Death Blow Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Last Updated:October 8, 2024|Change Log|FAQ
Welcome to the Death Blow Barbarian Endgame Guide!
If you thought the Starlight + Invigorating Fury nerf would bury Death Blow, then you're about to be proven wrong! Extreme tankiness, massive Overpowers, permanent Shouts and insane healing, all of those are still possible for that one goal in making our beloved Weapon Mastery Skill rise from the Dead(blow) once more!
While the "Starlight Tech" nerf hurt us, we're still able to sustain a 100 Fury Death Blow (combining Crown of Lucion and Ring of Starless Skies), allowing us to trigger Banished Lord's Talisman guaranteed Overpower every 3 casts and Ring of Red Furor guaranteed Critical Strike everytime!
When using Fighter's Death Blow and multiplying the Fury gains by Resource Generation bonuses such as the new Shroud of False Death, Yen's Blessing, a juiced up Rallying Cry and a few others, we are able to reach that sweet spot where the costly Death Blow becomes self-sustainable.
If those weren't enough, we're also taking advantage of the newest Runes to ensure War Cry and Challenging Shout are always on, further buffing our defensive capabilities.
Combining all of the above with the new Temper "Chance for Death Blow to deal Double damage", up to 37 bonus Ranks from Overkill and +Core skill affixes (through The Third Blade), be assured that our Overpower hits will reach absurd amounts of damage.
To wrap it up, using both Call of the Ancients and Steel Grasp, our AoE capabilities will skyrocket while Enhanced Death Blow takes care of any Boss damage concerns.
Feeling like giving it a try? Well, you're more than welcome to do so but first, take a note of the...
Requirement for this build
- The Third Blade
(yes, don't play it without acquiring this first).
Note that Shroud of False Death has been temporarily disabled for the launch of Season 6 - Season of Hatred. Keep using the Chest Armor piece from the Starter or Ancestral variants until fixed!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Barbarian Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
NOTE:
Due to Yen's Blessing shenanigans and usage of Runewords, our skill bar only uses Five Skills (leaving one out) despite investing in Seven Skills (including 3 shouts). This behavior is intended (explanations can be found below)
- Death Blow is our primary damage and combined skill as it generates and spends Fury, and every cast will trigger Fortify (Irrepressible ), Vulnerable (Expose Vulnerability) and heals (Invigorating Fury). Equipping The Third Blade turns it into a spammable pseudo-Core skill.
- Steel Grasp is used to group up enemies. Having tightly packed groups is important for this build as Death Blow on its own has very narrow coverage. Thanks to The Third Blade (again), it benefits from +Core skill ranks bonuses and becomes available without investing any Skill point.
- Lunging Strike can be used as a backup tool to generate Fury when needed and move in and out of monster packs.
- Call of the Ancients acts as an all purpose buff, increasing our Damage, Attack Speed and generating Fury. Using Arreat's Bearing, it becomes easy to reduce its cooldown to 10 seconds, meaning it only has about 4 seconds of downtime.
- Rallying Cry is a buff providing us a big Resource Generation bonus (to sustain our high Fury spending gameplay) and Unstoppable for its entire duration (preventing us from getting interrupted). Paired with Yen's Blessing and Booming Voice, when being the ONLY SHOUT assigned to our Skill Bar, we can benefit from its effects all the time (as long as it is on cooldown)!
- Challenging Shout is another buff granting us a vast amount of Damage Mitigation and Maximum Life; further increasing our damage as Maximum life is factored into the Overpower damage calculation. DO NOT PUT IT ON YOUR SKILL BAR, as it is automatically casted by the Lac Rune, allowing us to have it permanently active as long we cast Death Blow atleast 4 times per second.
- War Cry is our last buff granting us Berserking and a hefty Damage multiplier. DO NOT PUT IT ON YOUR SKILL BAR, as it is automatically casted by the Ohm Rune, allowing us to have it permanently active by only casting Death Blow 6 to 7 times.
Skill Rotation
- Rallying Cry must be used whenever it is available; Yen's Blessing automatically refreshes it as long as it is on cooldown.
- Use Call of the Ancients pretty much whenever available for more damage and Fury generation.
- Use Steel Grasp to pull in surrounding enemies within Death Blow range and reuse it as you see fit. Ideally, group up monsters tightly against walls (pixel pull) to maximize your damage output.
- Start spamming Death Blow inside the largest pack of enemies and watch the magic happen as your Runewords automatically trigger War Cry and Challenging Shout as you cast; make sure to enjoy the Overpowers.
- Use Lunging Strike if you need the mobility to quickly get in or out of a pack of monsters.
PRO TIP: Make sure to use the Hold Position key when attacking to maximize your Inner Calm buff.
Arsenal System
The Arsenal System allows us to use a specific weapon for every attack skill, with each weapon granting different bonuses. We also have what is called the Technique Slot. With this, we can use any weapon of our choosing to always reap the benefit from its expertise bonus, regardless of which weapon we have equipped.
The Two-Handed Mace is used as our assigned weapon for both Death Blow and Lunging Strike to fully benefit from its expertise bonuses.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more Damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build naturally has permanent Vulnerable uptime thanks to Expose Vulnerability, so this is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, its secondary effect does not apply here - the limitation of the Technique Slot being that it does not allow us to benefit from the second bonus that is normally gained when reaching expertise rank 10 with any weapon.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Arsenal System Guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.
Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.
Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Ire
- Dominate
- Wrath
- Challenger
- Crusher
To Level 46
- Ire
- Dominate
- Wrath
- Challenger
- Crusher
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. This Death Blow Barbarian build focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
NOTE: Shouts triggered by Runes are affected by Shout bonuses (Skill Ranks, Enhanced Node, Passives and Aspects).
- Tam + Lac - This Runeword combination triggers Challenging Shout after casting 16 Core skills (ideally 4 per second) - which is easy enough with Death Blow and Steel Grasp thanks to The Third Blade. On top of it being a nice defensive boost, this bonus Maximum Life is also factored in the Overpower damage calculation.
- Poc + Ohm - This Runeword combination triggers War Cry after casting 6 to 7 Death Blow (100 Fury per cast).
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Cir - A good early game alternative/substitution Ritual Rune for Tam to generate offerings.
- Gar - A strong early game Invocation Rune option when trying to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- Yax - A very strong 200 offering Ritual Rune that triggers whenever you use a healing potion.
- Tec - A cheap Invocation Rune that allows temporary use of the Earthquakes and Bul-Kathos Aspects.
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.
Hired: Subo
Subo has a lot to offer us from a utility standpoint as Seeker allows us to easily track enemies and generate Fury.
For our Mercenary Core Skill, we pick Molotov and Share a Drink as its area of effect Slow and Potion generating capabilities are always helpful during long standing fights.
For our Mercenary Iconic Skill, we choose Explosive Charge and Bargaining Chips to further increase our AoE and Overpower damage output.
Reinforcement: Varyana
Varyana's Whirlwind serves as a regular Damage and Status effect (Bleed) helper thanks to its low cooldown.
We chose to bind Whirlwind to Steel Grasp as a way of making sure the monsters we pull are debuffed as we pack them.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Death Blow Barbarian to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.
Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds
- 115%+ Attack speed (including the Carnage buff) to cast Death Blow 4 times per second
- Rank 35+ Death Blow from the various +Core rank affixes
- 90%+ Chance for Death Blow to Deal Double damage
- 300%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 2500+ Strength
- 700+ Willpower
- ~200% Resource Generation Bonus (when buffed by Rallying Cry)
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 30,000+ Life
- 180%+ Movement Speed
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Death Blow Barbarian, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build and make sure to check them as you progress! See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in ourGeneral Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Death Blow Barbarian from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with max life, offensive or utility stats.
- To lower Death Blow cost to a sustainable 20-25 Fury per cast, we focus on Resource Cost Reduction affixes on our Two-Handers and use Weapon Master's to reduce the base cost by 5. One Fury per second affix along with Berserk Fury is used to ensure our Fury bar stays full; both trigger (partially) every 0.2 seconds, making them more reliable than Vocalized Empowerment.
- As we do not have Yen's Blessing yet, we put our three Shouts on our bar and get multiple Shout Cooldown Reduction Tempers and Bold Chieftain's to ensure permanent uptime.
- Gameplay is very similar to the Endgame versions with the sole difference being that we leverage Blood Boiling as a source of guaranteed Overpower, while also giving us nice AoE Damage when collecting the volatile drops.
- Remind yourself to use your Healing Potions to trigger your Runeword and stay in your Earthquakes when packing monsters with Steel Grasp to fully benefit from Earthquakes and Bul-Kathos!
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but ensure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
- Swap your Key passive to Unbridled Rage and keep your Death Blow Fury cost around 50-55 using Resource Cost Reduction affixes or tempers and Weapon Master's.
- Start farming Lord Zir to get Overkill, Arreat's Bearing, Yen's Blessing and Ugly Bastard Helm, as those allow you to transition into the Endgame setup and skill bar.
- Then, pay a couple of visits to the Echo of Varshan for an Ring of Red Furor to start triggering Critical Strikes reliably. NOTE: Even thought it might sound unintuitive, try to get one with a low-rolled Maximum Resource affix (+10 Maximum resource is all we need), as it increases our Poc efficiency.
- Lastly, hunt Duriel and Andariel to get Banished Lord's Talisman in order to get more Overpower procs.
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- Prioritize farming Infernal Hordes to get a Crown of Lucion and Tormented Bosses for your Mythic Uniques.
- Ring of Starless Skies will be your first priority as it gives bonus ranks to Core Skills and a bunch of Attack Speed. Only equip Crown of Lucion once you have it so you can reach that sweet 100 Fury / Death Blow cast.
- While the stats on Shroud of False Death are "okay" at best, it provides us an additional Fury Generation Bonus affix and mostly the amazing +1 to All Passive implicit modifier. This implicit represents a 30%+ damage multiplier on top of being a great boost to our shouts and defensive passives.
- Finally, Doombringer is always a no-brainer for Overpower builds since Maximum Life naturally scales Overpower damage. Aside from that, it gives an incredible amount of extra damage mitigation and helps us face-tank.
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Why are we not using Encroaching Wrath or Limitless Rage?
Why are we not using Harlequin Crest/Shako or Ugly Bastard Helm?
Mechanics
Coming soon™
Video Guide
Coming soon
Summary
The Death Blow Barbarian is an absolute "must try" for any Overpower enjoyer despite its narrow AoE capabilities. Here's why it's a great build:
- Up to 40+ Death Blow Ranks and massive damage output from Enhanced Death Blow, the new Chance to Deal Double Damage temper and the guaranteed Overpowers provided by Banished Lord's Talisman. Enjoy the Overpowers every 3 casts!
- High defense from its permanent Challenging Shout and Doombringer.
- High utility in being able to group enemies via Steel Grasp with no cooldown.
- High Ultimate uptime with Arreat's Bearing.
- Extremely easy to play, mainly using four skills, two of them being buffs.
- Easy to gear for and a solid Season starter. Why bother with Critical Strike affixes when you can wear Ring of Red Furor?
Credits
Written by Beatdropper
Reviewed by snail