Barbarian Leap/Earthquake Build With Might of the Earth

Strengthened by the powers of the Might of the Earth set, the Earthquake Barbarian offers a tight and satisfying rotation of synergistic abilities, disguised under a visual treat of rampaging AoE destruction, along with a hefty amount of crowd control to boot. This build is designed for Greater Rift solo progression, but we also have a speed farming variant, which you can find by clicking the link below.

The basic skill setup of the Earthquake Barbarian is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.

Active Skills
Earthquake Molten Fury Seismic Slam Rumble 1 War Cry Veteran's Warning 2 Leap Death from Above 3 Threatening Shout Falter 4 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity
Passive Skills
Rampage Earthen Might Ruthless Boon of Bul-Kathos

The required gear setup for the Earthquake Barbarian is listed below. Check the Gear page for detailed information on choices, alternatives, gemming, Kanai's Cube and Paragon distribution.

• Helm: Eyes of the Earth
• Shoulders: Spires of the Earth
• Gloves: Pull of the Earth
• Chest: Spirit of the Earth
• Belt: Girdle of Giants
• Pants: Weight of the Earth
• Boots: Foundation of the Earth
• Bracers: Ancient Parthan Defenders
• Amulet: Hellfire Amulet of Strength
• Ring 1: Focus
• Ring 2: Restraint
• Weapon: The Furnace

Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.

On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.

With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:

• Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
• Offense: Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so they are as close to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the two stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet. For 2-handed builds, this is usually achieved by spending all points on Critical Hit Damage. For dual-wielding 1-handed builds, this is generally achieved with 150 points into Critical Hit Chance and the remaining 50 into Critical Hit Damage.
• Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Barbarians, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and All Resistance (to complement the naturally high Armor stat of Strength-based characters).
• Utility: Area Damage: 200 points.

In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:

• Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the 3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season. If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its implementation. The available pieces are Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
• Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
• Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.

• Legendary Gem 1: Bane of the Trapped
• Legendary Gem 2: Bane of the Stricken
• Legendary Gem 3: Gogok of Swiftness

• Weapon Slot: Blade of the Tribes
• Armor Slot: Lut Socks
• Jewelry Slot: Band of Might

In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the Might of the Earth set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble a MotE Leapquake Barbarian, you should do the following.

• Gather the full 6-piece Shadow set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Pants, Shoulders, Boots, Gloves, Helm, and Chest. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Pants) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
• Upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Two-Handed Mighty Weapons to get Blade of the Tribes; this is a build-defining legendary weapon that increases Earthquake damage and provides two additional sources that trigger its effect from War Cry and Threatening Shout.
• Gamble Boots on a Level 1 Barbarian (either your starting character or an alt) to get Lut Socks. This is a crucial piece for Leapquake Barbs, allowing you to triple Leap before the cooldown triggers and enabling your whole rotation from the 4-piece bonus onwards.
• Gamble Rings on a Level 1 Barbarian (either your starting character or an alt) to get Band of Might, a massive source of damage reduction and a universally useful item for Barbarians. It is the only legendary ring available to level 1 Barbarians, making the gamble significantly easier.
• Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get In-geom; doing this on a level 1 Demon Hunter alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary swords. In-geom greatly benefits early game Leapquake Barbarians, since it makes Wrath of the Berserker a much more readily available buff.
• Gamble or upgrade rare Bracers to get Mortick's Brace; this legendary piece gives you all the runes of Wrath of the Berserker, adding the toughness of Striding Giant and the sustain of Thrive on Chaos to the universally desirable Insanity buff, which we usually take on the skill bar anyway. As a bonus, gambling or upgrading this slot can yield Nemesis Bracers, which are a staple farming item for your Follower.
• Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful legendaries in the build as described in the dedicated endgame Leapquake Barbarian guide. Bounties will net you craftable set recipes as well, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
• While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; Convention of Elements, the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint) and the Endless Walk set ( The Traveler's Pledge and The Compass Rose) will all drastically improve this and other builds, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Unity, or Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.