wrath of the Wastes set (6 pieces)
• Lamentation (belt)
• Mortick’s Brace (bracers)
• Band of Might (ring/cubed)
• Convention of Elements (ring/cubed)
• Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (ring/cubed)
• Hellfire Amulet or Squirt’s Necklace (amulet)
• Ambo’s Pride (cubed)
• Mantle of Channeling (cubed)

Now, for the Ethereal, there are two weapons I see being used. Either The Grandfather 2-handed weapon or a Doombringer. From my understanding, The Grandfather might end up becoming the best-in-slot choice here because of the huge amount of damage and other affixes it can roll including both cooldown reduction and critical hit chance.

On the other hand, the Doombringer is a one handed weapon, which means you can use another solid weapon in your offhand. However, it won’t have as much damage, nor have the cooldown affixes which can be critical for a Barbarian. It can provide some damage reduction, which is great while one can search for cooldown reduction elsewhere.

What matters, of course, is the legendary power on the Ethereal. Of the possible ones, the best in my estimation in order are:

1. Ambo’s Pride (Attacking with Whirlwind also applies Rend, and the total damage of Rend is dealt over 1 second)
2. The Furnace (Increases damage against elites by 40-50%)
3. Messerschmidt’s Reaver (Reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your skills by 1 second when you slay an enemy)
4. In-geom (Your skill cooldowns are reduced by 8-10 seconds for 15 seconds after killing an elite pack)
5. Echoing Fury (Slaying enemies engulfs the wielder into a Frenzy)
6. The Executioner (Attacks will slay enemies with less than 5-10% health)

If you manage to find a good one hander, you should find a complimentary one hander from the list above then use a cubed power from the list. For myself, I ended up dual wielding a one handed Ethereal with the Ambo’s Pride power and an Echoing Fury while using the Messerschmidt’s Reaver power in the cube. I know most people on PTR were using The Furnace but I think The Furnace works best when you’re pushing. At lower levels, you will value your cooldowns since it will be harder to generate Fury with everything dying quickly.

Active Skills

Skill-wise, I found the following setup to be useful without the Bul-Kathos mighty weapons:

• Ground Stomp: Wrench Smash (to pull in enemies)
• Whirlwind: Wind Sheer (to generate Fury on hit)
• Rend: Bloodbath (your main damaging ability activated by the set)
• Wrath of the Berserker (rune does not matter once you are using Mortik’s Brace)
• Warcry: Charge! (for instant generation of Fury)
• Sprint: Marathon (speed boost since you will NOT be using whirlwind the entire duration)

Passive Skills

Passive skills are going to depend on the passive you manage to score on your Ethereal. That said, you might be looking at between 5-6 passives for a Barbarian, depending on whether you feel okay with using a Squirt’s Necklace over a Hellfire Amulet. With that in mind, I will list out six passives I think will be worth using here.

• Rampage: Good for increasing strength, which in turn will also improve your armor
• Animosity: Increased fury generation as well as increased fury.
• Ruthless: Increased damage
• Nerves of Steel: Cheat death
• Brawler: Since you will always be in melee range and probably be against more than 3 foes at time, this provides increased damage
• Weapons Master: Only take this if you use an Ambo’s Pride for the Fury generation
• Unforgiving: Not a must have but only if you are having problems sustaining Fury generation. Useful in emptier areas.

Followers

With regards to choosing a Follower, my recommendation here would be to go with a Templar for resource generation. Without the Bul-Kathos mighty set weapons to provide constant Fury generation, you will be searching for additional batteries for resource generation. Also, a Templar is good for providing extra healing but in taking the Inspire over Guardian as a skill, you will lose out on a cheat death. So in that situation, you might go with Nerves of Steel.

Alternatively, you can choose an Enchantress for a little more cooldown reduction, bonus armor and a cheat death. However, if your Barbarian is also your starting character, you will end up not maximizing the gear for intelligence for your Enchantress which will improve things like her cooldown reduction for you.

Remaing Thoughts

In my experience with this version of the build, the biggest hiccup I immediately encountered was being out of Fury constantly. Because of that issue, I could not maintain Whirlwind at 100%, which is why Sprint with Marathon became critical. Empty areas in particular pose the greatest issue, especially if you need to backtrack. Generally, my strategy was to attempt to maintain Wrath of the Berserker and give myself a burst of Fury through War Cry whenever I encounter foes. I could also use Ground Stomp to gather up my goes and quickly mow them over with a slight generation of Fury.

I will admit that my endeavors were on lower levels of content. So I never felt threatened nor damaged too seriously. Instead, my biggest obstacle was keeping up Whirlwind or Sprint just because my Fury would be eaten up quickly especially in emptier areas. I might’ve switched from a badly rolled Hellfire Amulet to a Squirt’s Necklace too to improve my damage.

In addition, I saw a few alternative builds such as replacing Ground Stomp with Furious Charge. In that situation, Sprint also was used and I see the two abilities as a way to speed across areas while Furious Charge could be used to help generate your initial Fury, depending on the rune taken here.

Another thing you can do is alter the ring setup slightly. For instance, using a Focus/Restraint combination rather than depending on a Convention of Elements to cycle through to physical damage. In that scenario, you can use either Furious Charge or Ground Stomp to keep up the bonus generator damage. However, you will lose out on either a Band of Might for damage reduction (which can be made up through the Doombringer’s damage reduction affix) or an Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (which likewise can be made up through an In-geom and/or Messerschmidt’s Reaver combination). So there is quite a bit of room to experiment there.

At any rate, there’s no doubt that finding a solid Ethereal will be the way to go for a Whirlwind barbarian in Season 24, especially in pushing higher GRs. The various affixes will allow more flexibility  and damage that should give you a few more GRs when you find a good one.

The post Diablo 3: Season 24 Whirlwind Barbarian Guide for Patch 2.7.1 appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Back at Blizzcon 2014, I managed to get a preview glimpse at the Unhallowed Essence set. The items were slightly different arranged than most current popular builds. I believe the three main changes were using Odyssey’s End bow with the Entangling Shot generator and Krelm’s Buff Bulwark. I can’t remember which rings were used but it wasn’t Focus and Restraint. My goal since then was to attempt to replicate the set, although I had to obviously tweak my build based on the gear that I’m using.

At the same time, the set has changed along with other sets and items. As a result, I had to switch things up a bit. The popular build at the moment is to use the full six set along with Focus and Restraint. Then stack as much Discipline on your weapon and quiver as permitted since Discipline will fuel your damage. The set is supposed to center around Multishot but can boost other generator damage as well. That includes Chakram and Elemental Arrow if you have the appropriate quiver or bow that converts them into generators.

For myself, I cannot do the seasonal Multishot build since the Dead Man’s Legacy currently is season only. Instead, I’m using the Spines of Seething Hatred to convert my Chakram into a generator in conjunction with Multishot for my main damaging capabilities. In addition to that, I have an excellent Witching Hour and Countess Julia’s Cameo to really help boost my damage. In turn, T6 runs for the most part are a 1-shot fest.

That said, the main weakness I’ve encountered with the build is the brittleness of the build. While you can average 100-200 million critical hits even with basic gear, your real weakness is lack of defense. The 20% damage reduction buff really does little, even in T6 runs. So I’m not sure what the best course of action is for solo high greater rift progression outside of group runs. Most popular builds that I’ve seen use the Zei’s, Bane of the Trapped and Bane of the Powerful gems and focus on high damage. Yet without double Unity with your follower and lack of pets to help tank mobs, this build does seem a little lacking in terms of survivability. Also, I don’t know if this build would synergize well with other DH gear for a hybrid type. Natalya’s might be the only set that provides some crossover just based on the slots and a Ring of Royal Grandeur. However, the skills themselves aren’t that great when used in conjunction with each other.

On the other hand, I have a very interesting Strafe Natalya’s build with most of the basic gear. Unlike other Demon Hunters that I’ve seen, the main difference for me is using a K’mar Tenclip as opposed to a Calamity. I do this for two reasons: 1) My K’mar Tenclip is ancient; 2) I get a free Drifting Shadow rune for Strafe. In turn that frees up another rune for Strafe for me among other things.

In addition, I run the Marauder’s 2 piece bonus which gives me the full farm so to speak. And lastly, I use the Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan for boosting my damage and resource reduction. The result is a very resource intensive and cooldown intensive build that is great for farming T6. It’s an extraordinarily fast pace build. The biggest weakness is the shortage of Discipline that is derived from Smoke Screen: Displacement. There’s a few things you can do to compensate such as using Preparation and Invigoration and Blood Vengeance with Reaper’s Wraps. But the damage and movement speed aspects are very bursty. I do prefer this build at the moment over Unhallowed Essence mostly because of the speed. But I’m certain that if I would want to climb the Greater Rift difficulty, I would have to switch to a Focus/Restraint build and full Natalya’s.

The other class I’m trying to push a bit is my wizard. I did grab the entire 6 piece Delsere’s Magnum Opus but I’m only using 3 pieces as most people end up using that in conjunction with 5 pieces of Tal Rasha. My goal at the moment is to land some Meteor Boots and find anything gear that might compliment either a Tal Rasha or Delsere build. The only piece of non-Delsere gear that I have is the Gesture of Orpheus which I’ve been hoarding. The problem is that the cooldown reduction for mine rolled a low 51% for Slow Time. However, I really haven’t found that to be a major issue.

The combo build actually is a lot of fun compared to this other Tal Rasha/Firebirds build I had been using. The Delsere/Tal Rasha build is very cooldown based and extremely bursty. Your Mirror images, Slow Time Bubbles and Black Hole provides a huge among of CC, offense and defense simultaneously. I think if you could get a maxed out Gesture of Orpheus at 70% Slow Time cooldown reduction, you might be able to spam Slow Time bubbles all over the place with the right CDR gear.

The main thing I like about this build is the sheer amount of damage and speed you’ll get from the burst damage and cooldown resets. Those three skills synergize extremely well with Illusionist which help keep you move very quickly and doing a huge amount of damage with all the dots from the Slow Time bubbles provides.

Tal Rasha and Firebirds on the other hand is really slow. It’s easier to play and more intuitive but you don’t really get those burst moments in the same manner. In fact, I would argue Tal Rasha + Firebirds is really boring to play, very resource intensive and slow. It’s a good way to start but it can’t compete with the sheer base damage from Tal Rasha + Delsere’s.

The game play for Tal Rasha + Delsere’s is awkward at first and requires good timing. It’s really not a spam skill spec, although you might be tempted to at first. The idea is to toss down your Slow Time bubbles on a group of enemies, teleport up to them to blast them with Calamity, trigger Mirror Images, which will place down more Mirror Images and possible Black Holes. Anything left over can be cleaned up with Black Hole and possibly a new Slow Time since the cooldown ought to be reset. Also, because you catch your enemies in a Slow Time bubble, your meteors from Tal Rasha’s ought to be triggered as well and hit the now slowed mobs.

Part of the trick with this build is to take some damage. That is risky because you will be facing mobs up close using your Teleport. But you Slow Time bubbles are pretty large and Mirror Images guarantees a nice little area of protection. For myself, the main thing I’m missing are the meteor boots. Instead, I use a pretty well rolled Hellfire Amulet. But the boots would be a far better choice in order for me to be able to progress in greater rifts with this build.

Beyond that the main build of choice for me is the Whirlwind barbarian using the Wrath of the Wastes set. I’m still missing a few pieces to really boost my potential, namely an ancient Bul-Kathos Solemn Vow, a better amulet and a trifecta Focus ring. That said, I’ve had almost no problems soaring through most Greater Rifts (where I’ve managed to do up to 39 no problem). One little trick I learned is that just keeping the right click on hold really isn’t enough since you don’t get the full effect of Focus/Restraint. You will get the 50% just from using Whirlwind but not the other half from utilizing a generator. It wasn’t as obvious to me at first since I’ve seen most people use Rend and Whirlwind but leave out a generator. The key to me is to put something like Bash for your left click and just hit something to trigger the generator damage boost. You don’t have to spam click it but just periodically hit something to gain the buff. Most of the time you won’t need to do this but against elites, etc. in higher greater rifts, you can definitely push faster and harder rather than be lazy in keeping one button down at all times.

Now, something I would like to try is alternative builds with Immortal Kings. I do have a Whirlwind hybrid barbarian who uses both Immortal Kings and Wrath of the Wastes. And just recently I found a newer version of the Boulder Breaker. So I’m tempted to try other builds just to see how they perform. For instance, a pure ancients/pet build or perhaps a Seismic Slam build (since I have the weapon for that as well). I doubt that any of these will beat a pure Wrath of the Wastes set build but I’m doing it more for curiosity.

At any rate, I still have a ways to go. Until then I’m going to continue playing non-seasonal while I grab gear

The post Diablo 3: Weekend Grinding With Demon Hunters, Wizards and Barbarians appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Although I’m still working on perfecting my Witch Doctor, the character I’ve been playing the most is my non-seasonal barbarian. I’ve experimented with a combination of builds, crossing over the Immortal Kings set with Raekors to see what I can pull off. I’ve tried a few variations, including with the Vile Wards and going 2 piece Immortal Kings as well as 4 set bonus using the Raekors shoulders. Part of what I would do is employ either a Reapers Wraps bracers or the Strongarm Bracers in experimenting with better damage builds. My 4 set bonus with Immortal Kings tends to be Furious Charge with Seismic Slam or Weapon Throw to help keep Wrath of the Berserker up. That possibly was my favorite Raekor build for fast T6 clears.

However, in the process of doing this, I managed to acquire 5/6 Wrath of the Waste pieces. While my build is far from optimal, I will say that it’s one hell of a fun set to play. I’ve seen other people who just focus on the full set and include the Bul-Kathos Oath set along with Focus/Restraint as the ultimate set up. In my case, I’m still ways away since I don’t have the two weapons nor well rolled Focus/Restraint rings. Instead, my intermediate set is 5 piece Wrath of the Waste used in conjunction with the Immortal Kings 3 piece, including the Boulder Breaker weapon, mighty belt and helmet. The great thing about this set up is that it allows me to run permanent Call of the Ancients and near 100% Wrath of the Berserker. I don’t have Fury issues and destroy T6, even in group runs.

However, once you start doing Greater Rifts, you’ll feel a massive slowdown because the higher levels (particularly 37+) will be a pain as the monster’s health will start scaling and you will require some damage dampening ability or item. In my case, I’m still far from optimal with my gear but i can do 35s without too much difficulty. The biggest issue is single target, namely the Greater Rift Guardian. While some bosses won’t be that tough, it does become fairly tedious dragging your mouse in a circular pattern as you wait for the boss to die.

I’m hoping to secure ancient Bul-Kathos weapons. I gambled a non-ancient one so far and still am looking for the second one. However, I feel that without either being ancient the build still will be lacking. On the bright side, a lot of people are reporting to be able to complete 51+ with the Wrath of the Wastes build and not using the Immortal Kings set. I probably will avoid pushing anything higher until I can secure better weapons.

What I’m seeing is that Immortal Kings seems like a really good bridge set between Wrath of the Wastes and Raekors. The two set bonus alone is just amazing and being able to get close to 100% uptime on Wrath of the Berserker is a fun boost overall. I don’t feel that Wrath of the Wastes and Raekors go well with each other though. There really isn’t much synergy at their respective 2 set bonuses compared to Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker.

I still need to work on my wizard set. I’m taking a break from farming the belt for my pet doctor and mostly focusing on my barbarian (since I’ve practically shelved them since the expansion). However, I am eager to try the Slow Time set. I’ve read that most people feel that combining that set with Tal Rasha’s is the way to go. However, I do have some other pieces and I just want to see it working on my own. Similarly, I would like to do a complete Tal Rasha build. Again, I’m doing a hybrid with the Firebirds set. It’s fine for now but I can tell that I’m missing out because of lacking things like the Meteor boots and a good pair of Focus/Restraint (and I’ve found a bunch but most have been pretty poorly rolled).

That said, I’ve been pretty happy thus far with this patch in the sheer amount of potential build diversity. I think having meaningful 2/4 set bonuses per set allows a great deal of cool combinations for different purposes. While not everything is perfect and there’s been some disappointments (like the Barbarian bracers), there’s plenty of things to experiment with and change the game play somewhat. Also, the new maps help keep things reasonably fresh for rifting and the removal of bosses from bounties really has been great.

Season-wise, I feel that there wasn’t enough in seasons to motivate me into playing whereas I’ve enjoyed playing the non-season content a lot more. The only bad thing is that I’ve mostly played alone so it’s been kinda boring. I did manage to get my transmog so beyond that aspect, there really hasn’t been any reason for me to return.

That said, I’m curious what they propose to do for Season 4. If the patch preceding Season 4 is anything like the one we’re seeing, then I would find less motivation to play again. Season 2 was better for me since the builds were pretty well defined and I had accomplished as much as I could on non-seasonal. Since the transmog set for the most part is done, I’m wondering if they’ll do another transmog like for weapons or if there will be some other special prize. Also, what additional seasonal items will be added into the pool.

The post Diablo 3: Barbarian Funness and More Patch 2.2 Thoughts appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.