Rupture Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Rupture Barbarian Build Guide! With the introduction of The Third Blade in Season 5, Rupture lost its inherent cooldown penalty and became a pseudo-Core Fury spender, able to be spammed at will as long as it met its resource requirement.
Consequently, this allows for some fun interactions with some very uncommonly used Uniques. Rage of Harrogath is the first one, and it's incredible when combined with Rupture's impressive area of effect, often fully resetting the cooldowns for every skill on our bar. The second one is Fields of Crimson; this build doesn't sacrifice much in terms of Aspects to slot this, which is great, since it comes with a respectable 70% damage multiplier and a very gratuitous amount of Bleeding damage. Its other effects also cover most of our screen in red, as any worthwhile Bleed build should do.
While capable of taking on pretty much everything the game has to offer, it does take some effort to get there. As mentioned previously, Rupture relies on several key pieces to function correctly and can be rather demanding with Fury management before it fully comes online. At the very least, take note of the following:
Requirements for this build
- The Third Blade
- Rage of Harrogath
(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.
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
- Lord Zir's Blood Pool - The Bleed-themed Power; it's only really needed as a way to activate our other supporting Powers.
Modifiers
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - One of the best sources of multiplicative damage when it comes to Boss Powers. Works well with this build due to having permanent Vulnerable uptime via Expose Vulnerability.
- Hatred's Embrace's Haste - One of the Resistance-based Powers, with the focus being Shadow Resistance. This is great for passively maximizing our Critical Hit Chance and allows us to prioritize other important stats on gear.
- Lilith's Wind of Hate - This build has great AoE coverage, so it has no problem with tagging and destroying the blisters. This helps out a ton when it comes to Boss damage, while also keeping cooldowns low due to having additional Rage of Harrogath targets.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Torusk's Rage - A good main Boss Power alternative for most content.
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - A good damage multiplier that relies on Crowd Control Duration to function. Decent option in the early game before the build is fully geared.
- Blackmailer's Sabotage - Great defensive option that can be combined with Conceited to give it some offensive utility as well.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Frenzy is needed to progress the skill tree, but also serves several other purposes. With its Enhanced Frenzy and Combat Frenzy specializations, it acts as a Fury generator that also reduces our Fury consumption, and additionally provides us some damage reduction and Movement Speed. It also gives us an easy way to activate Belligerence for an additional damage multiplier.
- Rupture is the key to making the build function. We focus on scaling the damage of Enhanced Rupture by stacking Strength and Critical Strike Damage to benefit from Gushing Wounds for huge Bleed explosions. These explosions also activate Rage of Harrogath, which means all of our cooldowns (our Shouts and Ultimate in particular) are usually instantly reset.
- Rallying Cry provides us multiple buffs, with the most important ones being Resource Generation, Movement Speed, and the invaluable Unstoppable effect.
- 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.
- Wrath of the Berserker, with the proper setup, is an always-on buff that gives us Berserking, Movement Speed, Resource Generation, and most importantly, more damage! On activation, it also pulls in surrounding enemies for us.
Skill Rotation
- Spam Rupture. Yep, that's pretty much the build.
- To maintain Fury, use Frenzy as needed to refill and also lower the cost of Rupture.
- Spam all skills as they come off cooldown (which is pretty much all the time).
- Admire the bloodbath.
(Mythic)
(Gameplay Showcase)
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 Sword is our main weapon choice... mostly just because we're locked into it since we're wielding Fields of Crimson. Its main draw is its ability to increase our Bleed damage whenever we kill an enemy.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe Expertise allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build has naturally high Vulnerable uptime because of the Expose Vulnerability passive. 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.
Rupture 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
- Seething
- Replaced by Weapon Master, but only when this Glyph has reached level 46 (fairly useless before then).
- Exploit
- Replaced by Wrath once we have sufficient Critical Strike Chance to make better use of it.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Seething
- Ire
- Rumble
- Exploit
- Challenger
Level 46
- Weapon Master
- Wrath
- Challenger
- Ire
- Rumble
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 Rupture Barbarian focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Lith + Tec - While in combat, this Runeword constantly spawns Earthquakes for us, which we use to benefit from the Bul-Kathos and Earthquakes Aspects as well as the Rumble Glyph.
- Neo + Que - This combination grants us a persistent Barrier that we use to activate Conceited for a reliable damage boost.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Poc / Yul - Alternatives for Lith.
- 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.
- Jah - Gives us Teleport, which is great for 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: 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, his Scorched Earth periodically increases our Bleed damage.
Reinforcement: Varyana
She uses Bloodthirst to increase our Attack Speed, which is nice since Rupture is naturally pretty slow without this kind of support. Also, you know, this skill just sort of fits the theme we're going for here.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Earthquake 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
- 90%+ Critical Strike Chance (with Hatred's Embrace's Haste)
- 80%+ Chance for Rupture to Deal Double Damage
- 80%+ Enhanced Rupture Size
- 40%+ Frenzy Duration
- 450%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 300%+ Vulnerable Damage (Hemorrhage)
- 3500+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 10,000+ Life
- 50%+ Ultimate Cooldown
- 170%+ Movement Speed
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Rupture 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 Rupture 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.
- The Third Blade and Rage of Harrogath should both be treated as requirements before starting the build. Rupture spam is how we deal damage.
- Focus on acquiring and improving the Earthquake themed Aspects, as these are huge boosts both offensively and defensively (though not for the reasons you might think). This build does not focus on Earthquake damage; instead, it aims to capitalize on the buffs that they provide simply by standing in them.
- Bul-Kathos (damage reduction).
- Earthquakes (large generic damage multiplier).
- Executioner's (creates Earthquakes - alternatively, Tec can be used).
- Juggernaut's is extremely important early on. This is used to easily help us reach Armor cap when gear is still lacking.
- Because Rupture is a skill that always results in an Overpower, Blood Boiling is incredibly useful early on for some extra damage.
- Vehement Brawler's and Inner Calm are both very good generic multipliers that we can utilize fairly often.
- Berserk Fury and Vocalized Empowerment help us fuel our Fury consumption, which can be a pain point early on in progression.
- Ghostwalker is used in tandem with Rallying Cry for a large Movement Speed increase.
- Unconstrained is preferred at this progression point, since we likely don't have sufficient Critical Strike Chance or Damage to support Gushing Wounds.
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 it provides helps our uptime on Bosses.
- Rage of Harrogath is a core part of the build and enables Rupture to constantly reset all of our cooldowns. This is important because we get a lot of power and defense from having our Shouts and Ultimate up permanently.
- Rakanoth's Wake is an easy way to cap our Resistances with a single item. The added Cooldown Reduction is a nice touch as well.
- Fields of Crimson is a natural fit for the build; it gives us a 70% damage multiplier and an incredible amount of additive Damage to Bleeding Enemies, as well as a decent chunk of Strength. That's not all though - it also maximizes the explosion size of Enhanced Rupture with a single affix!
- Despite Leap not being in the build, we still benefit from the damage reduction provided by Bul-Kathos as long as we are standing in Earthquakes.
- Conceited can be used alongside Blackmailer's Sabotage. for a pretty good damage increase.
- Gushing Wounds can be used as soon as enough Critical Strike Chance is acquired to support it (let's say, 80%+).
- If you're feeling squishy, don't be afraid to prioritize Maximum Life instead of offensive stats on gear!
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
- Ring of Starless Skies is really the only thing that's added at this stage; it gives a bunch of Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, and a large damage multiplier that is very simple to keep active. The ability to spam Rupture becomes much easier with the addition of this item as well. Outside of this, the build remains generally the same as the Ancestral version.
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
- Despite its poor reputation, Shattered Vow is fantastic for speedfarming since Rupture is typically strong enough to Bleed out most enemies with a single cast. With this item equipped, enemies are vaporized instantly - no wait required!
- We get some extra mobility with this setup thanks to Leap and the Jah Rune. Socketing this Rune grants us a Teleport that we can use to quickly move between encounters.
- If damage isn't needed, Giant Strides can be used on a Ring for even more uptime on Leap.
- Since Shattered Vow is a Polearm, we can make use of the Executioner Glyph with 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.
You can save your wrists by using the "Num Lock" trick or mouse macro software to automate skill casts. To automate via Num Lock on your keyboard:
- Map the desired skills to numpad buttons in Options → Controls.
- Make sure Num Lock (on keyboard) is turned on.
- Hold down the button(s) that correspond to the skills you wish to automate on the numpad.
- Press Num Lock again to turn it off.
- Release the button(s) for automated skills.
- Skills now auto-cast until you turn Num Lock back on. This only works if another button is also not already being held down (moving with left mouse button, for example).
Summary
The Rupture Barbarian is extremely well-rounded and excels in pretty much all content. Here's why it is a great build:
- Using Rupture with Rage of Harrogath gives frequent large resets to every cooldown ability, which means:
- Permanent Berserking and uptime on the three Shouts: Challenging Shout, Rallying Cry, and War Cry.
- Permanent Wrath of the Berserker uptime with help from tempers and Ugly Bastard Helm.
- High amounts of passive healing with permanent uptime on Raid Leader.
- Off-meta, but still strong! Be a hipster and put some of those "worthless" Uniques to use (looking at you, Fields of Crimson and Shattered Vow).
- Extremely satisfying Bleed explosions! If for no other reason, play it for this one - you won't regret it.
Credits
Written by snail