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 25, the Barbarian free set is: Might of the Earth.
For this guide though, the free set doesn’t matter (but we WILL be able to beat the whole Seasonal Journey, don’t worry), as we’re rushing with LoD. Why? We want to get out of the early and early-mid game, freeing up for us to transition STRAIGHT into high-tier speedfarming or tryhard builds. More why? S25 Soul Shards give L100 augments – skipping a huge “mid-game” lull we’re used to. Another reason is, selfishly, I want to have a baseline LoD setup for Fresh 70 classes, and this seems like the best time to do it.
Step 1) Initial Build & Getting Legacy of Dreams
Don’t get stressed out, yes, LoD builds might seem a little daunting but let me tell you that it’s a fun and exciting process. Ultimately you need two things right now: The actual LoD gem, and a basic build to get you going.
Generic Starter build (slightly related to our ‘final build’)
| Barb Basic L70 Starter Build | |
| Skills | Rune |
| Rend | Bloodbath |
| Whirlwind | Wind Shear |
| Frenzy | Sidearm |
| Furious Charge |
Merciless Assault
|
| War Cry |
Veteran’s Warning
|
| Battle Rage | Ferocity |
| Passives | |
| Rampage |
Weapons Master
|
| Unforgiving (Open) |
Relentless (Open)
|
The above build is meant to be in the middle of two things: Easy to edit – that hopefully game-changing legendaries can fit in no matter what. Related to our ‘final build’ – it’s a rough basic version of our “goal”, so it feels more natural as you transition towards it. Have a look down there for the final build preview to see what we’re going for.
Getting Legacy of Dreams ASAP
It’s simple, you need this GEM so get it ASAP.
Get 3 rift keys → Run 3 rifts → Wear three gemstones on your gear.
The first three gems will always be Bane of the Powerful, Legacy of Dreams, and one random one. So thankfully, there’s no RNG there.
Step 2) Easy power-ups. Huge gains for little effort.
You can go all of these things “simultaneously”, basically small tasks here and there that you should keep in mind right now that will greatly increase your power for little to no effort.
What three Legendary gems?
Your next goal should be getting at least L25 on your three most important gems. Just get rift keys and spam GR’s until you get them, and do the absolute minimum level you need to level them up. Get them and level them quickly – do not feel pressured to “maximize” your rift keys by inflating the difficulty.
Legacy of Dreams is mandatory, as mentioned in the basics segment! Level this up as much as you can.
Taeguk is Taeguk… “Use it when ya can!”. It’s an extremely powerful gem that’s nearly mandatory on Channeling builds.
IMO Esoteric Alteration to bolster up defenses is a great option. If you want more power for low investment, go for L25 Powerful.
Can’t ever go wrong with leveling up a Boon of the Hoarder for speedfarming. (Need a refresher? Basic offensive: Powerful, Trapped. Basic Defensive: Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeests Gizzard)
Legendary Items in ALL SLOTS
LoD gets stronger with each legendary item you have equipped – so get to it! You should aim to get this done “passively” by natural item drops, but you can also craft items if you’re desperate.
Spending Blood Shards is “OK”, but only use Death’s Breath to fill up the slots if you’re absolutely desperate. You’ll get an item for each slot in no time (you can even craft them). Save your resources for finding SPECIFIC items that will greatly boost your power. We talk more about this in the next segment, refinement.
Ancients DOUBLE this bonus, and they’re a welcome boost to consider.
Defense Type & Gems
Barbs / Crusaders are STRENGTH classes (they get free Armor from STR). So, in the face of all this free armor, your prime defensive stats are ALL RESISTS > VIT. So try to reroll ALLRES on your gear if you need defense – it’s your best defensive stat by FAR.
So your gemming strategy (body and legs) should be slotting your best Diamonds, as they give ALLRES.
Basic Rerolls
Since legendaries are a little expensive to reroll EARLY ON, try to make the most by REMOVING GARBAGE STATS, and getting anything “remotely usable”.
First of all Barbarian has a special stat, Life Per Wrath Spent, found in mighty belts and mighty weapons. This stat is pretty damn good and ideally you would want one of it rolled somewhere.
Rend% is found in Shoulders and Chest. Ignore Whirlwind%, it does nothing meaningful for us.
The Element% you want is PHYSICAL, found typically in Bracers and Amulet.
Remove useless stats
Life Regeneration– garbage for any build.Attack Speed– it usually an endgame tune-up stat.Excess Resource Cost Reduction– Is a crutch, and only niche builds need it.Excess Cooldown Reduction– Only useful for an endgame “need”.Unused skill%– literally USELESS.All Resists– Useless for us, take Armor and VIT instead.
Take better stats
- STR VIT – can’t go wrong with these. Your core stats!
- ALLRES/ARMOR Life% Great defensive stats.
- Sockets are essentially MANDATORY.
- Life per Hit – Great early game sustainability.
- CRIT Stats (CHC / CHD) – More for endgame, but I’d take this over garbage stats.
- Skill and Elemental% – that you use.
FOLLOWER GEAR!
Do not forget to fully equip your follower for farming. You can start by crafting Sage or Cain’s NOW and worry about the rest later.
Step 3) Refining, Using Resources -> ‘Full Build’
Full Build Preview
So you can easily see what items you’ll need, and you can get an idea of what we’re trying to do here.
| S25 Fresh 70 Barb: early game LoD Whirlwind speedfarming | ||||
| Head | Any | Skill | Rune | |
| Shoulder | Mantle of Channeling | Rend | Bloodbath | |
| Chest | Aquila Cuirass | Whirlwind | Wind Shear | |
| Arms | Archews / Worship / Stone | Ground Stomp | Wrenching Smash | |
| Legs | Hexing Pants / Blackthorne | Battle Rage | Ferocity (Open) | |
| Boots | Ice Climbers | War Cry | Veteran’s Warning | |
| Belt | Lamentation (Core) | Wrath of the Berserker | Insanity / Striding Giant | |
| Bracer | Mortick’s Brace | Passives | ||
| Amulet | Hellfire Amulet | Rampage | ||
| Ring | Band of Might (Core) | Weapons Master | ||
| Ring | Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac | Relentless | ||
| Weapon | Ambo’s Pride (Core) | Boon of Bul-Kathos (Open) | ||
| Offhand | Sun Keeper (Low Prio) | — | ||
| Kanai’s Cube | Legendary Gems | |||
| Messerschmidt’s Reaver (Furnace) | Legacy of Dreams | |||
| Krelm’s Buff Bracers / Goldwrap | Taeguk | |||
| BoM / Zodiac / CoE / Unity | Powerful / Esoteric / Hoarder | |||
Get CORE ITEMS asap. The heart of your build
The absolute core of your build are these:
Ambo’s Pride (Rend on hit with Whirlwind) – use Death’s Breath.
Lamentation (Double Rend stacks) – use Blood Shards.
To a lesser extent:
Band of Might (Giga defense for Barb) – It’s a ring, so, not easy to craft.
Spending Blood Shards and Death’s Breath
All other items will be loosely prioritized here depending on resource. Again, check the build above to get an idea of the full picture.
Here’s advice on how to spend your blood shards with Kadala, roughly in order of importance:
Lamentation – Belt
Mantle of Channeling – Shoulder
Goldwrap – Belt
Mortick’s Brace / Nemesis – Bracer
Aquila Cuirass –
Chest Hexing Pants – Legs
You can look for the other ‘unimportant’ things in the build preview after these (IE Ice Climbers, Gloves etc)
Here’s advice on how to get your weapons from Deaths Breath rare item upgrades (Kanai’s Cube Recipe: 25x Deaths Breath convert a rare into random legendary of same type), roughly in order of importance:
1h Mighty Weapon for Ambo’s Pride – as you can imagine, is the absolute most important item in the build. Rending on WW hit and shortening its DoT time is, in essence, cheating.
2h Axe for Messerschmidt’s Reaver – If you plan on using Wrath of the Berserker alot, this is an early game crutch that can greatly help with that. Used in tandem or in place of Zodiac. You can keep WoTB up without reaver later on, if you’re wondering…
Nothing else is really WORTH spending DB’s for, and would rather spend to try and get jewelry you might not have yet.
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 these currencies – and you haven’t got your core accessories, it’s a viable way to spend them. Typically you’ll just find these as you grind – then use currency if you’re desperate. Anyway, if I had to rank the importance of your rings and ammys…
Band of Might is pseudo-core to the build simply because it shores up so much of our defense with a single item. It’s a huge boost to toughness.
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to start inching towards “100% Wrath of the Berserker uptime”.
Unity is a decent defensive option, but you need the follower immortality relic, and another Unity for the follower!
SKULL GRASP IS TRASH FOR THIS BUILD! We don’t actually do WW damage, it’s REND!
As an aside – Ring of Royal Grandeur and Avarice Band are BOUNTY ONLY rings (respectively ACT I and III), which DO NOT APPEAR FROM any other source. They, like any other bounty item, DO NOT DROP from monsters, gambling, upgrades or any other source outside of their respective BOUNTY CACHE.
Follower Gear odds and ends
More of a reminder than anything, once you start farming you will be running into those little bonuses for your follower farming build. Keep an eye out!
Summary & Outro
Welp, that’s about it. I have to say these Soul Shards are weirdly exciting, and S25 is a little spicier for it. From here, you can easily do the Seasonal Journey if that’s your thing, or transition into literally any other build you like – the it’s exactly what the S25 fresh 70 LoD builds for each class are made for.
GL out there and check out our D3 Guide Directory if you need anything else!
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?
Thanks for the assistance.
It would be helpful if you provided an acronym guide.
Thanks
thats actually a really good idea!
Is Ambos Pride supposed be extracted into cube and farming continued with 2hander?
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.
I love your seasonal builds. Do you have a set paragon section in the build? If not, can you add one?
I will be doing this next season, by popular demand!
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.
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
yea this should work. Rend-Whirlwind-Furious Charge are the keys skills.
Can you update for the IK set?
yup! working on it! hopefully its up before the season starts!
IK fresh 70 is up! might add some more stuff in the next few days but the guide is pretty much it already.
Thanks for the Guide, was very helpful.