Thorns Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Thorns Barbarian Endgame Guide!
If you are a believer of the Armadillo way of life or simply curious about the new Thorns Key Passive then, you're in the right place! Extreme Tankiness, loads of Cooldown Reduction, global (fire?) Damage Multipliers, you name it, all of those have but one objective, smite monsters as they come close to you!
Some of you might hesitate and say that the Thorns gameplay only means accepting slaps from your foes (the more the merrier) and turning the other cheek...
Well, our prayers for an active way of dealing Thorns Damage (D3 Invoker style) have been answered in the form of a brand new Key passive, Barbed Carapace, giving us a new Thorns multiplier and a close-range "aura" dealing Thorns Damage !
Back to the basics first, let's quickly talk about Thorns and what this build will focus on.
While stacking Life is an obvious objective for any melee-heavy class, we need to push it further as the Outburst and Strategic Challenging Shout passives give you a bigger Thorns base value than any other Aspect or Skill in the game.
Our second objective is ensuring an always Fortify state so that our massive Thorns while Fortified multiplier stays on. For that, a combination of Thick Skin, Irrepressible and Battle Bash will do the trick.
Next is focusing on Cooldown Reduction to have permanent uptime on our buffs, which we'll attain with various Shouts, Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction Tempers, Affixes and Aspects.
Lastly, we'll be stacking various global Damage Multipliers (Thorns not being a skill means it is not able to Critical Strike or Overpower) and putting emphasis on packing heretic foes with Steel Grasp to ensure maximum cleansing efficiency.
If those explanations managed to make you a Thorns believer, then have a seat friend, as we delve further into the Thorns scriptures.
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
- Bash will be our main skill to generate and spend Fury but also to give us Fortify with Enhanced Bash and create guaranteed Overpower through Combat Bash.
- Hammer of the Ancients should only be used whenever you have a guaranteed Overpower to trigger Violent Hammer of the Ancients.
- Steel Grasp will be your multi-purpose tool to apply Vulnerable, generate Fortify and trigger Berserking or Barbed Carapace. Used as a monster packing tool, it will also increase their taken Damage thanks to Ancients' Oath.
- Wrath of the Berserker will act as a steroid buff, further increasing our Damage, Berserking uptime, Movement Speed and making us Unstoppable while active.
- Challenging Shout will grant us a vast amount of Damage Mitigation, Maximum Life and Thorns while active which is the reason we want it up at all times.
- War Cry will be our last buff, giving us a well appreciated Damage boost.
Skill Rotation
NOTE: At first, you will need to get hit a few times to passively generate enough Fury for Bash, but such is the Thorns way of life.
- Wrath of the Berserker, War Cry and Challenging Shout must be active at all times. Make sure to cast them right before pulling enemies to avoid pushing them away when they are packed on you.
- Use Steel Grasp to pull in surrounding enemies inside your Earthquakes and reuse it every 3-5 seconds to refresh its effects. Remember that the more monsters there are attacking you, the more potent Needleflare becomes.
- Start spamming Bash on the nearest monster in order to build up your Combat Bash guaranteed Overpower, Supreme Wrath of the Berserker buff and help reset our cooldowns through Hectic.
- Use Hammer of the Ancients whenever one of those guaranteed Overpowers is available (ideally every 5 seconds).
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 will be used as our assigned weapon for both Combat Bash and Hammer of the Ancients as they require a Two-Handed Bludgeoning weapon.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more Damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build naturally has high Vulnerable uptime thanks to Enhanced Steel Grasp, 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 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.
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
- Ire
- Revenge
- Rumble
- Territorial
- Challenger
To Level 46
- Ire
- Challenger
- Revenge
- Territorial
- Rumble
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. This Thorns Barbarian build focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Yul + Xal - This combination gives us 20% more Maximum Life after casting 4 cooldown based skills - which will be easy enough with Steel Grasp. On top of it being a nice defensive boost, this bonus Maximum Life is also factored in when calculating our Thorns value. Note that unlike Enhanced Challenging Shout, this Rune maintains our Fortify buff.
- Lith + Tec - While in combat and standing still, this Runeword will constantly spawn Earthquakes so we can benefit from Earthquake, Bul-Kathos and Rumble.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Cem - A good alternative/substitution ritual Rune for Yul, preferably with Boots having the “Attack reduce Evade cooldown by X second” implicit affix.
- Teb - A strong early game “Thorns like” Invocation Rune, making enemies take Bonus Damage whenever they hit you and heal you when they die.
- Yax - A very strong 200 offering Ritual Rune that triggers whenever you use a healing potion.
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
Raheir has a lot to offer us from a defensive standpoint, as Skills like Valiance and Bastion help protect us from heavy hits and grant Unstoppable.
For our Mercenary Core Skill, we pick Ground Slam, as its area of effect Slow capabilities are always helpful. It is paired with Raheir's Aegis, which provides a pretty decent boost to all of our Resistances and can help compensate for low rolls on gear.
For our Mercenary Iconic Skill, we choose Bastion to provide us very strong defensive and offensive buffs through Inspiration.
Reinforcement: Aldkin
Aldkin serves as a nice panic button for dangerous encounters by casting Field of Languish, which slows enemies and reduces their damage.
We chose to bind Field of Languish to Steel Grasp as a way of making sure the Monsters we pull are debuffed as we pack them.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
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. 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
- 25%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 57.1% to 82.2% Basic Attack speed (including the The Third Blade bonus)
- 300%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 4000+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 30,000+ Life
- 190%+ Movement Speed
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 Uniqueitems 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 ourGeneral Farming Guide.
Build Variants
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.
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 get an initial amount of Thorns, we'll focus on Flat Thorns providing Aspects such as Sticker-thought and Death Wish.
- Whirlwind will be our chosen Fury spender for Barbed Carapace as it is very low maintenance thanks to Enhanced Whirlwind.
- Use Flay as your main way of reducing your Cooldowns (Hectic) or refresh your Defensive and Thorns buffs (Might, Combat Flay)
- Gameplay wise, we recommend you to tap Whirlwind every other second and focus on using Flay the rest of the time.
- Use Wrath of the Berserker, Challenging Shout and War Cry as you see fit.
- Remind yourself to use Dodge, Healing Potions to trigger your Runewords and stay in your Earthquakes when packing monsters with Steel Grasp to fully benefit from Earthquakes and Bul-Kathos!
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.
- Now is the time to swap to our Endgame Skills & Gameplay and respecialize into Bash and Hammer of the Ancients.
- First and foremost, hunt for a Shard of Verathiel in Infernal Hordes so you're able to reliably spend Fury with your Basic Skill to stack Barbed Carapace.
- Then, pay a couple of visits to the Beast in Ice or Grigoire for an Ancients' Oath to increase your Shout and Ultimate uptime.
- Last, start farming Lord Zir to get Razorplate and Ugly Bastard Helm, as those will skyrocket your damage output.
- Note that the new Ugly Bastard Helm is an incredibly strong item that gives a ton of 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 affix is the cherry on top to start our journey toward permanent Wrath of the Berserker.
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
- Prioritize getting or crafting a Doombringer. It is amazing for Thorns builds since Maximum Life scales our Thorns value thanks to Outburst. Aside from that, it gives an incredible amount of extra Damage Mitigation and helps us face-tank.
- Then, getting a Ring of Starless Skies is another no-brainer; it gives a bunch of Critical Strike Chance (helpful for Combat Bash), Attack Speed (always good when using Hectic), and a large Global Damage Multiplier that is very simple to keep active.
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.
Why are we not using the Bash Cleave Temper ?
Why are we not using Harlequin Crest/Shako ?
Mechanics
How do I calculate how much Thorns I get from passives and affixes ?
Video Guide
Coming soon
Summary
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, Bul-Kathos and defense oriented Paragon Boards.
- Permanent Berserking uptime thanks to Wrath of the Berserker and Enhanced War Cry.
- Permanent Wrath of the Berserker Ultimate uptime with Cooldown Reduction-focused gear.
- High utility in being able to group enemies via Steel Grasp with close to no Cooldown.
- Low Fury maintenance; after passively generating your initial 25 Fury, Bash will keep it maxed at all times.
- Massive Damage Multipliers thanks to Ugly Bastard Helm and Violent Hammer of the Ancients. Who thought a Fire Overpowering Thorns Barbarian would be a thing?
- Both Starter and Ancestral gear are very easy to get.
Credits
Written by Beatdropper
Reviewed by snail