Barbarian Class Overview

• Ambo's Pride has a proc coefficient of 1 and applies a Rend on each Whirlwind tick.
• Rend applied by Ambo’s Pride does not proc Area Damage, which is why the pushing builds have to use the skill manually as often as possible in high monster density.
• Applies the equipped rune from the skill bar.
• Alternates between Main-Hand and Off-Hand, just like Whirlwind.
• Can't exceed the base Lamentation cap of two stacks.

• Bastion's Revered allows you to get 10 Frenzy stacks, doubling the (4) and (6) Bonuses of Horde of the Ninety Savages for 60% damage reduction and 10,000% increased damage.
• Bastion's Revered chains damage instances and procs Area Damage and Bloodshed. Furthermore, every chain damage instance can critically hit.

• Gives Avalanche and Earthquake a 800% (9.0) separate damage 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.

• The 6.0 damage multiplier of this item only applies to a maximum of 10 targets.
• For this reason you cannot get as much benefit from big monster pulls in comparison to AoE heavy builds like the Whirlwind Barb. Thus you must not focus on stacking Area Damage on your gear too much. This also means you will not be spending minutes trying to pull half the Greater Rift floor into one spot with Ancient Spear Rage Flip.
• On some item pieces like Shoulders it is still worth going for, as this slot in particular lacks any decent alternative. On other items, like Rings or Echoing Fury, there are just better options with Cooldown Reduction or Physical Damage.
• For a full in-depth Area Damage mechanics guide check out this post.

• The damage formula for Standoff's damage increase is:
    

Base Example:
Furious Charge Damage * ( 1 + Movement Speed% * 5)

Solo Example:
25% Paragon, 40% Sprint, 20% WotB, 25% Wreath of Lightning = 110%
1 + 110 % * 5 = 6.50 damage multiplier

Group Example:
25% Paragon, 40% Sprint, 20% WotB, 25% Wreath of Lightning, 40% zBarb, 20% zBarb, 30% zMonk = 200%
1 + 200 % * 5 = 11.00 damage multiplier

• As you can see here, the supports in a group can double your damage gain from Standoff on top of what you are already getting from the normal additive damage buffs. When we divide 11.00 / 6.50 we get a total of 1.69 times more damage in a 4-Player group just from the Movement Speed buffs alone!

Mechanics
The 10% increase in Fury generation is a straight multiplier to your sheet generation but additive with Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan and Inspire for example. The +20 Maximum Fury is the same as you can get from items & Paragons and added to your Fury pool.

Best use
Weak passive for Fury generation
This passive is used in Hammer of the Ancients build variations as the Maximum Fury increases Critical Hit Chance from Hammer of the Ancients.

Mechanics
Gain 25% additive damage when you are at 95% Fury or higher. Snapshottable for example by Damage over Time skills like Rend etc.

Best use
Very useful offensive passive
Loads of builds that have no problems staying near Maximum Fury like the Furious Charge build, the Hammer of the Ancients build or the Frenzy build can make good use of this passive. It is even used in variations of the Whirlwind Rend Barbarian.

Mechanics
Gain 996 Life per Fury Spent. This effect is immensely outweighed by skills like Wrath of the Berserker Thrive on Chaos in combination with Mortick's Brace (5,364) or just by the bonus on a Mighty Belt with 1215.
This passive can be enhanced by optimizing your gear with secondary rolls. The Maximum Health Globe Healing Bonus is:

38,625 * 6 = 231,750 (Ring, Ring, Amulet, Shoulders, Chest and Boots)

without a Shield. At 1% that yields you an additional 2,317 + the base 996 for a total of 3,313 Life per Fury Spent.

Best use
Niche recovery passive
Only useful if combined with the right gear rolls and even then barely used as the Barbarian is pretty tanky on its own with its base 50% damage reduction.

Mechanics
Reduces the base cooldown of Wrath of the Berserker, Call of the Ancients by 30 and Earthquake's by 15 seconds. This reduction is applied to the base skill, before the game takes any Cooldown Reduction into account.

Best use
Nice passive often used to optimize Wrath of the Berserker uptime
Used by pretty much all builds that use Wrath of the Berserker as a buff.

Mechanics
An easy 20% additive damage increase as long as there are 3 or more enemies with a 12 yards range around the player. This effect can be snapshotted by Damage over Time skills like Rend etc.

Best use
Widely used
Amazing for big and small trash pulls. It even works for single blue Elites with no trash around. Very limited use on Rift Guardians as most of them don't spawn minions to have 3 monsters around you to get full benefit.

Mechanics
You gain 30 Fury in an instant on activation of Avalanche and Earthquake. Also works with items like Blade of the Tribes and Dread Iron when using War Cry, Threatening Shout or Ground Stomp.

Best use
Super niche use
Signature passive for the Might of the Earth Earthquake build.

Mechanics
Straight up doubles your shout duration, works for War Cry and Battle Rage but not for Threatening Shout debuffs. This passive also increases Life Regeneration for the entire party by 3% of their Maximum Life.

Best use
The #1 support passive
Used by almost every zBarb version there is, but barely used on any damage builds as there are better defensive alternatives.

Mechanics
This passive reduces control-impairing effects by 50%, just like the secondary roll that can be found on items like Rings or Helms (secondary stat). It is multiplicative to these effects so you can never reach 100%. Additionally whenever a control-impairing effect is cast on you there is an around 25% chance to recover 20% of your Maximum Life. If the player is already immune to control-impairing effects from Ignore Pain or Wrath of the Berserker however, the chance to recover Life can not proc.

Best use
Never - stronger alternatives available
Almost never used due to Ignore Pain and Wrath of the Berserker granting you full control-impairing effect immunity already and there are better life recovery options for Barbarians like Life per Fury Spent.

Mechanics
IfIf you take fatal damage instead of dying this passive reduces your life pool to 15% of your Maximum Life. Instead of making you immune to damage like the cheat death passives of other classes, this passive reduced all damage taken by 95% for 3 seconds. That means you can still die in these 3 seconds! However it is unlikely especially when combined with Relentless.

Best use
The cheat death passive for Barbs
Used in most builds, especially at lower Paragon levels.

Mechanics
Increases the damage of Weapon Throw, Seismic Slam, Ancient Spear and Avalanche by 30% multiplicatively to all enemies that are 15 or more yards away.

Best use
Strong offensive passive that is used in the unique Might of the Earth Seismic Slam ranged Barbarian build.

Mechanics
2% Life regeneration (based on your Maximum Life) and 4% Movement Speed increase when picking up a Health Globes. Health Globes picked up by party members count as well. The Movement Speed is additive and can exceed the 25% sheet limit.

Best use
Another passive usually used by the zBarb in Speed META runs like Rat Runs to move and scout faster.

Mechanics
1% increase Strength for8 seconds after killing an enemy, up to 25 stacks. That means 25% multiplicative damage increase and 25% toughness increase at full stacks as Strength provides you Armor as well. There's only a single timer for all 25 stacks and it refreshes on every kill. The only downside of this passive is that it is hard to impossible to keep on Rift Guardians when solo pushing. This passive can be snapshotted by Damage over Time skills like Rend.

Best use
The strongest Barbarian passive and one of the strongest passives in the entire game, used by almost every damage dealing build there is!

Mechanics
When you drop below 35% Life you gain 50% multiplicative Resource Cost Reduction, 50% multiplicative damage reduction and double your Life per Fury Spent.

Best use
One of the best toughness passives in the game. Great combination with Nerves of Steel as mentioned above and with Captain Crimson's Trimmings for even more damage reduction by the reduced resource costs. Mostly used in the zBarb build but also has implications in some solo push builds.

Mechanics
You deal 40% more multiplicative damage to all enemies below 30% health. This bonus is very strong in solo gameplay as you usually gain the full benefit. In group, however, it is a bit weaker due to The Executioner killing enemies below 10% life and Frailty 15% or 18% life Frailty Early Grave. The total damage buff is visualized here:

Most people treat Ruthless as a 40% damage bonus that's active 30% of the time. However, due to this very damage bonus you will spend less than 30% of the time fighting the last 30% of mob's HP. So the best way to calculate this bonus is by thinking in terms of Time To Kill (TTK). TTK is always inversely proportional to your DPS so if you figure out the new TTK, it's easy to get DPS bonus from there.

Let's say normally your TTK is 100s - and now we add Ruthless:

It's 70s for the first 70% and 30/1.4 = 21.43s for the last 30%. TTK is 91.43s, so the DPS is 100/91.43 = 109.375%, that is 9.4% bonus DPS you get from Ruthless

With Frailty it's similar: TTK is 85s base
with Ruthless it's 70s + 15s/1.4 = 80.71s
DPS gain is 85/80.71 - 1 = 5.3% bonus DPS

The final formula is ((100 - execute_threshold) / (70 + (30 - execute_threshold) / 1.4) - 1) * 100%

Best use
One of the few multiplicative passives the Barbarian has. Very useful in solo as you don't have The Executioner or Frailty curse there that diminishes the effect.

Mechanics
A small Esoteric Alteration passive that also adds Fury generation. With 20% damage reduction from all non-Physical attacks it is not as strong as Esoteric Alteration, but with the added chance to gain 2 Fury on elemental attacks it is used sometimes. The chance to gain Fury is higher on single target attacks but lower on damage over time or AoE attacks.

Best use
Generally there are better toughness passive available. It can be used on a zBarb or even for some DPS builds at very low Paragon levels.

Mechanics
While a Shield is equipped you gain 20% multiplicative Resource Cost Reduction and 30% multiplicative damage reduction.

Best use
Only used on zBarb, a good toughness passive when using a Stormshield, for example in 2-Player Push.

Mechanics
This passive increases your Armor by 25% additively and doubles your Thorns damage.

Best use
Another toughness passive that can be used at very low Paragon level zBarbs. In the past this passive was also utilized in Frenzy Thorns builds.

Mechanics
Another Fury passive that generates 2 Fury per second. This can be enhanced by the Animosity passive and by using Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan or Inspire from the Templar.

Best use
Weak passive
Again a passive that can be used on zBarbs or even some Torment Key farming builds.

Mechanics
OnOne of the most flexible Barbarian passives. Depending on the Weapon type you wear you get an individual bonus:

If you are dual wielding you can only get the bonus from the Weapon type that you hold in your Main-Hand (on the left below your Gloves and Shoulders).

Best use
In general there are better offensive passive available
The Dagger bonus is used as Frenzy RGK in combination with Pig Sticker sometimes, while the Mighty Weapons bonus is used mostly in Torment farming.

Ancient Spear Rage Flip has always been the backbone of the zBarb playstyle. However, this skill is one of the most complicated to understand and manage properly. First of all, its mechanic is unique and fairly unintuitive overall. Secondly, Rage Flip is hard to master in practice as its mechanic offers a wide variety of gameplay applications. Also just like Ground Stomp Wrenching Smash, a good understanding of Crowd Control Resistance and Monster Hitboxes is absolutely necessary.

Note that Rage Flip does not work on Juggernaut Rare Elites, Rift Guardians and huge monsters like Punishers, Mallet Lords, Golgors or Armaddons, as they are immune to Knockbacks. Rage Flip has a maximum range of 60 yards, which represents slightly further than the edges of your screen. Where things become interesting is that targets chained by Rage Flip are thrown behind you at approximately the same range they were in front of you when they got chained. These mechanics put together explain why Rage Flip is so powerful: it allows you to do long range pulls while also allowing you to control the magnitude of the pull.

Rage Flip does not have any specific breakpoint and possesses an innate 1.2 Attack Speed multiplier. This means that at 1 APS, Rage Flip has an animation of 50 frames and at 3 APS it has an animation of 17 frames. Rage Flip does alternate Weapons, which means Attack Speed matters on both Weapons.

Rage Flip does not work if there is an obstacle in the way between you and monsters' hitboxes. Walls from the Waller Affix are blocking Rage Flips, which is one of the reasons you should always use Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid. However, holes and gaps in the layout do not matter if the monster pulled is considered a flying monster like Vile Swarms, Anarchs, Bees or Plague Carriers for instance.

The same way, the landing position needs to be free of monsters and obstacles, otherwise targets will not be thrown behind you, and rather pulled in front of you. While this seems to be a bad thing, we can play around this and use it at our advantage. It is possible to pull monsters in front of you on purpose, or even perform Harpoon-like pulls that are effectively pixelpulling monsters with Rage Flip.

Rage Flip is thrown towards the targeted monster a follows a logical path towards this target. This is why aiming is essential and especially important when pulling monsters on a different Z-axis, such as stairs pulls. Don't forget that if aiming is crucial, pull angle and positioning are equally decisive when it comes to performing properRage Flips for your group.

Now that we explained the core mechanics of Rage Flip, one thing we only scratched with the importance of aiming and positioning is the general playstyle. The zBarb playstyle at higher level of Greater Rift is extremely fast-paced, you want to be able to accurately aim while moving and charging around... while processing the situation of your surroundings at any time given.

When you're pulling hordes of monsters to your group, you want to quickly move forward between each Rage Flip, as it enables you to not waste any time and also avoid some situations where monsters get pulled to you instead of flipped behind because of the surrounding monsters. Instead of quickly moving forward, it is also possible to Furious Charge, which mainly allows you to move further without wasting any time. In practice, you're going to move your cursor back and forth most of the time, while having to aim monsters in the process. If you're a terrible player at FPS games, I'm afraid the Rage Flip zBarb might not be the best fit for you!

Don't forget you want to charge through enemies as the ending animation of Furious Charge procs a Knockback! Cold Rush can be used purposefully to lock some targets and aim them with Rage Flip or in case of Elites, prevent them from using their Affixes, such as Shielding or Waller.

The pull range can be slightly extended by using Furious Charge right after you throw the Rage Flip, or getting Wormholed by the Elite Affix. The pull angle and cast location are locked only when the Rage Flip reaches its maximum range of 60 yards. This also means you can perform slightly curved pulls by quickly moving or charging after throwing a Rage Flip.

Missile Dampening can even allow for crazy pull angles or enabling you to preshot your next actions as it greatly increases the time it takes for the Rage Flip to travel 60 yards. This Elite Affix is all in all not bad to pull as long as the layout is wide enough, but only if you understand all the mechanics we previously mentioned. As an example, throw your Rage Flip towards a Missile Dampening, position yourself with enough monsters (depending on how far the Elite is) or obstacles behind you... and wait for the magic to happen. The Missile Dampening will be pulled right on you if there is enough space for it to land. Another trick to remember about this Affix is that the Missile Dampening bubble only activates if the monster has aggro on a player.
Missile Dampening also allows you to flip the monsters a tremendous distance. Casting the spear, then charging 180 degrees in the opposite direction and then having the monster flung can send it across the entire map. This is useful on some of the best maps like festering, battlefields, sands, and shrouded moors.

Keep in mind that this example is only one of the many gameplay applications you can perform with enough practice if you understand the in-depth mechanics behind Rage Flip. Practice, practice... and practice again!

• 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).

• 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.
• 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.

• 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.

• The Legacy of Raekor is one of the most important tools in the zBarb's arsenal. Understanding and using it properly is a challenge!
• Furious Charge does not have a specific Attack Speed Breakpoint. Furious Charge animation is split between the charge animation that scales using your Movement Speed and the ending animation that has a base duration of 30 frames and scales using your sheet Attack Speed. The charge animation has a minimum duration of 10 frames, even if you Wall Charge.
• Furious Charge alternates Weapons, which means Attack Speed matters on both your Weapons.
• The Legacy of Raekor (2) Bonus grants a Furious Charge charge refund if you only hit one enemy. This is very powerful as it allows for a better mobility control as you can purposefully decide to charge through only one enemy on your way to refresh charges during a Greater Rift.
• The Legacy of Raekor (4) Bonus gives you access to all Furious Charge runes, which enables great synergies for mobility, speed and control.
• Stamina makes it so that Furious Charge generates 15 Fury + 10 Fury per monster hit. This means hitting 6 to 7 monsters is enough to completely refill your Fury, making it easier to manage the heavy use and cost of Ancient Spear Rage Flip.
• Cold Rush triggers a 2.5 second Freeze on every monster hit: this is without a doubt one of the best crowd control in the game in combination with The Legacy of Raekor (4) Bonus as you can spam it on demand, and proc it on as many targets as you want. This is the main reason why zBarb is extremely potent at proccing Krysbin's Sentence or Ancient Parthan Defenders, as well as managing Rift Guardians.
• Merciless Assault + Dreadnought in combination allow for crazy mobility by reducing Furious Charge Cooldown by 2 seconds for each enemy hit (up to 10 seconds) while being able to store and manage up to 3 charges of Furious Charge.
• Environmental breakables objects or layout elements such as doors, crates or rocks are able to proc both The Legacy of Raekor (2) Bonus and Merciless Assault to reset your Furious Charge charges. This means you don't necessarily need to charge through monsters to keep up your charges. Note that breakables also count as targets in regard to Stamina.
• When using The Legacy of Raekor (4) Bonus, applying the Strongarm Bracers damage debuff using Furious Charge is troublesome. Indeed regardless of the rune you choose, you inherit the special behavior of Dreadnought which does not knockback enemies you charge through!
  It is still possible to proc them using the 20 yard radius Front Cone at the end of Furious Charge animation but this is not reliable enough: this explains why speed setups are generally not using The Legacy of Raekor, in order to not worry about Strongarm Bracers application.

• Ground Stomp has a base animation of 30 frames that does not scale with Attack Speed.
• The 24 yard pull effect happens 0.5 seconds before the 4 second stun and reduces its own duration as the pull will trigger 40% Crowd Control Resistance on monsters.

• Ground Stomp Wrenching Smash ignores the collision boxes of most enemies if cast in an area with enough space for the enemies to land, resulting into pixelpulls. Beware though, a good understanding of Crowd Control Resistance and Monster Hitboxes is absolutely necessary!
• A common trick is to create this space yourself by using Rage Flip when there is no good spot around.

• Monsters are pulled towards you, meaning any obstacles such as layout elements, walls from Waller Affix or even immune monsters can block the way to pullable monsters.
• Juggernaut Rare Elites, Rift Guardians and huge monsters such as Golgors or Mallet Lords cannot be pulled.

• This build starts the damage rotation at Maximum Fury, which is generated by Furious Charge.
• During single target fights like on the Rift Guardian we stay at Maximum Fury all the time with The Gavel of Judgment and get up to 174 Fury .
• We get 1% Critical Hit Chance per 5 Fury we currently have, so at full Fury we get 174/ 5 = 35% more Critical Chance. In conjunction with Battle Rage Bloodshed and Wrath of the Berserker, we gain a total of 35 + 3 + 10 = 48% bonus Critical Hit Chance.
• With the 5% players get by default and another 5% we get from the Paragon System, this build reaches 58% Critical Hit Chance without any items. This allows us to drop some Critical Hit Chance on Rings to gain other stats like Cooldown Reduction or Damage Range.

• Has a base duration of 6 seconds, not 5 (the tooltip is straight up incorrect).
• Self-cast damage is only calculated off Mainhand. The Off-hand can be any off-rolled weapon for supporting purposes (Cooldown Reduction, Area Damage etc.). Whirlwind, and therefore Ambo's Pride, oscillates between both weapons.
• Scales with Critical Hit Chance & Critical Hit Damage but can not crit:
  Each Rend tick has (1 + Critical Hit Chance * Critical Hit Damage) as a separate multiplier.
  Only Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage that you see in your detail sheet, will scale it. Any debuff-Critical Hit Chance (Iceblink, Multishot Wind Chill, Corpse Lance Brittle Touch, Bash Onslaught, etc.) will not scale Rend.
• Battle Rage Bloodshed has no effect in regards to Rend damage (except for the base rune crit), because Rend does not crit.
• Rend instance snapshots Critical Hit Chance upon cast.
• Self-casted Rends do proc Area Damage.
• Rend Bloodbath explosions count as a separate Rend instance but are capped to 2 due to Lamentation. This makes Bloodbath by far the best damage rune (effectively doubling the damage output as long as you are constantly killing stuff).
• Rend ticks every 12 Frames (0.2 seconds). Damage is accumulated and displayed every 48 Frames (0.8 seconds).

When the game refers to Shouts, it refers to the skills from the Tactics category: War Cry, Threatening Shout and Battle Rage. The zBarb always use the first two skills of this list as both bring huge benefits to any group setup.

These skills have a fairly low cooldown and generate a decent amount of Fury, which is great regarding Resource management as the zBarb generally makes a pretty big usage of its Fury through Ancient Spear Rage Flip. War Cry also possesses a unique and convenient mechanic that completely stops Fury Degeneration for 5 seconds after using it even if you're out of combat or didn't get hit for 5 seconds.

Inspiring Presence is a staple for every zBarb. It doubles the duration of War Cry from 120 sec to 240, but the main reason to use it is the 3% Life Regeneration effect, which is a different 120 seconds buff applied on players upon using any Shout skill. The duration of the War Cry Hardened Wrath 5 second 60% additional Armor effect upon cast is not doubled by Inspiring Presence. Threatening Shout's 15 second duration is doubled to 30 seconds for every rune but Falter, whose duration stays 6 seconds.

Horde of the Ninety Savages (2) Bonus doubles the effectiveness of Shouts. Effectiveness doesn't include base buff effect duration nor range. As the term effectiveness is rather vague and only refers to specific effects, let's take a closer look at what we get in practice:

• War Cry
  • Base effect of 20% Armor bonus gets buffed to 40%.
  • Hardened Wrath 5 second Armor bonus gets buffed to 120%.
  • Charge! is not affected and still generates 50 Fury.
  • Invigorate's Life % and Life Regeneration are doubled.
  • Impunity grants 40% All Resistance.
  • Veteran's Warning Dodge Chance is buffed to an impressive 60%.
• Threatening Shout
  • Base effect of 20% Reduced Enemy Damage is buffed to 40%.
  • Demoralize Taunt and Terrify Fear duration both get doubled.
  • Intimidate 60% Movement Speed Slow becomes a tremendous 90% Slow.
  • Grim Harvest Health Globe spawn chance goes from 15% to 30%.
  • Falter 25% additive damage buff becomes a 50% buff.

Threatening Shout Falter is usually the rune of choice for most group setups, due to its amazing 50% additive damage debuff (which replaces the base damage reduction debuff). When playing with a Witch Doctor, Grim Harvest becomes a strong option in order to fuel Gruesome Feast's 50% Intelligence bonus. Nonetheless, bear in mind that Grim Harvest is a hit or miss effect: only the first application of the debuff on monsters has a chance to spawn a Health Globe!

Chilanik's Chain grants a 40% Movement Speed buff for 10 seconds to you and all allies within 100 yards upon casting War Cry. This item legendary effect does not have any specific interaction with Inspiring Presence or Horde of the Ninety Savages (2) Bonus.