Rend Wastes Barbarian BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

This build hinges on the full powers of the Wrath of the Wastes set, taking all six available set pieces and leaving the jewelry for powerful offensive and defensive legendaries. Note that there is a glassier alteration of this build that combines the powers of the Wastes set with those of the Captain Crimson craftable set; a potent variant of this build, which is discussed in a dedicated section below.

Rolls-wise, this Rend-centric build takes good advantage of Rend skill bonuses on the Cuirass of the Wastes and Pauldrons of the Wastes (see this build's skills page for more information). High Toughness rolls are preferred on the Helm of the Wastes, Tasset of the Wastes and Sabaton of the Wastes. As expected, double Crit stats are taken on the Gauntlet of the Wastes, alongside Strength and Cooldown Reduction; CDR is also taken on the Pauldrons of the Wastes.

You have three important rings in this setup; Band of Might, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Convention of Elements. You are free to take your two best rolled rings and place your worse rolled one in the Cube, in order to maximize the benefits from your jewelry. Early on, especially as you chase CDR and IAS breakpoints, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac can be a good choice as an equipped ring due to its innate stats; regardless, it possesses a universally desired power for this playstyle, with its cooldown reduction based on spending resources (synergistic with a channeling build). Band of Might provides an incomparable defensive bulwark with trivial maintenance. Convention of Elements is a straightforward damage boost during the relevant elemental cycle (Physical in this case).

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

With a simple but undeniable legendary power, Lamentation is a centerpiece of Rend builds; it allows for the doubled-up application of Rend on a single enemy.

With its addition, Mortick's Brace overwhelms practically all other options for the slot 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.

Weapons-wise, you should be dual-wielding The Istvan's Paired Blades set, Little Rogue and The Slanderer, as they offer a significant toughness and attack speed increase per resource spent, which matches the constantly Whirlwinding nature of the build.

As previously mentioned, there is a variant of this build which includes two of the three available pieces of the craftable Captain Crimson set — Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle (mandatory) and either Captain Crimson's Thrust or Captain Crimson's Waders. This variation brings more CDR and damage to the table, at the cost of a chunk of survivability; its endgame pushing potential however is undeniable. If you choose to use it, simply replace Lamentation and one Wastes piece of your choosing to fit your best rolled Captain Crimson pieces.

Lamentation is still vital in the build, and will have to move to your Cube armor slot. You will complete the two sets' bonuses via a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry Cube slot, necessitating that you drop Band of Might from the setup. To offset that loss of survivability, you will replace Ground Stomp from the base build with Ignore Pain Iron Hide.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Rend % bonus on both the chest and shoulders (maximum of 30%), Physical elemental damage on both the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%) and Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 500%, respectively). Bring as much CDR as you can, ideally on all the pieces that can roll it, taking you well over a somewhat comfortable 50% threshold.

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. Your sustain will come mostly from the Swords to Ploughshares rune on Battle Rage and the Thrive on Chaos rune on Wrath of the Berserker (coming via Mortick's Brace), but you can supplement it Life per Fury Spent roll on Lamentation in the base version of the build, or a Life per Hit roll on one of your weapons or the bracer in the Captain Crimson variant.

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 omnipresent Lamentation belt, or the (hard-to-perfect) Pauldrons of the Wastes shoulder.

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. 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. Investing points into Maximum Fury is not necessary in this build; your spenders are relatively cheap, especially when compared to your Fury restoration powers.

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 Life on Hit and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Area Damage and Globe Radius.

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 by slows from your follower equipment (i.e. Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker), and your own crowd control secondary stats.

Taeguk is the best hybrid of defense and offense among the legendary gem options, and continued Whirlwind channeling will ensure that your stacks remain capped. While the need for healing will force you anyway, it bears repeating: never stop Whirlwinding, as dropping the Taeguk stacks and building them up from scratch is a significant loss of DPS and Toughness.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket in 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. 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.

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. Since this is a CDR-dependent build, a Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm will be necessary. In your weapon, use Flawless Royal Emeralds for the Crit Damage boost.

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

Reworked in Patch 2.6.7, Ambo's Pride is a centerpiece legendary for the build. Tucked away in the Cube, it brings two massive powers: first, it applies Rend to enemies you Whirlwind through and second, it deals Rend's 15 seconds worth of DoT (extended by the Wastes 2-piece set bonus) in a condensed, single second punch.

You have several options for the armor Cube slot. In the basic, 6-piece Wastes version of the build, you can choose between Stone Gauntlets (strongest defense for high-end pushing, requires optimized CDR), Aquila Cuirass (decent defense and no roll requirements to maintain) or Mantle of Channeling (recommended; defense-and-offense hybrid). In a Cpt. Crimson version, this is where you will slot the necessary Lamentation.

In the general version of the build, you will store the weaker of your three crucial rings in this slot between Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Band of Might and Convention of Elements. In a Wastes / Cpt. Crimson hybrid, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur, a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two sets together.

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.

Waller affixes are problematic for Rend Barb builds, since they greatly limit your opportunities to weave and DoT from one pack to the next, back and forth, which is the general playstyle of the build. As such, our general recommendation for your legendary potion is the Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid, which allows you to break through Waller affixes. Alternatively, 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.)