D3 S28 Barbarian Fresh Level 70 Guide | 2.7.5

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).

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.

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).

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.

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).

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!

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.

(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.

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.

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.