Leapquake Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Leapquake Barbarian Build Guide! This build got some much needed attention several seasons ago with the addition of Tempered affixes, which finally made it capable of becoming a viable endgame build.
Leapquake actually gets its power from two sources. The first and obvious one being Earthquakes, which are created by using Leap with the Bul-Kathos Aspect and by triggering the Tec Rune. The second damage source is Dust Devils, which come from the Fierce Winds and Devilish Aspects, the empowered Call of the Ancients, as well as the newly added Force of Nature for Season 6.
When we combine these things with the high mobility and the ability to (eventually) use Leap with zero cooldown, this is a build that quickly and chaotically delivers screen-wide destruction, almost to the point where it's difficult to keep up with it!
If jumping around like a madman and demolishing everything in your path sounds like your idea of a good time, then this is the build for you. It has some fairly strict requirements when starting out, but once it comes together, Leapquake is one of the fastest speedfarming builds in the game, and arguably one of the most enjoyable. Before we leap into it, however, take note of the following before starting:
Requirements for this build
- Bul-Kathos
- Giant Strides
- Fierce Winds
- Tec
(it's not recommended to play without first acquiring these).
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
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Lunging Strike is needed to progress the skill tree. This is not used in the build.
- Rallying Cry provides us multiple buffs, with the most important ones being the invaluable Unstoppable and Fortify effects.
- Challenging Shout boosts our defenses even higher with its massive damage reduction and health increase, while also Taunting any monsters in range.
- War Cry grants us the Berserking buff, but its main appeal is the generous multiplicative damage boost it gives while active.
- Leap is the skill that this build revolves around; we use it to constantly fill the entire screen with Earthquakes and Dust Devils.
- Steel Grasp is used to group up enemies and keep them within the area of effect of our Earthquakes. Since Leap inherently knocks back enemies, this skill is invaluable for making sure everything doesn't become too spread and out of range.
- Call of the Ancients provides us with a decent multiplicative boost and also contributes to our overall damage, since the Ancients from Arreat's Bearing are quite formidable on their own.
Skill Rotation
- The gameplay for this build is very simple: Leap. Use Leap and cast Shouts. That's the build.
- Use Steel Grasp in large density to group stuff up and to counteract Leap's knockback.
- Call of the Ancients can be used strategically for tougher fights and against Bosses for a large damage boost.
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 and One-Handed Mace Expertise are our main weapon choices since we are dual-wielding. The first is a given because we utilize Ramaladni's Magnum Opus when it is acquired in the endgame. Our second choice has great utility when used against Stunned enemies, offering us a generic damage multiplier as well synergy with other damage sources such as the Wallop passive.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build has high Vulnerable uptime when using the gear affix "Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable." 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 class specification in our full Arsenal System Guide.
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.
Leapquake Barbarian Endgame Paragon
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
- Ire
- Replaced by Ambidextrous once our Damage while Berserking reaches 300%.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Twister
- Ire
- Rumble
- Territorial
- Challenger
Level 21
- Twister
- Rumble
- Territorial
- Challenger
- Ambidextrous
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
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 Leapquake Barbarian focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Yul + Wat - While in combat, this Runeword constantly casts Horrid Decrepify, which causes all surrounding enemies to deal 20% less damage and be Executed when they drop below 10% health.
- Xol + Tec - This combination spawns Earthquakes for us when triggered by Yul + Wat.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Bac - Alternative for Yul.
- Gar - Helps cover gear options when trying to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- Ohm - Gives us a way to cast War Cry without having it on our skill bar. For Barbarians, this Rune scales with any additional ranks we have in the skill tree or on gear.
- Zec - Can assist with keeping our Ultimate off cooldown; useful early on when lacking Cooldown Reduction.
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: Subo
He's mainly used for his Seeker ability, which is just incredibly useful in all content since it reveals enemies on the mini-map; the value this has can not be understated. Aside from that, he just kinda shoots stuff and occasionally applies Stuns. His Iconic Skill, Cover Fire, gives us a pretty decent 25% damage multiplier as well when linked with Opening Fire.
Reinforcement: Raheir
He uses the Crater skill, which helps keep enemies grouped up. This can act as an extra defensive layer as well since it has the ability to inflict Stun.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Leapquake Barbarian to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. 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
- 80%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 60%+ Chance for Dust Devils to Cast Twice
- 90%+ Dust Devil Size
- 30%+ Chance for Earthquakes to Cast Twice
- 30% Earthquake Duration
- 300%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 500%+ Damage to Close Enemies (Force of Nature)
- 3000+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 20,000+ Life
- 70%+ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
- 60%+ Leap Cooldown Reduction
- (below 4 seconds)
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Leapquake 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 Leapquake 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 Earthquake and Dust Devil themed Aspects, as these contribute the most to our damage output:
- Fierce Winds
- Devilish
- Earthquake
- Bul-Kathos
- Juggernaut's and Steadfast Berserker's are both extremely important, especially at this progression point. The former is very helpful for reaching Armor cap, while the latter is a worry-free way of keeping Fortify.
- Elements is a solid generic multiplier that increases our damage when it changes to Physical.
- Retribution is a conditional damage multiplier that we can take advantage of relatively often by using Ground Stomp.
- Leap has a naturally high Lucky Hit Chance, so we can make pretty good use of Concussive Strikes and Accursed Touch for some extra damage and Vulnerable application.
- Giant Strides helps keep our Leap off cooldown, which improves our mobility and lets us create more Earthquakes via Bul-Kathos.
- Bear Clan Berserker's is extremely useful early on for keeping all of our Brawling abilities off cooldown; these include Leap, Ground Stomp and War Cry.
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 Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction can be completely ignored; even though this is a wasted stat, everything else is too good to pass up.
- The combination of Rage of Harrogath and Ring of the Ravenous is fantastic for this build. This allows Leap to inflict Bleed, which in turn allows it to rapidly reduce all of our cooldowns. Both of these items also inherently give a pretty decent chunk of Critical Strike Chance.
- Arreat's Bearing gives an absurd amount of Cooldown Reduction to Call of the Ancients and helps us easily cap our Resistances. The Dust Devils and Earthquakes created by the Ancients themselves are also very powerful.
- Fists of Fate, when rolled well, is a 50% damage multiplier on average and provides a lot of good stats along with it. The Lucky Hit-based Crowd Controls are great for locking down enemies and staggering Bosses. The high amount of Lucky Hit Chance this item provides also ensures we have good Vulnerable uptime from Pressure Point and the "Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable" roll on our Jewelry.
- Ramaladni's Magnum Opus deceptively buffs our Earthquake and Dust Devil damage; even though these aren't technically skills, they still receive the multiplicative damage boost that this item grants through scaling Maximum Fury.
- Ancients' Oath comes loaded with Cooldown Reduction and Damage to Close Enemies (which helps cap the bonus granted by Force of Nature). The Cooldown Reduction in particular is of great use to us, as it allows us to continuously spam Leap.
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
- Harlequin Crest gives us a massive amount of Cooldown Reduction and Skill ranks to help ensure Leap stays spammable. It also comes with a fairly good amount of damage reduction and Armor, which makes reaching its cap trivial. Lastly, it provides some extra Maximum Fury to help scale Ramaladni's Magnum Opus.
- Since it is possible to cap Critical Strike Chance with this build, The Grandfather is a fairly solid choice to effectively double our damage. Like previously mentioned, the Maximum Fury helps further scale our damage through Ramaladni's Magnum Opus. The rest of the stats here aren't too shabby either: a truckload of Maximum Life, a high amount of generic additive damage, and a generous amount of Dexterity and Willpower to help activate high requirement nodes on our paragon board.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
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Gear & Skills
- Tyrael's Might is a good choice for this setup since it covers Resistances and damage mitigation pretty much by itself, and also provides some supplemental damage with its divine barrage. Movement Speed is a good target for masterworking to help optimize travel time in places where Leap can't be used. In fact, it's wise to invest in even more Movement Speed via tempers on other gear for this same reason.
- Tibault's Will is a solid choice for speedfarming, especially if the extra damage from Call of the Ancients and Arreat's Bearing is not needed.
- Damage while War Cry is Active is the best damage temper since this skill has 100% uptime in this setup.
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.
Coming soon!
Summary
The Leapquake Barbarian is a chaotic, fast-paced build that excels in pretty much all content, especially speedfarming. Here's why it is a great build:
- Permanent Berserking uptime thanks to Battle Fervor.
- High defense and passive healing from permanent Challenging Shout, Bul-Kathos and Raid Leader.
- High Call of the Ancients uptime with Arreat's Bearing.
- Extremely high mobility; Leap can have zero cooldown at all times with proper gear.
- No Fury maintenance due to not having any abilities that spend resource.
- Great area of effect and damage via Dust Devils and Earthquakes, with multiple ways to generate them.
Credits
Written by snail