Frenzy Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Frenzy Barbarian Build Guide! This Basic Skill is a fan favorite that unfortunately had been left in the dust for quite some time due to it being quite underwhelming mechanically, as well as being on the weaker end of attack skills that the Barbarian had access to. Well, in Season 9, this all changes thanks to a myriad of buffs that are specifically targeted toward increasing its utility and damage output! Some of these include:
- Adaptability, a familiar Aspect that has been changed to grant a large damage multiplier that is based on Maximum Fury.
- Paingorger's Gauntlets, which now benefits from Critical Strikes and Overpowers with its echoed damage effect.
- Hooves of the Mountain God, a newly introduced Unique that gives a ton of damage and a small area-of-effect cleave.
Additionally, it has access to some already powerful weapons - Shard of Verathiel and Ramaladni's Magnum Opus - which perfectly synergize with the Fury stacking concept to boost damage to impressive levels. Combine all of this with the respectable base damage increase that Frenzy itself has received, and you've got a fast, hard-hitting Basic Skill that can handle pretty much anything the game has to throw at you. Let's start swingin'!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Barbarian Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
The Season 9 theme is the Sins of the Horadrim. This season allows you to craft unique Horadric Spells using three different components: a Catalyst, an Infusion, and three Arcana. You earn Catalysts and Infusions through the Seasonal Questline, and Arcana can be found while exploring Nightmare Dungeons. You choose a Skill as the trigger for your Horadric Spell. Once in Torment I or higher, Horadric Jewels can be crafted which replace the Gems in your Jewelry, that add additional power to your build.
Endgame Horadric Spell
Catalyst
You use Disintegrate as it has a long duration and is incredibly reliable. As long as you are positioned between the enemy and the Disintegrate, it applies its effects to the target.
Infusion
The Nebulous Extract Infusion is taken for the damage reduction it grants.
Arcana
- Sapping Crux - This Arcana gives us the ability to have permanent uptime on Vulnerable without having to prioritize it elsewhere.
- Fractured Core - Disables the damage resistance (purple) aura that is often seen in The Pit.
- Bloody Charm - Allows us to execute any non-Boss enemy when it reaches a certain health threshold (40% for normal enemies, 20% for everything else).
Optional Arcana
- Gleaming Conduit - Replaces Fractured Core for content where the damage resistance aura is not an issue. This makes Disintegrate a bit larger to help Vulnerable application and make Executions easier.
Best-in-Slot Horadric Jewels
- Luminate Eye - Gives our Ultimate a nice chunk of Cooldown Reduction, which helps us keep it up permanently.
- Scornful Light - With Ugly Bastard Helm equipped, our damage is converted to Fire, which allows us to benefit from this Jewel.
- Idol From Below - Grants us a small boost to our Strength and Maximum Life, and also the Unhindered effect. The Jewel Guardians spawned from this help with progressing in The Pit and give us additional targets on Boss fights - this is useful for Shout uptime with Bold Chieftain's.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Frenzy is our main skill that is available right from the start. Its enhancement, Combat Frenzy, gives us a nice amount of damage reduction and movement speed that stay active throughout this skill's duration.
- Rallying Cry provides us multiple buffs, with the most important ones being and Fortify and Resource Generation. The latter helps us keep up with our Fury costs once Frenzy becomes a spender.
- War Cry grants us the Berserking buff, but its main appeal is the generous multiplicative damage boost it gives while active.
- Challenging Shout gives us huge damage reduction and a boost to our Maximum Life. This is a crucial skill for surviving the more difficult content in the game, such as higher levels of The Pit.
- Ground Stomp is used mainly for its ability to reset our Ultimate cooldown and as a means of activating the Earthquakes Aspect. The Stun it provides is also great defensive utility.
- Wrath of the Berserker is our Ultimate of choice, as it enables permanent Berserking and Unstoppable when combined with strategic use of Ground Stomp and additional Cooldown Reduction. It also functions as an AoE pull, which helps a lot in dealing with the small range of Frenzy.
Skill Rotation
- Always engage fights with War Cry, Rallying Cry and Challenging Shout active to benefit from the powerful buffs they provide.
- Likewise, Wrath of the Berserker should be maintained in such a way that it is up permanently. If you notice that it is about to have downtime, use Ground Stomp on at least one target to prevent it.
- With buffs under control, the playstyle is really just hold down Frenzy and proceed to slice everything to bits. Holding it down allows you to move and auto-target any nearby enemies, then keep moving once they're defeated.
(Season 9 PTR)
Note: This is PTR footage and is intended for demonstration purposes only; it may not reflect the current power level of the build.
Arsenal System
The Arsenal System allows us to use a specific weapon for every attack skill, with each weapon granting different bonuses. We also have what is called the Technique Slot. With this, we can use any weapon of our choosing to always reap the benefit from, regardless of which weapon we have equipped.
For this purpose of this guide, the One-Handed Sword Expertise is our main (and only) weapon choice since we are dual-wielding Ramaladni's Magnum Opus and Shard of Verathiel. Inherently, this expertise gives us Lucky Hit-based Fury recoup and some additional Attack Speed upon killing Crowd Controlled enemies. While not the most useful set of bonus effects, being able to use the previously mentioned Uniques is still a worthwhile trade-off.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build has high Vulnerable uptime thanks to Sapping Crux. Unfortunately, its secondary effect does not apply here - the limitation of the Technique Slot is that it does not allow us to benefit from the second bonus that is normally gained from reaching rank 10 with any weapon expertise.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Barbarian Class Overview.
Paragon & Glyphs
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.
Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.
Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.
Placeholder Glyphs
- Marshal
- This is used early on in progression to help with uptime on our non-Shout cooldowns. It's replaced with Revenge once it outlives its usefulness.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Ambidextrous
- Ire
- Challenger
- Wrath
- Marshal
Level 46
- Challenger
- Ire
- Revenge
- Ambidextrous
- Wrath
Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.
Runes
You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Frenzy Barbarian focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Cir + Ceh - This combination gives us passive and reliable uptime on the Paingorger's Gauntlets echoed damage effect. At the time of testing, this is the only class skill Rune that achieves this effect.
- Ahu + Xan - This Runeword allows us to frequently Overpower (1.5x damage multiplier) when fighting in large density and against Bosses that are within the threshold of its trigger range. This is because Frenzy hits multiple times each time it attacks, and each hit triggers Ahu. Aside from the inherent Overpower bonus, we also get Warpath and Decimator multipliers.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Poc / Lith - Alternative Ritual Runes.
- Zec - Good option that helps with Ultimate cooldown.
- Gar - Can be used early on to help with low Critical Strike Chance.
- Jah - Great choice for some extra zoom when speedfarming.
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.
Hired: Raheir
Raheir's Aegis helps us cap our Resistances, which is quite difficult to do with gear alone. His Key Passive, Inspiration, gives us a pretty sizable damage boost while the effects of Ground Slam and Bastion are active.
Reinforcement: Varyana
She gives us some extra Attack Speed with her Bloodthirst, which does exactly what you might think - it lets us attack faster (duh). She's also a Barbarian, so she gets cool points.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Frenzy Barbarian to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does not indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed, and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.
Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds
- 70%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 250+ Maximum Fury
- 51%+ Attack Speed (Cap 1)
- 100% Attack Speed (Cap 2)
- 3500+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 10,000+ Life
- < 15 Second Ultimate Cooldown
- < 10 Second Ground Stomp Cooldown
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Frenzy Barbarian, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Frenzy Barbarian from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional Aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- During early progression, Armor & Resistances should be prioritized in order to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% to all Resistances and it's recommended to keep both capped at all times; this means having a value of 1,000 for Armor and 70% for each Resistance.
- As masterworking levels and Paragon points are unlocked, character power naturally scales into the higher difficulties. As this happens, most of these stats can start being replaced with utility or offensive-oriented ones.
- Focus on acquiring and improving the Aspects that are themed around Basic Skills, as these contribute the most to our damage output.
- Moonrise
- Adaptability
- Even though we aren't an Earthquake build, the Earthquakes Aspect gives us a lot of power since we are using Ground Stomp (and Tec, if available).
- Next, focus on Defensive Aspects to make sure the Starter build doesn't just fall over.
- Juggernaut's and Steadfast Berserker's are both extremely important. The former is very helpful for reaching Armor cap, while the latter is a worry-free way of keeping Fortify.
- Might gives us some very welcome generic damage mitigation; it activates simply by attacking with Frenzy. Bul-Kathos is also an option here, but requires standing in Earthquakes periodically to function.
- To round out the build, we add some extra Offensive and Utility Aspects to fill out the rest of our gear.
- Edgemaster's gives us a damage multiplier based on our Fury pool (which is always full at this point).
- Rapid gives us some extra Attack Speed; this is useful early on as we don't have many good sources of this in the build quite yet.
- Anger Management gives us stress-free Berserking uptime.
- Bold Chieftain's helps keep all of our Shouts off cooldown.
- Accursed Touch gives us some early Vulnerable application. When this is no longer needed, it can be replaced with an Offensive Aspect, such as Elements.
- Lastly, Ghostwalker is used for some extra Movement Speed to help speed up the leveling process.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As gear is upgraded to Ancestral and more masterworking levels and Paragon points are unlocked, we can focus on replacing Armor and Resistance rolls with more desirable stats; however, staying capped at 1,000 Armor and 70% for all Resistances should always remain a priority for the current difficulty level.
- Ugly Bastard Helm is an incredibly strong item that gives some damage reduction from ranks of Aggressive Resistance, as well as a hefty damage multiplier via its Unique effect. The large amount of Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction helps drastically with keeping our Ultimate up permanently.
- Paingorger's Gauntlets give us a ton of useful stats, including Basic Skill ranks, Attack Speed, and Cooldown Reduction. Its Unique effect makes all of our hits echo and then multiplies the damage, so long as we have a way to trigger it. In this setup, this is accomplished mainly by using the Ceh Rune, with Wrath of the Berserker and Ground Stomp being secondary sources.
- Tassets of the Dawning Sky are used early on when we are desperate for Resistances. While it's only a temporary solution, these still do a great job at accomplishing this until Mythics and other gear upgrades are acquired.
- Hooves of the Mountain God are what give Frenzy its ability to cleave in a small area in front of it. Many of the stats on this item are great, but ranks to Belligerence should be prioritized first. When wearing these, Fury will constantly drain at an increasing rate until it is empty, at which point the draining effect resets. This is offset by the inherent Fury per Second that is present here, as well as other sources of Resource Generation and the natural ability of Basic Skills to generate Fury on their own.
- Ramaladni's Magnum Opus gives us a massive damage multiplier that is based on our Maximum Fury. For this reason, we prioritize this stat where it is convenient on gear and also via paragon points.
- Shard of Verathiel gives us yet another massive damage multiplier, as well as some Basic Skill ranks and Maximum Fury. In general, the Basic Attack Speed stat on this item (which is also present on Hooves of the Mountain God) is not that important to focus on, since we naturally cap this Attack Speed breakpoint with almost no effort.
- We swap to Wrath of the Berserker here because it naturally solves Berserking for us without the use of an Aspect or otherwise. Aside from also being the better damage multiplier, It's also extremely useful for its Unstoppable effect and ability to pull enemies.
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- Shroud of False Death gives us a bunch of All Stats (which equates to damage and Resistances) and also a decent chunk of Maximum Life. By far its main appeal though is its +1 to All Passives implicit. We have many passives that grant us damage (Belligerence , Counteroffensive , Warpath, etc.), as well as some great utility/defensive ones, such as Warpath and Imposing Presence .
- Ring of Starless Skies is swapped in at this point for its large multiplicative damage increase, Attack Speed, and extra Critical Strike Chance. It also helps us cap our Resistances without having to resort to other sources, like Tassets of the Dawning Sky.
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Mechanics
Coming soon.
Summary
Frenzy is an underused skill that got a lot of love going into Season 9. The build offers a fast and simple playstyle that can take on much of what the game has to offer. Here's why it's great:
- Very relaxed gameplay. Hold down Frenzy to stay on the move and auto-target enemies on the way.
- High defense and passive healing with great uptime on Challenging Shout, Rallying Cry, and War Cry.
- High Ultimate uptime due to stacking Cooldown Reduction with the help of Ugly Bastard Helm and Ground Stomp for resets.
- Low Fury maintenance - Although Shard of Verathiel makes Basic Skills spend Fury, they are also natural generators and get a lot of help from Fury per Second on Hooves of the Mountain God.
Credits
Written by snail
Contributions by Icytroll