Frenzy HotNS Barbarian Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The HotNS Frenzy Barbarian is a capable build for Normal Rift and Bounty farming all the way through the highest Torment difficulties. The build variation suffers from the minor inconvenience of being a predominantly single target build, but with the correct playstyle (mostly ignoring trash and focusing down elite after elite), it handles the task with ease. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Frenzy Vanguard Furious Charge Merciless Assault 1 War Cry Veteran's Warning 2 Sprint Marathon 3 Battle Rage Ferocity 4 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity
Passive Skills
Berserker Rage Rampage Boon of Bul-Kathos Pound of Flesh

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

During speed farming, you are allowed much more liberal use of Wrath of the Berserker; you can pop it as soon as you enter the Rift and keep it up pretty much indefinitely thanks to the powers of In-geom. Aside from WotB, keep up War Cry and Battle Rage up at all times as your staple buffs, and reapply Sprint as soon as it falls off. The remainder of the core rotation stays the same; you will be using Furious Charge to jump between packs and one-shotting the priority target with one or two quick Frenzy slashes. Due to the single target nature and In-geom proc dependency of this build, always keep in mind to focus on elites and very dense trash packs, largely ignoring stragglers on your way as they will only slow down your runs.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• Frenzy is still your main damage dealer, but since you will be dropping progression-oriented weaponry like Azurewrath (and losing the elemental damage bonus as consequence) for In-geom (see gearing section below) you can change from the Cold rune Berserk or the Fire rune Maniac to any one you like. For the sake of example, we have swapped to Vanguard, though it should be noted you receive all rune effects regardless, due to The Undisputed Champion.
• Furious Charge retains its role as a movement skill, along with the cooldown-resetting powers of the rune Merciless Assault.
• Battle Rage is present in the speed farming build as well, but the rune is swapped from the progression-oriented Bloodshed to the extra movement speed of Ferocity.
• When you are solo speed farming, use the slot usually occupied by Threatening Shout for the short bursts of speed from Sprint Marathon — useful when there is no one to Furious Charge to, and especially so in Bounties.
• War Cry stays in the build not so much for its defensive properties (although they are welcome), but for its speed farming synergy from a cubed or worn Chilanik's Chain — providing a substantial, party-wide movement speed buff.
• Wrath of the Berserker Insanity is still part of your skill lineup, and will have much higher uptime due to In-geom.
• You will retain the vast majority of your passive lineup from the solo GR progression build. Boon of Bul-Kathos is still quite useful for WotB uptime even with In-geom present, while Rampage and Berserker Rage are consistent and straightforward damage buffs for a generator build in speed farming.
• If you feel you confidently overpower the chosen difficulty, you can take off the excessive damage of Ruthless (or the defense of Nerves of Steel, depending on your choice) for the extra movement speed of Pound of Flesh, which synergizes excellently with Avarice Band.

Most of the gear from the Greater Rift progression build will still make sense for speed farming, but a few variations will be necessary in order to maximize your productivity and momentum during regular Rift clears.

The Horde of the Ninety Savages set is still worn almost in its entirety, but it is recommended that you use the Depth Diggers legendary pants as a worn piece (instead of cubed, as in the progression version). They replace the Leggings of Savages and necessitate the use of Ring of Royal Grandeur in your jewelry Cube slot to complete the 6-piece HotNS bonus. This change however nets you a valuable armor Cube slot for utility bonuses — see the Cube section below.

During standard rift speed farming, the timing and positioning-reliant bonuses of the Endless Walk set is greatly diminished in usefulness. In its place, try wearing a combination of an Avarice Band (or Rechel's Ring of Larceny) and a Band of Might. Avarice Band is an Act III bounty cache legendary ring that increases your gold and health globe pickup radius as you pick up gold, stacking to the massive, half-screen circle of 30 yards — all for a generous 10 second duration. Its legendary power will greatly assist you in maintaining the movespeed bonuses from both Boon of the Hoarder and Pound of Flesh. Starting in Patch 2.7 however, your chosen follower can wear this ring and emanate its power to your character, meaning you get its powers for free. As such, your next best choice is Rechel's Ring of Larceny, whose Fear-based speed proc (and innate Fear on hit roll, making it proc itself) will make your runs even faster.

Lastly, complete the jewelry with a Hellfire Amulet of Strength (with Ruthless) in solo play, or with The Flavor of Time in groups. The latter doubles the duration of Pylon pickups, which in most speed farming cases covers for a third to half of a rift clear, further smoothing out runs. It is not recommended in solo play simply because it can be worn by the follower and emanated onto you.

During low tier GRs or normal rift speedruns in solo play, an optimized character can avoid the overkill of toughness in the bracer slot by swapping to Warzechian Armguards for the additional environment destruction-based speed boost. The usual recommendation, Nemesis Bracers, can be worn by the follower starting from Patch 2.7, but should still be taken by the character themselves in group play.

In order to ensure very high uptime of Wrath of the Berserker during speed farming, you should drop the Azurewrath recommendation from the progression build and use an In-geom. The cooldown reduction upon elite kill powers of this legendary sword directly correspond to the elite hunting playstyle of this build. For the most part of character progression, your other weapon should still be Oathkeeper for the significant damage bonuses it provides. Note however that a high Paragon, optimized gear character can afford to drop Oathkeeper in favor of Echoing Fury to enhance the uptime of Rechel's Ring of Larceny. The Fear proc synergy between those two items will further amplify your mobility.

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.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random. For this build, we recommend aiming for the Wrath of the Berserker Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Wrath of the Berserker Sanctification: Hitting enemies generates stacks of Tempest Rhythm. Activating Wrath of the Berserker consumes 50 stacks of Tempest Rhythm and startles enemies within 16 yards, causing them to take 2% increased damage per stack for 20 seconds. Max 50 stacks.

Use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). In the case of this build, a good candidate for Sanctification is the Oathkeeper.

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

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.

Simplicity's Strength remains a universally desired damage amplification gem for Primary skill-focused builds.

Boon of the Hoarder is a great speed farming inclusion, as it increases both your gold income (necessary for empowering GRs) as well as your movement speed.

Early on in character progression, you can use Bane of the Trapped for its solid damage increase against targets under the effects of crowd control. Once you are confident in your damage output however, it is advisable to change into Wreath of Lightning simply for its level 25 movement speed increase, further smoothing out farming runs.

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

Tucked away in the cube, Bastion's Revered offers a key legendary effect for the build — the extension of Frenzy stacks from 5 to 10. The result is a whopping 150% increase to Frenzy attack speed at cap, as well as a 25% damage buff from Maniac and 50% additional movement speed from Vanguard.

As outlined above, taking Depth Diggers into your worn item selection frees up this slot for the substantial movement speed increase of Chilanik's Chain. Its legendary powers trigger when using War Cry, necessitating that you pop it at least once every 10 seconds to maintain the solid, party-wide MS buff. During solo play, or if you do not particularly care to boost your speed further than the skill and worn item recommendations, you can slot Goldwrap here for its synergy with Boon of the Hoarder and the Avarice Band worn by the follower, and enjoy near-invulnerability as you farm content that drops gold.

In order to balance the 6-piece bonus of the Horde of the Ninety Savages set with the aforementioned speed farming prerequisites, you will need to slot a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry Cube slot.

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 T16 rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her utility-laden arsenal of skills, and especially her cooldown reduction bonus, which assists your significant CDR needs during farming. Her balance of increasing survivability while also improving damage makes her an excellent choice during speed farming of any kind.

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.

You have two viable potion options for this build; either lean into extra health sustain with Bottomless Potion of the Leech for its Life per Hit bonuses, or try to compensate for your lack of permanent CC immunity due to lesser WotB uptime with Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered.