Tornadoes
#1
I was recently discussing some Tornado Barb discussion I saw over on the Amazon Basin, but hadn't really given it much serious thought myself. Figured I would sit and actually look at it so I could talk about it with some small clue. So thus I also figured I might as well make a post here with my thoughts.

Sprint/Run Like The Wind - This is the real core of the build. The whole point is to run around leaving tornadoes. Each tick of a tornado counts as a hit for life on hit and such like that.

Whirlwind/Hurricane - This is so that you can run right through mobs and drop tornadoes on top of them as well as a way to get yet more hits to trigger things. The Hurricane rune cause the speed you run at really matters for this build and so you don't want Whirlwind slowing you down.

Wrath of the Berserker/Thrive on Chaos - You are going to be trying to gain fury off of either crits or hits. At the same time you are going to be spending fury on Whirlwind. Thus hopefully reaching a point where you are constantly gaining/spending to a degree to keep this skill active for long periods.

Weapon Master - This passive is pretty much required. You can run maces and get extra crit from it or you can run mighty weapons and get rage on hit from it.

I feel like those four Skills/Runes are the things I can't see changing too much. Past those you have to decide if you want to try for crit chance in order to gain fury from Battle Rage/Into The Fray or if you want to go the mighty weapon route. I'd probably go the mighty weapon route and do something like the following.

Warcry/Impunity - Resists to keep me alive and a way to generate rage to start with.,

Furious Charge/Stamina - I figure starting a fight with Warcry and then charging through the mobs. That should give you 45 rage plus extra for any mobs you hit. Wrath is 50, Sprint is 20, Whrilwind is 16 (according to the website guide). So we need 86 to start. If you hit 3 mobs with the charge you'd be at 69. So might have to absorb some hits or use a generator for the rest.

Bash/Onslaught - I think the extra hits from this count for the Weapon Master fury on hit procing. So it seems like a good way to generate any extra needed fury. It also gives an attack to use against single targets since the rest of the build is very mass target oriented.

Superstition - A passive that reduces damage and gives you fury gain as well.

Nerves of Steel - Just seems like a required passive to me. Something to help keep you alive.

So the end build would look like: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...Yeb!ZZZccb

I have no idea how good it would be, but it feels like it would be fun anyway. I do want to remind that I didn't originate the idea. http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d3/forums/...lace-wotb/ is the thread I originally found it in. I just sat and thought about how I would attempt it at a glance.
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#2
My understanding is that you have to actually gain the fury for it to count for Thrive on Chaos, meaning that you need to be spending it as well. I couldn't get it to be be better than than Insanity, but I did not try it with Run with the Wind and Whirlwind.

I will give variations of this a try next time I feel like farming Act I and trying a different build. My first impression is that I will need to swap in a life gain skill. I can't imagine that my few hundred life on hit will be enough healing.
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#3
Official forums are calling this "double tornado" (whirlwind + tornado)

I think this is how the spec I saw was:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...bZY!ZZcYca

Warcry / Battle rage to start it up, now crits are your rage gain. With maces / axes, natrual crit with zero crit on gear is up to 23%. Even a moderate 10%ish crit on gear has you doing 1/3 of attacks are crits at +15 fury each.
Leap in so you hit a few monsters, and you get a big rage gain to start up your main attacks. Start up berserker ASAP for another 10% crit, bringing you up near 50%, and the +3 seconds per 5 crits means you can pretty much keep berserk up for as long as monsters are around.

The crit --> fury means you don't need a basic attack at all, and leap hitting a few mobs (and critting) is how you get your initial Fury.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#4
I love the tornadoes! This is the spec I'm using: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...eZb!aZZacc

I'm using a build with run like the wind and furious charge- reduce cooldown by 2 seconds for each monster hit. Hit 5 monsters and you can charge endlessly. You also leave tornadoes in your wake while you charge. This is AMAZING for destroying trash packs or illusion bosses. This build has a ton of fury too. You're charging constantly, generating 15 rage each time and your only rage dump is run like the wind. I usually hit run like the wind, charge twice and use run like the wind again. This build is so much fun because there is tons of speed. Charge is fast and you have tons of rage for run like the wind.

Lots of life on hit is necessary and great for this build. Even with the low coefficient for life on hit on tornado hits, you still gain a ton of life back because you'll have lots of tornadoes hitting enemies.

I love the versatility that run like the wind gives you too. If you're low on health, just run out of combat(or charge) and run around looking for a health globe. Chase those mosquitoes down in act 2. Spam run like the wind when you're fighting a vortex boss and you'll spawn tornadoes while being forced to run away. If the boss is doing too much damage to you, spam run like the wind and kite it, letting your tornadoes do some damage to the boss and giving you some health back via life on hit.
-Ell_man
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#5
Somebody named Grim posted a guide for these builds over on the AB. It seems pretty decent to me. Figured maybe I should make sure people here see it too.

Grim's Tornado Barb Guide
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#6
I got a barb to 60 and this is what I've been using:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Conci...o/24683459
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...YZb!ZZZYZc

He has some pretty nice gear for his first time through Act I inferno from getting some hand me downs from my Wiz. The only major purchase was the bracers. Some stuff is really obviously a hand-me-down from the Wiz (like the 100 INT / VIT with 6% crit necklace... lol... whatever works).

It's pretty crazy. Crit is about 40% without using the Scoundrel and this is enough to sustain whirlwind pretty regularly. That's 5% base + 15% passives + 3% battle rage + ~17% gear.
Charges with short cooldowns are great. You can charge ash pots and such to get your initial fury, which removes any need for a standard generator, and gives you an out when you make a mistake and end up too low on fury. It actually feels a lot like a low level WoW warrior in that respect, where you would look for critters to charge to gain rage. It's the only build I've tried that actually has Fury management as a working mechanic, and that "feels right".

Damage seems quite adequate. the ~500 DPS weapons I'm using do not feel inadequate at all, but this is still Act I.

What feels so good about the build is the variety of ways to approach combat.
You can run away and that will thin packs.
You can run circles around one monster and really concentrate damage. Multiple tornadoes on one monster really does quite a lot of damage.
You can effectively charge back and forth through a large pack since the cooldown lowers. The cooldown also lowers for breaking random objects, so if there is a collection of barrels behind one monster, you can charge through to hit the barrels and immediately charge back. Since crits give 15 fury, charging into a pack will generally give quite a bit more than just the 15 fury that charge usually generates. In and back out usually completely fills fury.

Then you combine these, and the combat feels pretty dynamic. It manages to do this without being a button mash-fest. It's nice to not have to hyperpress at all really.

One of the coolest features is that the larger the size of your foe, the more damage you're doing, as the more tornadoes are hitting at once. Thus stuff that generally needs the most damage, has it available.

Leveling, I used this other build for like 20+ levels, as crit was not as available on gear and I couldn't really use Whirlwind much:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...YZb!aZZZZa

With that, mostly I'd just charge back and forth to thin the herd and spread the tornadoes, then use frenzy on the last couple.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#7
I've been working on a Barb lately that is aiming for this style. He is only 40 so doesn't have Into The Fray yet. So I have frenzy as my main attack to build up some rage and then I pop Sprint and Whirlwind through a couple of times. I also recently picked up Charge/Stamina which has helped some. Lets me charge through a group to start which gives a full rage bar which I can then burn off. The only thing enabling me to even marginally make the build work right now though is that I have bought a mighty weapon off the AH. I'm running both Weapon Master and Animosity right now and while it isn't perfect, it lets me Sprint/Whirlwind enough to still feel decent. Every once and a while a pack is even big enough for me to not lose rage from going through it.

A couple more levels and I get Into The Fray which I'm hoping will change things completely. To give me a bit more freedom.

One thing I keep wondering is how WotB/Thrive on Chaos will work in the build. Did you try that instead of Insanity? I'm thinking that there is enough gain/loss of rage that it might be sustainable. Though I worry if there are enough mobs in most areas to do so. Knowing me, I'll probably die before I get to find out heh.
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#8
Thrive on chaos wasn't fully sustainable, though I haven't tried it at my current crit levels. Ultimately I feel like it's better used as a "must kill this NOW" button. In my current gear if I have a clear attack on boss in a pack and I pop Berserker, my DPS spikes to rather insane levels and he's dead in WELL under the 15 seconds berserker is up. Nothing else in Act I is posing any danger right now, so it feels more useful as a boss killer. If you don't have a clear attack on a boss it can end up a little wasted though.

I'm not playing particularly conservative and I haven't died in Inferno Act I, though my gear is admittedly pretty twinked for when I started Act I.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#9
Still haven't been able to sustain Thrive on Chaos. It seems you need to actually gain the Fury, not just gain "potential fury" while being at 100 fury. This means you need to find quite a lot of enemies or be playing in multiplayer games, which I don't do a lot of.

The build scaling is quite insane. After purchasing 2 weapons (i think they were ~1 mil and 500k) and I got a decent helm drop, I just faceroll Act I. I thought my wizard facerolled Act I, but this guy is ludicrous. I literally ignore everything. If I come across a champ pack, I ignore molten, arcane beams, etc... and just WW through the middle of them for 10 seconds and they're dead. If I pop berserker, they last 4.

Modifiers on weapons are more important than base damage, especially on the off-hand. Take a 300 DPS dagger off hand that has 80% crit damage, socket, and a few hundred LoH and you'll do better than a raw 900 DPS off-hand. Enough combined LoH, armor, resist, vit and lifesteal combined with crit are what makes the build insane. Damage on weapons seems quite a secondary consideration.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#10
(08-26-2012, 08:07 PM)Concillian Wrote: Still haven't been able to sustain Thrive on Chaos. It seems you need to actually gain the Fury, not just gain "potential fury" while being at 100 fury. This means you need to find quite a lot of enemies or be playing in multiplayer games, which I don't do a lot of.

The build scaling is quite insane. After purchasing 2 weapons (i think they were ~1 mil and 500k) and I got a decent helm drop, I just faceroll Act I. I thought my wizard facerolled Act I, but this guy is ludicrous. I literally ignore everything. If I come across a champ pack, I ignore molten, arcane beams, etc... and just WW through the middle of them for 10 seconds and they're dead. If I pop berserker, they last 4.

Modifiers on weapons are more important than base damage, especially on the off-hand. Take a 300 DPS dagger off hand that has 80% crit damage, socket, and a few hundred LoH and you'll do better than a raw 900 DPS off-hand. Enough combined LoH, armor, resist, vit and lifesteal combined with crit are what makes the build insane. Damage on weapons seems quite a secondary consideration.

You do need to spend the fury go power Thrive on Chaos. Fortunately spending it is easy enough - you can just spam shout and whirlwind all the time. I found that most of Act 1 and parts of Act 2 don't have the monster density to support Thrive on Chaos. I haven't tried whirlwinding through Act 3 yet, but I can imagine it easily has enough monsters.

The tornado damage is purely based on the main hand weapon. So ideally you want a slow, high dps main, with a fast offhand with LoH and crit.
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