Barbarian Legacy of Raekor Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.6 / Season 29)

The Legacy of Raekor set starting build significantly alters the foundations of the leveling and fresh 70 build, leaning heavily into the Furious Charge strengths of the set instead. Your primary damage dealer and mobility tool will shift from Whirlwind to Furious Charge. With a combination of the rune Merciless Assault and the easily obtained 2-piece set bonus, this limited use heavy hitter will be transformed into a readily available tool. In turn, the leveling-oriented Rend will be exchanged for a Fury dump skill — either Ancient Spear Boulder Toss or Seismic Slam Rumble. Once you obtain the full 6-piece bonuses of the Raekor set, these reserve-emptying nukes will provide you with the best stack spent to damage dealt ratio.

The following build assumes you will assemble the build in 2-piece increments, similarly to how Haedrig's Gift would dole the set out. Haderig's Gift is a seasonal participation reward that gives you a full class-specific set as you complete Chapters II, III and IV of the Seasonal Journey (accessible via the leaf-shaped icon in the top right corner). The cadence of early natural character progression is also not too far off the listed strategy, so even if the set is not part of Haedrig's Gift, you can put the advice below to good use.

Active Skills
Furious Charge Merciless Assault Threatening Shout Falter 1 Battle Rage Ferocity 2 Sprint Marathon 3 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity 4 War Cry Veteran's Warning
Passive Skills
Rampage Berserker Rage Pound of Flesh Nerves of Steel

At the 2-piece Legacy of Raekor set bonus, you gain some Furious Charge utility; it refunds a charge if it hits only one enemy. Coupled with the charge-refunding rune Merciless Assault, Furious Charge will turn into a readily available asset that you will need to learn and master in order to wield Raekor effectively. You can continue using the leveling to 70 build for as long as it is convenient to you, or you can adapt to the build displayed above.

The dynamic at this point is to Furious Charge into enemies, using careful positioning with the skill to reset it and nuke enemies down with its substantial damage. Always try to either hit one enemy, or more than 3-4, in order to have charge readily available. The remainder of your rotation is purely spent on buffs and debuffs. Always keep War Cry Veteran's Warning and Battle Rage Ferocity active, as they will provide significant survivability and speed, respectively. As you engage a pack, debuff them with Threatening Shout Falter for additional damage. Finally, use Wrath of the Berserker as often as you can; it will have a significant downtime at this point, but whenever it is active, it will make a difference.

One thing that might influence your build decisions early on is your crafting and/or gambling at level 1, especially if you followed the advice in the Beginner Seasonal Guide. Items you might have from leveling that significantly alter your setup are:

• Band of Might — if you lucked into gambling a Band of Might, you will have an endgame-worthy source of damage reduction that is inseparable from the rotation of Raekor builds. It will allow you to take riskier, damage-oriented skill, passive, and gear choices. Overall, it is a wonderful starting point for a Raekor Barb.

Active Skills
Furious Charge Merciless Assault Ancient Spear Boulder Toss 1 Battle Rage Bloodshed 2 Sprint Marathon 3 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity 4 Threatening Shout Falter
Passive Skills
Rampage Unforgiving Relentless No Escape

At the 4-piece Legacy of Raekor set bonus, you gain a significant boon — a tremendous base increase to Furious Charge damage, access to all its runes, as well as an increase of Ancient Spear damage based on missing health. At this point, unless you lucked into The Three Hundredth Spear or Arreat's Law, it is not necessary to include Ancient Spear; if you did, however, you can exchange Threatening Shout then and there and start getting used to the Raekor nuke.

You can also alter some of your active and passive choices to ramp up your damage, in order to increase the difficulties you can handle. A simple change from Battle Rage Ferocity to Bloodshed and Pound of Flesh to Brawler will cost you some movement speed, but will increase your DPS output.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 4-piece bonus, you have attained at least one additional key item for Raekor Barbarians. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, this item will likely be either Arreat's Law, The Three Hundredth Spear, or Skular's Salvation. Either of these items will practically cement the inclusion of Ancient Spear in the build, but if you stumbled into the bracers particularly, you should use the rune Boulder Toss straight away to increase your nuke potential.

Active Skills
Furious Charge Merciless Assault Ancient Spear Boulder Toss 1 Battle Rage Ferocity 2 Sprint Marathon 3 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity 4 War Cry Veteran's Warning
Passive Skills
Rampage Unforgiving Relentless Nerves of Steel

At the 4-piece Legacy of Raekor set bonus, you gain a massive damage increase to Ancient Spear damage as you use Furious Charge and/or Weapon Throw. While taking the generator skill is not out of the question (we recommend the Balanced Weapon rune for the increased Fury generation), it should not be necessary. You generate more than enough Fury through Furious Charge, War Cry and Unforgiving, and monster HP is not high enough that Boulder Toss cannot nuke them down as is. That being said, if you get Arreat's Law — you are more than welcome to try the generator dynamic as outlined in our endgame Boulder Toss Build.

Skill-wise, this is the point where you should take Ancient Spear into the build. Whether you take Boulder Toss right away, or ease yourself into the Raekor dynamic with a rune like Jagged Edge is up to you. You also gain more than enough burst to take back some utility and speed into the build; you should revert Battle Rage back to Ferocity when farming with a 6-piece Raekor. You should also take Relentless in your passives, as fighting with the 4-piece "low health" bonuses of Raekor in your mind will become more and more prevalent.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 6-piece bonus, you have attained at least two more crucial pieces for Raekor Barbarians. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, these items will likely be either Arreat's Law, The Three Hundredth Spear, or Skular's Salvation. Having one or more of these items in your setup will greatly improve the performance of an Ancient Spear-centric build. Prioritize their acquisition with utmost urgency.

In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the Raekor set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble a Raekor Boulder Toss Barbarian, you should do the following.

• Gather the full 6-piece Raekor set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Pants, Shoulders, Boots, Gloves, Helm, and Chest. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Pants) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
• Upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) One-Handed Spears to get The Three Hundredth Spear and Arreat's Law; these are build-defining legendary weapons that increase Ancient Spear damage and provide additional Weapon Throw utility that ties into the mechanics of the Raekor set. Getting these two spears is trivial, since as of Patch 2.7.3 they are the only legendary spears that Barbarians can acquire.
• Gamble Rings on a Level 1 Barbarian (either your starting character or an alt) to get Band of Might, a massive source of damage reduction and a universally useful item for Barbarians. It is one of the two legendary Rings available to level 1 Barbarians, making the gamble significantly easier.
• Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get In-geom; doing this on a level 1 Demon Hunter alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary swords. In-geom greatly benefits early game Raekor Barbarians, since it makes Wrath of the Berserker a much more readily available buff.
• Gamble or upgrade rare Bracers to get Skular's Salvation; this legendary piece gives you another massive damage increase to Ancient Spear Boulder Toss. As a bonus, gambling or upgrading this slot can yield Ancient Parthan Defenders, which should be cubed and used as a protective piece — Furious Charge procs the bracer with the Freeze of Cold Rush. Even better, gambling on this slot can yield Nemesis Bracers, which are a staple farming item for your Follower.
• Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful legendaries in the build as described in the dedicated endgame Raekor Barbarian guide. Bounties will net you craftable set recipes as well, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
• While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; the Endless Walk set ( The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge), Convention of Elements, and Squirt's Necklace will all drastically improve this and other builds, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Unity, or Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.