Barb Item String of ears VS Belt with High stats ?

[Deleted]

Hi everyone

I am thinking about replaceing my current belt and bye my self a String of ears. So i can start to do act 3 i have act2 on farm but now i need better gear.

But my problem is here that my current belt have strenght 238 and vit 111 and res 55 and some healing over time
If i have to bye a string of ears lets say min 18% reduce meele dmg then the stats on the item is like +40 vit +30 strenght and 20 res at a max it will cost a lot of $$ or gold and i will loose A lot of DPS Healt and res

So my ? is is it really worth it and how big off and upgrade is it ?

Best Regards..!!

[bossmonster]

Your current belt seems really good, to progress act3 you might want to upgrade your weakest slots first.

[Deleted]

Yes it is okay but i would still really love to know if it is a upgrade to bye string of ears? and lets say what stats on your belt vs the stats on string of ears makes it not worth replacing.. ?

[Deleted]

Strenght is not the most important stat from Act2 on.

Resistance to All, + %Block, Life on Hit, Vitality and +%Life are far more important to survive.
Also, get a weapon with lots of attackspeed (helps heaps with Life on Hit), with a slot to stick your Pink gem in it (best gem = 300 Life on Hit).

Aim for 10k+ dps attack
700 Resi to All (without the WarCry buff, cuz you'll need about 900-1000 total in Act3)
500-1000 life on Hit
50k+ HP

Good luck, I just started Act3, and I can kill stuff, but especially the Champions have so much HP it's stupid long hack and slash before they die.... (some of these have 40 mil HP, takes 10-15 minutes to kill haha)

[Cairhiin]

High end string of ears is probably better than your current belt, but I was in a similar situation as you. Few weeks ago I managed to get a cheap low end String on my Monk which I've been using for the longest time, but yesterday I finally replaced it with a similar belt (but dex instead) as your current belt.

In all honesty I doubt it's worth spending millions on a String if you still have other slots you can relatively easily upgrade.

[Deleted]

String of ears with 18% reduced is a pretty big upgrade imo, far worth losing some vit/str... there are also some strings up with loh and all res, even if you have 20 all res you'll only lose 30. Personally, if you can afford a high % string then I think it's worth it. I paid 3 mil for a really nice all res 17% one and it really does seem to help a lot..... but I don't know if you consider that a lot or not.

If you don't have the cash then I wouldn't bother with a low end one compared to a high stat belt.

[Deleted]

Thanks all

So Shamanic if you had my current belt and could replace it with lets say a string belt with 18% 20strenght 30 vit and res 20 you would think it is a big upgrade and you would do it ?

[Postaldude]

Thanks all

So Shamanic if you had my current belt and could replace it with lets say a string belt with 18% 20strenght 30 vit and res 20 you would think it is a big upgrade and you would do it ?

If u wanna get past act3 and onwards its a necessity

[Deleted]

If u wanna get past act3 and onwards its a necessity

So what i suspectet it is necessity to have that belt the lets say 17-20% DMG reduction is much better then 200 strenght 70 vit and 30 res
is there no Barb tanks in late act3 and 4 with out this belt ? and what kind of belt make them drop there current string of ears?

[hapylol]

So what i suspectet it is necessity to have that belt the lets say 17-20% DMG reduction is much better then 200 strenght 70 vit and 30 res
is there no Barb tanks in late act3 and 4 with out this belt ? and what kind of belt make them drop there current string of ears?

String of Ears is definitely not necessary. My barb might have 2-3mil spent on him and he can tank act3 just fine. Get a 1H dagger with 850LOH and a socket and get up to 1500LOH and you are golden

[Deleted]

There are spreadsheets out there that will answer your question. Generally though I think your belt has way too low resist all to have a chance to be better than SoE. I am leaving home now so that's that. Use a spreadsheet.

[Deleted]

There are spreadsheets out there that will answer your question. Generally though I think your belt has way too low resist all to have a chance to be better than SoE. I am leaving home now so that's that. Use a spreadsheet.

ok thx but where do i find a spreadsheet link please :-) ?

[Darkfrosty]

I sold my 16% string for 1.5 mil and picked up a 200k one that had better stats across the board. Mele damage is not usually what kills me in Act2/3 its usually some sort of magic dmg that is doing the most dmg. Especially after patch 1.0.3 I see string not being that great and many barbs replacing it. Just my opinion from what I noticed. I used string from middle of hell all the way to Act 3 Inferno.

[BurningStick]

ok thx but where do i find a spreadsheet link please :-) ?

http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator/ This might be of some use - Easy to compare the effective health points gain / loss of different items (and your total EHP).

[Spoiledkid]

Save your current belt and buy String of Ears for situations when you get lots of melee damage?

[Deleted]

Switched from 20%string and not going back. Outside reduction, which is only melee it gives almost nothing. For high end gear 2-5mln, u get:
100str/100vit, 60-70resist, 7-10%life likely 400-450 armor and sth more (ofc 150str and 50vit and viceversa is possibie).

At 40% block value 60-70k life, ~1000resist buffed and 11k armor with enchantress, i'm trying to achieve as much dps as i can, survival is about enough. Started from 11k went 23k dps now with full defensive build 1k wpn. Outside reduction string offers nothing - picks like 20% reducion WITH 30resists all, 50str/80wit cost 15-20mils.

Same thing with lantern of justice - much more prefer str/vit all resists ring - block is crazy good but 8% helm and 25-30% from shield is a fair amount already.

[Deleted]

I watched Kripparrian earlier, and he was doing inferno Rakanoth on his softcore barbarian, to see how it would go on his hardcore. He was losing health and went down to quite low. He popped Wrath and still went further down. Then he popped his String on, and it didn't take long for him to be topped. I think that was a clear indication of how good it really is against melee opponents.

Also, you can have two items for one slot, since switching gear on the fly is still possible.

[Deleted]

Thanks all

So Shamanic if you had my current belt and could replace it with lets say a string belt with 18% 20strenght 30 vit and res 20 you would think it is a big upgrade and you would do it ?

I would do it personally, but like others are saying, it's only good against melee damage... so you could also keep a high stat belt for magic damage and farming and just switch between

[Darklurker]

I think String of Ears is kinda overrated. As different damage reduction sources act multiplicatively, let's suppose reduced melee damage comes last to illustrate better. Supposing you have 75% of both armor and all resists, you would be receiving about 6.25% of the initial damage. If it's melee and the String of Ears is a 20% one, it would take away a further 1.25%. That value is pretty decent, but comes at the cost of a big chunk of every useful stat, and it gets worse the more defense you get. And, again, only for melee.
It's still a solid choice, but not the best.

[Bigbazz]

I would never take a string of ears over a good rare, apart from the melee reduction they are complete junk stat wise even with the best of them, while they are good belts they are majorly overrated outside of their niche of tanking heavy hitting melee physical monsters.

A good String could set you back millions and in the majority of situations could end up being a worse belt than something costing less than 100k gold. I bought my String of Ears for 200k back when they were cheap before they boomed, then I found a decent rare and came to the conclusion that it was better than string, sold the string for 600k and never looked back.


If you wanna keep 2 on you for the sake of hard hitting melee mobs then fairplay, it works.