Furious Charge IK/Raekor Barbarian Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Furious Charge Merciless Assault Seismic Slam Rumble 1 Battle Rage Bloodshed 2 Sprint Marathon 3 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity 4 Call of the Ancients Together as One
Passive Skills
Rampage Berserker Rage Ruthless Nerves of Steel

The build starts runs with an activation of Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker; both skills are to be kept up throughout the rift using the Immortal King set bonus. While Wrath of the Berserker needs to be cast on cooldown, only resummon Call of the Ancients when one or more of them fall in battle. Your battle strategy when using the Raekor/Immortal King mixture is to seek out high monster density in Rifts, where the combined power of the Furious Charge runes shines. Seeking out density is especially important for the endgame, as the build generally eschews Cooldown Reduction on gear, and relies on constantly hitting over 5 enemies for a Merciless Assault reset (or hitting just one, due to the Raekor 2-piece bonus). Furious Charge will also quickly build up your Fury reserves, which you need to dump regularly through Seismic Slam Rumble or Ancient Spear in order to reset the cooldowns of Wrath of the Berserker and Call of the Ancients. Several buffs round out your rotation: you will need to reapply Sprint Marathon as soon as its 4-second duration falls off, as well as maintain the Battle Rage buff throughout the rift.

Furious Charge is a centerpiece of the build. If you choose to focus on Furious Charge as your primary means of delivering damage (recommended), the rune selection is adaptable to the element of your best rolled gear. If you choose Boulder Toss as your main damage dealer, you need to pick a synergistic rune like Stamina or Merciless Assault and gear for Physical damage accordingly. Regardless of your choice, you will still enjoy the benefits of all the runes because of the Raekor set bonus. The damage of Battering Ram, the cooldown reduction of Merciless Assault, the freezing effect of Cold Rush, and the double charge effect of Dreadnought work together to ensure devastation of your enemies and the build's signature supercharged speed.

The role of a spender in the build needs to be taken by efficient Fury spenders. You can take the long standing favorite Ancient Spear Boulder Toss for precise, small radius nuke, or the 2.5 rework Seismic Slam Rumble for larger, but relatively weaker AoE. Regardless of your choice, incorporating a pure Fury dump is important in order to take significant chunks off massive cooldowns like Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker via the 4-piece IK bonus (see this build's gear page for more information), as well as to heal yourself through Life per Fury Spent on gear.

Battle Rage boosts both your overall damage and your Crit Chance. While it can be considered a fire-and-forget skill with its impressive 2-minute duration, never neglect to activate and keep it up. You will adjust runes according to content: for example, the Bloodshed damage procs are superior in the prolonged fights of Greater Rifts.

Removing the timed limit of Call of the Ancients, the 2-piece bonus of IK keeps the powerful trio of warriors permanently at your side. While they certainly can fall in battle, you should be able to promptly resummon them, as their cooldown is reset by the 4-piece IK set bonus. In fact, never neglect to do so, as the Together as One rune will be the basis of your survivability and ignoring the ancients upkeep will promptly kill you.

The signature barbarian steroid Wrath of the Berserker is strengthened further by the damage rune Insanity. Using the 4-piece IK bonus, you should be able to harness the potential of this skill permanently and boost your Dodge, Crit Chance, Attack and Movement Speed by significant percentages. As soon as you obtain the powers of the Mortick's Brace, which adds all the runes of Wrath of the Berserker to the build, this skill slot selection becomes a no-brainer.

You will pick your final self buff according to the build variation you go for: Sprint for a Furious Charge-centric build (recommended), or War Cry for a spender-centric build. Usually perceived as a movement speed utility skill, Sprint gains a damage-oriented twist from the unique power of the Standoff polearm, tucked away in the cube. This legendary item property increases the damage of Furious Charge to 500% of your bonus movement speed. If you opt to empower your Furious Charges, you will be taking the speediest and lengthiest of the runes, Marathon, for a 40% increase of movement speed for 4 seconds. If you favor the spender variant instead, take War Cry for a utility skill with a powerful Toughness angle coming from the Veteran's Warning rune. The 2-minute duration of the buff long exceeds the decent 20-second cooldown, but you have a strong incentive to use it as soon as it is available again — resource generation for your Fury dumps.

With a bulldozing playstyle that emphasizes both brutality and agility, the Raekor Barbarian uses the Rampage passive to great efficiency. With the potential to stack up to 25% additional Strength, increasing your damage and toughness substantially, it is important to learn to keep this passive up. Always being on the move towards bigger fights, where killing minor enemies will feed your stacks, is key.

Picking Berserker Rage as our second passive takes advantage of Furious Charge's utility powers. Building you up to full Fury near instantaneously through the Stamina rune, you will barely notice this passive falling off from Fury dumping, and enjoy a significant uptime of this strong damage multiplier.

Completing the triad of amplifiers, Ruthless makes a tight fit and edges over Brawler for one simple reason — it is a multiplicative bonus that shines during Greater Rift fights. Once you bring your target below 30% health, your damage skyrockets with an additional 40%, ensuring the mortal blow will be dealt well ahead of the timer.

You have some room for personal preference in the final passive slot. The general recommendation is Nerves of Steel, adding a cheat death backup plan to a generally glassy spec. If you focus on spender damage, Animosity will expand your reserve with another 20 Fury and add to the Boulder Toss or Rumble burst potential. Other viable options include density-dependent damage increase from Brawler (recommended once you obtain a nicely rolled Hellfire Amulet of Strength), or the emergency protection and recovery of Relentless.