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 Thorns state in Season 7, then you're in the right place! Extreme tankiness, loads of Cooldown Reduction, active Thorns damage, flexible Spin2Win or Basic+Core gameplay; these combined have one objective, smite monsters as they come close to you (well, or you to them)!
Back to the basics first, let's quickly talk about Thorns and what this build focuses on.
While stacking Life is an obvious objective for any melee-heavy class, we push it even further, as the Outburst and Strategic Challenging Shout passives give us a bigger Thorns base value than any other Aspect or Skill in the game.
Our second objective is ensuring an always active Fortify state so that our massive Thorns while Fortified multiplier stays on. For that, a combination of Thick Skin and Strategic Rallying Cry does the trick.
Next is focusing on Cooldown Reduction to have permanent uptime on our Shouts and Ultimate, which we attain by using a combination of Harlequin Crest, Cooldown Reduction Tempers, and Aspects.
Lastly, we stack various global Damage Multipliers (Thorns not being a skill means it is not able to land Critical Strikes or Overpower hits) and put emphasis on passively packing heretic foes with our newly acquired Witchcraft Powers 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.
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
- The Cycle - Our first Growth & Decay power. While the damage itself isn't all that amazing, we want to avoid hard Crowd Control such as Piranhado that prevent enemies from triggering our Thorns.
- Shaken Soul - Once at rank 10, this gives us an infinite Vulnerable source.
- Hex of Shattering - One way of applying the Hex status, on top of a nice Damage Reduction debuff.
- Soul Harvest - Our second Growth & Decay power, activating both Friend of the Bog and Cornucopia. This power dramatically increases Core Stat based on monster density and is a strong choice, especially since we are always casting a skill that has a cooldown.
- Hex of Whispers - Our third Growth & Decay power, activating both Friend of the Bog and Cornucopia. Outside of its decent damage output it is also a way of applying the Hex state to our targets and provide a decent amount of defense.
- Aura of Siphoning - This is our Aura of choice and third Growth & Decay power, activating Friend of the Bog. The additional healing this Power gives is also a very welcome defensive buff.
Alternate Witchcraft Powers
- None at the moment
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
- Cornucopia - More Fortify and more Thorns on a plate? Gladly, thank you.
- Friend of the Bog - Extra Core Stats and Maximum Life both improve our Thorns damage. A must have.
- Hungering Void - AoE pull every 8 seconds without doing anything? Yes!
Alternate Occult Gems
- Dust Stone - Can be used over Hungering Void if you'd rather have extra damage multipliers over the automatic AoE pulling.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Whirlwind is our main skill to generate (Enhanced Whirlwind) and spend Fury in order to easily stack Barbed Carapace, Ring of Starless Skies and Supreme Wrath of the Berserker.
- Frenzy is our secondary skill. Used every couple of seconds to top us off Fury wise, its main purpose is to provide us Damage Reduction, Cost Reduction and Movement speed through Enhanced Frenzy and Combat Frenzy, but also to activate our Temper-boosted Belligerence passive.
- Wrath of the Berserker acts as a steroid buff, further increasing our Damage, Berserking uptime, Movement Speed and making us Unstoppable while active.
- Rallying Cry is a buff providing us a big Resource Generation bonus (to sustain our high Fury spending gameplay) and Unstoppable for its entire duration.
- Challenging Shout grants 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 is our last buff, giving us a well appreciated multiplicative damage boost.
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 Cry. Afterward, reuse them whenever they are available as each Shout use will reduce your Wrath of the Berserker thanks to the Marshal Glyph.
- Start spinning with Whirlwind toward your nearest pack of monsters and watch Hungering Void suck them into your barbed defenses.
- Use Frenzy every 3 seconds to upkeep your related buffs active, especially Belligerence .
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 Polearm Expertise is used as our assigned weapon for Whirlwind, while Frenzy uses a (forced) dual-wield weapon setup.
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 Shaken Soul, 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
- Marshal
- Rumble
- Revenge
- Challenger
- Executioner
To Level 46
- Marshal
- Revenge
- Challenger
- Executioner
- 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
- Igni + Xal - This combination gives us 20% more Maximum Life every few seconds.
- Bac + Tec - This Runeword constantly spawns 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:
- 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.
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
He has a lot to offer us from a defensive standpoint. Skills like Valiance and Bastion help protect us from heavy hits and grant Unstoppable. Bastion also works in tandem with Ground Slam to provide some very strong offensive buffs with Inspiration. Lastly, he provides a pretty decent boost to all of our Resistances, which can help compensate for low rolls on gear.
Reinforcement: Varyana
Varyana's Bloodthirst serves as a regular Attack Speed steroid.
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
- 50%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 30% Attack speed
- 450%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 4000+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 45,000+ Life
- 200%+ 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 focus on flat Thorns-providing Aspects such as Sticker-thought and Death Wish.
- Whirlwind is our chosen Fury spender for Barbed Carapace as it is very low maintenance thanks to Enhanced Whirlwind.
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.
- 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 is useful here as we aim for permanent uptime on our Ultimate.
- Razorplate is the obvious core of any Thorns build. Despite lacking when it comes to stats, its Unique effect more than makes up for 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
- 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.
- Harlequin Crest and its massive built in Cooldown Reduction are a massive help to reach 100% uptime on our Shouts and Ultimate.
- Getting a Ring of Starless Skies is another no-brainer; as the Cost Reduction and large global damage multiplier are very simple to keep active.
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
- The Pit Pushing setup changes things around when it comes to gameplay.
- Trade Whirlwind for Bash.
- Instead of pressing Frenzy every 3 seconds, use Hammer of the Ancients to stack your Fury spending multipliers and trigger Violent Hammer of the Ancients.
- Ultimate and Shout usage remains the same.
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 Cleaves temper?
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?
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 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.
- Flexible gameplay; either zoom around with Whirlwind or get a more focused gameplay with Bash.
Credits
Written by Beatdropper
Reviewed by snail