MotE Earthquake “Leapquake” Barbarian Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. Gather the full Might of the Earth set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Might of the Earth set
2. Create a level 1 Barbarian and gamble for Band of Might
3. Girdle of Giants
4. Lut Socks
5. Mortick's Brace and Nemesis Bracers
6. Convention of Elements, Focus and Restraint
   
   

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Two-Handed Mighty Weapons to get Blade of the Tribes
2. Create a level 1 Witch Doctor and upgrade Maces to get Echoing Fury
3. Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-geom
4. Rings to get Convention of Elements, Focus and Restraint
5. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
   
   

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

• Bounty Turn In: Recipe for Cain's Destiny (for your follower)
  
  

6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. It's better to spend your materials improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc. Finally you can spice up your season by doing some Ubers to craft Hellfire Amulet (recipe can be bought from Squirt the Peddler in Act 2).

7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

• Fjord Cutter
• Band of Might
• Bracers of Destruction

• Bane of the Trapped is the most common damage gem, and as we are a melee character, the rank 25 effect will slow all enemies within 15 yards providing us a flat 1.6 damage multiplier.
• Zei's Stone of Vengeance can be used for additional damage. We can run out the monster pull after casting our Earthquake letting the DoT do the job, especially in speed runs.
• Other popular choices are Bane of the Stricken for solo gameplay to kill the Rift Guardian. Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard can be used to gain a shield buff in combination with Squirt's Necklace for double damage output, some additional toughness & insane healing. Esoteric Alteration can be used for a tremendous toughness boost during Solo Push!

• Earthquake as your main DoT based damage skill. We take the Fire rune Molten Fury to buff the damage even further.
• Leap Call of Arreat together with the Might of the Earth (4) Bonus for a crazy Armor buff combined with the ability to proc our Band of Might.
• Seismic Slam is needed on the skill bar to proc the Girdle of Giants secondary effect and to dump all of our Fury for the Might of the Earth (2) Bonus Cooldown Reduction. Furthermore it can be used to proc Focus & Restraint or for recovery reasons in combination with Life per Fury Spent rolled on your items.
• Wrath of the Berserker for an overall stat boost and Crowd Control immunity. Pair this skill with Boon of Bul-kathos to reduce its cooldown.
• The last two skill slots are very situational: Most builds use War Cry for toughness and Threatening Shout Falter for a damage debuff on the monsters as well as additional Earthquake procs from Blade of the Tribes. You can also use Ignore Pain to have a Crowd Control immunity option combined with some nice toughness during Wrath of the Berserker downtime, Battle Rage for a pure damage with the rune Swords to Ploughshares for a crazy recovery boost. Sprint is also an option if you want to add more mobility especially in any kind of speed runs!

• Earthen Might for insane Fury generation. The additional Earthquake's from Blade of the Tribes, Lut Socks and Girdle of Giants proc this Passive as well.
• Rampage is the strongest Barbarian passive there is with its 25% buff to total Strength. It provides a massive boost to both offense and defense (Armor).
• Boon of Bul-kathos for more Wrath of the Berserker uptime.
• Another damage option is Ruthless to finish low hit-point targets quickly
• On top of that we can take Nerves of Steel as a defensive touch for a cheat death with our Hellfire Amulet.

¹ Maximum Fury is used for additional Cooldown Reduction from our Might of the Earth (2) Bonus in combination with Seismic Slam Rumble spending all our Fury.
² Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 500,000 - 800,000 Life is recommended).

Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:

1. The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
2. Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25.000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10.000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
3. Guardian's Jeopardy (2) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

With these in mind, let’s get into our recommendation for this build:
Select Follower

Cast your War Cry and start grouping up monsters by Leaping around getting the toughness buff from Might of the Earth (4) Bonus at the same time. After you have created a decent pull cast your Seismic Slam to proc the Girdle of Giants secondary effect as well as the Focus & Restraint damage buff.

Proceed by casting Threatening Shout Falter and Wrath of the Berserker to further increase your damage output and keep using Leap for additional Earthquakes as well as the Earthquake itself. Keep resetting your Earthquake and Leap cooldowns with Seismic Slam Rumble via Might of the Earth (2) Bonus.

An overall decent build for hardcore when using Band of Might as the Might of the Earth (4) Bonus is a massive toughness increase (375% increased Armor from Leap Iron Impact translates to roughly 70% damage reduction, depending on Paragon, Items and other Skills). Make sure to use Nerves of Steel to avoid random deaths.

Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Every time you land on the ground after your Leap animation, an Earthquake is caused. This Earthquake carries the rune chosen on your skill bar and can proc Area Damage.

• Gives Avalanche and Earthquake a 800% separate damage multiplier which equals a 9.0 multiplier.
• War Cry and Threatening Shout now both cause an Avalanche and Earthquake when cast. This cast also carries the runes chosen on your skill bar and can proc Area Damage.

• Earthquake is a damage over time skill that ticks twice per second (every 30 frames) and has a chance to critically hit with each damage tick individually. Furthermore all Earthquake ticks damage are calculated from your Main-Hand Weapon, thus your Off-Hand damage when Dual Wielding does not matter.

• As Earthquake can critically hit, we can use this great offensive skill. However the rune Bloodshed is not an ideal choice as the damage is diminished by the low proc coefficient of Earthquake of 0.05. Runes like Into the Fray for damage or Swords to Ploughshares for recovery are more valid choices.