Boulder Toss Raekor Barbarian BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

This build takes advantage of the full Raekor set bonuses, incorporating five of the six available items and completing the requirements via a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. Rolls-wise, this Boulder Toss-centric build rolls for Ancient Spear skill bonuses on the Raekor's Will and Raekor's Striders. The build also relies heavily on Area Damage procs, Cooldown Reduction to cut the Wrath of the Berserker downtime, and Resource Cost Reduction wherever it can spare the stats. This primary stat-intensive playstyle requires a lot of optimization on gear, and careful balancing of the main stats you trade off for utility stats based on your current Paragon level. You will be mixing the Raekor set with the craftable Captain Crimson's Trimmings set — Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and one more of your choosing, according to your weaker Raekor set piece (either Captain Crimson's Thrust or Captain Crimson's Waders). This set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build.

The cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur leaves space for a potent combo in the jewelry: the Endless Walk set, The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge amulet. This jewelry set adds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% if you remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reduction while moving. This dynamic mimics the Boulder Toss Barb playstyle, as you alternate between Furious Charge bursts of movement in search of the next big fight with extended periods of stationary Ancient Spear spam. Note that if you are using this build for lower tier GRs for the purposes of speed farming instead of progression, the Endless Walk set should be swapped out for pure damage amplification items: Squirt's Necklace and Convention of Elements.

Your other ring slot should be taken by Band of Might. This ring offers supreme mitigation for the build: 80% damage reduction, towering over other defensive staples like Unity and its 50% DR. It is also independent of the presence of a follower, and has a modest requirement of casting Furious Charge at least once every 8 seconds — in practice, something you do a lot more often in this build.

The remainder of your item slots — bracers, main- and off-hand slots — will be dedicated to Ancient Spear-centric items. Skular's Salvation, The Three Hundredth Spear and Arreat's Law all amplify Ancient Spear damage by up to 200%, as well as adding various other bonuses to the build. Arreat's Law is most notable in that regard, since it adds the unique Fury overcapping mechanic to the build, as noted in the rotation paragraph of this build's Skills page. Note that there is a viable tankier path to take with this build, which uses a Stormshield in the off-hand and cubes one of the two legendary spears depending on your worse rolled item. This adaptation uses Sword and Board as a passive, over the standard No Escape recommendation. Stat-wise, aim for high Strength, All Resistance, Cooldown Reduction, and Critical Hit Chance on the Stormshield.

Cooldown Reduction is a major consideration for Raekor Boulder Toss Barbs, and a priority on most gear slots where you can obtain it. Aside from a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm and maxed out CDR in Paragons, you should also strive to obtain as close to maximum CDR as possible on your rings, weapons, shoulder and gloves. A perfected scenario puts you at 67% CDR, or a 10-second downtime of Wrath of the Berserker. You can strive for a luxury Resource Cost Reduction roll on your shoulders (alongside the higher priority CDR and Area Damage), since it feeds into the Damage Reduction bonuses from your Cpt. Crimson's set.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Ancient Spear % bonus on both the helm and boots (maximum of 30%), Physical elemental damage on both the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 600% prior to buffs, respectively), and Area Damage of 100%+.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 700-900k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. The build generally lacks sources of health sustain, with one viable option being Life per Fury Spent through the Ignore Pain Ignorance is Bliss rune.

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Strength.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. Max out Fury next, due to the interaction with Boulder Toss. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Strength, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness.

In the Offense section, max out CDR, Crit Chance, Crit Damage and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life per Hit and Globe Radius.

Your first jewelry socket will be taken by Zei's Stone of Vengeance, which provides a multiplicative damage increase against enemies based on your distance to them. It also has a helpful Stun proc, which indirectly contributes to your safety and assists the CC-dependent Bane of the Trapped. If you feel your build is too glass cannon, a decent alternative for this slot is to use the tanky Esoteric Alteration gem — or alter to the Stormshield variant outlined above.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property when in a 15-yard radius, and is otherwise procced by your various sources of crowd control.

Bane of the Stricken occupies a firm jewelry socket during GR progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Note that if you are doing lower tier Greater Rifts for farming or gem leveling purposes, you should exchange this gem for the safety shield provided by Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard, which will safeguard your Squirt's Necklace bonuses.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Rubies in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Ruby as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Strength in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Diamond. There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. This build is cooldown dependent, which necessitates a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. In your weapons, use Flawless Royal Emeralds for the Crit Damage boost.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

The Furnace offers a simple and straightforward bonus — 50% increased damage against Elite enemies, helping you take down the biggest threat in Greater Rift progression that much faster. Note that if you are using the tanky, Stormshield-wielding version of this build, you will need to slot either The Three Hundredth Spear or Arreat's Law in the weapon Cube slot, depending on your worse rolled item.

You will be taking Ancient Parthan Defenders in the armor Cube slot, since it provides percentage-based damage mitigation for stunned enemies within a 25-yard radius — a generous range, and a condition you easily fulfill Furious Charge (you get the Cold Rush rune for free from the Raekor set, and for the purposes of this bracer, Freeze = Stun).

In order to mix in the Raekor set with the craftable Captain Crimson set, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two set bonuses together.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, you should slot Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to take advantage of the ring's cooldown resetting powers, netting you a steady source of Wrath of the Berserker availability.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress due to her Cooldown Reduction bonuses and the slowing shield she can provide.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid (allows you to break up walls that impede your ranged DPS) and Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (provides a secondary source of crowd control immunity during Wrath of the Berserker downtime).