Theorycraft - 2.2 Rend/WW Cold Barb

You're theorycrafting in the right place, because I spent 30+ hours on the PTR trying to work on various pull/zDPS/tanky builds.

The initial build (which was nerfed into the ground) looked really promising:

Gear:

  • In-Geom (pre-nerf) + Solanium
  • Zodiac
  • RoRG
  • EQ 3
  • Vigilante belt
  • Stomplanche boots (pre-belt change) or Luts
  • Dovu amulet
  • Skull of Resonance
  • Parthan bracers
  • ~70% CDR
  • Essoteric, Gogok, and Wildebeast gems

Skills:

  • GS - Jarring
  • Leap - DFA
  • EQ - Cave-in
  • TS - Grim Harvest
  • IP - Mob Rule
  • Avalanche - Snow-capped or Rend Mutilate.

Passives:

  • Nerves
  • Relentless
  • Superstition
  • Rampage or Inspiring Presence

Leapquake was proccing Zodiac, so my CDs for leap and groud stomp were coming back in about 2s so I could rotate for perma-stun on the RG. Tanked my way through a grouped GR50+ without taking much damage.

Zodiac nerfed 3 times in a row. In-Geom turned into insta-salvage. Back to the drawing board.

Your build is similar to one of many I attempted after that, it has some downfalls:

  • Wrath 5 piece and only 2 pieces of IK leaves you with massive downtime on WotB, gutting both damage and defense. Zodiac no longer works to keep WotB up with a full WotW build, you have to mix in IK3.
  • Iceblink is a steamy PoS according to the general population. We will see as time goes on.
  • Dread Iron is actually unnecessary, the stun from GS is better and lasts longer than the freeze from avalanche.
  • Earthen Might won't keep up with how much Fury you will need.
  • Rend, while nice, is not a sustainable part of these builds (I tried).
  • WW Hurricane only pulls 2x per second. Not anywhere near enough unfortunately.

Some things to try:

  • Ancient Spear - Harpoon: best thing ever for pulling. Sucks down Fury like nobody's business, still working on ways to sustain (atm thinking Lightning WW+BKO for fury, mobility and resets w/ zodiac when I don't need to pull things).
  • Reduce the number of CDs you regularly use to 2 (aside from WotB+CotA with the 4-piece IK b/c they reset so fast it won't interfere with zodiac's reset too much). Ground Stomp +
  • Threatening Shout w/ SoR are the most successful CDs so far. You may find some other great combo.
  • Try IK3+WotW3, SoR, RoRG, Zodiac, Dovu
  • Max out CDR in every single slot
  • Max Fury on Paragon, weaps, and belt - gives you a bigger pool when you need to chain spam scorpion's harp... I mean ancient spear.
/r/Diablo3Barbarians Thread