I couldn't find a thread on this topic here. If there is one already, please post the link.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Skovgaard-1745/hero/31817526

I'm a WW/HoTA Barb.

I can't afford a godly barb SOJ so I have to prioritize the stats on the ring and figure out what are the most important stats to look for.

Should I get one with cold damage, or 15 to fury, or 30 to elites, or increased crit chance to WW, or reduced resources for HoTA.

It depends on your HotA playstyle, @Skovgaard. If you use it on a build designed primarily to smash Elites, look for elite percentage damage above 25% (whatever you're comfortable with) and -2 or -3 HotA. You'd be surprised how much easier your life is with -3 Fury to HotA if you like to spam the skill.

Cold damage is highly overrated and this is coming from someone obsessed with it. You can make a case for DH, because 30% chill on white mobs can actually make a difference in the number of arrows you can hit them with before they hit you. Due to the 80% CC reduction for elites in Inferno, that 30% chill effect is only 6% slowed movement which is undetectable. Throw Barbs could probably justify it, but not a WW or HotA Barb.

CC on WW is iffy. WW has a tiny 12.5% proc rate so even a +7% CC increase to WW means a tiny increase to Fury generated from crits with WW. I've never noticed the difference. You will, however, get a bump in damage that doesn't show up in your displayed dps so it's not like it's worthless.

Barbarian Crit Chance caps at 80% normally and 90% under WotB so depending upon your support skills, you might be able to get pretty close to that cap even without the extra CC from a SoJ.

Giving up +Crit Chance and/or IAS on a ring slot can be pretty big, too, so it would probably be worth spending a few hundred thousand Gold on a random 27% Elite damage, +Fury SoJ. Run around with it and see if you can handle the drop in IAS and Fury generation before you drop 10s of millions of Gold on a SoJ. Also, only buy SoJs on bid. It might take up to a week to find and win a great one on bid, but you'll overpay by up to 70% on Buyout prices on SoJs.

That's good info. What I'm hearing you say is that I'd likely receive more benefit from a SOJ with reduced fury cost to HoTA and decent %damage to elites. I shouldn't spend extra money just to get cold damage.

I'm not an elite hunter, but with this build I can run MP8 and kill whites and elites fairly efficiently. I mainly use WW for mobs and throw in the occasional HoTA, but like to spam HoTA on elites.

I'm surprised that a -3 or even -2 HoTA would be noticable since the skill costs 20 fury to begin with.

I didn't see this post until this morning so last night I placed a bid (10,000 gold) on a WD SOJ with 6% cold damage and 30% damage to elites just to see what the fuss is all about. Sounds like this might have been a mistake. Oh well.

Nah, it never hurts to experiment in D3. You very well may find that your playstyle suits the cold damage and elite damage. My gear on my Ironborn DH (waaaaay back in 1.03) favored kiting so Evasive Fire was a fantastic skill. I basically never use it now with my current gear, but for that time, it was a good build for me to run.

Edit: Okay, a lot of those numbers are crap. Boo on me.

This next bit is a bit dense with math. The important bit is in bold below.

BAD NUMBERS BEGIN
The -3 HotA works, because of Battle Rage. You pay the HotA cost when you use the skill and you gain fury back after you score a hit. The Crit bonus on HotA is huge and the proc rate on the Smash rune is a whopping 80%. It's not all that difficult to get near the 80% Crit Chance cap with HotA and that cap increases to 90% under WotB. With full Fury, ~90% Crit, 80% proc, you're regaining 15 Fury of that 20 Fury spent on 72% of every enemy struck. So that means in the best case scenario against a single enemy, on average, you would be spending 5 / 0.72 = 7 Fury under WotB.

Run the numbers with a -3 SoJ. You regain 15 Fury on a cost of 17 Fury. 2 / 0.72 ~= 3 Fury under WotB.

Let's run those numbers with 70% CC, instead, which is pretty reasonable if you're not geared specifically to cap your CC. Now you have a 70% CC * 80% proc rate = 56% of generating 15 fury when striking an enemy. With no reduction, that's an average of 9 Fury per swing (5 / .56) and with -3 SoJ that's 3.6 Fury per swing (2 / .56). Even though you're reducing the cost of the initial swing by 15% (20 Fury down to 17 Fury), your effective fury cost decreases 60% under Battle Rage.
BAD NUMBERS END

Not only that, but remember the CC bonus from HotA decreases as your fury bulb empties. With a 56% chance to proc you're going to fail to proc against a single enemy relatively often; about 20% of the time you'll whiff on two consecutive HotAs. That drops your Fury Bulb 40 points which drops your Crit Chance by 8 points on your next swing. And so on and so on. If those 2 whiffs only cost you 34 points, your Crit Chance only drops by 7 points. Those little tiny bits of probability add up pretty quickly.

This Fury reduction difference isn't nearly as pronounced against a group of enemies. If you manage to strike 2 enemies with 1 HotA swing, then at a 56% chance to Proc Battle Rage, you'll proc it twice 31% of the time, i.e., you will generate +10 Fury 31% of the time. You'll only whiff entirely 19% of the time. You'll only whiff on 2 consecutive HotAs while striking two monsters 4% of the time. There's no big difference between a HotA that costs 20 and a HotA that costs 17 when you're striking 2 or more monsters with each swing.

If you want to have lots of fun, pick up a -5 HotA 2H IK Mace along with a -3 HotA SoJ for a total of -8 Fury HotA. I think the wealthiest of the wealthy can get -20 HotA between weapon, two rings and amulet. You can make HotA your base attack! Even at -11 HotA (-5 weapon, 2x -3 jewelry) you can pretty much swing with reckless abandon.

Posted by ecocd at 06/06/2013 09:43 AM

I think the wealthiest of the wealthy can get -20 HotA between weapon, two rings and amulet. You can make HotA your base attack! Even at -11 HotA (-5 weapon, 2x -3 jewelry) you can pretty much swing with reckless abandon.

I don't qualify as wealthiest of the wealthy. Not ever been over 200mil. BUT... i do have a -18 HotA with HoTA as my primary attack. And believe me... its's fun to play.

I think we talked about that before and discovered the price disparity between Europe and NA was pretty large for some reason. I haven't been on in ages, but I know the -5 HotA rings were all at least 50 million and the -4 HotA rings weren't much behind that.