How to build a support barb in under an hour

BARBARIAN

TL;DR: Craft 3P borns and 2P cains with INT, Find all shared gear and upgrade Lgems with your main class then gamble or upgrade for the last 5 gear pieces on a powerleveled barb.

Edit 3: I need to clarify this is not the 100% optimal build for speeds, but the fastest way to get a decent build that you can use to farm better gear.

Greetings travellers, stay a while and listen. I'm Axman#21735 and I have 1000+ hours on barb. Even after so long I am still learning new stuff, but hopefully I can teach even you pros out there a few tricks. Remember you should never trust anyone who think they know everything about this game (or life in general).

I've seen countless xp barbs this season with some bad and even just plain wrong builds for the speed meta, which makes no sense since xp barb is THE easiest build to make. You get a tiny bit more XP and it's nice to have at least one support for flexibilty when making a group. Here's how I did it and it could support gr 130 in under an hour including powerlevel.

First, use your main class to:

Find: Oculus ring 85%, Strongarm bracer 30%, Rondals Locket amulet with CDR and Ingeom or Echoing fury with CDR (cube the other).
Upgrade legendary gems: Toxin lvl 25, esoteric 100, gogok 25+, lastly gem of ease (or just use amethyst)

Then on your main class farm at least 4 sets of T16 bounties and get enough materials for 5+ hellfire rings, then use a WD or wiz (even lvl 1) to craft the following gear pieces:

3piece Borns Frozen soul set. Look especially for CDR and globe pickup range.
2p Cains Destiny set: Boots, gloves or hat. Again CDR and globe range.
A hellfire ring with at least CDR and socket

See my LINK for perfect stats on all gear for monk speed, but except max cooldown reduction and at least 20 yards globe range you can make do with almost any stats! Ancient gear not needed. We craft the items on WD or Wiz so items roll with INT since it's very useful on support barb with the All Res that is hard to come by. You can also augment INT on gear, but it shouldn't be needed.

That only leaves 5 items that only barb can get, and you will have to find by either gambling blood shards that you farm on main class, upgrade yellows or ask another barb for help.

2p Savages set: Pants and either helm, gloves or boots depending on what cains you crafted. Don't craft pants as they wont have guaranteed sockets like sets do.
2x MIGTHY Belts (don't upgrade regular belts): Chilaniks chain and Pride of cassius. Put the worst one in cube. You NEED the full 6 sec on cassius.

One belt and band of might is for cubing, so dont worry about stats. Again look for max CDR and globe range on all pieces.

Then get a powerlevel for your new barb. You can write me in EU server PC.

Until you get max CDR on gear you can use messerschmidt in cube instead of echoing fury or (less optimal) change oculus or hellfire ring to a zodiac. This is to keep up Ignore Pain 100%.

PARAGONS: Around 50/50 STR and VIT. Remove Area Damage.

For Necro LoD speeds you'll want to change the shard in weapon for the Essence of Anguish with 50% more poison dmg from all sources rank 3, and roll your MAIN HAND weapon dmg to poison. And change esoteric gem to wreath of lightning. Otherwise the builds are the same.

Playstyle is very intuitive, just keep up buffs, but here are some more advanced tips:

Remember to also apply the execute effect from the shard in hat by running around in circles.
Bind Force-Move to a button on your mouse like scrollwheel or button 5 if you have it.
Don't miss any purple orbs, or the team will lose trust in you. The one from the weapon shard spawns when the last elite add dies (like ingeom proc), which can be at weird times.
Keep up your Gogok with rend, but don't spam charge, just charge once every 6 sec to keep up Strongarm and Band of might, because:
Understanding Crowd Control management and why stuff like 4P raekors builds are more difficult for speeds. It's really one of the most important things to learn as barb, and useful to know for every single class. Don't mess up monks pull more than you have to.
There are arguemets to be made for swapping rend and sprint to stomp- wrenching smash and ancient spear- rageflip. Try them both and see what you like.

Thats it. It probably took you longer to read than to actually do, sorry about that. I could have written much more on optimization though. Feel free to ask questions and suggest changes - as any decent player should I don't get mad about suggestions to improve (yes i've been kicked from games for even suggesting optimizations).

Good luck, Have fun!

Edit: To clarify, it doesn't matter what class your main is as long as you can complete bounties and upgrade some Lgems. I don't include the time spend farming on your main in the "create a barb in under an hour" claim since it's something you will do anyways.

Edit 2: As u/kika-kun pointed out, the 4P raekor build is arguably more damage. See our discussion of pros and cons in comments.

Posted Jan 7, 2022, 11:08 AM UTC · edited

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fengluwei•4 yr. ago

I know I might get downvoted to hell for this since we're on Reddit, but I'm trying to make what I'm about to say be as constructive as possible. I will preface that I really hope no one reads OP's build/gameplay and proceeds to use it and grief some pickup groups

As pointed out by a couple of other players, XP boost from wearing items is actually super negligible. You would do much, much better just being more efficient & faster through creating more density (linked to my third point below). Another big factor is looking for pools (esp. 2.5k-3k Para and up), which has been brought up as well. The only acceptable wear of these items would be the 2pc Cain in Rat runs since you can't make use of the 4pc Raekor in any case.
Good support barb gameplay is all about ground stomp and rage flip. Why? These allow you to manipulate monsters' position, which in the hands of a good barb player, allows you to create artificial density. Density = more monsters killed per action = more XP, yay! (much more relevant than wearing 'XP gear'). An experienced barb would be able to create juicy packs of trash around elite packs, pulling from different junctions. This is possible even on certain 'bad' maps, and no, by no means it is 'impossible' to use the spear in 80% of maps (a more accurate number would be 15-25% which is already a pretty generous estimate). Also, if "mobs die before you pull anything", you are almost definitely playing barb wrong (see point 3)
A great support barb is almost always leading the group, not "staying a bit behind together with monks to speed them up and pick up orbs". To be clear, a good group with monks who know what they are doing would not require sprint. They use epiphany teleport when able (visible monster), and dashing strike when there is no visible monster (to get past blind terrain etc.) What OP described is NOT your role at all, and it doesn't help the group be more efficient. This is true for any meta run, and is also true for monk runs. The only exception are RAT runs as the monsters completely cannot be manipulated due to the ZNec's LOTD freeze, and your only function is to max PuR, press Ignore Pain, pick up purple spheres and watch pornography on your 2nd monitor.
Basis for point 3? Mainly the simple fact that Ground Stomp is a busted skill - some might argue the most overpowered skill in the entire game which single-handedly allowed GR150s to first happen many seasons ago. Why is it busted? It allows for 'pixel-pulling' i.e. squeezing millions of mobs into 1 tiny overlapping area. Cyclone strike can't do that. When you stomp, the monster's hitboxes are in that moment stacked on top of each other and they end up occupying the same space. Cyclone strike by the monk would result in the monsters being unable to be stacked; whereas a proper pixel from a barb's stomp (hard to execute, but see point 7) would pack everything neatly into a small space, compacting them (if interested, skim through the video above). In the hands of a great barb, you could potentially put 30-40 monsters in the space of 1 pixel just in the span of 2-3 seconds. What does this mean? It means more efficient runs, since much more monsters are killed per action, which translates into juicy juicy XP (again, yes, much better than wearing 'XP gear'). This is also why good monks in a good group would be running reaver instead of ingeom, because the group is actually able to kill value trash (think biggies , aboms, huge packs in general etc.) when efficient and when needed; and not just hop mindlessly from elite to elite. Again, an experienced barb would have the skillset to make a bad map into an acceptable one, an acceptable one into a good one, and a good map into an insane one (think big open maps like Festering, Battlefields etc., and watch them do their art). They trust their barb to be able to create density -- not just walk around shouting, Picking Up Purple Orbs, and being a nerfed 2% Enlightenment Shrine.
This is a point alone bc it's important. If you think that barb's stomps and charges "ruin the monks pulls", you are deluded and have got it the complete opposite. Barb's pixel is infinitely better than cyclone; and the priority should be on getting off the stomp effect (over cyclone). If you think that running 4P Raekor is bad for speed runs, then you either have no idea of how best barbs play (tip: aim your charge properly); or you have been playing with idiot barbs, or are one yourself. It is simply a matter of skill. Raekor = +difficulty, +reward ratio.
Small point, but you miss the target on understanding different kinds of damage. Not all damage forms are created equal. There is multiplicative damage & additive damage. Without going into detail, multiplicative = pog; additive = meh. Additive damage is stacked with all sorts of other buffs like DH's Odyssey, Wolf, Fire Ally, Unity, even the 2x Toxin gems, the list goes on. Multiplicative damage is well, multiplicative with other factors (self-explanatory). This is why "10% damage" Rend, in the grand scheme of things, is dogshit compared to how much impact a barb can have with good spears and stomps; and why Anguish ("+50% damage" poison gem) pales in comparison to Sin (+1 Orb) in a proper 4 man group. This is also why monks in good groups would be running Relentless Assault (multiplicative), instead of Momentum/Unity (additive). Which is why the barb should be ahead of the group, so that the mobs are stunned/frozen when the monks arrive and the pack just goes boom.
Circling back, Ground stomp doesn't work when the mobs are CC-immune, which is why the Barb should be in front of the monks in monk runs. How this works out in reality, like Kika alluded to and showcased in his gameplay, is that the barb prepares the stack nicely so that when the monks arrive (which should be around ~1.5-3 seconds later), they just cyclone (no need to reposition since the pinata is already prepared) and the entire pack (stuffed nicely into 1 small area) just explodes in 1 MA activation. Letting the monks cyclone strike before your ground stomp is just a recipe for disaster as they won't be able to create any good density as the monsters hitboxes are not overridden (they still take up the same space). In practice, this rookie mistake results in the monks commonly needing multiple MA activations to clear an elite pack (as they are spread out), not being able to kill trash along with the elite pack at the same time, and results in not being efficient overall.
With all that being said, the truth is that properly using ground stomp and ancient spear to manipulate monsters is not easy. Stomp requires you to have an 'empty' pixel at your point (not a click targeted skill); using it improperly messes things up. Spear has many high-level tactics like distance & animation manipulation, curve-pulling on jagged paths, or making use of missile dampening to do some crazy stuff. You also need to have tons of situational awareness of where and when to pick fights that will serve your group the best. There's a reason why 100% of pros agree that the support barb is the hardest role in the game to play well, and that it has the highest skill ceiling of any class.

If anyone really wants to know how to gear and play a proper support barb, go look at the comments of u/Kika-kun in the thread, see what build/gameplay he talked about and learn from the videos he posted. He was being absolutely nice in the discussion (tbh it is like a PhD holder speaking to a third grader). Other great barb veterans are Rob2628, Hoxango and ChewingNom off the top of my head. They know their shit, they know their gameplay, and if we are able to do 50% of what they do on a constant basis it would be a blessing for any group to have you.

I can't stress this enough: a good support barb is not about what random items you wear to boost group's exp by ~2% - it's about using your brain and situational/spatial awareness to create ideal situations for your group. The gear you wear is a means to an end for you to achieve your goal.

If you aim to be a braindead orb picker, be basically a Toughness Aura through being an IP/Warcry button, and walk around wearing 'XP gear' (lol) without any real impact, then all power to you, follow OP for sure. But if you actually want to have much more impact than that and have a more fulfilling function, and you play with a group where the monks have enough mechanical skill to not need sprint because of good epiphany TP usage, I urge you to check out the guys I spoke of above. They actually know their shit. I'm by no means affiliated to any of them, they are just good players, and I am just someone who cares about sharing the truth and what is the ideal setup for groups.

Because if you follow OP's post, his build, and his described gameplay -- you are honestly not being a "support barb"... You are being a Purple Orb Bot and a 2% Experience Shrine. Think about it for a second and repeat those terms in your head. Many things mentioned in the OT is outright bad advice. You'd have literally negligible impact. And I want to be clear about one thing - it is not just a matter of "your build" vs "my build". There is one that is outright objectively better, and hint it's not OPs. Also I really don't want my pubs or pickup groups griefed because of this post (there are already enough fucking whirlwind zbarbs on the server, thank u). A proper barb boosts a group's efficiency by up to ~35% as compared to a mediocre one.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

P.S. Born's is goddamn trash on zbarb

mikwillOP•4 yr. ago

Wow I am glad that my post at least gathered enough attention to get such valuable critique. While i do agree with your points on efficiency as i've also discussed in the other comments, this post was basically meant as a newcomers guide to create the most versatile xp barb in the fastest way possible so they can try it out. I am sure you realize most players that need guides are not in pbarb groups above 4K para, we merely look for other players in ingame communities and hope for the best. Have you seen a new barb using 4p raekor and not knowing what to do in public games? I have and it's not pretty. Not to mentions noob monks moving with epiphany.

While I find your post super insightful, I hope these discussions dont discourage new players from trying an easy build that works no matter what the dps does. And then later practice and learn your setup.

My opinion is still this: if you dont use raekor 4p you might as well use xp gear. 2.1% xp is better than none.

fengluwei•4 yr. ago

I'll try to answer your points step by step

Your guide is not versatile. I don't like to belabour the point but what you prescribed provides negligible impact, and doesn't cover any function other than the bread-and-butter toughness buffs that any barb provides
"So that they can try it out" - there is a world of a difference between the gameplay you prescribed and the true support barb gameplay (with Ancient Spear and Rage Flip). Rat runs are one thing because the barb's function is literally to be an aura/pickup bot and the other 3 necs are doing everything; but you will be literally pulling no weight at all in speed/monk/meta runs. And you literally said in your post your build is for monk runs
There is also importantly no bridge for newbies to connect the two. You pretty much stated in your post that "you shouldn't need spear for speeds since mobs die before you pull anything", and "80% of maps are impossible to use it in", both of which are arguably outright falsehoods. When they read your post they already are under the impression that it's useless and that barb is a Buff Presser and Purple Orb Bot, how would they even get better or evolve beyond that playstyle, I have no clue
I hope to God I don't encounter anyone using your build in the ingame community :( it really just does nothing
"Easy build" - yes it is. "Works no matter what the DPS does" - I'd say it doesn't do any work lol. For instance, c'mon man, 10% additive damage Rend? There are much better alternatives, even if you don't use either spear or stomp (e.g. Leap to catch up with your teleporting DPSers over impassable terrain where charge doesn't work, which is a common thing in rat runs... I'd take that in monk runs too over rend any day of the week)
"Later practice and learn..." - you already implied that spear was useless for speeds (it is hardly the case). You also implied that stomp/charge messes up monk pull ("Don't mess up monks pull more than you have to"), when its actually the complete opposite... the monk should not be messing up your pull. No clue what would they be practicing or learning, since firstly because of the things you said, they are already under a completely misrepresented impression of what considered good for a support barb; and secondly there is also no mention of any positive use for those anywhere in speeds at all. I guess they would be practicing pressing sprint, and practicing rolling for increased pickup radius by 2 yards at the Mystic?
I think if you really wanna set new players up for success, lay out a feasible progress plan that grows from easy difficulty to higher difficulty (e.g. Maxroll where they have differing builds set out based on paragon, ease of use and comfort level), rather than putting them on the wrong idea/knowledge and starting them off the wrong footing in the first place

TBH lowkey kinda sad that newer players might read the original post and think hey thats what im gonna do and then they go in all excited to a pickup group doing the shit that you recommended. Then they either get flamed or kicked or everyone leaves cos they are basically doing nothing lmao

mikwillOP•4 yr. ago

I love all the strong opinions about support barb, and seing so many as passioned about a class as me.

Remember my post was about creating an xp barb fast. The main point was you are able to craft 6 of the items, and find 8 including Lgems before even creating the barb.

After that you have a perfectly usable barb you can farm zbarb gear on and follow another guide. I should have clarified that but wanted to keep it brief.

Yes this build is a glorified stat stick but you are saying thats useless? It might be boring sure, but not useless - all you are offering more is density with stomp and spear and im saying i personally havent found pixeling mobs to be worth more that 10% rend dmg when your monk can just as well pull and kill the same amount, and grabbing a few trash with spear isnt worth losing 20% movesped in MY opinion/experience. We can agree getting to next elite faster is good i hope.

This build also has NO problem keeping up with monks, otherwise i would recommend wreath of lightning. Please test it out yourself.

And by all means link to better guides or maybe take the opportunity here to write your own guides. You've practically already done it.

I am also sorry to all the new barb being scared away by all this discussion. Just find a group that lets you experiment and mess up without getting mad, and you'll learn ALL that barb can offer, not just the highest paragon meta.

fengluwei•4 yr. ago

"Creating an XP barb fast" - then go for the Maxroll 2Cain 2Raekor 2Savages which someone else suggested, which is pretty much as easy to start as yours but better. Anyway my gripe was more about the prescribed skills and gameplay rather than the actual item build
"Yes this build is a glorified stat stick but you are saying thats useless?" - to be clear, I mean your build's impact is negligible, and I stand by that. You are advocating doing what a rat run barb does in a monk run, which isn't great (close to zero). Good monks really barely need the stats you claim to provide because of Serenity/Epiphany (and the cooldowns on these two are non-issues as they inevitably run with either Reaver or ingeom)
"We can agree getting to next elite faster is good i hope." - yup getting to next elite faster is good, but do monks really need that movespeed even; and does that 20% MS actually translate into 20% higher efficiency? They have two ways to just zip past you - dashing strike (which will be unlimited with ingeom as you say your group runs with), and epiphany TP. Why would they be even walking for any substantial proportion? Rat barbs only run sprint because they have literally nothing better to do (see LOTD freeze point in my main post). Also, 20% movespeed, but at what cost? At what tradeoff? None of this was discussed. See my ending point below.
"This build also has NO problem keeping up with monks" - you mentioned somewhere else that you like to run with 1 ingeom monk and 1 reaver monk. If you really honestly think your barb build (with no Leap even) has no issue keeping up with ingeom monks, you are playing with monks who are legally blind, are having a stroke, or are playing with one hand (even then you might still be slower if they bind dash to amouse button) and masturbating with the other. There's a reason why monk is considered the fastest build in T16 and bounties... (btw our group has tested it pretty extensively and there is no way in hell barb matches monk on ingeom). Monks are also arguably just as fast if not faster than Necs, so you are kind of saying that the general consensus of Leap being used in rat runs is not better than rend, which is again, flawed. Also most top players and most casuals alike use Wreath of lightning with barb, so not sure what you are going on about
"you'll learn ALL that barb can offer" - that was my gripe man, that your build is basically offering nada
"Just find a group that lets you experiment and mess up without getting mad" - this was part of my original point, right? You already and still are talking about the relative uselessness (in your opinion and experience, of course) of hook and pixel, so what are they experimenting on? lol

Something that was true in your experience doesn't mean it's true in reality. As someone who is attempting to write a guide or a build post for "new players" on Reddit, I wholeheartedly believe you have a duty to give them the best objective information that you can, or at the very least, present a fuller and more objective picture than what you did. Again, recommending goddamn Rend and sprint over spear and stomp for monk runs is NOT equipping them with the tools nor knowledge to succeed. The amount of intellectual arrogance, and perspective from within a well just made me disappointed and that was why I replied when I'm usually a lurker.

"all you are offering more is density with stomp and spear and im saying i personally havent found pixeling mobs to be worth more that 10% rend dmg when your monk can just as well pull and kill the same amount"

If you really think that monster repositioning and pixels is "all you are offering" and that repositioning mobs to your whim and pixeling isn't infinitely more valuable than 10% ADDITIVE rend damage (which is really complete fuckall in the bigger picture), then we are clearly just playing two very very different games lmao. I cannot see why any good barb player would even think or say that. I'm going to spell it out to make it clear to any potential reader: good use of ancient spear + ground stomp over goddamn rend can cut your group's times in half (not exaggerating). Also I literally wrote paragraphs in my other comment about how ground stomp alone (and even more if you use it in conjunction with ancient spear) is going to be able to get MUCH more monsters into the same space than cyclone strike, and you still literally just claimed "your monk can just as well pull and kill the same amount" (completely untrue BTW), so I think there's no point to further discussion and we can just agree to disagree.

Cheers mate

Disclaimer: I'm not some P4000+ tryhard focused on the "high paragon meta", I'm barely P2000+ this season (similar to you). That doesn't mean you can't do your best though. Paragon is more of an indicator of time, rather than skill or mindset. There are tons of high paragon people that are as clueless as the original proposal. I just think everyone can have a high contribution and a great impact even if you are a casual player. Even a janitor can make his job efficient and fulfilling, but you are suggesting he just throws a bucket of water onto the toilet floor and that's it. Not sure if good analogy but hope people get what I mean. Peace out

zennonlwr•4 yr. ago

if we go by that logic (and i'm not saying that your logic here is flawed by any means), then the 2P cains / 2P raekor / 2P savages build listed in Maxroll for Speed runs might be a much more suitable path

IMO it's in essence a middle ground between a pretty much useless build (to be blunt, it is not versatile -- the proposed build doesn't really provide anything other than toughness buffs and a tinge of negligible additive dps), and the "elite" build. it has ingeom + echoing for easy mobility, with cains and hellfire for that slight XP boost, while also having the 2pc raekor as "insurance" for horrible maps. it also uses spear and ground stomp which encourages better gameplay (hopefully), as opposed to a lazy playstyle with low/no contribution

another point i'd like to note is that especially since you mentioned your post is for newer players and newer barbs, not even discussing nor even allocating hook + ground stomp together in tandem as gameplay just completely removes that awareness from them. also the idea that as a "zbarb" pressing sprint and picking up orbs is all you need to do perpetuates its own negative cycle IMHO, especially when they are not even introduced or aware that there is something that is not only more active, but also more ideal. you said they can practice and learn later; but if people don't even know something exists as a possibility they never even get along to trying it = no practice = stagnancy in the deep puddle

zbarb is already the hardest class to play well, and there is something to be said about the general zbarb gameplay and skill level (not great) on ingame communities (which we both use). there is also a general lack of quality + easily accessible zbarb content or advice not just on this platform but everywhere (exception being certain frequents like u/Kika-kun or u/VERTIKAL19 in the past); in part due to its difficulty but in large part due to its low level of popularity (you see monk guides, tips n tricks, discussions everywhere; but few discuss wd/sader or zbarb for instance)

i know for a fact that i definitely wouldn't want to go into an ingame community, try to form a pickup group with a couple of friends, need a +1 zbarb, and then this zbarb who joins us is gunning with the build you proposed and just runs behind us using buffs (no offence intended). to respond to what you said, i'd much rather have a new barb fuck around with the raekor and hooks and stomps and not know what to do and we can actually guide and help the person; rather than him/her just using a build that does close to nothing and will continue to do jack-all. and i especially think information meant for/targeted at newer players (like your post) has the capacity to reach the more 'casual' gamer population (there are tons of laidback lurkers/dads etc. on this sub), and also has the potential to have much more impact than you think. cheers!

Modern_Liberal•4 yr. ago

LMAO, WWZBarb.... well I was a Support / DPS WW barb in season 22. Simply I joined some groups where I wasn't top DPS and people asked me to switch abilities around to help their DPS, which was better than me going full DPS.

Kika-kunKikaha•4 yr. ago

You should play 4p raekor for monk runs to get more freeze for the monks' relentless assault passive, as well as play stomp for the stun.

Bonus xp from gear barely does anything and if your goal is fast gear up, it's way easier to play messerschmidt and drop born set altogether. If your goal is pure xp bonus (again, not recommended), drop born and band of might, equip aquila and leoric's ring.

In monk runs, I prefer having a sin with + progress globe but I guess anguish is also fine. Monks get way more additive damage than rats so 50% is not that impactful.

Oh, and barbs don't get more xp, all xp gear is shared across all members of the group. So 4% xp means every member gets 1% more xp from kills, so roughly 0.5% actual xp because roughly 50% of the xp comes from rift closure. To put things in perspective, getting 0.5% more xp, assuming you have that bonus xp up 100% of the time vs someone who doesn't have it at all : to get to p4000, you need 1Qd xp. 0.5% of that is 5 Tr. 5Tr is the difference between 4000 and 4007. So having an xp gear barb vs not having it is 7 paragon difference at p4000.

mikwillOP•4 yr. ago

Some good thoughts.

Why would you use relentless assoult for speeds and not just momentum and unity? The freeze might help you single out elites since the trash won't be pulled in properly, maybe that what you are going for? Then messer in monks cubes wont work as well and they should use Ingeom. And less trash killed = slower rift i'd say.

And how often are the mobs actually frozen/stunned when monks pop mystic allies. Together with their cyclone knockback I can imagine they get cc resistant pretty fast.

With stomp your version is also missing either 10% crit from rend or 20% movespeed from sprint.

Btw, i've found one monk with messer and one with ingeom to be a good setup, what do you think?

There's no reason for barb to play with messer since you get 100% uptime on IP, but you could easily fit it instead of echoing fury while you need it. The movespeed from echoing isn't nearly as needed for monk runs as it is for nec LoD. So you want to trade a sometimes 50% dmg reduction and 30% xp for what the born set gives plus 80% dmg reduction, that doesn't seem good enough for me. But I can see your point.

I also play with sin in monk speeds, it should show up in the build link.

I actually didn't know xp was shared like that, good to know! Also more fair lol. So the extra 16.8% xp I see in stats is divided by 4, thats 4.2% xp for every member. thats still a lot better than no bonus xp, and there's nothing better to use in those gearslots.

Edit: I tested relentless assault in d3planner, and it's about 6% more dmg than momentum or unity. I think the 10% crit from rend is about the same but I'm not sure how to test it. Edit 2: yeah they are about 6% dmg both

-1

Kika-kunKikaha•4 yr. ago

The way my group does these runs, the barb charges in, stomps on the elite(s), then monks can come in and pull trash from a bit farther out, with some assists from rage flips, IF the barb is confident in his flipping abilities (when I barb, I use it very sparingly and mostly on trash or easy blues).

Unless you, for some reason, decide to manually charge every single trash mob twice to make it completely CC immune, they will still be pulled and die. Trash killing is never an issue, only elites can resist more than you'd like.

As to why relentless assault... Relentless assault is a multiplier, it gives 20% damage when it's proced. Both unity and momentum are additive. You already have a lot of additive. zDH oddissey, barb falter, mystic ally fire, strongarms, 2 toxin gems, mantra from inna... Turns out, if you have that much, the buff from unity/momentum is ~7% damage. Compared to a true 20% damage from RA.

We actually dropped MfD on zDH to play with freezing beast to get a freeze on the boss while the barb is out looking for pools. It works well enough.

16.8% XP is 2.1% actual XP (you divide by 4 players then by 2 because half of the XP comes from rift closing). It's not bad and I would use hellfire ring, but I wouldn't go out of my way to drop messer just to get 0.1% XP. Having more stomps is already something I value more. Actually, messer is especially important for pbarb, which gives WAY more xp than bornes will ever hope to ! But I understand not everyone wants to skip loots.

You can see runs we do there: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1254978238?t=03h23m30s

Saskatchewinnians•4 yr. ago

VERY GOOD POST OP> > thank you

Redditgafffss•4 yr. ago

Do you have links or streamer names that play zbarb

mikwillOP•4 yr. ago

So I tested the mystic allies damage in d3planner and saw the 10% crit from rend is about the same 6% FINAL dmg as relentless assault. Maybe we could use your build but with rend and sprint?

Could you check d3planner as well and see if i'm right with the dmg?

Yeah I will never play pool barb. To me the loot is part of what makes the game fun. I'm usually doing the 3 runs and salvage runs, which most random groups are familiar with.

For my guide here though I will keep the borns version since it's easy to craft/get and also works for necro runs.

-1

Kika-kunKikaha•4 yr. ago

Just checked on d3planner

If monk goes with unity and barb goes with rend (which gives 10% additive damage, not 10% crit btw), the difference in the planner I made was
25,728,686,321,848,600 (unity on both monks (= 25% additive because you get the other monk's 5% buff) + rend on barb) vs 28,478,404,017,443,044 (relentless assault) I might have missed some buffs, but nothing major afaik (there was no marked for deaths in these, but mfd would make RA setup better because it dilutes the additive buff category even more)

So 28.4 / 25.7 = 10% damage

Your setup would be at worst 10% less damage, but because it's not possible to get all mobs 100% of the time stunned / frozen, it's a bit less (although ideally, elites get stunned then die within the next second and a half)

However, without raekor / stomp, you do lose on some utility. Mobs are less tightly packed (pixel be good), and you only have 1 furious charge instead of 3. Upside is it's easier to play

Regarding pool barb, I agree and I'm sad the game is in this state that if you want to get into good groups (as xp barb) you have to play pbarb

EmergencyCaramel6282•4 yr. ago

You can use 2p level 21 borns set instead. You don't lose messer.

mikwillOP•4 yr. ago

For the build i'm recommending you start out with messer in cube instead of echoing fury until you get close to max cdr on gear then you will have 100% uptime of IP and no longer need messer.

Secondly messer doesn't proc on RGs without adds. You will drop IP then without ingeom. 3P borns helps keeping IP close to 100%.

The 2P level 21 borns is viable but has some VERY low stats. You could instead go aquila and leorics signet and get better stats allround and 10% more xp but lose 30% dmg reduction. But i'd rather just lose some movespeed from echoing fury.

DraknoreZ•4 yr. ago

TLDR support barb = good

AnotherThroneAway•4 yr. ago

TIL Rondals isn't straight gutter trash

Redditgafffss•4 yr. ago

Some issues:

Do not use rend over spear flips. Crowd control is much more important. In rats you need the skill slot for leaps instead of spears.

Do not focus on xp gear, the gain is minimal. Certainly do not squueze born. You need flexibility and cooldowns, so cube messer and go the usual ingeom x echoing. 4p raekor is very good.

Monks will always catch up to you so leave it to them to pickup orbs. You must lead and create density.

LooseGoose_24_7battletag#1234•4 yr. ago

Nice discussion on zbarb, for those that are clueless on the pros/cons. I know it sucks running with a zbarb that don’t pixel stomp or flip. But that the life of a community player that don’t have a steady barb friend that actually plays it optimally. Those rat running zbarb are in no way suited for S25 Monks runs. But since not everyone can play all builds we take what is available, no matter the inefficiency. Still beat going solo.

I appreciate the OP and all the informative reply. I told myself 20 seasons ago that I will eventually do a zbarb. Guess this season just might be it.
Just atm I have a deeper hatred for a slow Zdh than barb at the moment!!!