Trying out different early 50s builds in tier 3.
Arsenal, deathblow, hammer is fun. That’s what I used to level. Keeping all the plates spinning is a challenge and it’s rewarding when you stack everything and nearly 1-shit elites
Trying out unbridled rage instead of arsenal. Feeling like I’m standing around doing flurry and getting hit in the face more, but it’s fun when hammer drops 30k crits in an aoe. There’s less plate spinning but now I’m feeling fury starved and getting face kicked in more.
Anyone else using unbridled and hammer? Does fury gen get better?
I’m doing HotA and my basic rhythm (ignoring shouts) is “Lunge, lunge, hammer. Lunge, lunge, hammer.”
Then if I add shouts into the mix, it basically becomes “lunge, hammer, lunge, hammer, lunge, hammer”. It feels good. :D
Increasing attack speed ups this tempo to insane speeds. At one point I had an aspect that would increase attack speed by 25% after a core skill crits. Accelerating aspect, I think.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to the point where I can just hammer constantly. I still need something to generate rage between hits even if it’s just a single lunge. Groups of mobs just die almost instantly and combat mobility is insane thanks to lunge - shamans don’t stand a chance.
How are you getting enough fury (70) for a hammer out of two lunges?
The first build-up is slower, usually takes about 5 hits. But once I’ve got enough for a hammer and go berserk… it’s all just a combination of stats. Fury cost reduction has HotA at 65, still looking for more reduction there. I have a lucky hit chance to gain 20% fury and lunge/HotA both have 50% lucky hit chance, so I’m guessing that procs quite often especially in large groups with Ancestral Force applying it in decent AoE.
I don’t see fury generation bonus listed in the stats page (probably because it’s only applied when berserking or after using HotA) but Prolific Fury is boosting fury gain by 18% and Enhanced HotA gives +30%. So that’s around 50% increase so I should be seeing 15 fury from each lunge. Combined with the lucky hit to restore fury, I’m almost guaranteed to get 20 fury (30 if berserking) back from each hammer as long as I hit a decent number of enemies. So HotA effectively costs 35, so two lunges at 15 each gives me 65 fury to spend again.
Sometimes I get unlucky and it stalls a little, usually when there’s only one elite left and I’m not getting the lucky hit proc from HotA, but then I can always use Rallying Cry (9 skill points) to gain an additional +92% fury generation which makes each lunge gain nearly 30 fury and the lucky strike then gives me 50 fury each time, plus the 20 bonus fury from Rallying Cry… which again might also be affected by +% fury generation from other skills? Honestly no idea at this point.
Hmm, I never really mathed it out before and now it seems really complicated… but I think it makes sense.
Thanks for the breakdown. I had wanted to try lunge instead of flurry because it looked like it would evade well; I’ll give it a shot.
I’ve got a hammer barb and I kite mobs into other mobs and can just hammer constantly as long as enough elites are alive. He absolutely sucks at single enemies though.