HotA GR LoD Barbarian BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

Since the build is based on the Legacy of Dreams power, you have some flexibility in the items you choose to slot across your gear, provided they are ideally of Ancient quality, have the appropriate stats, and do not form any other set bonuses (meaning you can temporarily run individual set pieces, if necessary).

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two best rolled rings and cubing the third between Convention of Elements, Band of Might, and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. At least initially, it is recommended to wear the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, since it rolls innately with valuable Attack Speed, CDR and Crit Chance bonuses; the ring itself is crucial to the build due to its cooldown reducing mechanics, which bring Wrath of the Berserker down to permanent uptime. Band of Might greatly reduces incoming damage, as long as you remember to Furious Charge at least once every 8 seconds, which comes naturally as part of the build's rotation (see this build's skills page for more information). Convention of Elements simply provides a massive damage increase during the Fire cycle of its rotation.

The recommended amulet is Hellfire Amulet of Strength, since it allows you access to an additional synergistic passive like Nerves of Steel 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.

Two powerful options are present in your helm slot. You can opt to boost your damage directly (as well as scale your Attack Speed with the innate roll on the item, and reach a breakpoint more easily) with a Fire damage Andariel's Visage. Alternatively, you can lower your massive and vital cooldowns with a Leoric's Crown, gemmed with a Flawless Royal Diamond for CDR. Both options are seen as viable for the slot, but our general recommendation is Leoric's Crown, since its generic CDR bonus slightly reduces your reliance on Rift composition and pylon RNG.

You can choose between your best rolled bracers — either Bracers of the First Men and Mortick's Brace — for the wrist slot, and Cube the other. Bracers of the First Men are an invaluable part of any HotA build, as they scale both the attack speed and damage of your main damage dealer by massive percentages. Mortick's Brace is an equally valuable item, as it 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.

The remainder of your armor slots can be roughly split into two categories: Fire elemental damage items and Utility items.

• Cindercoat, Magefist, and Blackthorne's Jousting Mail are able to bring up to 20% Fire elemental damage each, greatly amplifying your main damage dealer. While Magefist is a straightforward elemental DPS item, Cindercoat also brings Resource Cost Reduction value to the build. While it puts a dent into your sustain (as it hinges on Fury spent), it makes up for it with prolonging your Smash barrage and Berserker Rage upkeep. Blackthorne's Jousting Mail provides an elemental damage increase, which is fairly unique for the slot — as long as it does not form its set bonus with another Blackthorne item, thus breaking the LoD bonus, this will be your best-in-slot item.
• Pride of Cassius, Illusory Boots, and Fury of the Ancients each bring their own angle of protection and utility to the build. Pride of Cassius is a Barbarian-specific mighty belt that more than doubles the base duration of Ignore Pain, easing the strain on your CDR and enabling the skill's permanent uptime. Illusory Boots assist with mobility and repositioning when Furious Charge is on cooldown, and allow you to engage fights at your leisure and from the best angle possible. Lastly, Fury of the Ancients adds the Ancients' Fury rune on Call of the Ancients for free, which is a massive bonus to your Fury maintenance.

Weapons-wise, we recommend that you dual wield the HotA-synergistic combination of Remorseless and Echoing Fury. Remorseless has been updated in Patch 2.6.7 to greatly increase your Hammer of the Ancients damage while both Wrath of the Berserker and Call of the Ancients are active, which matches the skill lineup and general cooldown goals of the build. Echoing Fury on the other hand simply feeds into the Attack Speed frenzy of this build with its scaling IAS and movement speed bonuses. These weapons' use is further reinforced by the ability to extract The Gavel of Judgment's HotA damage bonus into Kanai's Cube as of Patch 2.6.1. Note that it is important to wield Remorseless in your main hand, in order to take advantage of the resource utility of the Weapons Master passive.

The build benefits from a good combination of Cooldown Reduction, Increased Attack Speed, and Area Damage on gear, as well as the usual recommendation for skill damage bonuses — Hammer of the Ancients %, in this case. As a rule of thumb, you will be aiming for ~50% CDR and 2.10 attacks per second while Wrath of the Berserker is active, which is achievable with max Attack Speed rolls on both rings and your slower weapon, the Echoing Fury. This nets you the 18 frames breakpoint of Hammer of the Ancients, greatly improving your WotB uptime. Refer to the stat recommendation tables below for specific recommendations on the stat spread.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Hammer of the Ancients % bonus on both the helm and boots (maximum of 30%), Fire 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%+. HotA Barbs try to extend their Fury pool due to the skill's mechanics, so obtain Max Fury on your belt.

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 Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup, but ideally two (optimal slots are the two weapons and/or bracer). Life per Fury Spent can also be a nice source of extra sustain (can be rolled on the mighty belt).

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, both the Whirlwind and Hammer of the Ancients Sanctifications are viable and important to consider. For high endgame pushing of Greater Rifts, where you're testing the build to its upper limits, the pulling utility of the Whirlwind Sanctification edges over its competitors. Thus, for high-end soloing endgame, we recommend substituting Ignore Pain from the regular build and using Whirlwind Dust Devils to proc the following power:

• Whirlwind Sanctification: Whirlwind pulls in and holds all enemies within 25 yards.

However, you will also be using the build in content where pulling is less of a concern, such as Echoing Nightmares and solo speed GRs. In these scenarios, you should use the regular build described above, and opt for the Hammer of the Ancients Sanctification instead:

• Hammer of the Ancients Sanctification: Hammer of the Ancients hits in all directions around the Barbarian. Every tenth cast of Hammer of the Ancients unleashes a powerful shockwave.

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, good candidates for Sanctification are Remorseless and Bracers of the First Men.

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 Hammer of the Ancients. 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 Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Attack Speed and CDR 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, and you manage Fury just fine with the resource refund mechanics of The Gavel of Judgment.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation.

Bane of the Stricken firmly occupies one of your jewelry sockets 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. HotA Barbs are better suited to single target fights than many other AoE specs, but they still take decent advantage of this gem — a fine testament to its quality.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot; in the older LoN setup, this socket would be occupied by Pain Enhancer.

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. Due to your demand for Cooldown Reduction, you will be slotting 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.

Cubing the The Gavel of Judgment is a natural choice for a HotA-centric build, since this two handed mighty weapon is the basis of your Fury management with its refund mechanic, and also offers a massive skill damage bonus.

As outlined above, you can choose between your better roll of Mortick's Brace and Bracers of the First Men to wear, and cube the other. The standard recommendation for this slot are the Bracers of the First Men, as they are harder to perfect and a large portion of the HotA attack speed and damage depend on that item.

In a Legacy of Dreams setup, you can cube your worst rolled ring between Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Convention of Elements, and Band of Might in the jewelry slot of the Cube. In the older LoN setup, your jewelry slot will be occupied by necessity by Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, since the cooldown reset of the vital Wrath of the Berserker hinges on this ring's power.

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. Alternatively, if you feel yourself too squishy, you can alter to the Templar for his powerful heals and sustain boons.

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.