Need major help with ar/leech for my barb please

Need major help with ar/leech for my barb please

Hi, I have a barb who has 12k ar (7k without the demon limb switch). I'm having some serious problems leeching and doing considerable damage to some monsters. Like in act 5, I just did a one-player game for a test against some blunderbore that randomized in the frigid highlands and I had to whirlwind about... I dunno... let's just say 40-50 times to kill the pack. Each ww did very little damage.

The leeching wasn't too much of a problem, although my blue bar isn't skyrocketing up or anything like that like it does in classic. It's just slowly going down until it deplets. I had to use 2 mana pots to do all 40 whirlwinds to kill them.

Now, it says that I have a 89% chance to hit them, so I figured attack rating shouldn't be the problem now. I just want to know why I am not doing good damage in a one-player game and why my mana isn't jumping up like it should. I mean, if I'm doing 3k damage, shouldn't 181 mana just fill up regardless of leech penalties?

Anyway, here is my gear:

200% grandfather
6% arreats with cham
25% leviathan with 40ed/max
stormshield with um
thundergods
goreriders
58%/20 steelrends
metalgrid
228/20 ravenfrost with 101 ar/6% mana leech/39 life/31 mana ring

The rare ring isn't the best, but it'll do. Anyway, the gear doesn't suck although you can make the argument that 6% mana leech isn't enough. However, when the bar rarely goes up when I hit something for either life leech or mana leech, I'm concerned.

Another thing I noticed is that concentrate, even at level 1, is doing more damage per hit than my whirlwinds, which actually leechs better (however, only slightly). What's up with that?

Any Barbarian experts out there that can help me figure this out?

 

3k whirlwind damage isn't much these days for one. Enemies now have resistance to damage and leech, which is why it's taking your whirl so many times to kill, and likewise why your leech isn't working as well. You don't really need much leech, but you do need a lot of damage, and 3k per whirl isn't a whole lot in hell, especially against high-physical-resist enemies. Likewise, the patch gave monsters a TON more hitpoints, and since whirlwind didn't get any damage boosts, it's like you're using a 1.09 skill to kill a 1.10 enemy.

That is also why your conc damage is doing more than whirlwind. At max level, whirl gives 1xx% damage, while with 20 battle orders, concentrate gets an extra 200% damage, thanks to the synergy.

Whirlwind is still a great skill, but now, even moreso than before, it is MUCH more item dependent. You really need almost godly gear to use it effectively.

And, just to point it out, ed/max jewels are bugged and don't work right in armor/helms/shields, so that ed/max in your armor isn't doing much of anything. Ed/str jewels are the new rage, 40/9 being a perfect one.

-Hal

 

Many monsters have big time pdr in parts of a5 hell that could be a big portion of the probablem

 

isnt a GF a bit slow for WW ? I asked somenone, and he said GF is to slow to be really effective when whirling (he's using botd ba, so maybe he was a bit to negative, but still iirc GF has only fast attack speed)

 

gf cannot hit the last ww bp for swords:
10 ias
35 ias

a colossus blade is base speed 5, so you need 40 additional ias to hit the last bp. many popular runewords now can hit the last bp, and i traded for a rare elite that could as well.

Basically you are only getting 3-4 hits per whirl.

when monsters are tightly packed, WW randomly picks 1 mob per yard (square, hex, call it whatever you want) to hit. thus, if you pass through 4 monsters, you hit the same one twice every 4 passes (!). you can understand how basic mob regen rate will nullify most of your whirls.

On top of this, mobs get blocking. I just checked d2data.net, and on average, mobs in hell get around 13% (according to them, i think it's closer to 33%) blocking. So, of your four hits, 1 of them gets blocked (on the same mob. all 4 might get blocked vs a group!)

i finished hell with far crappier eq than you have, doing i think 1200 damage/ww.

what to do:
1. change weps. i finished hell with a crescent moon legend sword, last bp, range 3, ITD. no worries about AR. iirc, i averaged around 60% to-hit. didn't matter.

2. CB doesn't work with WW, according to popular belief. i *think* it does, i will check if i have time. if you couldn't dent those mobs, then probably it doesn't work.

3. change boots. war travs, war travs, war travs. the added damage on those boots is huge.

4. ww doesn't have synergies, which is why 1 pt conc is, in practice, seemingly more effective in leech. once you get a -35 ias sword, then you can really compare.

 

Well, my character is pretty much crap then. I thought it might have to do with the low dex, but in the last 10 or so levels, I have fixed that and have equipped metalgrid. I also started using the demon limb too. Ar should be in check.

The best things I can think of are to use the pride set bet that gives dual leech (or maybe there is one that gives lots of mana leech, I can't remember). I could shael the gf, but I'm lacking a socket quest.

 

shaeling the gf will only give you the first bp. i assumed you already did that when i made my post. with no ias, the gf is +5, or 2-3 hits per ww. 3-4 results with -15 ias, 5-6 is with -35.

try just a crescent moon legend sword.