Frenzy Thorns LoN Barbarian Speed Farming Variation

The LoN Thorns Frenzy Barbarian can deal reasonably well with Normal Rift and Bounty farming all the way through the highest Torment difficulties. It might lag slightly behind the top tier builds for those purposes due to its focus on hunting down elites, potentially skipping large amounts of valuable trash. 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 Battle Rage Ferocity 2 Sprint Marathon 3 War Cry Veteran's Warning 4 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity
Passive Skills
Pound of Flesh Berserker Rage Ruthless Boon of Bul-Kathos

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

The basis of the Thorns Frenzy Barb is still the same in standard rifts — jumping from one elite to another, and generally killing trash as collateral damage rather than the focus. The build's signature mobility is achieved largely through the combination of Illusory Boots and Furious Charge, and you should aim to reset the cooldown of the latter by charging multiple enemies and taking advantage of the Merciless Assault effect. During speed farming, this is also augmented by the combination of Chilanik's Chain and War Cry, bringing a party-wide movement speed buff to your overall efficiency, as well as the personal movement speed buffs of Battle Rage Ferocity and Sprint Marathon. Try to stick to elites, mowing them down with Frenzy and activating Wrath of the Berserker as often as you can (unbroken chains will not be uncommon due to the combination of The Flavor of Time and Channeling Pylons).

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 means of Thorns application, however you should swap the Maniac rune for the movement speed stacking Vanguard.
• Furious Charge Merciless Assault remains unchanged across variations, and you will largerly rely on it for mobility purposes. War Cry is also present during speed farming, but it gains an extra mobility edge due to the worn Chilanik's Chain.
• Wrath of the Berserker Insanity is an omnipresent self-buff in both versions of the build.
• Ignore Pain and Threatening Shout will step down, replaced by two pure movement speed utility skills: Battle Rage Ferocity and Sprint Marathon.
• Tough as Nails, Berserker Rage and Boon of Bul-Kathos are still a solid foundation of your passive selection.
• You can change the flexible fourth slot from progression staples like Nerves of Steel to Pound of Flesh for its 20% additional movement speed at 5 health globe stacks. This bonus that is trivial to refresh with its generous 15 second duration and a cubed 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 vast majority of your pieces remain unchanged between the two builds; you will still rely on the combination of Aquila Cuirass and St. Archew's Gage for protection, on Illusory Boots for freedom of movement, on Swamp Land Waders for the extra damage, and Mortick's Brace for all the runes of Wrath of the Berserker. You weapon and offhand combo will still be Hack and Oathkeeper.

Compared to the progression build, you have a bigger incentive to wear Andariel's Visage over Leoric's Crown, since WotB downtime is a lesser concern in standard difficulties. This will be greatly assisted by the doubled duration of Pylon effects, courtesy of The Flavor of Time.

In speed farm, and especially when grouped up, consider swapping your belt from Pride of Cassius into Chilanik's Chain for its excellent increase of party movement speed. Another minor consideration for regular rifts is to swap from Pauldrons of the Skeleton King to Homing Pads, to ensure uninterrupted teleportation (this will not be necessary during solo play, as your follower can be the one emanating the Homing Pads power).

In Season 24, your ideal weapon during speed farm runs will be Gimmershred, whose fast attack speed, elite damage increase and unrivaled skill and pure stat bonuses will outperform any other alternatives. It will ideally roll with the weapon power of In-geom or Messerschmidt's Reaver and the Pound of Flesh passive. Learn more about Ethereal weapons in our Ethereal mechanics guide, and read up on how to farm them in the Ethereal farming guide.

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.

Boyarsky's Chip remains a universally desired damage amplification gem for Thorns-based builds. The same can be said for Bane of the Trapped, although once you comfortably outscale the content, you can consider using Wreath of Lightning in this slot for the lvl 25+ movement speed proc.

In normal rifts, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. This high utility gem feeds you practically infinite gold and gives you a massive short-term speed boost while picking up gold, automated by a cubed Avarice Band.

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 in GR pushes, or 50% additional movespeed from Vanguard when speedfarming.

If you struggle with survivability in high Torments, you can complement your Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band with a Goldwrap in the Cube Armor slot — its legendary power skyrockets your Toughness as you acquire gold. Ideally though, this slot will be taken by the environment destruction-based speed boosts of Warzechian Armguards in solo play (where your follower will be emanating the power of the elite-spawning Nemesis Bracers), or said Nemesis Bracers in group play.

During speed farming, the jewelry slot in the Cube should be taken up by the Act III cache legendary ring Avarice Band. Its unique property extends your pickup radius up to the massive 30 yards for a generous 10 second period. Triggered, maximized and constantly refreshed from the endless stream of Boon of the Hoarder gold, the ring and the gem will keep you sped up throughout the rift.

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 standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.

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 potion for this build is Bottomless Potion of the Leech due to its Life per Hit bonuses, which synergize perfectly for the high attack speed and sustain-through-attacks playstyle of the build.