Completing the seasonal questline, partaking in the seasonal Blood Harvest event and collecting Potent Blood are the main ways of obtaining and empowering these abilities. Check out the full Season 2 Guide from Chewingnom to learn more! Helms & Boots can have up to 3 Pacts, Pants can have up to 4, Chests & Gloves can have up to 5 giving you 20 Pacts to empower.

An ideal combat encounter would play out like this:

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.

In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to gain a significant bonus to our damage against Vulnerable enemies. 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. Make sure to train your Two-Handed Axe expertise up to level 10 to gain the full bonus. You can do this by hitting monsters with a Two-Handed Axe. This should take less than an hour.

The Two-Handed Mace is our best option for Upheaval because many nodes, glyphs, affixes and skills provide synergy between Overpower and Two-Handed Mace.

Our Two-Handed Slashing weapon is the best option for Leap because using a Two-Handed Sword makes everything we hit with Leap start Bleeding, which improves our Damage Reduction against those enemies.

For Lunging Strike, we want to use our One-Handed Weapons because they are fastest, which allows us to generate Fury quickly.

This build recommends the Ultimate Passive skill Unbridled Rage, which doubles the cost of Upheaval from 40 Fury to 80 Fury . If you do not have very much Resource Generation on your rings or Fury Cost Reduction on your boots and amulet, you will not generate enough Fury with Leap to pay for Upheaval, which makes the build frustrating to play. You may want to use Walking Arsenal instead of Unbridled Rage until you get enough Resource Generation to make Leap generate approximately 80 Fury . Don't be afraid to cast a few Lunging Strike between Leap and Upheaval to build a little more Fury , or to cap Limitless Rage.

The base cooldown of Leap is 17 seconds, so we need to significantly reduce its cooldown in order to use it as a generator. The rare ring aspects Giant Strides and Bear Clan Berserker make a big difference, as do Ranks of Leap on pants and Ranks of Brawling Skills on amulets. The affix Cooldown Reduction on amulets and helmets helps too. Prioritize these affixes in order to make this build viable. If we stack enough of those bonuses, it's possible to reduce the cooldown of Leap down to one second or less.

Before you commit to equipping new Unique items, check if you'll be removing equipment with the above affixes and aspects. If you drop too many sources of Resource Generation, you can't pay for Upheaval with a single Leap. If you drop too many Ranks of Leap or Cooldown Reduction, you may find yourself waiting for Leap to come off cooldown, which hurts your DPS and survivability.

Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!

We need to level up our Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default, this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.

When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.

Starting at level 50, we'll need to take a few steps to bring this build fully online. First we need our Vampiric Powers if we haven't already got them all. Second we'll need to start collection all of our aspects. Third we need to fight tough bosses to target farm our uniques. Finally, we should farm Nightmare Dungeons and Abattoir of Zir to level up our glyphs.

Vampiric Powers can be purchased by participating in the Blood Harvest, purchased with Potent Blood, and by completing the seasonal quest line. Acquire these powers and level them up to 3. Note: do not level up Metamorphosis - doing so offers very little advantage, and interferes with Tibault's Will. Although we don't recommend using those pants in this build, you may try other builds that do.

Aspects from dungeons

Aspects from Legendary drops: if you find a legendary aspect that's a perfect roll, save it. In addition, if you find any of the aspects listed above or below at any quality, save it unless you already have one of that quality in your codex.

Ring of Red Furor gives us a reliable boost to our damage. It also gives a huge amount of Resource Generation and Attack Speed which is very valuable and hard to come by. Ring of Red Furor ensures that every other Upheaval will Critically Hit as long as we don't pause too long between casts. If equipping this ring means losing Bear Clan Berserker and increases your Leap cooldown too much, you won't be able to make good use of it. Echo of Varshan has an increased chance to drop Ring of Red Furor, so head over to our Echo of Varshan Boss Guide when you're ready to start farming this ring.

Hellhammer is our unique of choice for this build because it gives up to 6 ranks to our core skill Upheaval. We should have 9 ranks without it (5 base, +4 from gloves) so this should bring us up to 15 ranks. This makes Upheaval capable of dealing more damage than almost every other skill available to Barbarians. In addition, this unique weapon increases the size of Upheaval's AoE. Together, those effects mean we can wipe out entire groups of enemies with a single swing of our hammer. The Beast in the Ice has an increased chance to drop Hellhammer. Check out The Beast in the Ice Boss Guide for more information.

The next four Uniques can be farmed from from Duriel, King of Maggots, so when you're ready for that challenge, head on over to the Duriel, King of Maggots Boss Guide to learn more.

Banished Lord's Talisman is incredible for this build. It gives huge amounts of Overpower Damage, Resource Generation, and Critical Strike Chance, all of which we need. On top of that, it gives us another 2 ranks to Upheaval. None of those great affixes can usually be found on amulets. The best part, however, is the unique aspect, which gives us another source of guaranteed Overpower, and more than doubles the damage of any Overpower that also critically hits. However, if equipping this amulet means losing Cooldown Reduction and Ranks of Brawling Skills, it might slow down our Leap, and make this build less viable.

Godslayer Crown is a good addition to this build because it gives a bonus to Cooldown Reduction which we need for Leap. It also gives a large damage bonus when we stun Elites or Bosses, which we will be doing with Ground Stomp and Upheaval. Finally, it stacks up our enemies, which makes it easier to hit them all at once with Upheaval.

We may also find Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty and Andariel's Visage. While these are both very good, they do not have the Cooldown Reduction we desperately need.

Harlequin Crest takes this build to another level. It is an extremely rare drop that is a huge benefit to almost every build for every class, so if you get one, equip it immediately and never take it off. This helm is especially important for this build because we need additional ranks of Leap and Cooldown Reduction to achieve our optimal rotation and maximum DPS. Once you get this helm, you can comfortably equip Banished Lord's Talisman and Ring of Red Furor without incurring a crippling Leap cooldown.

The Grandfather is another extremely rare drop that is highly sought-after by almost all players and every build. The affixes are not great, but the unique aspect is incredible. Our Best in Slot build gives us over 75% chance to Critically Strike with Upheaval. This sword will double the damage of every one of those Critical Strikes. Having this weapon practically doubles our damage per second.

You may also find Doombringer and Melted Heart of Selig. These are good items to equip if you feel like you need more defense, but they will cause us too lose too much offense. This build is already very safe and defensive, so using these two items would make us less balanced and slow us down too much.

If you find Ring of Starless Skies, throw it in the garbage. Almost all the affixes are terrible, and practically anything you do will break the aspect's effect, including actions that are not skills. This is currently bugged and is virtually useless for all builds.

By now you should be level 100, and whether you got Harlequin Crest and The Grandfather, or just a bank full of Ring of Starless Skies, you should be getting ready to advance to the toughest endgame content: The Abattoir of Zir. To unlock this challenge, you have to complete the Season Journey, which may require you to complete several random tasks, including leveling a glyph up to level 21, and killing Echo of Lilith. Farm glyph experience in the highest tier Nightmare Dungeon you can survive, and check out our Echo of Lilith Boss Guide when you feel like tackling that problem. Once those challenges feel trivial, you're ready for the Abattoir of Zir. Refer to our Abattoir of Zir Campfire Chat review for more information on what to expect on the other side of the bloody rift.

Follow the build's gearing progression from level 50 to 100, including the changes that need to be made as you obtain Legendary Aspects and Uniques.

Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:

Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build into endgame.

There are many stats and status effects that generate on gear, but many are not important for your build. See below for a general breakdown as well as a per slot priority list in the list.

This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:

The Upheaval Barbarian is a unique build that feels both chill and explosive. Capable of destroying anything and everything with the click of a button, the only downside is its long reload time. Assuming you spend that reload time running from one pile of destruction to the next unexplored room, you don't really feel any drawbacks. Pray you land a Hellhammer, because this build is a real blast!

Written by Slothmaster
Reviewed by Wudijo and Snail