Back in Season 1, Furious Charge was at its absolute prime using The Legacy of RaekorSet. The playstyle was completely different back then, mainly due to the original Dreadnought rune:
All enemies hit are pulled to your destination.
This effect allowed Furious Charge to act like a vacuum cleaner, dragging monsters along with it and pixelpulling them in the process. This playstyle was deemed too powerful and Dreadnought got changed to its current iteration with Patch 2.1.2 during Season 1.
Later on The Legacy of Raekor got stripped of its original essence, causing the Charge Barbarian to only be playable using the IK set in conjunction with Raekor, since the Raekor (6) Bonus was reworked to allow Fury-spending attacks to deal tremendous amounts of damage by consuming Furious Charge stacks.
The Legacy of Raekor set was reworked again in Season 26 to be centered around Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear while retaining a similar playstyle, with Boulder Toss being the skill rune of choice for this set to shine.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Boulder Toss as well as all the procs from The Legacy of Raekor (6) Bonus can proc it. The build and gameplay itself are easy to learn while still being very active, however when it comes to optimizing the setup especially in solo push, there are a lot of details to consider (see Mechanics). Moreover The Legacy of Raekor is one of the only sets in the game with no damage reduction, so it is a pretty squishy build in general. Let's get into it!
Very Mobile ✔ Fast Paced Playstyle ✔ Semi-Ranged Playstyle ✔ Easy to Get Starter Gear ✔
❌ Squishy ❌ Slightly Clunky ❌ “Wall Pulling” Playstyle ❌ Band of Might Dependency
Core Setup
Items
The Legacy of Raekorset provides massive damage and the ability to permanently Furious Charge a single target like the Rift Guardian to gain plenty of stacks. Furthermore having all runes of Furious Charge lets us reset our cooldown with Merciless Assault and instantly gain full Fury in large pulls with Stamina.
Our second highest damage multiplier is the The Three Hundredth Spear. It grants us a 200% damage multiplier on top of a 200% separate Attack Speed multiplier for Weapon Throw.
Arreat's Law grants us another 200% separate damage multiplier on top of increasing our Maximum Fury pool, which buffs Ancient Spear Boulder Toss damage even more.
Skular's Salvation is yet another damage multiplier for Ancient Spear Boulder Toss, our main damage skill, helping on Rift Guardians.
Band of Might is used for its tremendous 80% damage reduction and is procced by Furious Charge.
Season 33 Shades of the Nephalem
For the duration of Season 33, you gain one extra slot in Kanai’s Cube that allows to choose any Legendary Powers for a total of 4 slots. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, now you can add a second of one of these categories! Some builds enjoy major damage buffs while others are able to run completely different setups, for example through otherwise impossible combinations of weapon effects.
In addition, whenever you press a shrine or pylon, you spawn a Shadow Nephalem of your class to assist you for 1 minute. These use various abilities and provide helpful extra damage in the early game and for lower tier Greater Rifts. Learn more in our Season 22 overview.
In this build, most setups gain a free Convention of Elements to produce huge damage bursts during your Elemental cycle. If you already play without Band of Might (at high pragon), you can go for anything, Squirt's Necklace for instance.
Global Stat Priorities
You want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Critical Hit Chance and Damage, Area Damage as well as Physical Damage and Ancient Spear Damage. Cooldown Reduction is however your priority as you need it on almost every piece of gear since maintaining Wrath of the Berserker as much as possible is essential for both damage output and mitigation as well as Crowd Control Immunity.
For toughness, we prioritize All Resistance since we are a Strength class which stacks Armor by default. A decent HP pool is recommended especially in Greater Rift Solo Push since Relentless and The Legacy of Raekor(4) Bonus synergize well together.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2. Gather the full The Legacy of Raekor 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.
Spears to get The Three Hundredth Spear and Arreat's Law
Two-Handed Maces to get The Furnace
Two-Handed Axes to get Messerschmidt's Reaver
Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-geom
Rings to get Convention of Elements and The Compass Rose
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:
Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Bounty Turn In: Recipe for Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Cain's Destiny (for your follower)
6. There is one final required piece to piece to acquire, The Traveler's Pledge for push or Squirt's Necklace for speed runs. With amulets being so expensive to gamble and craft, we'll have to search for it to drop in Nephalem and Greater Rifts. They both can drop on any class so try to group up with friends when possible to share your loot!
7. Use Primordial Ashes 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:
The Compass Rose
Band of Might
The Traveler's Pledge
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
The Three Hundredth Spear The Furnace (Cubed) Messerschmidt's Reaver (Cubed)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Area Damage 5. Damage % 7. Strength
Off-Hand
Arreat's Law Stormshield (Tanky Setup) In-Geom (Cubed)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Area Damage 5. Damage % 7. Strength
Helm
Raekor's Will
1. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 2. Ancient Spear Damage 3. Critical Hit Chance 4. Strength 5. All Resistance 6. Vitality
1. Strength 2. All Resistance 4. Life % 5. Vitality
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is equipped since it grants us a nice 1.6 global separate multiplier and its rank 25 effect slows all enemies within 15 yards.
Bane of the Stricken helps us kill the Rift Guardian. As long as you don't need more than 2 minutes to kill it, equip Bane of the Powerful instead.
Zei's Stone of Vengeance is a good damage choice which contrary to its description, grants its first stage benefit at 0 yards and not 10, synergizing well with Ancient Spear Boulder Toss.
Esoteric Alteration is a great choice for toughness to replace Zei's Stone of Vengeance, especially early on since The Legacy of Raekor set do not provide any damage reduction.
For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always a default include specifically due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band.
For Speed Greater Rifts, Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard is a great choice providing us with a shield to protect Squirt's Necklace damage multiplier while also granting us insane recovery.
Skills
Ancient Spear Boulder Toss is our main damage dealer. This skill expands all Fury to add 20% Weapon Damage for every point of Fury spent above the base cost. We want to use it only when we reach Maximum Fury for maximum damage.
Weapon Throw is only used because of Arreat's Law. The up to +200 Maximum Fury cap allows you to buff Boulder Toss damage even further.
Furious Charge has all runes from The Legacy of Raekor(4) Bonus. We reset our cooldown with Merciless Assault and instantly gain full Fury in large pulls with Stamina. We also need this skill to gain stacks for our The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus and to proc Band of Might.
Wrath of the Berserker Insanity is a staple in almost any Barbarian build for its 50% separate damage multiplier on top of other damage stat boosts and Crowd Control Immunity.
Battle Rage Bloodshed is a powerful damage choice since we are a melee class.
The last skill slot is optional. The easiest choice is to use War Cry Veteran's Warning for toughness or Threatening Shout Falter for a damage debuff on monsters. You can also use Ignore Pain Ignorance is Bliss to have a Crowd Control immunity option alongside a 50% damage reduction.
Passives
No Escape is a good damage passive for a ranged playstyle, which complements well with Zei's Stone of Vengeance.
Boon of Bul-Kathos is important to get the best uptime possible on Wrath of the Berserker.
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).
Nerves of Steel as a cheat death to make sure you never die!
Relentless for 50% damage reduction while under 35% HP. This passive is an insane toughness buff at higher Paragon level due to higher HP pool and damage reduction and synergizes with The Legacy of Raekor(4) Bonus.
At lower Paragon level, Rampage or another passive should be swapped for Sword and Board with a Stormshield.
Berserker Rage can be an option for a bit of additive damage since you are always full Fury when you cast Boulder Toss.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
1. All Resistance
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Fury
2. Critical Hit Chance
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Strength
3. Critical Hit Damage
3. Armor
3. Life per Hit
4. Vitality1
4. Attack Speed
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Aim for a decent HP pool (~1,000,000 Life in Solo Push) as you get benefits for staying at low Life due to Relentless, Captain Crimson's Trimmings and The Legacy of Raekor(4) Bonus.
Altar of Rites
The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Node 7: Take Vigor to help your build sustain its resources.
Nodes 8-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Follower
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:
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.
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.
Guardian's Jeopardy(3) 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.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
Speed GR Enchantress
For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death. Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
For speed Greater Rifts we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is speed content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Cooldown Reduction from Prophetic Harmony, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Cheat Death. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence> Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Mempo of Twilight and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
Always keep Battle Rage Bloodshed up for the Critical Hit Chance and additional damage wave, along with War Cry and Ignore Pain if you use these skills. Use Furious Charge to group up monsters and build up stacks for The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus while keeping Band of Might up.
Find a good spot with Elites, plenty of trash monsters and keep building up stacks.
Pull them close to a wall or layout element and face the monsters because this forces The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus procs to hit most monsters since they collide with the layout.
With Wrath of the Berserker, use Weapon Throw 3 or 4 times then Boulder Toss.
Furious charge monsters once after every Boulder Toss to refill your base Fury pool before unlocking the additional Fury pool with Weapon Throw.
Repeat until Wrath of the Berserker expires.
Pull more monsters while waiting for Wrath of the Berserker cooldown.
Hardcore
Like most Barbarian builds make sure to always stay with Band of Might and Nerves of Steel instead of Ruthless to not die! Feel free to add more Paragon Points from Strength into Vitality. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
Echoing Nightmare
Concept In T16 farming, we take Squirt's Necklace for double damage. We add In-Geom to the setup to further reduce our cooldowns and permanently Furious Charge, even without enemies around. We use Rechel's Ring of Larceny and get Fear on Hit on our Helmet for the additional Movement Speed.
Gameplay In this setup you have permanent uptime on Wrath of the Berserker by focusing on killing Elite packs. All of this guarantees that we easily generate Fury to spam Harpoon all around! Charge from Elite pack to Elite pack and burst them down with Ancient Spear Harpoon.
Setups For even more Movement Speed, replace War Cry with Ignore Pain Bravado. Feel free to swap In-Geom to Echoing Fury for additional Movement and Attack Speed.
Concept In this speed setup we take Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard for a shield in combination with Squirt's Necklace for double damage, some additional toughness & insane healing. We do not need Bane of the Stricken anymore as the single target damage is already very high on lower Greater Rift Tiers. On top of that we add Messerschmidt's Reaver to further reduce our cooldowns.
Gameplay In this setup you have near permanent uptime on Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker by killing monsters. Charge from Elite pack to Elite pack and burst them down with Ancient Spear Boulder Toss. Call of the Ancients in conjunction with Fury of the Ancients refills your Fury pool quickly without having to charge much.
Setups There isn't much to switch around here as the set slots are already fixed. If you feel squishy, replace Zei's Stone of Vengeance with Esoteric Alteration. For lower Greater Rift Speeds, you can use Jagged Edge which pierces for better AoE coverage.
Select Build Version
Standard Setup
Concept This build is relatively squishy but has very high mobility and field control over the monsters.
Gameplay Keep your main focus on small, high-progression trash monsters like Vile Swarms or Dark Hellions while you damage Elites in the process. Ideally play an open map where you can finish off the already damaged Elite Packs with a Conduit Pylon.
In good pulls, position monsters against a wall so The Legacy of Raekor (6) Bonus procs land on them more often. On Rift Guardian fights, spam Weapon Throw to stack Bane of the Stricken, get the 200 Maximum Fury bonus and only spam Boulder Toss when Wrath of the Berserker is up.
Setups If you feel too squishy, then you can swap Zei's Stone of Vengeance with Esoteric Alteration or take a look at the Stormshield setup in the next tab!
Concept We swap out Arreat's Law to gain Stormshield and a skill slot in the process, which makes us a lot tankier. We also add in Sword and Board.
Gameplay Keep your main focus on small, high-progression trash monsters like Vile Swarms or Dark Hellions while you damage Elites in the process. Ideally play an open map where you can finish off the already damaged Elite Packs with a Conduit Pylon.
In good pulls try to move as little as possible to keep the Endless Walk damage multiplier up. Position monsters against a wall so The Legacy of Raekor (6) Bonus procs land on them more often. On Rift Guardian fights, spam Weapon Throw to stack Bane of the Stricken, get the 200 Maximum Fury bonus and only spam Boulder Toss when Wrath of the Berserker is up.
Setups If you want to be safer, replace Zei's Stone of Vengeance with Esoteric Alteration and/or swap Rampage with Nerves of Steel.
Reroll Area Damage to Average Damage as we do not need to make huge pulls.
Gameplay
Click Speed Pylon instantly to boost your mobility and dodge Green Meteors.
Around Wave 90, click Channeling Pylon and Power Pylon.
After Wave 100, use Conduit Pylon.
At Wave 122, stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.
Always keep Battle Rage Bloodshed up for the Critical Hit Chance and additional damage wave, along with War Cry and Ignore Pain if you use these skills. Use Furious Charge to group up monsters and build up stacks for The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus while keeping Band of Might up. Pull monsters close to a wall or layout element and face the monsters because this will force The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus procs to hit most monsters since they will collide with the layout.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Ancient Spear Boulder Toss
Ancient Spear Boulder Toss throws a big boulder at enemies, which deals 500% Weapon Damage.
Ancient Spear Boulder Toss spend your entire Fury pool. Every point of Fury spent above the base cost of the skill (after Resource Cost Reduction calculation) adds 20% Weapon Damage to the total damage dealt.
This means with ~33% RCR in a normal setup, Boulder Toss has a cost of ~17 Fury and you have a total Fury pool of 150 :
This grants a 532% damage multiplier, multiplying Boulder Toss damage by 6.32!
Things become even more interesting when adding Arreat's Law and Weapon Throw into the mix. You can get +200 Fury above your Maximum Fury pool, meaning you can reach a total of 350 Fury.
This means a 1,332% damage multiplier, multiplying Boulder Toss damage by 14.32!
If we compare these results, we can see that Arreat's Law Fury bonus is a ~126% damage multiplier (x2.26 damage).
The Legacy of Raekor(4) Bonus
The Legacy of Raekor(4) Bonus grants you all runes of Furious Charge and a 1,000% damage multiplier for Furious Charge, which is irrelevant for this build since Boulder Toss is our main damage dealer.
The Legacy of Raekor(4) Bonus increases the damage of Ancient Spear by 2% for every 1% Life you are missing, meaning you can get up to a 198% damage multiplier at 1% Life remaining!
The (4) Bonus has an incredible synergy with Relentless and Captain Crimson's Trimmings:
Relentless gives you 50% damage reduction and Resource Cost Reduction while below 35% HP.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings grants you damage reduction based on Resource Cost Reduction.
As a result, this combo provides you with a total of 75% damage reduction while below 35% HP.
This means you can expect an additional ~150% damage multiplier for Boulder Toss if you're sitting around 25-35% HP at all times.
To make this synergy work well, get a good HP pool (around 1 million Life) in order to prevent one shots while being at low life.
The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus
The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus generates 1 stack per enemy hit and works with Weapon Throw as well since Season 26 to fight Wall Charging shenanigans. Note that you keep the offensive buff from the Endless Walk set by Wall Charging as you stay stationary and not move at all.
The Legacy of Raekor(6) Bonus throws 10 additional Boulder Tosses in a 90° cone in front of the initial Boulder Toss impact that can proc Area Damage. They travel ~20 yards away before hitting the ground. This means the most optimal way to maximize damage is to position monsters against a wall so that these procs collide with the layout and are more likely to hit them.
Battle Rage Bloodshed
A great offensive skill that has been reworked a lot in the past due to multiple bugs like double dipping some damage multipliers such as Elite damage and Physical Elemental damage.
Releases a 20 yard wave around your character every second.
Because Boulder Toss playstyle can be ranged, positioning is important to maximize your damage output. No Escape procs on targets more than 15 yards away while Bloodshed wave has a 20 yard radius. As a result you have to stay between this range to optimize damage.
Does not proc Area Damage and diminishes its effectiveness.
The damage is calculated from a sum of the critical hits performed during the last second.
The damage wave itself is not further amplified by any damage bonus, including Physical Elemental damage, as its damage calculation is based off of your hits, which are already buffed.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full The Legacy of Raekor set.
Stack Cooldown Reduction to get a high Wrath of the Berserker uptime.
Furious Charge mobility and field control is very enjoyable to play around!
This is a squishy build. Use the safer Stormshield setup to become tanky.
One of the few Barbarian builds that can be ranged reminding us of the Diablo II Javazon!
Cheers!
Credits
Shoutouts to Rage for feedbacks! Written by Chewingnom. Reviewed by Rob & Raxxanterax.