Grats on your newly minted Fresh 70 Barbarian! If you’re wondering where to go from here, “Look no further“. Get your Haedrigs Gift free set ASAP, builds for each step, and items you need. Get to endgame with your barb NOW! (Not 70 yet? See Barb Leveling guide instead)

In Season 23, the Barbarian free set is: Wrath of the Wastes.

Updated Apr 15 2021: Added mentions of Follower Guide where applicable.

Season 23 and YOU. How does it affect?

This season’s “theme” is the Follower buff + emanate items. I’m guessing it will be a permanent addition from after this season.

This mainly affects farming speed. While the follower buff skills make them more relevant in tryharding GR’s, it is by no means game-breaking.

Essentially, this season unlocks
NEW HEIGHTS FOR SPEEDFARMING

I highly recommend checking out our Follower Guide (Builds, Item, Skills etc).

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

Fresh 70: The first step – setting up!

The very first step of your journey! Here, I discuss items, rerolls, and basic advice to keep in mind during your ascent.

Crafting a Reaper’s Wraps ASAP (Recipe from any Torment Malthael) will help you get past the early game struggles by alleviating your Fury issues.

Yellow items - stats - rerolls - gems

REROLLING YELLOW ITEMS IS SUPER LEGIT, CHEAP, AND UNDERRATED.
Nicely rerolled yellows will carry you for a LONG TIME.

WEAPON: Craft or find a 2H Mighty Weapon. The stats you want are STR VIT LpH. Socket is fine, too (Purple gem for LpH, Red for DMG+, Green for CHD+). Avoid any other stat for now.

Barb is an STR Class – meaning you get free ARMOR from all the STR on your gear. This results in a huge lack of ALL RESISTS. So, in your reroll strategy REMOVE ALL ARMOR ROLLS as they’re pretty much USELESS – and replace them with ALL RESISTS. ALLRES is your best defensive stat by a LARGE MARGIN. Socketing Diamonds also gives you ALLRES.

SELF HEALING: Life per Hit and/or Life per Fury Spent is pretty huge for your early game survival. You want at least some of it on your gear. LpH rolls on almost anything, but LpFS only shows up on MIGHTY WEAPONS and MIGHTY BELT. For barb’s playstyle, I value LpFS a little more than LpH, but having either or both isn’t bad early on.

Belt: Is a huge source of defense. Main stat > VIT > RES/ARMOR > Life%. You’ll be surprised how a single item can give you a whole load of toughness on.

Rings and Amulet: You NEED sockets on these to prep for legendary gems. Get any stat on these that you feel you’re missing. Feeling soft? Get defenses. Need DPS? Crit and mainstat. Feel free to roll “random helpful stats” on these for now, instead of the usual endgame CHC/CHD/MAINSTAT.

GEMS: For body pieces you’ll want Diamonds for ALLRES. Helm may vary (Amethyst for Life%, Topaz for resource cost reduction, Diamond for Cooldown Reduction) depending on your needs.

Skill% (Rend%) can be found on Chest and Shoulder. Typically, it’s safer to roll on shoulder but if you’re removing trash stats for it you can take it on chest, too. Having it on both is great, at a cost to defensive stats. Not too important early on.

Whirlwind is NOT your main source of DPS.
It’s actually REND!

Shoulders / Arms / Chest / Legs / Helm / Shoulder? You’ll be getting these for “free” via the Haedrig’s gift. So you don’t need to tryhard on getting these temporary items. Wastes in particular has no issue blasting through the seasonal journey.

OTHER SLOTS will be taken over by your free set pieces. No matter how bad they are stat wise, the 4pc bonus will heavily outperform any temporary yellow you can make.

Getting the “correct” stats beats getting the “perfect” stats for now. REMOVE USELESS STATS and get any USEFUL STAT for massive gains in power.

Remove useless stats

  • Life per second: Meme-tier junk stat.
  • Unused Elemental and Skill%: Actually useless. Lol.
  • Attack Speed – it’s usually an endgame tune-up stat.
  • Excessive Resource Cost Reduction – Is a crutch and only niche builds need it.
  • Excessive Cooldown Reduction – Only useful for an endgame “need”.
  • Armor – Useless for us, take ALLRES instead.

Take better stats

  • STR VIT – can’t go wrong with these. Your core stats!
  • ALLRES Life% – Great defensive stats.
  • Life per Hit / Life per Fury Spent – Great sustainability.
  • CRIT Stats (CHC / CHD) – More for endgame, but I’d take this over garbage stats.

Keeping items important for your Follower Farming Build is high priority!

0pc Wastes free set – getting the 2pc

Getting 1st Haedrig's Gift

For clarity this box contains info and builds if you currently have 0 pcs of the Wastes’ free set, going for 2 (you don’t have any Haedrig’s gift bag, going for the first).

S23 Fresh 70 Barbarian No Set Build
Skills Rune
Rend Bloodbath
Whirlwind Wind Shear
Frenzy Sidearm
Furious Charge Merciless Assault
War Cry Invigorate
Battle Rage Ferocity
Passives
Rampage Weapons Master
Unforgiving (Open) Animosity (Open)

This build is a classic spin on Rend / WW / Furious Charge. I added Frenzy for anti-elites. It’s a great all-rounder that can handle mobs REALLY WELL and does ok versus bosses and single targets. It’s pretty much a copy of the L70 build from our Barbarian Leveling Guide, with minimal adjustments, if any.

If you have a powerful legendary – edit the build to accommodate it if needed.

*Pressing Shift+J (PC) opens up your Seasonal Journey tracker!*

The entries in these early chapters are dead easy. The build above gives you a good balance of offense, defense and speed built in to help you breeze through this as mindlessly as possible.

Hard Mode for Chapters 1 & 2. Clear through all the entries on Hard. Just up the difficulty to complete one Neph on Expert.

Don’t forget to level up all the NPCs in town. Completing your weekly Challenge Rift will help you get resources to do this easily, if you haven’t already.

When you’re done here, get your first free set from your mail, and proceed onward.

2pc Wastes free set – getting the 4pc

Getting 2nd Haedrig's Gift

For clarity, this box contains builds and info if you currently have 2 pcs of the Wastes’ free set, going for 4 (you have the first Haedrig’s gift bag, going for the second).

S23 Fresh 70 Barbarian 2pc Wastes Build
Skills Rune
Rend Bloodbath
Whirlwind Wind Shear
Frenzy (Open) Sidearm
Furious Charge Merciless Assault
War Cry Invigorate
Battle Rage Ferocity
Passives
Rampage Weapons Master
Bloodthirst Relentless

2 Passives changed! That’s about it. Wastes 2pc gives a huge buff to Rend. Frenzy becomes an open slot because of this. You can use Sprint, Threatening Shout, or anything else if you don’t like Frenzy anymore.

If you have a powerful legendary – edit the build to accommodate it if needed.

*Pressing Shift+J (PC) opens up your Seasonal Journey tracker!*

Difficulty: Although there are entries here that need to be finished on Master, you can still complete the bounty cache, if you haven’t already, on Hard. For the bounty, try to do the whole five acts as you’ll need to do this down the line, anyway.

These entries are still on the easy side, so we can be a little lax with our build making as little sacrifices as possible to retain good DPS, Speed, and some thought to defense. When you’re done with this chapter, collect your 2nd set of free set and let’s finish the next chapter for the remaining free gear!

4pc Wastes free set – getting the 6pc

For clarity the next boxes contains builds and info if you currently have 4pcs of the Wastes free set, going for 6 (you have the first+second Haedrig’s gift bag, going for the third). This segment is further divided into three parts – Torment II, Torment IV, and GR20.

Torment II seasonal journey entries

Torment I-II and general stuff
S23 Fresh 70 Barbarian 2pc Wastes Build
Skills Rune
Rend Bloodbath
Whirlwind Wind Shear
Frenzy (Open) Sidearm
Furious Charge Merciless Assault
War Cry Invigorate
Battle Rage Ferocity
Passives
Rampage Weapons Master
Bloodthirst Relentless

No Changes. This build will be the baseline for all entries in this tier (Torment II, IV, and GR20) While this build may seem overkill for the Torment II entries, you may as well prep up for the harder parts of this tier.

Upgrade a Rare to Legendary w/ Kanai’s Cube:

Complete a Torment I Rift: This will be the minimum level you should be farming at should you need to do it. Increase if you can easily obliterate a rift. There’s also a “Kill a Torment II Boss” entry here which should be easy.

Complete any other odds and ends that you can, before proceeding to Torment IV.

Torment IV seasonal journey entries

Torment IV stuff

(build template in the Torment II tab)

In Torment IV things get real. For many of the free sets, this place is the breakpoint whether your build needs help or not. And for S23 and Wastes can do it alright. Just play carefully and let rend do the work.

  • Kill Odeg – Keywarden in ACT I, Fields of Misery.
  • Kill Sokahr – Keywarden in ACT II, Dahlgur Oasis.
  • Kill Xah’Rith – Keywarden in ACT III, Stonefort.
  • Kill Nekarat – Keywarden in ACT IV, Gardens of Hope 2nd Tier.
  • Kill Specific Boss Check your journal to see who it is this season.
  • Keywardens maps have a key icon next to the waypoint. Purple arrows point you to their location after a short while once you’re in their respective map.

For the boss and all Keywardens – STRAIGHT UP RUSH TO THEM!
Ignore ALL TRASH and just beeline! Get it done ASAP!

You’ll really notice the if you’ve neglected your temporary yellow gear and rerolls. Hopefully you have powerful legendary to carry you (and even if you do), you will notice if you’ve neglected your gear. Refer to the very top setting up tab if you need help.

Either way, this is a good time to take a closer look at your items and get as many powerups and rerolls stated in the setting up tab above.

4pc Wastes free set GR20

Spoiler title

No changes to build!

Wastes 4 should have ZERO PROBLEM here. Rend, Merciless Charge, and the whole kit is just way too powerful. Even with 0 legendaries and all yellow items I would have full confidence to clear this.

You should have an idea of how strong you are given the drops (or lack thereof) you’ve gotten. Be practical and don’t be afraid to shore up your build a little. If you feel a little weak – Do 4 quick Nephs, then do 4 GR10+.

The “ultimate” challenge gating you to getting your full six piece free set! The difficulty varies wildly on your class and seasonal set. As someone who has cleared with EVERY SINGLE SET AND CLASS WITHOUT ANY OTHER LEGENDARY, without taking any Pylons – let me tell you, they’re not all created equal.

Fresh 70 Barb 6pc Wastes Free Set!

S23 Barb 6pc Wastes Free Set Build
Skill Rune
Rend Bloodbath
Whirlwind
Blood Funnel / Wind Shear
Ground Stomp
Wrenching Smash
Threatening Shout Demoralize
Battle Rage
Ferocity / Swords
Warcry
Veterans Warning / Impunity
Passives
Rampage Relentless
Bloodthirst (Open)
Weapons Master (Open)

FROM HERE OUR GOAL IS TO GAIN POWER FAST. The next logical steps are Legendary Gems, and being mindful of the good items you need to find.

Build notes / reminders

  • Diamonds on chest/legs. Amethyst on Helm is great early.
  • Reroll off the trash stats, get the decent ones.
  • GEAR UP YOUR FOLLOWER. Sage Set, Gloves of Worship etc.
  • Reapers Wraps is “alright”. Wastes doesn’t really struggle with Fury but it’s a free legendary upgrade.
  • Lots of defensive options placed in the base build. As well as Fury generation options. If you feel you have excess of either, adjust your build accordingly.
  • Follower build and items are IMPORTANT!

Keep in mind the important rerolls I mentioned at the start of this guide. Also, before you proceed, here’s a preview / reminder/ of items you need to look for.

Core items preview - look out for these!
Slot Name Notes
1h Mighty Weapon Ambo’s Pride
Ultra CORE item. Godlike power.
Mighty Belt Lamentation
Big boost to Rend.
1h Mighty Weapon Bulkathos Solemn Vow
Great for speedier builds
1h Mighty Weapon Bulkathos Warrior Blood
Great for speedier builds
— lots of possible accessory
setups after this —
Ring Ring of Royal Grandeur
allowing you to wear Cpt. Crimson
Ring Band of Might
Mega toughness
Ring Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
For Wrath of the Berserker builds
Rings Focus + Restraint
for the DPS freaks.

REND is the real worker here.
Whirlwind legendaries like Skull Grasp are purely filler.

As implied, these are the items that are core, or important, to your build. I talk more about how to obtain these later on – remember to keep these in mind always.

At the very bottom of this guide, you can preview what a good base template build is for items / skills / passives to get an idea what you’re going for.

Powering Up: Legendary Gems

Your next step after getting your 6pc is Legendary Gems. Why? LGems are a huge power spike relying on very little RNG. Simply spam Neph -> GR until you get the three gems you need and power them up to 25.

Wastes Main useful gemsOther useful gems

Taeguk is hands down your best gem. Pump as many points into it once you have L25 of your other gems.

Bane of the Powerful is a quick and easy gem that caps out at L25. Amazing given how little points you need to put into it.

Moratorium is a decent early game defensive gem. Use Esoteric Alteration if you want a more longterm investment (but don’t worry as you’ll be needing augments anyway). You don’t need any more than an L25 Moratorium anyway!

Bane of the Stricken – is the go to LATE GAME DPS Gem of choice. Its main use is shortening your Rift Guardian time (and helping out vs yellow elites).

Bane of the Trapped – is a better DPS gem than Powerful, if you want more straight up DPS.

Gogok of Swiftness is decent for Wrath of the Berserker builds.

Esoteric Alteration – is probably the best defensive gem in the game, and is worth having a strong one around.

Boon of the Hoarder – is used in many speedfarming builds alongside Avarice Band.

Again, Legendary Gems are a massive priority given their NON-RNG powerspike. Just having three useful gems at 25 will allow you farm a few torment levels higher.

Powering Up: Important Items & how to get them

Of course, any build will need a couple (or more than a couple) items to round out. Here, I list down what items you’re looking for, and how best to get them using various currencies and means.

Blood ShardsDeaths BreathRings and AmuletsThe Classics

Here’s advice on how to spend your blood shards with Kadala, roughly in order of importance.

Belts – Lamentation: Well, this right here is essentially half of your ultra core items. There aren’t many other fillers you want with belts, but you still want to get this ASAP.

Bracers – Nemesis Bracers: You can equip this on your follower! It’s a good speed boost. Also, you get Morticks Brace.

There’s really nothing else you want from shards. There are a few fillers here for transitioning builds like Mantle of Channeling.

Here’s advice on how to get your weapons from Deaths Breath rare item upgrades, roughly in order of importance.

1H Mighty Weapons for Ambo’s Pride. The godliest of the god boosts for your build. It does so much DAMAGE! Also, you get both the Bulkathos set mighty weapons from this pile. So its mega value.

After this try for Rings. There’s a ton of great rings to mix and match for your needs. Band of Might is the jackpot. Obsidian, Focus, Restraint, and CoE are all great too. Unity is alright for another defensive ring.

Rings and Amulets are tough to get from either BS or DB’s (due to the large amount of possible outcomes), but if you’re done getting your core items from them – and you haven’t got your core accessories, it’s a viable way to spend them.

There are so many ways to setup wastes, but these three rings will give you the most options.

  • RoRG from ACT I Bounties – allows you to use Captain Crimsons belt and Legs which gives a ton of useful stats.
  • Band of Might for MASSIVE DEFENSE. Try w/ Death’s Breath.
  • Obsidiian Ring of the Zodiac. Ultra CDR. Try w/ DB’s.

RoRG + Band of Might + Zodiac is a great place to start.

Typically you’ll just find these as you grind, as they can be difficult to obtain with currency…

This is just a list of your “all-around” items that may or may not be mentioned previously. While I do not take set-specifics in this tab, it serves as a seasonal reminder (and helpful general list for newbies) on what’s “generally good”.

Reapers Wraps: A Crafted legendary whose plans drop from any Torment Malthael (and is oft mentioned in our Fresh 70 guides), any NON-RNG boost to power (in this case, resource generation) is welcome. MOST builds can benefit from an early reapers.

Nemesis Bracers: An absolute monster for increasing rift clear speed (and a little extra deaths breaths!), newer players might not value this as highly – try it out and you’ll be surprised.

Unity: Used alongside another Unity on your follower (Plus their unique “Cannot Die” relic) essentially halving all damage you take for one ring slot, that’s usable for any character. Not bad.

Obisidian Ring of the Zodiac: Core on many builds, but usable for any build that spends resource. It’s a unique source of “in-combat” CDR that would give you 100% uptime on skills you couldn’t otherwise achieve. It’s pretty crazy.

Focus+Restraint: If you can trigger both halves of the set bonus, and don’t mind losing defenses from rings – this is will “more than double” your DPS.

Travellers Pledge + Compass Rose: Another accessory set, this one is more suited for “elite killer” builds that like to travel in between packs, and face-tanking builds that tend to stay still while DPSing. It’s not very universal, but it can reasonably benefit any character.

Convention of Elements: Literally any character can use this ring. It’s a titanic boost in DPS (especially for builds that have tons of short-duration buffs… LINE THEM UP!).

Ring of Royal Grandeur: -1 set item requirements to help you fit random core or filler legendaries to help your build out. While absolutely necessary on some builds, most builds can benefit from this using “generic” legendaries for a temporary power boost (IE Aquilla Cuirass).

Avarice Band + Boon of the Hoarder (+Goldwrap) the gold farming speedy holy trinity. While you don’t really need all three all the time, this combo allows you to speed through and survive ANY difficulty (careful, this doesn’t improve DPS!).

You also need specific items for your follower build, which again, has a huge impact on your farming speed.

Wastes 6 Full Build Template Preview

S23 Fresh L70 Barb Wastes 6pc Build Template
Head Wastes Skill Rune
Shoulder Wastes Rend Bloodbath
Chest Wastes Whirlwind
Blood Funnel / Wind Shear
Arms Wastes Ground Stomp
Wrenching Smash
Legs Cpt. Crimson Wrath of the Berserker
Insanity (All active)
Boots Wastes Battle Rage
Ferocity / Swords
Belt Cpt. Crimson Warcry
Veterans Warning / Impunity
Bracer Mortick’s Brace Passives
Amulet Any Rampage
Ring Band of Might Bloodthirst (Open)
Ring Zodiac Relentless
Weapon
BulKathos Solemn Blood
Boon of Bul’Kathos
Offhand
BulKathos Warrior Blood
Kanai’s Cube Legendary Gems
Ambo’s Pride Taeguk
Lamentation Bane of the Trapped
Ring of Royal Grandeus Gogok of Swiftness / Esoteric

The above is the baseline template for a fully functional 6pc Wastes. It’s not heavily optimized for pushing GR, but more of a speedy farming slant. It’s a great place to be in, as you adjust the build to your needs!

Bridging to the End-game

(( Some links aren’t updated yet to S23 ))
(( But there’s still a lot of useful into there ))

So you skipped a whole chunk of the powering up phase with the free set. Now what? Like I always say, “Speedfarming first before pushing GR’s”. So, convert what you have NOW to be as speedfarmy as possible, first.

It’s likely you’ll transition into a PURE speedfarming build. If so, check out:
Barbarian Best Speedfarming Builds

Other Barbarian Guides:

Check out our D3 Guide Directory for other resources.

That’s it for our seasonal Fresh 70 Barbarian guide! Enjoy your Wastes free set this season, and I hope we helped you out!

Support TeamBRG! Check out our Patreon!

15 COMMENTS

  1. I am new to Diablo 3. I have been playing Wow since it started, some 16 or 17 years ago. I decided I had played it long enough. At 76 years old, I am kind of “Long in the Tooth” for that game. I opened up Diablo 3 and lo and behold, I already have one of each class of characters, although one, a Barbarian, was named Logan which one of my Grandsons names. Getting the “Savages” set is why I am leaving this message. Apparently, getting to 70 is not the only requirement for this as Haedrig doesn’t tell me anything about it. Is this a Seasonal thing. If so, apparently the current Season is supposed to end on March 28, 2021. So, I guess I will have to wait till next Season to get it. Is there some sort of overall guide for Diablo 3 that I could use? Thanks in Advance(TIA in my day).

    • It’s highly likely that your current barbarian isn’t a seasonal character! Every season, you get to “start anew” with a seasonal character, which gets turned into a non-seasonal / normal one once the season is over. I’m almost certain that your barbarian is a non-seasonal character if you cannot seem to access the seasonal journey (Shift+J in-game). Or it might have been claimed already for this season on that account?

    • It really depends, either of those setups can be legit – do what’s most practical for you in the early game. Later on, I’d imagine Ambo’s on cube is the more “flexible” choice. Although if you want to use weapons master you’d have to stick w ambos.

  2. the season 13 barbarian build is overpowered.I suggest pairing MOTE with a good rolled Fury of the Vanquished Peak + seismic slam % on items you can get it.Fun times and makes Seismic slam fun to play with plus all the earthquakes.

  3. I found a different 4-piece skill setup, personal preference of course:
    LMB – Cleave – Reaping Swing
    RMB – Whirlwind – Wind Shear
    A – Furious Charge – Stamina
    S – Rend – Bloodbath
    D – Battle Rage – Ferocity
    F – War Cry – Invigorate
    P1 – Weapons Master
    P2 – Unforgiving
    P3 – Inspiring Presence
    P4 – Rampage

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