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I don't see the benefit of an axe compared to a crafted hammer. An axe comes with 1387 critical hit and much less damage than a hammer...
You can craft a hammer with over 1700 critical hit golden lines which is much much more than you can get from an axes 1387 and still have a ton of damage if you have increase damage lines on the weapon.

 

There have been some changes since I made this analysis, but nothing has changed that makes hammers better than axes.

To summarize, an axe's base crit line (and an extra crit line) increase your total crit so much while using so few lines that it leaves more room for crit damage. With a hammer, you either need 2x crit lines to come to a reasonable crit rate (which decreases the damage benefit of the hammer), or you will never be able to reach as high of DPS. There comes a point where damage is less important than crit damage, and a hammer has a harder time reaching that. That also doesn't even factor in the subjective value of crit when considering skills like the cool down reduction for Rage Strike which an axe again has an easier time reaching than a hammer.

In my "ideal" build, I'd have 1x amulet/belt/decoration with full crit (about 1200 at LVL55), 2x amulet/belt/decoration with 65%+ crit damage, an axe with 3x %damage (235%+) an 1x +crit (1720 at LVL 50, 2135+ at LVL 55), a 38%+ torso, the Warlord set, the white New Moon boots, 2x Bloodtooth, and HP (2000 HP) or speed gloves (38%+) depending on the difficulty. Offensive gems include 2x 4% crit rate Christmas gems, 4x 5% crit damage/1% attack speed, 1x 6% crit damage/2% attack speed, 1x 440 crit onyx, 4x 14% speed gems, and 5x +38 rubies. This would result in a build with 5500 base crit (8681 after %s are applies which is 78.23%), 4979-6681 damage, 3.71x crit damage, and 1.26 attack speed with defense gloves or 1.58 attack speed with speed gloves. This results in DPS of 22919 DPS for the defensive buils and 28740 DPS for the speed gloves build.

In all my math, I've been unable to identify a hammer that beats that while still maintaining the impressive defense that comes with this build. Like I said in the above analysis, the closest hammer is 2x% damage (155%+) and 2x crit (3440+), but that still falls short by about 1000 DPS. A hammer that has enough crit to come close in DPS also has crappy damage for a hammer and the damage is rather close to what I estimated for the axe, so the reduced % obliterates the advantage of the the higher base damage. Furthermore, if they introduce higher damage gems like some people have theorized/dreaded may happen either with the expansion or in the months after, a the axe, with it's higher % damage (~235%) will get more out of those than the hammer (~155%). Sure, a LVL 55-60 hammer will again have higher base damage, but the gems is where you get your best improvement.

 

I'm set on a 2h hammer with 235% +1700 critical hit as the best 2h weapon choice, lots of damage and enough critical hit rate for critical hit % enhancements. I plugged all the viable 2h weapons into DPS calculator and they are all relatively close but the pure damage weapon and the 235% +1700 crit 2h weapons seem to be geared for build entirely set on DPS.
The 2h axe with 235% +1700 and hammer with 155% +3400 are not far behind the other 2 but are better weapons for DK because the extra crit allows for other stats to be higher without having to compensate and rage attack giving cooldown.
For absolute devastation I'm going to use pure damage hammer or a 235% +1700 critical hit hammer. Hopefully I'll have all 4 to try out. I have 2 of the choices already

 

What should I focus on next for my tank setup. Yes all my items are level 50 because my gops are in my 2h and 2h items

 

Not bad. Right now, I'd wait to see what LVL 55 brings in the next week. Just build up your glyphs in the meantime and prepare yourself mentally for the grind to 55.



EDIT:
So R185 is here...
With just the changes brought about from runes, I gained the following when I logged in today, bought some runes, and moved some gems:

26 Max Damage
0.08 attack speed
2494 HP
486 armor
47 crit
13% crit damage
168 resist

I literally improved every stat except my minimum damage and my block stats, and not by small amounts.

 

My DK after getting to 55

Wishing I had not combined so many unique gems so I had more rune slots to fill
I really like the new weapon trophies especially with the increase critical hit adds huge new opportunities but the loss of crit on weapons really ticks me off again

 

Can you survive in level 2 cata with that armor? Btw, the leg seal is very good. xD

 

I can do excutiating and kinda fatal at lvl 55 but i die instantly if I mess up spamming wild swing every 3 seconds... Hopefully I get lucky to transfer some nice stats onto the new items so I get more of those juicy armor and hp base lines.

 

After taking my time, I've finally (sarcasm) reached LVL 55.

This is my stats immediately upon leveling up.


Now the real work begins. My goal is to return to 55%+ armor in the next week while also getting my damage up another 200+ by crafting a new torso. We'll see how I do on that goal.

I have 1300+ cubes to open, but I think I'll hold off on those for the moment to save them for crafting exos because I'm only crafting greens and blues at the moment.

 

My current stats. Still have no luck with crafting leg xD

 

How you make that attack speed?

 

I have a lovely pair of gloves. I got lucky early in R185 and managed to craft my 2x old 3/4 legendary speed gloves with 2x new legendary gloves (one of which had a gold base HP line), and I made a pair of gloves that outshines almost anything you could hope for. I have them leveled up to LVL 55, and they have 1171 HP which allows them to keep my defenses up too. I also have a bunch of the older attack speed gems and one of the new 8% attack speed runes. Total, from gloves, gems, and runes, I have 107.45% attack speed. Even once you take into account the -10% from Behemoth, that is still 97.45% attack speed added to the 0.83 base attack speed of an axe. 0.8333333333*1.9745= 1.6454 attacks per second.

 

Friend told me to post his stats here.
Tank stats for dragan:


And with full dmg:

 

Since when a road car is being used as a armored vehicle on the battlefield?
I can't see a tank there ... nor a damage dealer.

 

I am not a dmg dealer yep, but i kill fatal bosses in less than 20 sec Also i am not a tank but i tank infernal bosses without aggro by making dmg with dwarf with 26k dmg and 3,50 speed in group Thx for your comm

 

Wooow stunnishing

 

Why is someone else posting your stats for you, when you are perfectly capable of entering the forum yourself? Besides is hiding your name necessary since well... you already blown your own ''cover'' by replying to trakilaki.

To stay on topic, those are some nice 2h stats u got there.

 

It's been a while, but now that the Dragan event has come and gone, I've gotten the Bellicose set worked into my build and I am most satisfied with the results. Yesterday, I hit two milestones. I now have over 40k HP in a 2h build, and I have over 10k max damage. See post 1629 above for my last stats.


The next two major changes I expect (other than finally crafting a proper weapon), will be when I can craft a %CHR helmet to transfer into my waiting Bellicose helmet and when we get the updated Dragansilver set. At that time, I'll trade out the Dragan ring and my existing Dragonsilver ring, but maintain the 3 piece set bonus for the bellicose set with the upgraded helmet.

 

Optimism... gotta love it

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

Given the timeline I'm looking at to craft a full % crit helmet and then farm the draken cores needed to do the transfer, and enough mareri frags to buy the pristine cores... I think the Dragonsilver set should just be getting released around the same time.