Support Barbarian Guide

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this Build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal, so you can review the recommended Items and more easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item in the Item Options to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter Variant.

Act 1

Act 3

Act 5

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Insight, Holy Freeze

Use a Desert Mercenary with Holy Freeze Aura for its powerful Crowd Control. A Mercenary with Might Aura isn’t used, since we don’t rely on his damage or benefit from the Physical Damage increase. Equip him with Insight for the high Mana Regeneration provided by Meditation Aura.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

Solo General

• With your battlecommand, battleorders, and shout you can effectively double or even triple Life, Mana, and Skill power.
• Using leap by targeting right on top of your Barbarian initiates very fast "short hops" which get the full benefit of your leap radius. At high Skill levels this pushes every monster on the visible screen and put them into Hit Recovery.
• Use taunt to manipulate Ranged monsters as well as high danger targets, which moves towards your position until they get into melee range and begin attacking again.
• Use howl to literally scare off everything other than the bosses of Elite packs to better target valuable targets and not waste time clearing through trash mobs.
• The Support Barbarian's Best in Slot gear mimics the War Cry Barb to a degree that does allow for Solo farming with decent efficiency.

Multiplayer General

• In Multiplayer games your primary concerns are buffing and Crowd Control (CC).
• With your battlecommand, battleorders, and shout you can effectively double or even triple your team member's defensives.
• Using leap by targeting right on top of your Barbarian initiates very fast "short hops" which get the full benefit of your leap radius. At high Skill levels this pushes every monster on the visible screen and put them into Hit Recovery.
• After your team finishes mopping up the Elite packs, you can use finditem for an extra chance of finding good loot.
• If you're partied with a lot of Attack Skill users and there is no Necromancer for curses, you can use your battlecry to reduce monster's Physical Damage and Defense to increase your parties' Hit Chance.
• Use taunt to manipulate Ranged monsters as well as high danger targets, which moves towards your position until they get into melee range and begin attacking again.
• Once you kill your targets, make sure to finditem for chances at extra loot.

Immunities

• The Support Barbarian does not have a method for removing Immunities to its Damage types. Ignore monster with Physical Immunity.

Late-Game

• Once you have access to teleport you can begin Telestomping Elite packs, howl to clear minions if things get dicey, but typically just spamming warcry because the Stun effect permanently CC's most monsters.
• Because of your damage type, and DPS you want to focus clearing densely packed areas and ignore act Bosses. Their Physical Damage Reduction and high Life totals typically make them inefficient targets.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate (FCR)

Faster Cast Rate speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 200% FCR Breakpoint. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery increases survivability. Aim for at least the 48% FHR Breakpoint.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary focus is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build can become Hardcore viable with key changes to the Skills, Stat Point allocation, and items. Review the changes below before building this character, as they may differ significantly from the normal build.

Stat Point Changes

• We place 130 points into Dexterity to hit 75% Chance to Block with Stormshield Monarch

Skill Point Changes

• We put 20 points into ironskin for Defense instead of howl.

Item Changes

• We swap out key pieces for more survivability. Stormshield for Physical Damage Reduction and Chance to Block.
• Caster Crafted Amulet for more Life, Resistance, and Dexterity over Faster Cast Rate.