Looking at the leaderboard, people playing whirlwind seem to pick life regeneration as a fourth stat on their boots. Why is that? The build has enough sustain as it is and the roll comes to under one percent of your total life. I currently have armour, but I’m leaning to changing it to 12% movement speed. That way I can take 24 points off the paragon movement speed and slot them into strength. 120 strength isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in my opinion.
The preferred stats used to be was STR / VIT / All Res / 15% WW. As a result of the changes to the Wastes set, Ambo’s and Lamentation, this has changed to STR / VIT / All Res / Armour because WW is no longer the primary damage dealing ability.
As to Armour vs RunSpeed, I’d go for Armour. The 24 paragon you move into STR gives you 120 strength which is also 120 armour. Rolling armour onto ancient boots can get you 436-516 Armour. So, you get a much bigger toughness / recovery benefit from the Armour than from the STR. Also, depending on your hero’s current STR, adding 120 to it is probably only a fraction of a percent increase. For example, my seasonal Barb has 18786 STR so 120 extra would be 0.15% increase.
That’s the thing though, monster HP scales much harder than monster damage. So, my line of thinking is that offensive stats would relatively be worth more than defensive ones, especially armour on a strength class. Even if it is only 120 strength.
Perhaps this also has a paragon component.
If we assume top-end rolls, the choice is between…
- 120 STR + 120 armour
- 516 armour
I have two WW/Rend Barbs, one seasonal, one not. Let’s use them as examples…
My seasonal Barb - SeasonTwenty - has these stats…
- STR = 18,861
- Armour = 30,291
My non-seasonal Barb - Meteorblade - has these stats…
- STR = 31,584
- Armour = 46,252
For damage, we’ve gained 120 STR…
- SeasonTwenty - (120/18861) * 100 = 0.636%
- Meteorblade - (120/30291) * 100 = 0.396%
For armour, we’ve gained 120 from the extra STR, but lost 516 from the boots, so we’ve lost 416 armour…
- SeasonTwenty - (29875/30291) * 100 = 98.626% = 1.374% loss
- Meteorblade - (45836/46252) * 100 = 99.100% = 0.900% loss
For each increase in GR level mobs gain 17% more health. As your paragon increases, the less impact an increase of 120 STR has on whether it will help you reach that or not.
Also factor in this…
120 STR is the equivalent of 24 paragon levels.
516 armour is the equivalent of 103 paragon levels (1 STR = 1 Armour).
How much effort is required to obtain 24 vs 103 paragon levels is determined by what paragon you’re already at and we can use a Paragon Calculator to determine that…
SeasonTwenty (Paragon 1513)
- XP required to go from 1513 to 1537 = ~2.69 trillion XP
- XP required to go from 1513 to 1616 = ~12.042 trillion XP
Meteorblade (Paragon 3716)
- XP required to go from 3716 to 3740 = ~15.639 trillion XP
- XP required to go from 3716 to 3819 = ~68.678 trillion XP
So, the higher your current paragon is, the less impact the STR has, and the vastly more XP you’d need to farm to get the equivalent armour rating via STR than getting it on your boots.
(My apologies, I know a lot of readers don’t enjoy maths as an explanation / reasoning, but this is very much a maths question, sorry)
You didn’t factor in the extra 25% armour from paragon, so the absolute difference is a bit higher. Armour, however has diminishing returns, and the real difference in damage reduction is less than two tenths of a percent in the case of your seasonal character. The overall increase in stats seems to favour strength 4:1 wrt armour, since the damage multiplier doesn’t have diminishing returns.
It’s not that it will tip me over the next GR tier, it’s more about what the most optimal thing to have. Then again, my gear is really far from optimal at this point of time. I’m having somewhat bad luck with rerolls, too.
The reason (i think) why they roll life regen and not move speed or armor is bcs the added benefit of 24paragon xtra in str or 500 armor is so small the boost you get from life regen is just better or maybe less bad 