Thorns Barbarian Endgame Build Guide

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

Alternate Boss Powers

• Lilith's Wind of Hate - As a Main Power, it can be used in the later stages of the game if you're looking for a serviceable Physical damage wave that also consistently triggers our Modifiers.
• Torusk's Rage - As a Main Power, it can be used for its speed farming capabilities. If monsters become Unstoppable, they can't be Crowd Controlled, which means they attack you more! Other players might not like it as much though...

Skill Rotation

• Use Wrath of the Berserker first and then whenever available. Ideally reuse it just before it falls off to keep the stacked bonus from Supreme Wrath of the Berserker.
• Right after, use Rallying Cry, Challenging Shout and War Cryand then whenever they are available as each Shout use will reduce your Wrath of the Berserker thanks to the Marshal Glyph.
• Start spamming Frenzy at the speed of Light and watch the magic happen as your Fury spending related buffs get automatically triggered while your cooldowns reset thanks to the Hectic Aspect.
• Use Rupture every 3 to 5 seconds to upkeep your related buffs active, especially Barbed Carapace.

PRO TIP: Make sure to use the Hold Position key when attacking to maximize your Inner Calm.

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 ‍Dual-Wield weapon set is used as our assigned weapon for both Frenzy and Rupture.

In the Technique Slot, the ‍Two-Handed Axe Expertise allows us to deal 10% more Damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build naturally has high Vulnerable uptime thanks to Harbinger of Hatred's Volley, 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.

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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

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 Thorns Barbarian build focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Poc + Qax - With the recent changes to Qax and our fast and massive Fury spending playstyle, this Runeword guarantees a near permanent 100% damage multiplier.
• Neo + Tec - This Runeword constantly spawns Earthquakes as damage taken under a Barrier does not count as Health damage, this way we can easily benefit from Earthquake and Bul-Kathos.

Alternative choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Cir - A good early game alternative/substitution Ritual Rune to generate offerings.
• Yax - A very strong 200 offering Ritual Rune that triggers whenever you use a healing potion.
• Qua - A fairly good Invocation rune to increase our movement speed early on.

To enable the Thorns 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

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Thorns 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.

This section is designed to guide your Thorns Barbarian from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestraland 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.

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™

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.

How do I calculate how much Thorns I get from passives and affixes?

Coming soon

The Thorns Barbarian is a lazy easy to play, razor bladed tank that performs well in in most content.

Here's why it's a great build:

• Extreme defense from its Challenging Shout, Doombringer and defense oriented Paragon Boards.
• Permanent Berserking uptime thanks to Wrath of the Berserker and Enhanced War Cry.
• Good synergy with the Season 8 Boss Powers, which ease the build playstyle while providing decent QoL improvements.

Written by Beatdropper

Reviewed by snail