Earthquake Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Earthquake Barbarian Build Guide! This is a comprehensive guide that focuses on the new "HotA Quake" setup introduced in Season 7, which uses Hammer of the Ancients and Mantle of Mountain's Fury for some seriously dangerous and explosive terrestrial destruction. This is an extremely powerful and versatile build that is ideal for pushing the highest levels of The Pit, as well as speedfarming all content in the game with a comfy and familiar Leapquake setup.
Earthquakes, as you may have guessed, are what give the build practically all of its power. They are created primarily by using Leap with the Bul-Kathos Aspect, Ground Stomp with the Earthquakes Aspect, and by triggering the Tec Rune; the latter being the most volatile of the bunch. Secondary sources, in some cases, also include Call of the Ancients with Arreat's Bearing, as well as the Executioner's Aspect when combined with skills that Overpower.
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. Heck, if body-pulling multiple screens of enemies, hunkering down and then annihilating them all with a titanic swing of the Hammer of the Ancients sounds like your idea of a good time... then this build is also for you. Don't get too excited yet though -as with most builds, there are some integral pieces that must be acquired first before any Earthquake-focused setup can truly shine:
Requirements for this build
- Bul-Kathos
- Giant Strides
- Tec (the strongest Earthquake by a large margin).
- Mantle of Mountain's Fury (makes them go boom!)
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.
Witchcraft Powers
Season 7 is the Season of Witchcraft. It features two separate borrowed power mechanics in the forms of Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems. Both Seasonal mechanics are unlocked and improved by new NPCs found at the Tree of Whispers after collecting resources from Headhunt Zones, Seasonal areas similar to Helltide that appear across Sanctuary.
There are 25 Witchcraft Powers, 6 of which can be equipped at a time. Each Power belongs to one of four Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, Psyche, and Lost), tags that promote synergies within themselves and with Occult Gems. Each School has a single Unique Witchcraft Power, only one of which can be equipped at a time. These Unique Powers max out and gain an additional effect at rank 5, while the other Powers max at rank 21 and gain their bonus effects at various levels. To unlock and improve Witchcraft Powers, defeat Headrotten or complete Whispers within the Headhunt Zones to collect Restless Rot. Lost Powers are an exception, requiring you to randomly encounter a Forgotten Altar in Dungeons to unlock them.
Best-in-Slot Witchcraft Powers
- Piranhado - This is a fantastic ability that passively and automatically groups up enemies for us.
- Soul Harvest - This Power dramatically increases Core Stats based on monster density and is a reliably strong choice, especially since we are pretty much always casting a skill that has a cooldown.
- Shaken Soul - This is used in combination with Aura of Siphoning to constantly apply Vulnerable to all enemies in its radius.
- Aura of Siphoning - As mentioned above, this is our primary source of Vulnerable. Aside from that, it synergizes with Dust Stone to give us some extra multiplicative damage. The additional healing this Power gives is also a very welcome defensive buff.
- Aura Specialization - The extra area of effect that it grants our Aura is nice, but the Critical Strike Damage multiplier that comes with leveling it makes this an even better choice.
- Hex of Whispers - This is another buff to Dust Stone, and also serves as our third Growth & Decay Power, which is necessary in order to activate Friend of the Bog.
Alternate Witchcraft Powers
- Doom Orb - This power can be used as a replacement Growth & Decay Power for Aura of Siphoning. If this is used, it's wise to socket the Hungering Void Occult Gem to keep some grouping utility.
- Aura of Misfortune - The alternative to Aura of Siphoning, this Power mitigates some incoming damage while boosting Movement Speed. Unfortunately, it's ineffective against Bosses.
Occult Gems
Rarely, Headrotten Bosses appear with a still-attached Fugitive Head stolen from the Tree of Whispers. Slay these enemies and return the Heads to Gelena to unlock and upgrade Occult Gems. These Gems are socketable in Jewelry and each provide +160 Armor and +8% Resistance to All Elements. More importantly, each Occult Gem grants a unique effect that synergizes with your equipped Witchcraft Powers to provide a variety of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility-based bonuses.
Best-in-Slot Occult Gems
- Dust Stone - This Gem is a set-and-forget damage multiplier; it is enabled by Aura of Siphoning and Hex of Whispers.
- Friend of the Bog - Extra Core Stats improve both skill damage (which includes Earthquakes) and the Executioner's damage multiplier. Maximum Life is self-explanatory; more life = less dying. Unhindered doesn't help us much since we are typically using Leap or under the effects of Rallying Cry, but it's there if needed.
- Toadling's Wish - It's really just here for one reason, and that reason is to boost the effect of the already extremely powerful Soul Harvest.
Alternate Occult Gems
- Killing Wind - Provides some extra Critical Strike Chance and Movement Speed. It has some use in the early gearing process.
- Hungering Void - Another way to pull mobs together. Can be used as a replacement for Piranhado or just as an extra source of grouping.
- Moonlight Ward - A pretty decent chunk of damage reduction and resistances. Use it if some extra defense is needed.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Bash is needed to progress the skill tree and is not used in any iteration of the build outside of high level Pit pushing. In that specific case, Combat Bash is used as a means to guarantee an Overpower hit, which allows us to benefit from damage bonuses such as the ones granted by Warpath and Decimator.
- Hammer of the Ancients becomes a core part of our skill rotation when it is combined with Mantle of Mountain's Fury. Equipping it makes this skill consume all of our active Earthquakes and then detonate them; the result is a chain of highly destructive explosions that are based on the duration of the consumed Earthquakes.
- Rallying Cry provides us multiple buffs, with the most important ones being the invaluable Unstoppable and Fortify effects.
- War Cry grants us the Berserking buff, but its main appeal is the generous multiplicative damage boost it gives while active.
- Leap is the other skill that is considered a core part of the main build described in this guide; we use it to stay mobile and constantly fill the entire screen with Earthquakes. With enough Cooldown Reduction, it can be used freely and without penalty when combined with Giant Strides.
- Ground Stomp is an ability that Stuns all surrounding enemies and spawns an Earthquake underneath them. It's a great way to quickly squeeze in some extra damage when fighting Elite packs.
- 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
- Use Leap to spawn Earthquakes from the Bul-Kathos Aspect and Tec Rune.
- Once Earthquakes are active, use Hammer of the Ancients to detonate them on top of enemies.
- The desired number of active Earthquakes required to quickly eliminate packs may vary depending on the content.
- For weak enemies, a single Earthquake from one or both of Bul-Kathos and Tec is typically enough, so detonating them early is usually ideal to speed things up.
- In high levels of The Pit and during Boss fights, there is a point where stacking many Earthquakes before detonating is more efficient for overall damage output. To keep things simple, aim for 4-5 seconds of stacking Earthquakes before dropping a Hammer of the Ancients.
- Results may vary! Try to find the sweet spot for stacking and detonating based on your current gear level and the content you're running.
- While leaping around, cast War Cry and Rallying Cry whenever they are off cooldown to keep their buffs active.
- Call of the Ancients can be used strategically for tougher fights and against Bosses for a large damage boost. The 30% damage multiplier and 20% damage reduction bonuses aren't the only perks of using this skill - with Arreat's Bearing equipped, Talic and Korlic also provide us with pretty solid supplemental damage.
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 Two-Handed Mace Expertise is our main weapon choice simply because Hammer of the Ancients requires it to function. When using the Pit Push variant, Bash should also be set to this weapon in order to benefit from both its Enhanced version as well as the Combat Bash specialization. The Two-Handed Mace also has the added advantage of having the highest base damage of all weapon types, which makes it a great choice for scaling Earthquakes.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. Thankfully, this build has very high Vulnerable uptime, so this is practically a no-brainer. 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.
Earthquake 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.
Optional Glyphs
- Revenge
- Replaces Wrath in Pit Pushing variant.
- Marshal
- Replaces Ire in Pit Pushing variant.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Rumble
- Ire
- Territorial
- Challenger
- Wrath
Level 21
- Rumble
- Challenger
- Ire
- Territorial
- Wrath
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 + Tec - This combination allows us to spawn Earthquakes from any of our skills that have a cooldown, with Leap being the primary one. The majority of our damage comes from socketing these Runes.
- Igni + Gar - This Runeword passively helps us cap our Critical Strike Chance. It's a simple but effective boost to our overall damage output.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Bac / Moni - Alternatives for Yul.
- 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. If this Rune is chosen, Challenging Shout (or anything else) can serve as a replacement active skill.
- 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 (with Gar)
- 70%+ Chance for Earthquakes to Cast Twice
- 70%+ Earthquake Size
- 25% Earthquake Duration
- 450%+ 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
- 60%+ 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 themed Aspects, as these contribute the most to our damage output:
- Bul-Kathos
- Earthquakes
- Executioner's
- Incendiary Fissures
- 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 for some extra damage.
- 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.
- Mantle of Mountain's Fury turns our Hammer of the Ancients into a detonation device and allows us to lean into the "HotaQuake" style of play. Once this item is acquired, the priority becomes blowing up our active Earthquakes for huge bursts of explosive damage.
- 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 uptime on any ability or effect that relies on it.
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's important to note that equipping this over Ugly Bastard Helm is a net damage loss. However, there is a point where this extra damage becomes completely unnecessary and prioritizing speed is the more efficient way to build.
This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
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Gear & Skills
- Pit Pushing variants drop the mobility of Leap in favor of damage.
- Note that these setups are subject to frequent changes as the meta evolves.
- Wrath of the Berserker acts as a 1.375x damage multiplier and is our solution to maintaining permanent Berserking. With enough Cooldown Reduction and help from Strategic Ground Stomp and Marshal, we can keep this up indefinitely.
- Combat Bash provides us a way to guarantee an Overpower hit. Not only does this skill allow us to benefit from Warpath, Belligerence, and Decimator, it also enables the 1.4x damage multiplier from Violent Hammer of the Ancients.
- Inner Calm, Elements, and Exploiter's are all additional generic damage multipliers, with the latter applying only to monsters that have become Unstoppable from our various Crowd Control effects.
- Outburst and Tough as Nails are taken so that we have a way of activating Revenge. This Glyph has two separate damage multipliers and is a strong choice for longer fights, and is especially good against most Bosses.
- When all relevant Paragon nodes below are taken, allocate any remaining points into Strength.
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 Earthquake Barbarian is a complete monster that can be a chaotic and fast-paced speedfarmer, or slowed down and stacked with multipliers to allow it to absolutely destroy any content in the game. Here's what makes it great:
- Permanent Berserking uptime thanks to Battle Fervor (or alternatively, Wrath of the Berserker).
- High defense and passive healing with great uptime on Challenging Shout if needed, Bul-Kathos, and Defensive Stance.
- High Ultimate uptime due to stacking Cooldown Reduction with Arreat's Bearing for speedfarming, or Ugly Bastard Helm for pushing The Pit.
- Extremely high mobility; Leap has zero cooldown at all times with the proper gear.
- Very little Fury maintenance - this is not a build that needs to spam spenders in order to do damage.
- Great area of effect and absurd damage output via Earthquakes, with multiple ways to generate them.
- Explosions!
Credits
Written by snail