Death Blow Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Death Blow Barbarian Endgame Guide!
Death Blow had a rough time since its former Season 5 glory and thanks to the recent bug fixes to Crown of Lucion, giving us access to Encroaching Wrath and Limitless Rage, we're finally able to crank it up!
The main idea behind this generator-less build is to self-sustain a 100 to 140 Fury cost with Fighter's Death Blow by combining Crown of Lucion and Unbridled Rage, allowing us to:
- Trigger a guaranteed Overpower every 2 to 3 casts through Banished Lord's Talisman
- Have 100% Critical Strike juiced up attacks thanks to Ring of Red Furor
- Up to 100% uptime on Qax when pairing it with Poc with extremely fast attacks
There are however a few drawbacks that you have to bear in mind; for instance, screen clearing capabilities are lacking as the Overkill wave is fairly narrow. With that in mind, the build only truly shines against Bosses, since Enhanced Death Blow does not work on regular and Elite monsters.
All in all, it's an extremely fast attacking build using a "feast or famine" gameplay style, and is able to dish out impressive numbers while being fairly accessible due to using cheap off-meta items. Feeling like giving it a try? Well, you're more than welcome to do so but first, take a note of the...
Requirement for this build
- The Third Blade
(yes, don't play it without acquiring this first).
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.
Boss Powers
Season 8 is the Season of Belial's Return. It allows you to tap into Boss Powers obtained from World, Event, and Lair Bosses throughout Sanctuary. The new seasonal mechanic, Apparition Incursions, is available at any difficulty level and gives you the opportunity to unlock a subset of these powers very early on. Various Apparition Monsters appear in these special timed events throughout Sanctuary. Defeating these monsters spawns 1 of 10 Apparition Bosses to hunt you down and defeating them grants you their Boss Power. After defeating the first Boss, continue the event for a chance to fight a second Apparition Boss, after which Belial himself joins the fray.
There are 24 Boss Powers available and the first time you defeat one of these Bosses, you claim their power for yourself. Boss Powers each have Main and Modifier effects to boost your build. 13 are available in all difficulties (from Apparition Incursions and World Bosses), while 11 can only be acquired in Torment 1 difficulty or higher from Lair Bosses and Lilith. You can equip 1 Main Power and 3 Modifiers, and all powers can be upgraded up to Rank 20, increasing the potency of both the Main and Modifier effect. You use Spectral Ash to upgrade these powers, dropped from Apparition Incursions and by defeating any Bosses. Boss Powers also scale with your Paragon Level, growing stronger as you progress.
Best-in-Slot Boss Powers
Main Power
- Torusk's Rage - While the uptime remains questionable against Bosses without minions, this Main Power provides an impressive damage output and mobility steroid.
Modifiers
- Belial's Eye Beams - Triggered by activating your Main Power and Shroud of False Death, this Modifier's Stealth mechanic mitigates some incoming damage while providing a sizeable Overpower multiplier.
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - Triggered by activating your Main Power. The second line is an attractive multiplier, but the first line is actually a detriment. Be mindful of only using Lunging Strike to get enough Fury to kick-start your Death Blow spam or you might end up wasting all your resource if overcapped.
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - Always active buff. Due to us tempering Crowd Control Duration on our Gloves and our permanent Vulnerable uptime this is a decent choice as our last Modifier.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Grigoire's Lightning Square - As a Main Power, it can used in any stages of the build as a serviceable AoE clearing tool that also consistently triggers our Modifiers.
- Torusk's Rage - As a Modifier used in the early stages of the build, it gives us an amazing Attack Speed boost.
- Hatred's Embrace's Haste - As a Modifier used in the early stages of the build, this Power dramatically increases Critical Strike Chance until we get Ring of Red Furor.
- Wandering Death's Chest Beam - This execute drastically improves clear time but is ineffective against Bosses.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
NOTE:
Due to Yen's Blessing shenanigans and usage of Runewords, our skill bar only uses Five Skills (leaving one out) despite investing in Seven Skills (including 2 shouts). This behavior is intended (explanations can be found below).
- Death Blow is our primary damage and generator skill. As it generates and spends Fury, every cast will trigger Fortify (Irrepressible ), Vulnerable (Expose Vulnerability) and heal us (Invigorating Fury). Equipping The Third Blade turns it into a spammable pseudo-Core skill.
- Lunging Strike can be used as a backup tool to generate Fury when needed . It doubles as a Quality of Life tool allowing for quick moving in/out of monster packs and activating Berserking.
- Steel Grasp is used to group up enemies. Having tightly packed groups is important for this build as Death Blow on its own has very narrow coverage. Thanks to The Third Blade (again), it benefits from +Core skill ranks bonuses and becomes available without investing any Skill point.
- Call of the Ancients acts as an all purpose buff, increasing our damage, Attack Speed and generating Fury.
- Rallying Cry is a buff providing us a big Resource Generation bonus (to sustain our high Fury spending gameplay) and Unstoppable for its entire duration (preventing us from getting interrupted). Paired with Yen's Blessing and Booming Voice, when being the ONLY SHOUT assigned to our Skill Bar, we can benefit from its effects all the time (as long as it is on cooldown)!
- War Cry is our last buff, and main source for Berserking and a hefty Damage multiplier. DO NOT PUT IT ON YOUR SKILL BAR, as it is automatically casted by the Ohm Rune, allowing us to have it permanently active.
Skill Rotation
- Rallying Cry must be used whenever it is available; Yen's Blessing automatically refreshes it as long as it is on cooldown.
- Use Call of the Ancients pretty much whenever it is available for more damage and Fury generation.
- Use Steel Grasp to pull in surrounding enemies within Death Blow range and reuse it as you see fit. Ideally, group up monsters tightly against walls (pixel pull) to maximize your damage output.
- Start spamming Death Blow inside the largest pack of enemies and watch the magic happen as your Runewords automatically trigger War Cry and Qax as you cast; just make sure to enjoy the Overpowers!
- Use Lunging Strike if you need the mobility to quickly get in or out of a pack of monsters.
PRO TIP: Make sure to use the "Hold Position" key when attacking to maximize your Inner Calm buff.
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 its expertise bonus, regardless of which weapon we have equipped.
The Two-Handed Mace is used as our assigned weapon for both Death Blow and Lunging Strike to fully benefit from its expertise bonuses.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more Damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build naturally has permanent Vulnerable uptime thanks to Expose Vulnerability, so this is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, its secondary effect does not apply here - the limitation of the Technique Slot being that it does not allow us to benefit from the second bonus that is normally gained when reaching expertise rank 10 with any weapon.
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.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Wrath
- Crusher
- Challenger
- Dominate
- Revenge
To Level 46
- Challenger
- Wrath
- Crusher
- Dominate
- Revenge
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. This Death Blow Barbarian build focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
NOTE: Shouts triggered by Runes are affected by Shout bonuses (Skill Ranks, Enhanced Node, Passives and Aspects).
- Poc + Qax - This Runeword combination triggers the damage boost from Qax every 4 to 5 Death Blow (as we are spending close to our entire Fury bar each time).
- Tam + Ohm - This Runeword combination triggers War Cry after casting 24 Death Blow which provides us our main . While this might look impressive, keep in mind that you will be outputting this amount of attacks in about 6 seconds (while the buff lasts for about 8 seconds).
PRO TIP: If Berserking uptime and upkeeping Death Blow becomes an issue, we recommend you to reverse Poc and Tam until you reach the end of your Best in Slot gear journey.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Cir - As a strong early game Ritual Rune to generate offerings.
- Gar - As a strong early game Invocation Rune when trying to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- Yax - A decent Ritual Rune offering a massive 200 offering in one go when you use a healing potion.
- Tec - A cheap Invocation Rune that allows temporary use of the Earthquakes or Bul-Kathos Aspects.
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
He has a lot to offer us from a defensive standpoint. Skills like Valiance and Bastion help protect us from heavy hits and grant Unstoppable. Bastion also works in tandem with Ground Slam to provide some very strong offensive buffs with Inspiration. Lastly, he provides a pretty decent boost to all of our Resistances, which can help compensate for low rolls on gear.
Reinforcement: Varyana
Varyana's Bloodthirst serves as a regular Attack Speed steroid.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Death Blow 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
- 115%+ Attack Speed (including the Carnage buff) to cast Death Blow 4 times per second
- Rank 30+ Death Blow from the various +Core rank affixes
- 90%+ Chance for Death Blow to Deal Double damage
- 450%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 2500+ Strength
- 900+ Willpower
- ~350% Resource Generation Bonus (when buffed by Rallying Cry)
- Armor Capped 1,000 (using incense)
- Resistance Capped 70% (using incense and Raheir)
- 50,000+ Life
- 180%+ Movement Speed
- 120 (Early endgame) to 140 (Late game) max Fury minimum
- (Early Endgame) 35-40% Resource Cost Reduction (Ring, Gloves and 2H Slash weapon) if you're aiming for a 105-110 Fury cost Death Blow
- (Late Game) 20% Resource Cost Reduction (2h Slash weapon Enchanting) if you can afford a ~138 Fury cost Death Blow.
Recommended Alchemist Elixir and Incenses
- Elixir: Elixir of Fortitude II
- Resistance Incense: Soothing Spices
- Defensive Incense: Reddamine Buzz
- Core Stat Incense: Ancient Times
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Death Blow Barbarian, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build and make sure to check them as you progress! 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 Death Blow 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
- Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with max life, offensive or utility stats.
- To lower Death Blow cost to a sustainable 30-35 Fury per cast, we focus on Resource Cost Reduction affixes on our Two-Handers and use Resource Generation tempers on our Rings. One Fury per second affix along with Berserk Fury is used to ensure our Fury bar stays full; both trigger (partially) every 0.2 seconds, making them more reliable than Vocalized Empowerment.
- As we do not have Yen's Blessing yet, we put our three Shouts on our bar and get multiple Shout Cooldown Reduction Tempers and Bold Chieftain's to ensure permanent uptime.
- Gameplay is very similar to the Endgame versions with the sole difference being that we leverage Blood Boiling as a source of guaranteed Overpower, while also giving us nice AoE Damage when collecting the volatile drops.
- Remind yourself to use your Healing Potions to trigger your Runeword and stay in your Earthquakes to fully benefit from Earthquakes and Bul-Kathos!
- Unbridled Rage is used as our Key passive, as it's such an incredible way of ramping up our gameplay loop (spend, regen, repeat)
- Remember, The Third Blade is required! The build is incredibly clunky without this item.
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 you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but ensure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
- Tibault's Will provides us with both damage and a damage reduction multiplier, as we're always Unstoppable thanks to Rallying Cry.
- Yen's Blessing gives a very decent chunk of Resistances. The main draw of this item is its ability to give us essentially a permanent Shout of our choosing, Rallying Cry in this case.
- Overkill will give us the gears to crank our Death Blow damage up, thanks to its massive +Skill ranks increase on top of its Unique effect creating an additional wave of damage.
- Crown of Lucion and Ring of Red Furor will provide us the means to start our "feast or famine" playstyle. Make sure to have the recommended Resource Cost Reduction and Max Fury Stat Thresholds.
- Banished Lord's Talisman and Ring of Red Furor allow us to start triggering Overpowers and Critical Strikes reliably.
- We swap our Key Passive to Unbridled Rage, as the Fury Generation bonuses from our newly acquired Uniques allow us to afford the skill cost increase.
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
- While the stats on Shroud of False Death are "okay" at best, it provides us an additional Fury Generation Bonus affix and mostly the amazing +1 to All Passive implicit modifier. This implicit represents a 30%+ damage multiplier on top of being a great boost to our shouts and defensive passives.
- Finally, Doombringer is always a no-brainer for Overpower builds since Maximum Life naturally scales Overpower damage. Aside from that, it gives an incredible amount of extra damage mitigation and helps us face-tank.
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.
Sinerat's Flames is an incredible damage multiplier, problem is it only applies to elemental damage. And from what I learned watching "Avatar the Last Airbender" as a teen, Physical isn't an element.
It would be another Story if we used Ugly Bastard Helm in this build as this changes all our Physical damage into Fire ("and everything changed when the Fire nation attacked"...)
Because this build relies on spending a mimum amount of Fury to reliably trigger Banished Lord's Talisman and Ring of Red Furor. Unfortunately, the only way to make Death Blow cost that amount is to use Crown of Lucion.
Unfortunately for us The Third Blade got changed in Season 8 to make all Weapon Mastery cost 5 less Fury baseline meaning a fully stacked Starless would bring our Death Blow cost down to 87.5 preventing the activation threshold of our Aspects and Uniques.
Mechanics
Much of the information in this section has been carefully and thoroughly tested by Icytroll and is extracted directly from the Barbarian Compendium. This should be your main source for the most accurate and up-to-date explanations on all mechanics that pertain to the Barbarian class.
Gameplay Video
Summary
The Death Blow Barbarian is an absolute "must try" for any Overpower enjoyer despite its narrow AoE capabilities. Here's why it's a great build:
- Up to 35 Death Blow Ranks and massive damage output from Enhanced Death Blow, the Chance to Deal Double Damage temper and the guaranteed Overpowers provided by Banished Lord's Talisman. Enjoy the Overpowers every 3 casts!
- High defense from multiple Damage Reduction and Maximum Life sources (Doombringer), as well as permanent Fortify.
- High mobility with Rallying Cry and Shroud of False Death.
- High utility in being able to group enemies via Steel Grasp with no cooldown.
- Extremely easy to play, mainly using four skills, two of them being buffs.
- Cheap gear.
- High Vulnerable uptime.
- Decent usability of the Season 8 Boss Powers, but no real build enabling interactions.
- Recent fixes to Crown of Lucion finally gives us access to our high priority Aspects.
Credits
Written by Beatdropper
Reviewed by snail