Leap/Earthquake MotE Barbarian BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build takes advantage of the full Might of the Earth set bonuses, taking all six available pieces and opening up the jewelry slots for the damage multiplication of the Bastions of Will set. Rolls-wise, this Earthquake-centric playstyle makes good use of skill and area damage bonuses across gear (see this build's skills page for more information). Earthquake %, Area Damage and Cooldown Reduction are ideal rolls on the Spires of the Earth; Earthquake % is best accompanied by toughness stats on the Spirit of the Earth. While you can roll Seismic Slam % on both helm and boots, the overall damage coming from the Fury dump will be minimal and these rolls cannot be recommended over toughness stats. Crit Chance, Crit Damage and Area Damage are sought after on Pull of the Earth. Weight of the Earth should be dedicated purely to toughness rolls.

Not skipping on any of the pieces required to obtain the 6-piece set bonus of Might of the Earth opens a powerful offense combo in the jewelry: the Bastions of Will set, Focus and Restraint. These rings offer an unparalleled 2.25 independent damage multiplier as long as you alternate between generating and spender attacks, a requirement which you fulfill via Leap and Seismic Slam. Seek double Crit stats, Area Damage and an open Socket as the best-in-slot stats for both Focus and Restraint.

The recommended amulet is The Flavor of Time, whose revised legendary power now doubles the duration of Pylons — an extremely potent power that, with careful timing, can turn the progressively harder fights in Greater Rifts greatly in your favor. The former recommendation for the slot, Hellfire Amulet of Strength, remains a viable option, especially if you obtain a good roll with a synergistic fifth passive like Nerves of Steel, Animosity or Brawler. A perfect roll would include both Crit stats, elemental damage and an open Socket.

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

Girdle of Giants is the best-in-slot belt for Greater Rift progression, bringing a temporary damage increase to your Earthquakes after using Seismic Slam. Note that this item comes with an innate Attack Speed roll, but it is of little use to the setup and should ideally be rerolled into one of the stats listed below.

You have a degree of freedom when picking out your bracer. For the absolute highest tiers of Greater Rifts, you should lean on the AoE superiority of the build and amp up your survivability significantly by equipping Ancient Parthan Defenders (triggered by the Death from Above stun). An alternative for this slot is Mortick's Brace, which places greater emphasis on progression during your Wrath of the Berserker uptime, and leads to an on- and off-playstyle, where you play more defensively during the WotB downtime. In a Mortick's Brace setup, alter the Leap rune to the pulling effect of Call of Arreat.

You have two crucial weapons for the build, and you will wield one and place the other in the Cube. Blade of the Tribes is a Patch 2.4 addition designed around the Earthquake Barbarian. It matches its imposing looks with an increase to Earthquake damage, and a unique power that turns two utility cooldowns — Threatening Shout and War Cry — into another source of damage, each casting a simultaneous Avalanche and Earthquake upon use. The Furnace provides you with an incomparable source of bonus elite damage, significantly shortening fights with champion packs and Rift Guardians — arguably the most dangerous fights in Greater Rift progression attempts. Ideally, you will be wearing The Furnace and cubing the Blade of the Tribes, due to the superior average damage of Two-Handed Maces.

There is a Cooldown Reduction baseline you will be aiming for; Earthquake builds run smoothest past the 33% CDR point, which is easily achievable with a Diamond in the helm, Paragon points and a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness. For Offense stats, try to obtain Earthquake % bonus on both the shoulders and chest (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%+. Earthquake Barbs try to extend their Fury pool due to the set's mechanics, so try to obtain Max Fury on your mighty belt and mighty 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. Sustain is an issue for Earthquake Barbs, and you will mostly heal in Life per Fury Spent bursts with Rumble; thus try to obtain a LpFS roll as the fourth primary stat on your 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. In the endgame, where you are testing this build to its upper limits, the pulling utility of the Whirlwind Sanctification edges over its competitors. Thus, we recommend substituting Threatening Shout 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.

If you decide against this alteration, you can safely fall back to the (easier to use) Wrath of the Berserker Sanctification, which reads:

• 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 your main-hand weapon — usually The Furnace (although a combination of The Slanderer and Little Rogue is also viable in this S27-specific, Whirlwind-using alteration).

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 Might of the Earth set bonus. 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 and 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 Life per Fury Spent stats on gear, and you manage Fury just fine with your multitude of Fury-generating skills and Earthen Might.

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 Death from Above stun, making it an integral part of this crowd control-heavy setup.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken takes a firm slot in the second jewelry socket. 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. 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 imbue your character with more of the vital cooldown reduction — necessary not only for lightning-fast Leap resets, but also shortening the downtime of Wrath of the Berserker — you will do well to take Gogok of Swiftness in your third and final gem slot. The gem's scaling Dodge bonus adds welcome extra protective utility.

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. While it is a fairly easy build cooldown-wise, you should still make use of the easy CDR source coming from a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

As described above, you will be cubing your weaker roll between The Furnace and Blade of the Tribes in the weapon slot. Ideally, the cube slot will be taken by Blade of the Tribes to secure the maximum Earthquake damage increase, while enjoying the superior average damage of the two handed mace in your hands.

A former best-in-slot item for the build, Lut Socks find a new home for their power in Kanai's Cube, making way for the full set and offense jewelry. This does not lessen their impact in the build, and they remain a key piece for the playstyle by allowing three Leaps within a 2-second window before the cooldown begins.

You have two viable routes to take in the jewelry slot of Kanai's Cube during Greater Rift progression. The general recommendation for this slot, especially for high-end pushing and Hardcore, is Band of Might. It offers the massive 80% damage reduction for the modest requirement of Leaping at least once every 8 seconds. You can also gamble on a favorable rift and monster composition by going glass cannon with the full offense power of Convention of Elements.

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.

Two legendary potions can be considered useful in an Earthquake Barb build. Bottomless Potion of Amplification adds some extra healing to your Life per Fury Spent tactics with Rumble. Alternatively, Bottomless Potion of the Diamond can be 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.)