Furious Charge IK/Raekor Barbarian BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

This build takes the combined power of the Immortal King set and the Raekor set, taking 5 pieces of Immortal King and 3 pieces of Raekor set respectively and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur to reduce the number of items for set bonus completion by one. Naturally, you will be cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur to reduce the number of items for set bonus completion by one. The Immortal King's Boulder Breaker, Immortal King's Tribal Binding and Raekor's Burden are taken as mandatory, since their slots do not conflict between the two sets.

Pure Toughness rolls are preferred on the pants and belt, with Life per Fury spent on the latter. As expected, double Crit stats are taken on the gloves, alongside Strength and Area Damage. As a final note: high damage range, good Strength and Call of the Ancients %, as well as extra damage % and area damage rolls are the desired stats on the Immortal King's Boulder Breaker.

With its addition, Mortick's Brace overwhelms practically all other options for Barbarians. This class-specific legendary bracer grants you the effect of every Wrath of the Berserker rune: from the staple 50% damage increase of Insanity, through the burst damage additions of Arreat's Wail and Slaughter, to the protective and utility bonuses of Striding Giant and Thrive on Chaos.

With the changes in Patch 2.6.1, the recommended jewelry split for the build is Band of Might and Convention of Elements. The base damage increase of the armor sets, coupled with the significant boost to Band of Might's damage reduction, make this setup preferable and significantly smoother to play and enjoy. Like any Convention of Elements-centric build, make sure to pay attention to the timing of the ring and maximize charges into density and spender usage during the Physical cycle.

On the topic of jewelry, aim for as perfect of an elemental amulet as you can. The ideal rolls are Crit Chance, Crit Damage, an open socket and Physical elemental damage. The recommended amulet is Hellfire Amulet of Strength, since it allows you access to an additional synergistic passive like Brawler, Animosity or Relentless. The former favorite The Flavor of Time should now be slotted on your follower, and its power will be transferred to your character via the Emanate mechanics.

Note that you can shift around Immortal King and Raekor pieces according to your best rolls, as long as you maintain the equipped ratio of 5 Immortal King pieces and 3 Raekor pieces. The table below is just a viable example of several possible combinations.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Furious Charge % bonus on both the chest and shoulders (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 500%, respectively), and Area Damage of 100%+. Charge Barbs try to extend their Fury pool due to the Immortal King set and Boulder Toss mechanics, so obtain Max Fury on both your belt and weapon.

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. You will mostly sustain through Life per Fury Spent on gear, with ideally one high roll in your setup (belt preferred), though you can double up with another on the weapon if you prefer a safer route.

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.

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 Band of Might.

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.

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 the Immortal King 4-piece set bonus and 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 Life on Hit first, then finish off with Globe Radius. Resource Cost Reduction should be skipped, as it directly interferes with the Immortal King 4-piece set bonus and with Life per Fury Spent stats on gear.

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, and is otherwise kept up with the Cold Rush freeze (you get the rune for free from the Raekor 2-piece bonus), making it an inseparable part of this crowd control-reliant setup.

Bane of the Stricken builds up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and has 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 — as such, Furious Charge builds benefit from it massively. Note that if you are doing lower tier Greater Rifts for farming or gem leveling purposes, you should exchange this gem for the universal, well-rounded bonuses of Bane of the Powerful.

To maximize your damage, your last legendary gem slot for high end Greater Rift pushing needs to be Wreath of Lightning. Since the movement speed proc of the gem (from its level 25 property) feeds into the legendary effect of Standoff, the gem's inclusion squeezes the last bit of DPS possible into the build. If you are running lower tier Greater Rifts and you would prefer safety over extra damage (say you are doing gem ups, or playing Hardcore and not pushing), you can viably alternate the final gem slot to Esoteric Alteration — the strongest legendary gem for mitigation, which scales your elemental resistances per gem level, as well as adding an emergency toughness spike from the level 25 property.

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. As this is a fairly easy build to manage cooldowns in, slot a Flawless Royal Amethyst 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 formerly unremarkable Standoff polearm has been turned into a potent source of additional damage for the Furious Charge build, and is the whole reason to spec into additional movement speed.

Once a staple in the gearing of a Furious Charge Barb, the Vile Ward shoulder has been moved to the cube to ease the way for pure offense jewelry, as well as to maximize the shoulder's power in one stroke. The only limits to the Vile Ward damage scaling are the number of enemies you can strike at once, making trash-dense rifts your ideal playground.

In this Immortal King / Raekor mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur — a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two sets together. The ability to run with one full 6-piece set bonus and an additional 4-piece bonus, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost to the build.

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 Scoundrel due to his powerful crit buff, allowing you brief windows of extra damage that are well suited to the strengths of this build.

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.

Three legendary potions can be considered useful in a Charge Barb build. Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid allows you to break through Waller affixes, which is a great boon to a build that is highly dependent on mobility. Bottomless Potion of Amplification adds some extra healing to your Life per Fury Spent tactics with Boulder Toss. Finally, Bottomless Potion of the Diamond is a straightforward addition that simply layers a short All Resist protective coating after drinking (All Resistance is the preferred form of mitigation stacking for Strength-based characters, since their mainstat scales Armor already.)