Feels like SoH aint working with a cold build, which is weird since it says on the label that it should. Works great with Lightning tough.
This made me think maybe i am using the wrong skills, however barbs dont have a whole lot cold skills anyway...
All cold skills EXCEPT Earthquake and Avalanche (Area Effect skills) trigger SoH. This includes:
Seismic Slam (Permafrost)
Hammer of the Ancients (The Devil's Anvil)
Whirlwind (Hurricane)
Frenzy (Sidearm)
Overpower (Crushing Advance)
Revenge (Best Served Cold)
Additional info about the Cold "Skull": It Pierces through all targets, but only ONE is cast per spell activation. Say you use Whirlwind (Hurricane) and trigger a skull... it will target a random enemy and shoot out in that direction. Frenzy seems to aim the skull at your primary target, but HotA, SS, OP, WW and Revenge all target a random enemy that was hit with the spell. Sometimes you get the Skull to hit a whole group (for me around 4mil per target), sometimes it hits one random guy off to the side
currently have utahs roar and zwarewrthj equipped for additonal cold damage. Feels like equipping SoH wouldnt be to good? i mean loosing +% cold damage then
Yeah that's obvious... It's really hard to weigh the exact benefit and dps output of the soh cold proc. though it does travel in a straight line so technically it's supposed to always hit your main target. 75% proc coef on sidearm is not too bad but i'm not sure if it can get close to a straight 20% cold dmg increase.
The only scenario where i think soh with cold could be nice is on a wizard... using mirror ball and glacial spike. Adding 1 more missile to your 3 missiles, even though it's different but still.
I think it would depend mostly on your target situation. In a large group, Seismic Slam / HotA would benefit greatly from ~20% more cold damage (Utar or Azurewrath), since they deal high weapon damage and hit a large area.
Say you have ~80% Cold Damage (Amulet, Ring, Bracer, 1 Weapon), and use Seismic Slam (755% Weapon damage with Permafrost). You would now do Approx 1360% Weapon Damage (755 x 1.8). That extra 20% Cold from a second weapon would offer you a total of 1510% (755 x 2.0) Weapon damage, or a gain of ~150% weapon damage per attack using Dual-wield Cold weapons with Seismic slam.
Given the same ~80% Cold Damage as the previous example, this time using Shard of Hate, you would have the 1360% Weapon Damage per slam. However, instead of gaining ~150% weapon damage per slam from a second Cold weapon, you would gain ~405% Weapon Damage from the Freezing Skull effect (Average 225% x 1.8 from Cold skills), 33% of the time. This averages out to a gain of ~135% Weapon damage per attack.
Using only this ability, a Cold weapon is the clear winner, especially given that Slam hits so many targets at the same time, where as the Skull may only hit a few.
However, add this skill with all the same info: Frenzy (Sidearm)
Base cold of 80% means Frenzy does 279% (155% x 1.8) Weapon damage per attack (Ignoring Sidearm procs for now). Adding the second weapon will boost it to 310% (155% x 2) Weapon Damage per attack. This is a gain of ~31% weapon damage per attack.
Using the same base 80% Cold damage, Frenzy would yield 279% Weapon Damage Per Attack (155% x 1.8) PLUS ~405% From Freezing Skull Effect (Average 225% x 1.8 From Cold skills), 75% of the time, totaling a gain of ~303% Weapon damage per attack.
In this situation, your Frenzy DPS will go up by a whopping 272% per attack!!
I will do some in-game testing tonight, possibly with some video to demonstrate the differences, but it looks like your build will really determine which weapons are ideal. I'm actually leaning towards trying a Cold Frenzy build with SoH as the focus.
Thanks for the advice. I'm going to swap out my Fjord Cutter for an Utar's Roar to bring me to 83% cold skill and if I find a cold SOJ like yours that would bring me to 103% cold skill! At this level I'd be doubling my damage right?
all procs on PTR have been "fixed" to benefit from appropriate damage. SoH can proc once per swing, so it's basically +250% weapon damage tacked on to your (always proc) primary attack, scale appropriately for sidearm. In single target fights this is probably more powerful than a +12.5% overall damage boost (+20% cold damage in a build that already has +60% cold damage), however your exact contribution of primary damage to other damage sources matters.
Yes +103% cold damage is doubling your damage.
Simply put if Double damage from primary attack against primary target is worth less than +12.5% damage overall don't use SoH.
This made me think maybe i am using the wrong skills, however barbs dont have a whole lot cold skills anyway...
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Storm-21498/hero/47687845
Seismic Slam (Permafrost)
Hammer of the Ancients (The Devil's Anvil)
Whirlwind (Hurricane)
Frenzy (Sidearm)
Overpower (Crushing Advance)
Revenge (Best Served Cold)
Additional info about the Cold "Skull": It Pierces through all targets, but only ONE is cast per spell activation. Say you use Whirlwind (Hurricane) and trigger a skull... it will target a random enemy and shoot out in that direction. Frenzy seems to aim the skull at your primary target, but HotA, SS, OP, WW and Revenge all target a random enemy that was hit with the spell. Sometimes you get the Skull to hit a whole group (for me around 4mil per target), sometimes it hits one random guy off to the side
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Storm-21498/hero/47687845
All skills procs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AgL5S3Revw9ddEhScEpSLWhnRDZKV25OaWZJcHdkN0E&toomany=true#gid=0
Seismic slam with permafrost has 0.333 proc coef so that's quite low. Skills that have 1.000 will proc the soh everytime.
Edit: A better list of proc coefhttp://www.d3maxstats.com/?p=procrates&class=barb
I have frenzy with sidearm, but when i would equip SoH i would loose roughly +20$ cold damage. that seems steep...
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Storm-21498/hero/47687845
The only scenario where i think soh with cold could be nice is on a wizard... using mirror ball and glacial spike. Adding 1 more missile to your 3 missiles, even though it's different but still.
Say you have ~80% Cold Damage (Amulet, Ring, Bracer, 1 Weapon), and use Seismic Slam (755% Weapon damage with Permafrost). You would now do Approx 1360% Weapon Damage (755 x 1.8). That extra 20% Cold from a second weapon would offer you a total of 1510% (755 x 2.0) Weapon damage, or a gain of ~150% weapon damage per attack using Dual-wield Cold weapons with Seismic slam.
Given the same ~80% Cold Damage as the previous example, this time using Shard of Hate, you would have the 1360% Weapon Damage per slam. However, instead of gaining ~150% weapon damage per slam from a second Cold weapon, you would gain ~405% Weapon Damage from the Freezing Skull effect (Average 225% x 1.8 from Cold skills), 33% of the time. This averages out to a gain of ~135% Weapon damage per attack.
Using only this ability, a Cold weapon is the clear winner, especially given that Slam hits so many targets at the same time, where as the Skull may only hit a few.
However, add this skill with all the same info: Frenzy (Sidearm)
Base cold of 80% means Frenzy does 279% (155% x 1.8) Weapon damage per attack (Ignoring Sidearm procs for now). Adding the second weapon will boost it to 310% (155% x 2) Weapon Damage per attack. This is a gain of ~31% weapon damage per attack.
Using the same base 80% Cold damage, Frenzy would yield 279% Weapon Damage Per Attack (155% x 1.8) PLUS ~405% From Freezing Skull Effect (Average 225% x 1.8 From Cold skills), 75% of the time, totaling a gain of ~303% Weapon damage per attack.
In this situation, your Frenzy DPS will go up by a whopping 272% per attack!!
I will do some in-game testing tonight, possibly with some video to demonstrate the differences, but it looks like your build will really determine which weapons are ideal. I'm actually leaning towards trying a Cold Frenzy build with SoH as the focus.
My cold barb
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/SDMODS-1671/hero/50523862
Yes +103% cold damage is doubling your damage.
Simply put if Double damage from primary attack against primary target is worth less than +12.5% damage overall don't use SoH.