Leap/Earthquake Barbarian

[Guest aaaaaaa]

There definitely isn't a way to reset your leap 100% of the time. You can do it for maybe 2-3 rotations, but then you're gonna have downtime on your leap after that.

 

You can use ground stomp in place of threatening shout for more consistency, but you'll lose a decent chunk of damage. You do, however, gain the ability to permanently stun enemies.

 

Leap by itself cannot be 100% reset though due to the patch that removed the ability to get 45 fury per leap.

[Guest Xentro]

Thanks for the guide, it has really helped me grasp the concept of the leapquake barb and allowed me to play on a pretty high level so far. I especially like the detail in things like the gear section where you list the best stats for each piece of equipment so we know what to reroll and which items to keep/neglect. However, I came across an item today and i'm really unsure if this is an upgrade or not so I'd like to know the opinion of you or anyone on this forum who thinks they can help me out. 

 

So basically you list the stat prio on boots as follows: 1) strength, 2) vitality, 3) all res and 4) AS dmg %. Now I didn't have those perfect stats on my boots but I had ancient boots with decent str and vit and rerolled one stat to AS dmg % and also had movement speed on them. Now today I looted non-ancient set boots with stats that could be rerolled exactly as you listed in your prio. All in all I would get a big loss in str (my new boots have lowest possible str and can't reroll since I had to reroll something else to AS dmg %) but I would get the all res instead of movement speed. I'm wondering is it worth losing the dmg for 99 resist all? Is this a noticeable increase in defenses? I can give the exact stats if needed but i'm just wondering what you would do. 

[Guest Xel]

I was wondering if it wouldnt be better to focus on armor than All resist on certain pieces of equipment since we have a huge boost of armor with the set and Leap's free rune. Any comment on this? I'm not good with numbers sorry

[Warden 8]

Hello there :> Terrific work as usual.

 

One question: after I do the three-leap+boulder-to-the-face combo, I still have a second or two left on the leap cooldowns. I've seen videos of people chaining it and I have no idea how. I even have CDR on the shoulders, in the helm gem and maxed as paragon, but I still can't permaleap like I've seen so many people do.

 

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

 

Remember that the more fury you have, the more reset you get from Boulder Toss.  I find that about every third time or so I haven't generated enough fury for the boulder toss to totally reset it.  By casting War Cry right then (hopefully when I am near enough to some mobs for the Avalanche to hit them) it adds in another 20 fury which often is enough to get a reset.

 

 

I was wondering if it wouldnt be better to focus on armor than All resist on certain pieces of equipment since we have a huge boost of armor with the set and Leap's free rune. Any comment on this? I'm not good with numbers sorry

 

I don't have hard numbers, but my impression has been that you get diminishing returns the higher you drive a stat.  So if you already have high armor, then you get more additional toughness from putting points into All Resist, and vice versa.  You see this in the Paragon Point recommendations.  Since strength also gives you armor, high strength characters like barbarians put their paragon points into all resist.  Since intelligence also gives you all resist, then Witch Doctors should put their points into Armor.  If I remember right.... :D

 

[Guest George]

Thy for they guide.

 

I haven't seen anything about health generation like Bloodthirst or life per fury spend. Do I miss a point?

[Guest Illusinaatio]

 

I dont like the build. Tried it with some good gear on t8. never was so fast down with a single grp with 2 groups of champs. no survival skills no escapeskills.

 

i am sure that i played not perfect but i simple dont like this.

 

also i think whirlwind on t10 is much faster and safer

I completely agree.  I have a full IK set with a decent ancient wep (though not the Gavel I'm supposed to have) and I can fly through t8.  I was so excited to try this build once I finally got all the right pieces in place, and I got absolutely murder-faced, still on t8, on just about every pull.  What am I missing? Did something get nerfed at the beginning of this patch?

 

 

If you have ANY problems even in T10 then you are either doing something wrong or you have missing gear.

 

I have almost perfect gear for this build (except the 2H weapon which I have cubed since I havent found an ancient one yet, thus I miss the 200% bonus for earthquake and +50% elite damage from the Furnace), and I can just stomp all around T10 and clear a nephalem rift in just a few minutes, with elite packs exploding in an instant, having zero survivability problems, leaving the feeling of T10 as a holiday cruise. I have also completed a grift 64 in solo.

 

My boulder tosses can easily crit for 10-20 billion without any pylons.

 

And I just cant wait for the +200%dmg bonus and +50% elite dmg which I am still missing.

 

The key is in the right skill rotation. If you have cubed the band of might, you will get LOADS of toughness after leaps (I have 330M toughness in solo). You also need to ALWAYS do 3 leaps then ancient spear in order to reset the leap CD. If you do less than 3 leaps, you will be left with your leap in a CD thus making you vulnerable. Without the buffs from the shout and the leap procs, my toughness is roughly 24M and after all the buffs it jumps to 330M so it is really really important to remember to keep leaping.

[Guest Illusinaatio]

 

 

I dont like the build. Tried it with some good gear on t8. never was so fast down with a single grp with 2 groups of champs. no survival skills no escapeskills.

 

i am sure that i played not perfect but i simple dont like this.

 

also i think whirlwind on t10 is much faster and safer

I completely agree.  I have a full IK set with a decent ancient wep (though not the Gavel I'm supposed to have) and I can fly through t8.  I was so excited to try this build once I finally got all the right pieces in place, and I got absolutely murder-faced, still on t8, on just about every pull.  What am I missing? Did something get nerfed at the beginning of this patch?

 

 

If you have ANY problems even in T10 then you are either doing something wrong or you have missing gear.

 

I have almost perfect gear for this build (except the 2H weapon which I have cubed since I havent found an ancient one yet, thus I miss the 200% bonus for earthquake and +50% elite damage from the Furnace), and I can just stomp all around T10 and clear a nephalem rift in just a few minutes, with elite packs exploding in an instant, having zero survivability problems, leaving the feeling of T10 as a holiday cruise. I have also completed a grift 64 in solo.

 

My boulder tosses can easily crit for 10-20 billion without any pylons.

 

And I just cant wait for the +200%dmg bonus and +50% elite dmg which I am still missing.

 

The key is in the right skill rotation. If you have cubed the band of might, you will get LOADS of toughness after leaps (I have 330M toughness in solo). You also need to ALWAYS do 3 leaps then ancient spear in order to reset the leap CD. If you do less than 3 leaps, you will be left with your leap in a CD thus making you vulnerable. Without the buffs from the shout and the leap procs, my toughness is roughly 24M and after all the buffs it jumps to 330M so it is really really important to remember to keep leaping.

 

[Guest Christian Santos]

You have the belt for it, but Ground Stomp is not one of the active skills?

[Guest George]

The key is in the right skill rotation. If you have cubed the band of might, you will get LOADS of toughness after leaps (I have 330M toughness in solo). You also need to ALWAYS do 3 leaps then ancient spear in order to reset the leap CD. 

 

I think before ancient spear you also have to either shout, cry or earth quake. All 3 generate fury and without it I have a 1 sec left before I can leap again.

 

 

Somebody described it like this:

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Cry-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Quake-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Cry-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Toss <--- doesn´t fully reset here

 

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20420213482?page=1

[Guest Jaybo]

 

The key is in the right skill rotation. If you have cubed the band of might, you will get LOADS of toughness after leaps (I have 330M toughness in solo). You also need to ALWAYS do 3 leaps then ancient spear in order to reset the leap CD. 

 

I think before ancient spear you also have to either shout, cry or earth quake. All 3 generate fury and without it I have a 1 sec left before I can leap again.

 

 

Somebody described it like this:

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Cry-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Quake-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Cry-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Shout-Toss

Leap-Leap-Leap-Toss <--- doesn´t fully reset here

 

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20420213482?page=1

 

With enough CDR (I think I have around 30-40% sheet CDR) I barely notice a cooldown from 3 leap-1 toss anymore, and if I do I can cheese it by waiting a split second before the toss (as mobs are typically still stunned from the rune).  I also would like to point out if your shout or cry are up you may try maximizing damage/fury dumps by 3 leap, 1 toss, then cry/shout(either seem to give me a fair amount of fury back), another toss then repeat the cycle.  Typically if you do 3 leaps, shout/cry then toss you may be wasting potential fury gains/dumps but havent done the math to be sure.

[Warden 8]

You have the belt for it, but Ground Stomp is not one of the active skills?

 

As long as you have the Patch 2.4 version of the belt, then it gives up to a %200 Avalanche damage increase, which is the purpose of wearing it.  Its Groundstomp > Avalanche property goes unused.

[Guest Illusinaatio]

Yesterday the proper ancient weapon finally rolled and got the furnace now too, so I have now all best in slot items. And the dmg -boost was wild! Now walked through grift 67 with 4 minutes remaining in the end, forgot to repair before the rift thus made a pit stop too!

 

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Illusinaatio-1870/hero/72204089

 

How big grifts have you completed with this build? It seems the top top tier barbs are all immortal/raekor and none use leap.

 

I am also trying to reach the leaderboards in 2 player grift with a thorns crusader friend, any tips wich alterations to the build would work? Working on grift 71 now. At least I gimped some of my boulder damage by changing the Animosity passive to Bloodthirst for better health regen.

 

And do any of you use the molten fury rune on earthquake? I am not sure whether I like the rune which pulls the mobs in a 2 player game...

[Guest Illusinaatio#1870]

Some comments about alterations to the build, since I started to have surival / DPS problems at grifts of 70'ish or higher:

 

-Switched Earthquake to Avalanche - Volcano

-Switched Battle Rage to Ground Stomp - Wrenching Smash

-Switched Animosity to Bloodthirst

-Rerolled all physical damage from gear to fire damage, obv.

 

After these adjustments I / we could go a few rifts up. Now the skill rotation is:

-Leap x3

-Both Shouts between leaps

-Ground Stomp

-Ancient Spear

- ...

 

Before these adjustments the unique property from belt was pretty unused, but now I can uitilize it and use Ground Stomp to create another Avalanche. Also replacing the Earthquake (thus missing the cave in rune from now on) with Avalance lets me rune it to increase Avalanche damage from 2400 % -> 6000%, which is huge, since three of my active skills trigger Avalanche now. And by utilizing Ground Stomps Wrenching Smash rune I can still pull mobs together and have very good crowd control even without the Cave In rune from Earthwuake. All of this gimped a bit of my Ancient Spear damage but resulted in a more sustained DPS in long fights.

 

I also had some survival problems before but they are gone now. Since Ground Stomp is another fury generator, by completing 3x leap and 1x ground stomp, I have full fury to boulder away with Ancient Spear, which will be a full CD reset and a heal of ~50% of my HP pool. In the original build there was practically zero heal.

 

Comments?

[Guest Huldu]

Wow 330m toughness? I'm thinking about trying the leap build instead of the charge. Don't get me wrong I love the charge build but it has a few glaring weaknesses: 1) you're a glass cannon, I mean, *really*. 2) If there are two mobs(or charge only hits two) for whatever reason, it'll screw up your charge in a major way. This doesn't happen often but it happens and that leaves you extremely vulnerable for 5-6 seconds. 

 

Well, I have some gear saved up so going with this one. Thanks for an amazing guide with so much information and how to play it properly. 

[Guest Noref]

Some comments about alterations to the build, since I started to have surival / DPS problems at grifts of 70'ish or higher:

 

-Switched Earthquake to Avalanche - Volcano

-Switched Battle Rage to Ground Stomp - Wrenching Smash

-Switched Animosity to Bloodthirst

-Rerolled all physical damage from gear to fire damage, obv.

 

After these adjustments I / we could go a few rifts up. Now the skill rotation is:

-Leap x3

-Both Shouts between leaps

-Ground Stomp

-Ancient Spear

- ...

 

Before these adjustments the unique property from belt was pretty unused, but now I can uitilize it and use Ground Stomp to create another Avalanche. Also replacing the Earthquake (thus missing the cave in rune from now on) with Avalance lets me rune it to increase Avalanche damage from 2400 % -> 6000%, which is huge, since three of my active skills trigger Avalanche now. And by utilizing Ground Stomps Wrenching Smash rune I can still pull mobs together and have very good crowd control even without the Cave In rune from Earthwuake. All of this gimped a bit of my Ancient Spear damage but resulted in a more sustained DPS in long fights.

 

I also had some survival problems before but they are gone now. Since Ground Stomp is another fury generator, by completing 3x leap and 1x ground stomp, I have full fury to boulder away with Ancient Spear, which will be a full CD reset and a heal of ~50% of my HP pool. In the original build there was practically zero heal.

 

Comments?

Looks nice, the big weakness is that you can only pull mobs once every 12sec with ground stomp instead of each time you trigger earthquake with 3x jump and shouts, so the mobs remains pretty scattered :s

[Illusinaatio 0]

 

Some comments about alterations to the build, since I started to have surival / DPS problems at grifts of 70'ish or higher:

 

-Switched Earthquake to Avalanche - Volcano

-Switched Battle Rage to Ground Stomp - Wrenching Smash

-Switched Animosity to Bloodthirst

-Rerolled all physical damage from gear to fire damage, obv.

 

After these adjustments I / we could go a few rifts up. Now the skill rotation is:

-Leap x3

-Both Shouts between leaps

-Ground Stomp

-Ancient Spear

- ...

 

Before these adjustments the unique property from belt was pretty unused, but now I can uitilize it and use Ground Stomp to create another Avalanche. Also replacing the Earthquake (thus missing the cave in rune from now on) with Avalance lets me rune it to increase Avalanche damage from 2400 % -> 6000%, which is huge, since three of my active skills trigger Avalanche now. And by utilizing Ground Stomps Wrenching Smash rune I can still pull mobs together and have very good crowd control even without the Cave In rune from Earthwuake. All of this gimped a bit of my Ancient Spear damage but resulted in a more sustained DPS in long fights.

 

I also had some survival problems before but they are gone now. Since Ground Stomp is another fury generator, by completing 3x leap and 1x ground stomp, I have full fury to boulder away with Ancient Spear, which will be a full CD reset and a heal of ~50% of my HP pool. In the original build there was practically zero heal.

 

Comments?

Looks nice, the big weakness is that you can only pull mobs once every 12sec with ground stomp instead of each time you trigger earthquake with 3x jump and shouts, so the mobs remains pretty scattered :s

 

The 2set bonus from Might of the Earth will reset the CD after each fury dump, thus I can use the Ground Stomp pretty much when needed. Also note that the Ground Stomp is another fury generator, so you can fury dump more often! Another point is that when soloing most of the mobs have a tendency to run towards you anyway, so the mobs will be pretty well stacked up. It is still not _as good_ for CC as the Earthquake, but works well enough for solo grift.

 

When grifting in a party, I will always switch to support/tank mode and use the Earthquake rune instead, also I will switch the bracers to Ancient Parthan Defenders for greatly increased toughness. Yesterday we completed a lvl 73 grift with a bombardment crusader, these builds work together insanely well.

[Guest todd]

i swapped out earth quake for ground stomp.  the dmg of roughly 200 from avalanche is more effective then earthquake

 

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Peruu-1116/hero/72991186

[relik 0]

what passive can be swapped for nerves of steel (hc)?

[mattar0 0]

how would using a dovu energy tap for neck slot fair. for the 25% stun length

[Deadset 108]

what passive can be swapped for nerves of steel (hc)?

 

I'd switch Animosity.

 

As for the neck, there are stronger options than Dovu. With the mobility at the build's disposal, getting caught by a stun should be a rare occurrence! :)

[mattar0 0]

what passive can be swapped for nerves of steel (hc)?

 

I'd switch Animosity.

 

As for the neck, there are stronger options than Dovu. With the mobility at the build's disposal, getting caught by a stun should be a rare occurrence! :)

but doesnt dovu increase the duration of the stuns you inflict?

[Guest Andrew]

I'm using In-Geom http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/ingeom instead of the furnace in the cube. It's - in my point of view - a viable option instead of a furnace. Why is that? With in-geom you can reduce the CD of all skills by 10s, 15s after you kill a group of elite / goblins / rift guardians / bosses. If you time it right you could kill a rift guardian in some seconds with multiple leaps (10s cd) + Threatening Shout (10s cd, so you could use it after the internal cd of ~1s again) in a rift with suitable difficulty.

I have to agree. In-Geom seems a better option for this build then Furnace. After killing an elite pack, i can spam Threatening Shout every second for 15 seconds. If in that 15 seconds I kill another elite pack.. even better. Only reason to use Leap while this is active is to escape if needed.

But I'm curious why Furnace was choosen over In-Geom?

To me this seems like a no brainer but I'm aure I'm missing something.

[Warden 8]

 

 

what passive can be swapped for nerves of steel (hc)?

 

I'd switch Animosity.

 

As for the neck, there are stronger options than Dovu. With the mobility at the build's disposal, getting caught by a stun should be a rare occurrence!

but doesnt dovu increase the duration of the stuns you inflict?

 

 

Yes, it increases the length of the stuns you apply to the mobs.  Perhaps Deadset was thinking of something that decreases how long you are stunned...?

[Guest guest]

 

I'm using In-Geom http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/ingeom instead of the furnace in the cube. It's - in my point of view - a viable option instead of a furnace. Why is that? With in-geom you can reduce the CD of all skills by 10s, 15s after you kill a group of elite / goblins / rift guardians / bosses. If you time it right you could kill a rift guardian in some seconds with multiple leaps (10s cd) + Threatening Shout (10s cd, so you could use it after the internal cd of ~1s again) in a rift with suitable difficulty.

I have to agree. In-Geom seems a better option for this build then Furnace. After killing an elite pack, i can spam Threatening Shout every second for 15 seconds. If in that 15 seconds I kill another elite pack.. even better. Only reason to use Leap while this is active is to escape if needed.

But I'm curious why Furnace was choosen over In-Geom?

To me this seems like a no brainer but I'm aure I'm missing something.

 

 

The build is more focused on pushing higher GRs in which it takes longer to kill elite packs thus giving you less uptime on In-Geom. Furnace just becomes a more consistent form of damage when going 70+, especially against the rift guardian.  If you're just farming t10 however In-Geom would work just fine since the damage from furnace would probably be redundant.

[Deadset 108]

 

 

whaI'd switch Animosity.

 

As for the neck, there are stronger options than Dovu. With the mobility at the build's disposal, getting caught by a stun should be a rare occurrence!

but doesnt dovu increase the duration of the stuns you inflict?

 

 

Doh, my bad! Mis-remembered what Dovu does. In this case it's better than I thought, but I'd still prefer other amulets over it. Reason being: CDR is a guaranteed roll on the item, making the perfect 4 stats for an amulet (Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Socket, Elemental Damage) impossible. Missing either is a substantial damage loss considering the high stat ranges on amulets.

 

As for the In-Geom discussion, the build is indeed aimed at difficulties (GR 65+) where keeping up In-Geom consistently is impossible. In-Geom is great when you're speedrunning though, use it by all means in Torments and low GRs.