Thorns Barbarian Endgame Build Guide

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:

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Skill Rotation

NOTE: At first, you will need to get hit a few times to passively generate enough Fury for Bash, but such is the Thorns way of life.

• Wrath of the Berserker, War Cry and Challenging Shout must be active at all times. Make sure to cast them right before pulling enemies to avoid pushing them away when they are packed on you.
• Use ‍Steel Grasp to pull in surrounding enemies inside your Earthquakes and reuse it every 3-5 seconds to refresh its effects. Remember that the more monsters there are attacking you, the more potent Needleflare becomes.
• Start spamming Bash on the nearest monster in order to build up your Combat Bash guaranteed Overpower, Supreme Wrath of the Berserker buff and help reset our cooldowns through Hectic.
• Use Hammer of the Ancients whenever one of those guaranteed Overpowers is available (ideally every 5 seconds).

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 will be used as our assigned weapon for both Combat Bash and Hammer of the Ancients as they require a Two-Handed Bludgeoning weapon.

In the Technique Slot, the ‍Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more Damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build naturally has high Vulnerable uptime thanks to Enhanced Steel Grasp, 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.

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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

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 Thorns Barbarian build focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Yul + Xal - This combination gives us 20% more Maximum Life after casting 4 cooldown based skills - which will be easy enough with ‍Steel Grasp. On top of it being a nice defensive boost, this bonus Maximum Life is also factored in when calculating our Thorns value. Note that unlike Enhanced Challenging Shout, this Rune maintains our Fortify buff.
• Lith + Tec - While in combat and standing still, this Runeword will constantly spawn Earthquakes so we can benefit from Earthquake, Bul-Kathos and Rumble.

Alternative choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Cem - A good alternative/substitution ritual Rune for Yul, preferably with Boots having the “Attack reduce Evade cooldown by X second” implicit affix.
• Teb - A strong early game “Thorns like” Invocation Rune, making enemies take Bonus Damage whenever they hit you and heal you when they die.
• Yax - A very strong 200 offering Ritual Rune that triggers whenever you use a healing potion.

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: Raheir

Raheir has a lot to offer us from a defensive standpoint, as Skills like ‍Valiance and ‍Bastion help protect us from heavy hits and grant Unstoppable.

For our Mercenary Core Skill, we pick Ground Slam, as its area of effect Slow capabilities are always helpful. It is paired with Raheir's Aegis, which provides a pretty decent boost to all of our Resistances and can help compensate for low rolls on gear.

For our Mercenary Iconic Skill, we choose Bastion to provide us very strong defensive and offensive buffs through Inspiration.

Reinforcement: Aldkin

Aldkin serves as a nice panic button for dangerous encounters by casting ‍Field of Languish, which slows enemies and reduces their damage.

We chose to bind Field of Languish to Steel Grasp as a way of making sure the Monsters we pull are debuffed as we pack them.

To enable the Thorns 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

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Thorns 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 Uniqueitems 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.

This section is designed to guide your Thorns Barbarian from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestraland 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.

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 the Bash Cleave Temper ?

The Bash Cleave Temper is extremely useful to multiply your chance of getting guaranteed Overpower faster as any additional Critical Strike inflicted that way counts towards Combat Bash. However using this Temper would create two issues for the build.

1. Bash Stuns your enemy (plural - enemies in front of you with the Bash Cleave temper) every other hit, Stunned monsters do not attack you, however this build wants you to get hit to trigger your Thorns (especially when using Needleflare).
2. We would have to replace one of our Unique Weapons to have room for the Bash Cleave Temper and the current Weapon loadout provides much more benefits.

Why are we not using Harlequin Crest/Shako ?

Despite Harlequin Crest being a strong option; mainly for it's massive Cooldown Reduction affix; it pales in comparison to the new Ugly Bastard Helm from an offensive point of view. Thorns builds being heavily tied to Steel Grasp, we can also easily get both Damage Multiplier and Cooldown Reduction bonuses from Ancients' Oath alone.

The main argument in favor of Harlequin Crest would be that it opens up your 2H Slashing Weapon to be a Polearm with the Maximum Life, Tempered Affixes and multiple Damage Multipliers that go along with its Executioner Glyph and Weapon Expertise Bonus. However, this build focuses on using Combat Bash and Violent Hammer of the Ancients, which makes a 2H Bludgeoning Weapon mandatory.

Mechanics

How do I calculate how much Thorns I get from passives and affixes ?

For Outburst the formula is (Max Life - BaseLife) / (BaseLife*10%) * OutburstThorns which translates into (MaxLife - 400) / 40 * 8 .

Note that we do not need more than 1 point in Outburst as it doesn't increase the ratio we get from Max life (2nd part), but only the base flat amount (1rst part, ie: 16 -> 32 -> 48).

Thorns while Fortified Tempers are additives within one another (ThornWFortified1 + ThornWFortified2 etc) but Multiplicative with your base Thorns (from Affixes, Outburst or Strategic Challenging Shout).

Other Thorns multipliers such as Barbed Carapace and Tough as Nails work as regular Thorns Multipliers.

Coming soon

The Thorns Barbarian is a lazy easy to play, razor bladed tank that performs well in in most content.

Here's why it's a great build:

• Extreme defense from its Challenging Shout, Doombringer, Bul-Kathos and defense oriented Paragon Boards.
• Permanent Berserking uptime thanks to Wrath of the Berserker and Enhanced War Cry.
• Permanent Wrath of the Berserker Ultimate uptime with Cooldown Reduction-focused gear.
• High utility in being able to group enemies via Steel Grasp with close to no Cooldown.
• Low Fury maintenance; after passively generating your initial 25 Fury, Bash will keep it maxed at all times.
• Massive Damage Multipliers thanks to Ugly Bastard Helm and Violent Hammer of the Ancients. Who thought a Fire Overpowering Thorns Barbarian would be a thing?
• Both Starter and Ancestral gear are very easy to get.

Written by Beatdropper

Reviewed by snail