Speed Farming Barbarian HotA Build with Immortal King (Patch 2.7.8 / Season 34)

The Immortal King HotA Barbarian can deal reasonably well with Normal Rift and Bounty farming all the way through the highest Torment difficulties. The build variation suffers from minor inconveniences compared to top tier speed farming builds (conflicting bracers, competing belts), but otherwise handles the task with ease. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Furious Charge Merciless Assault Hammer of the Ancients Smash 1 Battle Rage Ferocity 2 Sprint Marathon 3 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity 4 Call of the Ancients Together as One
Passive Skills
Berserker Rage Rampage Ruthless Pound of Flesh

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

Activate Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker as soon as you start a run, and keep both skills up throughout the rift — a task made infinitely easier with the Immortal King set bonus. Remember that Wrath of the Berserker needs to be cast on cooldown, but only resummon Call of the Ancients when one or more of them die off. In a speedfarming build, take advantage of the burst potential of HotA builds and try to jump from elite to elite, killing trash enemies as collateral damage instead of them being the focus. Furious Charge will alternate with Hammer of the Ancients at regular intervals to maintain the Focus and Restraint damage bonus. Keep Battle Rage up at all times and Sprint in between packs if necessary.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• Hammer of the Ancients remains the main damage dealing skill, along with the highest damage dealing rune — Smash.
• Furious Charge retains its role as a movement skill, along with the cooldown-resetting powers of the rune Merciless Assault.
• Battle Rage is present in the speed farming build as well, but the rune is swapped from the progression-oriented Bloodshed to the extra movement speed of Ferocity.
• When you are solo speed farming, use the slot usually occupied by Threatening Shout for the short bursts of speed from Sprint Marathon — useful when there is no one to Furious Charge to, and especially so in Bounties. If you are clearing standard rifts with a group, you can consider using War Cry in this slot and cubing Chilanik's Chain for the party-wide movement speed buff.
• Both Call of the Ancients Together as One and Wrath of the Berserker Insanity are still part of your skill lineup.
• Rampage, Berserker Rage and Ruthless are still a solid foundation of your passive selection.
• You can change the flexible fourth passive slot from progression staples like Nerves of Steel to the globe-consuming Pound of Flesh to further speed up your clears.

Most of the gear from the Greater Rift progression build will still make sense for speed farming, but a few variations will be necessary in order to maximize your productivity and momentum during regular Rift clears.

The six pieces of the Immortal King set, the Fury of the Ancients, and Bracers of the First Men worn during progression are still required during speed farming. Note that the bracers are the Kanai's Cube recommendation for Mortick's Brace, depending on your better rolled item. A former contender for the slot, Nemesis Bracers, can now be allocated to the follower and their unique power will still apply to you due to the Emanation system.

During standard rift speed farming, the timing and positioning-reliant bonuses of the Endless Walk set and Convention of Elements are greatly diminished in usefulness. Instead, you should amplify your damage potential and capability to oneshot elites by incorporating the Bastions of Will jewelry set: Focus and Restraint. The two rings offer an unparalleled 2.25x multiplier as long as you alternate between a generator and spender attacks — a requirement that is easily fulfilled by weaving a regular Furious Charge into your Hammer of the Ancients spam. Lastly, complete the jewelry with Squirt's Necklace, which adds another damage multiplier to the build at the cost of increasing damage taken, and with the condition of "not getting hit" — a limitation to a melee-only build that you will get around by socketing either a Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard (if you are farming low tier GRs), or Boon of the Hoarder (if you are farming T16 standard rifts).

Weapons-wise, you will be using the utility-driven combo of In-geom and Remorseless. The former will ensure an unbroken chain of Wrath of the Berserker activations despite the lesser HotA spam in standard rifts, while the latter will reward you for it with a massive damage bonus to your main damage skill while you keep WotB and Ancients active.

While we recommend that you use a Raekor Boulder Toss build for Death's Breath farming, Immortal King HotA builds are also able to include the Sage's set for the extra materials. You will simply need to:

• Replace two Immortal King set pieces with two Sage's Journey items of your choice — you have Sage's Apogee, Sage's Passage, Sage's Purchase and Sage's Ribbon available (ideally not the belt, since you will lose out on the extra Fury from Immortal King's Tribal Binding). Taking back Immortal King's Boulder Breaker into the build, at the expense of faster weaponry.
• Dropping Avarice Band from the cube for Ring of Royal Grandeur, which helps to maintain the full set bonuses of the two sets.

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 Hammer of the Ancients Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• 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, a good candidate for Sanctification is the Remorseless.

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.

Bane of the Trapped remains a universally desired damage amplification gem.

Boon of the Hoarder is a great speed farming inclusion, as it increases both your gold income (necessary for empowering GRs) as well as your movement speed. If you are farming Greater Rifts (where gold does not drop) or if you are doing a Death's Breath farming alteration, you can use the defensive bulwark of Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard to safekeep your Squirt's Necklace damage bonus.

Bane of the Powerful is one of the best speed farming gems, as it offers a 20% multiplicative damage increase after killing an elite pack with a scaling duration of 1 second per level, starting out at a generous 30 — meaning you can afford to leave the gem at level 25 for a while in early progression and work on your more important gems. Its secondary bonus is a further increase in damage dealt and a reduction in damage taken from elites, solidifying its spot as a farming staple.

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

You will maintain The Gavel of Judgment (in the weapon cube slot) and either Bracers of the First Men or Mortick's Brace (in the armor cube slot — choice depends on your weaker rolled item), as these items provide indispensable bonuses for the performance of a HotA Barbarian.

Avarice Band is an Act 3 cache legendary ring that increases your gold and health globe pickup radius as you pick up gold, stacking to the massive, half-screen circle of 30 yards — all for a generous 10 second duration. When cubed, its legendary power will greatly assist you in maintaining the movespeed bonuses of Boon of the Hoarder, as well as Pound of Flesh. If you are uncomfortable with your toughness however, you can stick with the mitigation powerhouse Band of Might.

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 standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.

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.