Support Barbarian BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

Following the role stereotypes, the Support Barb uses a mixture of sets and utility legendaries to maximize Toughness, cooldown and resource management.

The desired armor set mixture is The Legacy of Raekor and Horde of the Ninety Savages, incorporating three Raekor pieces (between Raekor's Will, Raekor's Wraps, Raekor's Burden, Raekor's Breeches and Raekor's Heart) and two Horde of the Ninety Savages set pieces (between Skull of Savages, Claws of Savages, Spines of Savages, Leggings of Savages and Markings of Savages). The Raekor 4-piece bonus will of course be attained through a cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur. This way you gain all the necessary mobility and utility from Raekor, as well as the tremendous Shout-related bonuses from Horde of the Ninety Savages. Check a sample split between the two sets in the table below.

Free of damage dealing concerns, the support Barbarian can focus on pure utility in the jewelry. You have three recommended rings — Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Oculus Ring and Ring of Royal Grandeur — two of which you will equip and Cube the third, according to your better rolled items. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is a powerful tool for this cooldown-heavy build: benefiting greatly from the heavy Ancient Spear use, it allows for permanent uptime of crucial abilities like Ignore Pain, Threatening Shout, and War Cry (see this build's skills page for more information). Ring of Royal Grandeur is necessary to complete the 4-piece bonus of Raekor. Finally, the revamped Oculus Ring will provide up to the impressive 85% multiplicative damage buff in a circular area for your DPS party members to stand in. While its wording is vague, it does trigger off assists, and will thus work on support characters.

To complete the jewelry, initially it is recommended to obtain an immunity amulet for a highly lethal source of elemental damage. Xephirian Amulet, which renders you immune to lightning, or The Star of Azkaranth against fire, are highly desirable options during lower Paragons, when your survival still is not cemented. With a highly progressed character, you should branch out into the increased pickup radius of Rondal's Locket to improve group utility, or even better — the doubling of Pylon duration coming from The Flavor of Time.

A crucial piece for the Support Barbarian is the mighty belt Pride of Cassius, whose legendary power extends the duration of Ignore Pain by up to 6 seconds. Obtaining the maximum value of the unique bonus solidifies the uptime of your strongest mitigation buff, and thankfully the belt is common enough to obtain a BiS roll relatively quickly. Regardless, it can be cubed if you get a well-rolled Chilanik's Chain first; stat-wise the two belts are interchangeable, but Chilanik's Chain is easier to maximize through Kanai's Cube because of its broader legendary affix range.

You have some wiggle room when deciding on your bracer; the default recommendation is the party-wide additive damage increase of Strongarm Bracers, triggered by the Furious Charge knockup. Alternatively, you can take the elite-spawning Nemesis Bracers to shorten the time spent looking for champion packs — at least one elite spawner should be present in the group, and you are adequate for the task.

Illusory Boots are a crucial piece for the mobility of the build, allowing you to ignore collision and pass freely through enemies — an indispensable bonus for a character tasked with scouting and monster control. These boots are farmed through Act II bounty caches, and are relatively easy to obtain with a good roll due to their fixed stats and no-range affix. Stat-wise, aim strictly for Toughness.

You have a degree of freedom in choosing your weapon and offhand, with many recognized and highly ranking viable combinations. If you are new to the playstyle, you can start out with a Pig Sticker — Stormshield combo. The experienced Barb support however will wield the set swords Little Rogue and The Slanderer for endgame pushing. While depriving you of the Stormshield defensive bulwark, these weapons will sync with the overall goals of the support Barbarian by supplying you with 30% Armor and Attack Speed when fully stacked. Stat-wise, supports care nothing about Weapon Damage, so your main- and off-hand items are a pure stat sticks that needs Strength, Vitality, Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed, and ideally the damage range gets rerolled into Resource Cost Reduction (or one of the missing aforementioned stats).

You should ideally augment your gear with Intelligence for the All Resistance gain.

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.

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.

Wreath of Lightning provides you with a nice AoE proc to aggro enemies with, along with an extremely helpful 25% movement speed for the duration of the proc — easily obtainable from the gem's level 25 property.

Gogok of Swiftness synergizes well with the build, indirectly providing the entire party with more survivability by increasing your essential Cooldown Reduction, as well as substantial personal Toughness from the Dodge bonuses.

The recommended gem for your third and final jewelry slot is Gem of Efficacious Toxin, for the party-wide damage increase against — and reduced damage from — enemies affected by its poisonous DoT.

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

You have several viable options for the weapons slot in Kanai's Cube depending on your GR goals. For high-end GR progression, the general recommendation for this slot is either Messerschmidt's Reaver for the cooldown reduction, or The Executioner for its culling proc on enemies below 10% health.

One core Kanai's Cube item is Chilanik's Chain for the armor slot. This belt provides a party-wide movement speed buff when you activate War Cry, essential both during XP runs (for efficiency) and progression content (to skip bad fights). As mentioned above, this slot is interchangeable with Pride of Cassius depending on your better rolled item.

As previously mentioned, your jewelry slot will be taken up by your worst roll of the three necessary rings for the build — Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Ring of Royal Grandeur and Oculus Ring.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, you should slot Band of Might to enjoy a virtually permanent, massive source of damage mitigation.

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.

As a support, you will gain additional utility from being able to break down walls with the Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid.