[CLASS BUILD] The Trashman (3.03 Single Axe Barbarian)

[baldurs_gate_2]

Why "can inflict prone" from the axe and not "can inflict stun" from starcaller or an other weapon? Stunned debuffs the enemy way more.

 

And how high is the max crit chance on this build? Is this the highest possible?

Edited June 15, 2016 by baldurs_gate_2

[Odd Hermit]

Why "can inflict prone" from the axe and not "can inflict stun" from starcaller or an other weapon? Stunned debuffs the enemy way more.

 

And how high is the max crit chance on this build? Is this the highest possible?

 

 

Axes have annihilation, giving them more damage on crits. Starcaller or other stunning weapons are a strong choice as well, but I wanted to build a barbarian that uses Axes in particular. It's unfortunate that axes don't have the strongest or most diverse options available, and I wouldn't argue this is the strongest barb build available.

 

Max crit chance will always be higher for rogues who can get +20% hit->crit conversion with Dirty/Vicious Fighting. So no it's not the highest. You do get 15% of your regular hits converted(via new one handed) though, and with other conversion buffs on top of natural crits you'll still be getting plenty of prone procs and of course the high damage of annihilation.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Odd Hermit

[baldurs_gate_2]

Ok, but why no items with retaliation? Is it not really strong as barbarian vs. large amount of mobs? Vengiatta Rugia or Garodh's Chorus have them on it.

[Boeroer]

Retaliation's base damage is very low. Even crits with it are weak. To make it a bit useful, you have to pile up DR bypass and get all melee dmg bonuses you can or it will be totally useless against enemies with higher DR. So don't rely on it unless you can add some cool stuff like Enervating Blows (weaken) or Glittering Gauntlets (daze). It also gets suppressed if you wear any other form of "retaliation" like from Binding Rope (retaliate with stuck affliction) or Lavender Wreath (sicken). Only excpetion is the retatliation from Sura's Supper Plate because it's a weapon and those stack with everything. And it doesn't work with carnage.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Boeroer

[baldurs_gate_2]

I watched this old video and there it deals really high amount of damage:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ_XfF4QGvU* (without the *)

 

So that does not work any more?

[Boeroer]

It's very, very old. Like a kazillion patches old.

 

No, it doesn't work like that any more. I now does wimpy damage now and uses a hit roll like any other weapon attack - but it also can cause afflictions like I mentioned above and also profits from things like Turning Wheel and Deathblows now - but still not worth it in my opinion.

 

[dambros]

Reading through this topic I realized it is probably possible to make a competent offtank barb with stun/prone weapon and shield. Does it work well or with the new one hand style, it is simple better to skip the shield?

 

Right now at lvl11 and beggining of act3, I have around 110 acc and 30% hit to crit chance (hearth orlan + durgan). Is there a way to improve the hit > crit %  besides the priest buff, predatory weapons and the paladin aura?

Edited July 12, 2016 by dambros

[Kazuma]

I came for the explosions, but was sorely disappointed. This is the Trashman build. Not the Trashcan Man build.

 

Joking aside I'm surprised one handed style wasn't already a thing? (or did it just not have a compelling buff?)

 

*edit* Derp - the OP does say that this is a buff to the ability in 3.03 so it's safe to say it was already there.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Kazuma

[Dr <3]

This build was born after the change in One hand style in 3.03 beta

[DreamWayfarer]

Joking aside I'm surprised one handed style wasn't already a thing? (or did it just not have a compelling buff?)

 

*edit* Derp - the OP does say that this is a buff to the ability in 3.03 so it's safe to say it was already there.

It was a thing, but it had a nearly useless buff for DPS (30% graze-to-hit, as if grazing was that likely when the only reason to use only one weapon was to stack as much accuracy as possible). It was useful for tanks, however, since it worked with shields back then. For some reason.

[Jojobobo]

So I'm curious, what do people think is better - one handed or two weapon on a Barbarian? I thought seeing as it relates directly to the build, posting here was a reasonable idea.

 

For one-handed, you get a +12 accuracy boost, you 15% crit to hit from One-Handed Style. Both these factors combine to get those vital crits on the enemy group, and help to secure crits for the on-crit status effect roll - giving you a greater likelihood to get some hefty durations there too. Further, I read somewhere that crits add 25 to your interrupt roll, though it's hard to say how this weighs up against two weapons attacking more rapidly and each having an interrupt roll. Though you won't deal as much damage using HoF, if you're so good at disabling a whole group than burst damage - or better DPS in general for that matter - becomes a little irrelevant, as the enemy won't be doing much of anything in the first place. And, as Boeroer said earlier, you can just switch to two weapons for your HoF alpha strike, and then switch back.

 

On the flip side, DPS is good for two weapons as you are attacking very quickly. You can have your second slot taken up with whatever you want as your HoF will already be beastly. Further if you Helwax Mold your one-hander, you would think that you still might be edging the stun-lock effect of just using One-Handed Style.

 

Going solo, I'm not going to have the luxury of the Helwax Mold - but one combo of two weapons does stand out. Godansthunyr has meaty interrupts and the vital on crit effect, Strike Hard has Disorientating for a -5 defense debuff. The Stun and Disorientating effects stack, meaning that the difference is just 7 accuracy, which isn't too bad at all - while giving you better DPS (remembering that Strike Hard is also a speed weapon).

 

In any case, it's certainly a tricky thing to call. What are everyone else's thoughts?

[Clerith]

Imo it's obvious that dual wielding is better than one handed or two handed, especially with HoF now being per encounter. Full attacks, carnage and on-hit effects, the ultimate barbarian dual wield synergy. I like two handed the most, but I have hard time justifying it when compared to dual wield.

[Loren Tyr]

Hmm, I'm leaning somewhat towards one-handed actually. The +12 ACC by itself translates into quite a bit of additional damage, and within a reasonable range of opposing DEF combines with the conversion bonus into 19.5% higher chance to crit. And indeed, crits add +25 to the interrupt roll (and grazes -25), so that is improved too. 

 

Obviously dual-wielders attack more often, but I'm not sure how much higher the DPS will actually be. Taking a very simplified example of a Sabre with no damage modifiers, with ACC - DEF = 0 (not counting the +12 for 1H), expected damage per hit would be 10.8 for dual-wielding and 14.3 for one-handed. This means that DW total attack duration needs to be about 75% of that of one-handed to get the same expected damage per time unit.

 

Now I'm admittedly not fully up on the details of attack duration (so anyone correct me if I'm wildly off base with following), but I believe the pertinent components are roughly as follows: dual wielding itself only affects recovery time, and gives a base recovery time of 2/3 that of non-DW. The figures I came across for Sabres are 30 frames attack and 36 / 54 recovery, or 28.8 / 54 with the -20% bonus on recovery time Two Weapon style gives. So we get 58.8 and 84 frames respectively, which gives an expected damage of 15.4 for dual wielding in the duration of a single one-handed attack. A bit more, but not a massive damage differential. Moreover, that's without DR. If we assume a DR of 4 the expected damage per hit drops to 6.8 (DW) and 10.3 (1H), which translates to 9.7 damage for dual-wielding per 1H attack, giving the advantage now to the one-handers.

 

Clearly this is going to depend massively on any number of other factors as well. Even corrected for number of attacks per time unit one-handed will crit more often (unless ACC >> DEF to begin with), and thus benefits more from on-crit triggers, crit multiplier bonuses, etc. Dual-wielding on the other hand gains more from Full Attack type effects like HoF. But I think in a general sense the conventional wisdom that dual-wielding offers (significantly) higher DPS is perhaps not quite correct.

 

Interestingly, you actually benefit more from attack speed bonuses if you're not dual wielding (again, if I grasp the details of attack duration correctly), because for non-DW the recovery time takes up more of the total attack duration. As far as I know the Two Weapon bonus is additive with all others (though some of those are multiplicative with each other), so if for example there is a combined -80% recovery time bonus from other sources we drop to 30 and 40.8 frames attack duration respectively, and in the above example the DW sabres drop to 14.7 expected damage per 1H Sabre attack. 

Edited July 20, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[Dr <3]

Dual wield is much better since you can easily reach 0 recovery and do full attacks with heart of fury and barbaric blow. Maybe just in the beginning of the game the +12 accuracy bonus and the 15% hiy to crit can help, but in my experience double wielding was better for dmg and hit chance, since you attack more often. 2 attacks >> 1 attack with +12 accuracy.

The barbarian usually suffers for low accuracy and can need some boost if you are playing a crit build ( es Godansthunyr permastun) in wich case you can find 1h style helpful for the hit to crit conversion rate, anyway after duganization you don't need it anymore.

 

If you want, you can just try a simple test: run 2 equal charachter 1 with 2w and One with 1h style and send them alone to kill some mobs. In 99% of the times you will find to have an easier time with the dual wielder

Edited July 20, 2016 by Dr <3

[Jojobobo]

Dual wield is much better since you can easily reach 0 recovery and do full attacks with heart of fury and barbaric blow. Maybe just in the beginning of the game the +12 accuracy bonus and the 15% hiy to crit can help, but in my experience double wielding was better for dmg and hit chance, since you attack more often. 2 attacks >> 1 attack with +12 accuracy.

The barbarian usually suffers for low accuracy and can need some boost if you are playing a crit build ( es Godansthunyr permastun) in wich case you can find 1h style helpful for the hit to crit conversion rate, anyway after duganization you don't need it anymore.

I've heard somewhere that if you attack one-handed you'll hit more often in a given time frame than with a particular weapon than you would with two weapons (as in you get less recovery per weapon, but when you consider you have to wait while the other weapon attacks for that first weapon to hit again - the rate of that weapon is on the whole slower). I've not tested it myself so it may be a load of rubbish, and of course if you have Helwax Mold duplicates of your status inflicting weapon it's by-the-by, but there is that consider.

 

I think another important thing to remember is the on-crit effect is a separate roll (so you roll to attack and get a crit against deflection, when this occurs you get a second roll to stun/prone against fortitude). While Stun dramatically lowers deflection, ensuring more vs deflection crits and procs of further Stun rolls - the opponents' fortitude isn't debuffed at all by Stun or Prone effects. In this way, one handed ensures greater accuracy on the second roll against fortitude (from what I saw playing a rogue, the status roll uses the same accuracy you roll against deflection, I don't see why this would be any different for the Barbarian) and so likely longer Stun durations than two weapons - and again I think the hit-to-crit conversion would also apply to the fortitude roll.

 

When taking these factors together, I think a one-hander could definitely be more effective at Stun-locking than two weapons - which at least for party play I think is their main utility. Even in solo play, given that you're doing a better job of Stun-locking, your DPS doesn't really matter as the opponent isn't getting an opportunity to attack. DPS is only really important if your opponent is doing you a decent amount of damage themselves, otherwise any amount of damage will do just fine.

 

Personally, I will still be taking Two Weapon Style on my solo run, as with Strike Hard and Godansthunyr as I mentioned my accuracy difference to a one hander is only 7 - so I think the DPS is worth it. All that said it could be that that 7 accuracy when you combine it with 35% hit to crit from duganization and One-Handed Style may well give me an easier time of it by ensuring the crits on the secondary effect - so it's a difficult call to make.

[Loren Tyr]

Dual wield is much better since you can easily reach 0 recovery and do full attacks with heart of fury and barbaric blow. Maybe just in the beginning of the game the +12 accuracy bonus and the 15% hiy to crit can help, but in my experience double wielding was better for dmg and hit chance, since you attack more often. 2 attacks >> 1 attack with +12 accuracy.

The barbarian usually suffers for low accuracy and can need some boost if you are playing a crit build ( es Godansthunyr permastun) in wich case you can find 1h style helpful for the hit to crit conversion rate, anyway after duganization you don't need it anymore.

 

If you want, you can just try a simple test: run 2 equal charachter 1 with 2w and One with 1h style and send them alone to kill some mobs. In 99% of the times you will find to have an easier time with the dual wielder

 

Except that dual-wielding doesn't double your attack speed. Again, take the example of Sabre with 30 frames attack time and 36 (DW) /  54 (1H) frames base recovery time. Assume -20% recovery time from Two weapon style and -80% from other sources, for 0 recovery when dual wielding. This makes the attack duration 30 (DW) and 40.8 (1H) frames. So the actual comparison you would need to make is 1 attack at +12 ACC and +15% HtoC conversion versus 1.36 attacks; it's not remotely a 1 : 2 ratio. I also don't see why the utility of greater accuracy or HtoC conversion would be limited to the early game; the general point throughout the game is ultimately to hit things, no?

 

It's ultimately a trade-off between attacking more often vs doing more damage per attack. DW boosts the attack rate, whereas both 1H and 2H in different ways boost the damage dealt. Which one is better in terms of DPS or some other criterium isn't nearly as obvious as it is sometimes claimed to be. Though dual-wielding seems to be considered obviously superior by many, the mathematics just doesn't back that up. 

[Boeroer]

Dual Wielding is only superior in my opinion when you have Full Attack abilities like Torment's Reach or Heart of Fury. Besides that I think it's all quite comparable - although I would like to buff the Two Handed Style from 15% to 30% so that it makes sense to take a Great Sword and not a one handed sabre or a sabre with shield.

[Loren Tyr]

I agree that there should be a better balance there. Though I think that (in PoE2) they should actually just change the Sabre instead, make it a bit weaker. Just Slashing damage isn't enough of a downside to justify its damage range, especially compared to regular 1H and 2H damage ranges. But I would expect they'll revisit that issue anyway, for example I can't imagine they'll leave the whole 'average' 1H vs 'slow' 2H (non-)thing the way it is now. 

[Dr <3]

 

 

Dual wield is much better since you can easily reach 0 recovery and do full attacks with heart of fury and barbaric blow. Maybe just in the beginning of the game the +12 accuracy bonus and the 15% hiy to crit can help, but in my experience double wielding was better for dmg and hit chance, since you attack more often. 2 attacks >> 1 attack with +12 accuracy.

The barbarian usually suffers for low accuracy and can need some boost if you are playing a crit build ( es Godansthunyr permastun) in wich case you can find 1h style helpful for the hit to crit conversion rate, anyway after duganization you don't need it anymore.

 

If you want, you can just try a simple test: run 2 equal charachter 1 with 2w and One with 1h style and send them alone to kill some mobs. In 99% of the times you will find to have an easier time with the dual wielder

Except that dual-wielding doesn't double your attack speed. Again, take the example of Sabre with 30 frames attack time and 36 (DW) / 54 (1H) frames base recovery time. Assume -20% recovery time from Two weapon style and -80% from other sources, for 0 recovery when dual wielding. This makes the attack duration 30 (DW) and 40.8 (1H) frames. So the actual comparison you would need to make is 1 attack at +12 ACC and +15% HtoC conversion versus 1.36 attacks; it's not remotely a 1 : 2 ratio. I also don't see why the utility of greater accuracy or HtoC conversion would be limited to the early game; the general point throughout the game is ultimately to hit things, no?

 

It's ultimately a trade-off between attacking more often vs doing more damage per attack. DW boosts the attack rate, whereas both 1H and 2H in different ways boost the damage dealt. Which one is better in terms of DPS or some other criterium isn't nearly as obvious as it is sometimes claimed to be. Though dual-wielding seems to be considered obviously superior by many, the mathematics just doesn't back that up.

Sorry was writing from my smartphone ( now also ) so i was not as accurate as i wanted.

 

Your argument have a flaw: actually 2w style give you +50% attack speed simply from dual wielding, and with the talent you get another +20%. So you can choose between +70% attack rate with 2w ( + talent) OR +12 acc, +15% hit to crit with 1 h style( + talent).

 

IF you manage to reach 0 recovery from both styles, unless you use full attacks 1h style will come up as a winner, but actually reach 0 recovery with 1h style is Pretty difficult ( you need more or less no armor ( or at max a durganized hide), speed weapon (+20%), durganized (+15%), gauntlets of speed ( +15%), potion of daom ( +50%) --> total of 100%.

 

On the other side, while dual wielding , you start from -70% recovery, so with 2 durganized weapon and gauntlets of speed you are already at 0 recovery. Adding more speed bonus ( frenzy, spped wepon, daom,... ) Gives you space to add a better armour or vulnerabile attack. So i think that is better.

 

Also if is a totally stupid comparison , you can think that dual wielding is like a perennal drink of daom potion, 1 h style is a "lesser" scroll of valor + a merciless gaze

 

 

P.s.: I know the value should be multiplicative and not additive but take it as it comes :D.

[Loren Tyr]

Not sure where the +50% comes from, that's different from what the different attack speed threads seem to say. But then again, the exact mechanics remain a bit unclear to me even with those, so I did a bit of testing: identical level 2 fighters (all stats at 10), except for their weapon style talent. Attacking in fast mode for 30 seconds, they perform the following number of attacks / duration per attack (using long swords):

- DW, naked (0.3R): 32 / 0.94s

- DW, plate armour (0.8R): 22 / 1.36s

- 1H, naked (1R): 19 / 1.58s

- 1H, plate armour (1.5R): 15 / 2s

 

With R the base recovery duration and the number the proposed multiplier if dual-wielding by itself gives a flat -50% to R. This indeed fits very well, pretty much confirming that model, and in this case we end up with a fixed attack time A = 0.67s and R = 0.89s. 

 

However, whether that translates to more damage is another question, and my point remains that this is not so straightforward. I also had my fighters attack a single target for 1 minute (fast mode) to see their damage output. Naked with long swords against a 0 DR / 25 DEF target DW is a clear winner, with 699 damage against 506. But under more realistic conditions this changes dramatically. Wearing scale armour and wielding Resolution sabres against 9 DR, this becomes 282 and 284 damage; and against 15 DR, 261 and 270 damage. In fact against the last one I also tried an identical fighter except for two-handed talent and wielding a fine estoc, and he did 282 damage. 

 

And sure, maybe the best, most optimized DPS build is indeed a dual-wielder; I'm certainly not denying the effectiveness of dual-wielding. But I do want to underscore that its supposed superiority over other weapon styles is not nearly as evident as it is frequently made out to be, and if it is indeed superior the difference is likely to be relatively modest. 

Edited July 21, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[Loren Tyr]

As an aside, you've also got to wonder to what extent the commonly recommended choice of Sabre is necessarily ideal when dual-wielding. In my simple setup above I also tested DW daggers vs DW sabres against 0 DR: 870 vs 805 damage; and DW stilettos vs DW sabres against 9 DR: 341 vs 302 damage. Obviously this will be influenced by a host of additional factors as well, but again I think it pays to carefully consider the options. After all, in terms of speed you can't do better than those (A = 0.51, R = 0.54). 

[Boeroer]

Two sabres is the best option (concerning damage) for melee AoE Full Attacks like Torment's Reach or HoF - or when the Full Attacks are very limited but have a hige ACC bonus like FoD. You get out the most hits with the highest damage per hit. That is only true if you can reliably hit things with you ACC when dual wielding of course.

 

Besides that I think you are right.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Boeroer

[Loren Tyr]

Yeah, for Full Attack abilities dual-wielding in general and with Sabres in particular does have an inherent advantage because it by definition affects two attacks instead of one; and especially with TR / HoF, indeed. For FoD as well, but probably not actually by too much compared to 1H especially, since the latter still tends to have a better crit chance (and in terms of damage output you do have to also count the partial regular 1H attack that overlaps with the second FoD DW it, of course). For status effect abilities like Knock Down and rogue Strikes it is a bit trickier since the second suppresses the first (if it's better) rather than being additive, but since the best one sticks you have a multiplicative probabilities thing. So whether 1H or DW more successfully delivers the status effect varies considerably. Though frankly, for the most effectively delivery of ability-based status effects, nothing can really beat a Blunderbuss; despite the -10 ACC it has you virtually can't graze or miss with it, and don't need too much ACC or HtoC to get massive crit rates (especially since the individual pellets interact, so stuff Blinding Strike in particular is enormously more effective with Blunderbuss).

 

Anyway, like I said, dual-wielding Sabres is certainly going to be a good bet. But it's hardly the only game in town and its alleged superiority seems to be rather overstated (and simply incorrect, depending on various other factors), which I do enjoy poking holes into .

Edited July 21, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[Dr <3]

Another thing to considerazione is that all the dmg modifiers are a % based on the base dmg of the weapon. Sabres have the highest base dmg, so get more benefit to that too ( althoug i agree is a small effect after all )

 

Anyway thks for your testing-job!

Edited July 21, 2016 by Dr <3

[Boeroer]

 considerazione

Hu? That's what I wanna have for supper!