Breath of the Dying or Death for Eth Colossus Blade?

I just traded away my 2nd Grief and now I need a new off-hand weapon. I want Last Wish but I'm still 2

Jah away from it so I need something cheaper in the meantime. I was thinking about trying something new instead of just making another Grief.

I've been considering something like BotD or Death in an Ethereal

Colossus Blade. I suppose Death could also go into an Ethereal

Colossus Sword... I don't fully understand the differences between Colossus Blades and Swords in terms of which is best for a

Frenzy Barb. I'm kind of torn between these two... 50% crushing blow on Death seems like a very strong option, but the 60% IAS on BotD also seems like it would be really strong. Does anyone have any experience with these runewords that they could offer me some guidance? Is Grief just flat-out better that I should skip this and just go with 2nd Grief again? I have the runes to craft Death but I would need to trade for

Zod for BotD.

Here is my current character build sans small charms: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/k701068u

You don't have any CB in your setup. Are you planning to run bosses? If yes, then Grief + Death is my pick. Otherwise, Grief + BotD for most style points. Dual Grief obviously has the highest raw damage output, but I think it's boring.

Colossus Sword vs

Colossus Blade:

CS is slower for barbs, slightly more average damage, and can have 5 sockets at most. No hassle base for Death.

CB is faster for barbs, slightly less average damage, and can have 6 sockets. You need 15 more dex to use vs CS, or only 88 with BotD.

Edit: I forgot to subtract 10 dex for ethereal CB.

Imho, BotD is a bit better than Grief - assuming you have crushing/openwounds/etc on your other gear. High speed, solid dual leech, massive stats - for ww barb it works great. Choosing a Grief tho, you make sure you'll hit good speed breakpoint with it - and then, it is also awesome.

Khegan wrote: 2 years ago

You don't have any CB in your setup. Are you planning to run bosses? If yes, then Grief + Death is my pick. Otherwise, Grief + BotD for most style points. Dual Grief obviously has the highest raw damage output, but I think it's boring.

Colossus Sword vs

Colossus Blade:

CS is slower for barbs, slightly more average damage, and can have 5 sockets at most. No hassle base for Death.

CB is faster for barbs, slightly less average damage, and can have 6 sockets. You need 15 more dex to use vs CS, or only 88 with BotD.

Yeah I'm looking to replace the offhand Lawbringer

Phase Blade with one of the options discussed here. I'll be sticking with Grief PB in main hand. I do run bosses, but I'm leaning towards BotD because of the much higher attack speed, and 50% chance to cast

Poison Nova on killing an enemy is going to be a lot of fun to watch. It sounds like I can't really go wrong with either option.

Thanks for highlighting the differences between CS and CB for me.

Hi, about Last Wish:
It curses

Life Tap, so it curses over

Decrepify if your merc has

The Reaper's Toll.
Hit Blinds Target in turn curses over

Life Tap, so you only profit of

Life Tap for one hit.
The weapon cannot be ethereal and thus it does less damage than Death, Oath or Breath of the Dying
The Might aura of your mercenary is stronger.

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

Hi, about Last Wish:
It curses

Life Tap, so it curses over

Decrepify if your merc has

The Reaper's Toll.
Hit Blinds Target in turn curses over

Life Tap, so you only profit of

Life Tap for one hit.
The weapon cannot be ethereal and thus it does less damage than Death, Oath or Breath of the Dying
The Might aura of your mercenary is stronger.

That Hit Blinds Target counts as a curse seems like a massive oversight in the design of that weapon. Thanks for letting me know. I guess it's not worth the cost.

Another info: Only the ias of your primary weapon counts. As you should use Grief in a

Phase Blade in your primary weapon slot, the ias of Breath of the Dying does not count.

Trubbs wrote: 2 years ago

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

Hi, about Last Wish:
It curses

Life Tap, so it curses over

Decrepify if your merc has

The Reaper's Toll.
Hit Blinds Target in turn curses over

Life Tap, so you only profit of

Life Tap for one hit.
The weapon cannot be ethereal and thus it does less damage than Death, Oath or Breath of the Dying
The Might aura of your mercenary is stronger.

That Hit Blinds Target counts as a curse seems like a massive oversight in the design of that weapon. Thanks for letting me know. I guess it's not worth the cost.

Sadly, yeah. If it didn't have the blind it'd be glorious. But with it..mweh.

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

Another info: Only the ias of your primary weapon counts. As you should use Grief in a

Phase Blade in your primary weapon slot, the ias of Breath of the Dying does not count.

well i am curious about that
Grief in pb in main hand, Death in

Eth CB as offhand, what's the outcome?
it seems to me you get an hybrid scenario that ends up in having slow attack speed

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

Another info: Only the ias of your primary weapon counts. As you should use Grief in a

Phase Blade in your primary weapon slot, the ias of Breath of the Dying does not count.

I thought it would apply the 60% IAS from offhand weapon to only the offhand weapon's attacks. You're saying it wouldn't do anything at all? That seems like a rip-off. In that case I'd lean towards Death but as someone also pointed out, wouldn't that leave me with rather slow attack speed? I find myself tempted to use Hero Editor or whatever its called to do some single-player offline testing.

I also noticed that when I equip my

Doombringer in my offhand it does not seem to apply the 40% bonus to attack rating, to either my main hand or my offhand.

The

Frenzy barb weapon speed calculation is very complicated. If you want to wear a Grief

Phase Blade and you have

Frenzy level 25, then you need 78% ias for max speed with

Colossus Sword and 72% ias with a

Colossus Blade.
You should use a calculator for this. Unfortunately I only know one in German.

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

The

Frenzy barb weapon speed calculation is very complicated. If you want to wear a Grief

Phase Blade and you have

Frenzy level 25, then you need 78% ias for max speed with

Colossus Sword and 72% ias with a

Colossus Blade.
You should use a calculator for this. Unfortunately I only know one in German.

well i used a calculator but no one i found seems to be very accurate
just one last question, when you say ias you mean from equip other than Grief weapon ias or should we take that into account too, to get to the 78/72 % ias?

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

well i used a calculator but no one i found seems to be very accurate
just one last question, when you say ias you mean from equip other than Grief weapon ias or should we take that into account too, to get to the 78/72 % ias?

Can you link your calculator? If linking is not allowed in threads then in a PM plz.
Primary weapons ias counts. The char screen reflects this. I have a Grief with 36% ias in my primary slot and a Breath of the Dying in my secondary slot. When I unequip my Grief, the advanced stats tab jumps from 66% ias to 90% ias.

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

well i used a calculator but no one i found seems to be very accurate
just one last question, when you say ias you mean from equip other than Grief weapon ias or should we take that into account too, to get to the 78/72 % ias?

Can you link your calculator? If linking is not allowed in threads then in a PM plz.
Primary weapons ias counts. The char screen reflects this. I have a Grief with 36% ias in my primary slot and a Breath of the Dying in my secondary slot. When I unequip my Grief, the advanced stats tab jumps from 66% ias to 90% ias.

thanks man, i actually use a mobile app and some site i found around, don t have the link now
i'll pm you some more info, now it is 1 am here, just killed dclone after a quite long wait so heading straigth to bed

I tried out that character planner in the start post and it works perfectly. I need to change my Grief that I currently have to a 38% ias one or I need to wear a

Nosferatu's Coil. Not my current Barb, but the one I would like to build.
https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/2q0106tc

It's true that the IAS of the primary weapon is used to calculate

Frenzy speed, but only if the first attack in the sequence misses or is blocked. If the first attack successfully hits, then the second attack is also involved in attack rate calculation. There was a topic about this long ago on another site that I can't seem to find anymore. However, the difference is hardly noticeable (about 1 frame slower if the first attack lands), so it's not inaccurate to say that primary weapon speed is most important.

I took a closer look at that attack speed calculator built into the paper doll website I linked in my first post. Thanks for pointing that feature out, I didn't realize it was there.

Also, it occurred to me that bosses are immune to Hit Blinds Target and therefore Last Wish is maybe not as flawed as I thought.

Right now I'm leaning towards just remaking a 2nd Grief.