Boulder Toss Raekor Barbarian Speed Farming Variation
Raekor Boulder Toss Barbarian Speed Farming Variation
The Raekor Boulder Toss Barbarian deals excellently with Normal Rifts and Bounty farming all the way through the highest Torment difficulties. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.
Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.
In a Reakor Boulder Toss build, Furious Charge is at the heart of
your rotation, used both as a mobility and damage amplification tool from the
Raekor set. During T16 speed
farming, take advantage of the burst potential of Boulder Toss builds and try
to jump from elite to elite, killing trash enemies as collateral damage
instead of them being the focus. Build up
Furious Charge stacks and
dump them in singular, devastating
Ancient Spear
Boulder Tosses. Keep
War Cry and
Battle Rage up at all times and
Sprint in
between packs if necessary. Apply
Wrath of the Berserker as soon as it
comes off cooldown — hopefully with minimal downtime due to
In-geom procs.
Adapting Skills and Passives
Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.
Ancient Spear
Boulder Toss remains the main damage dealing skill, but you will be dropping its generator counterpart
Weapon Throw, since the extra damage amplification it provides will be superfluous for T16 rifts. You will still be wearing
Arreat's Law for the baked-in damage amp to
Ancient Spear, however. The freed up skill slot should be taken up by
Sprint. Along with the
Marathon rune, it will provide useful mobility when there is no one to
Furious Charge to — a situation that comes up often in Bounties.
Furious Charge retains its role as a movement and damage amplification skill (due to the Raekor set bonuses).
Battle Rage is present in the speed farming build as well, but the rune is swapped from the progression-oriented
Bloodshed to the extra movement speed of
Ferocity.
- When you are T16 speed farming, use the slot usually occupied by
Ignore Pain for the all-around buff from
War Cry
Veteran's Warning.
Wrath of the Berserker
Insanity is an omnipresent self-buff in all versions of the build.
Rampage remains one of the best damage amplification passives you can take, easily capped with the T16 kill speed.
No Escape can also be taken to solidify your burst. Since you will be dropping the generator skill, you should take
Unforgiving to ease your resource management. Lastly, take
Nerves of Steel to prevent any careless mishaps as you jump from one brawl to another.
Adapting Gear
You will largely keep the gear pieces from your Greater Rift progression
setup. When it comes to armor sets, you will still use the 6-piece Raekor and
3-piece Cpt. Crimson bonusеs, using 5 pieces from the former and 2 from the
latter and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur to complete their power. Since
this remains a Boulder Toss-centric playstyle, you will have to keep
Skular's Salvation,
The Three Hundredth Spear and
Arreat's Law as cornerstone pieces of your damage output.
The notable differences are in the jewelry slots, where you can make some
adaptations to complement T16 farming. Instead of the slow-and-steady Endless
Walk set, you should use a combo of Squirt's Necklace and a Physical
damage
Stone of Jordan — both of which will provide a consistent
damage bonus suitable to bursting enemies down. Your second ring should be
Rechel's Ring of Larceny, which has a Fear-based movement speed proc and
comes with an innate Chance to Fear on Hit roll, essentially proccing
itself.
Note that former favorites for the jewelry slots in T16 — like
Nemesis Bracers,
The Flavor of Time, and
Avarice Band
— can now be equipped on your Follower, and their bonuses "Emanate"
(meaning, their effect applies to you as well). Obviously, you should consider
fitting these pieces back into the build, if you are farming T16s in a
group.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
---|---|---|
Head |
|
|
Shoulders |
|
|
Torso |
|
|
Wrists |
|
|
Hands |
|
|
Waist |
|
|
Legs |
|
|
Feet |
|
|
Amulet |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
|
Ring #2 |
|
|
Weapon #1 |
|
|
Weapon #2 |
|
To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.
Season 29: Paragon Cap
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 dual-wielding 1-handed builds, this is usually 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.
Season 29: Gearing Considerations
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.
Adapting Gems
Zei's Stone of Vengeance remains a universally desired damage
amplification gem. Swap the CC-dependent
Bane of the Trapped for
Bane of the Powerful, which provides an all-around damage and
survivability bonus as long as you maintain an above-abysmal farming speed.
Boon of the Hoarder is a great T16 speed farming inclusion, as it
increases both your Gold income (necessary for empowering GRs) as well as your
Movement Speed (via its interaction with the Follower-worn
Avarice Band) and your Toughness (through its interaction with
Goldwrap).
Slot | Gems |
---|---|
Jewelry | |
Helm | |
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
In-geom will cut down your Cooldowns in 10-second chunks with every
Elite kill, allowing you to chain
Wrath of the Berserker without
interruption and enjoy the tremendous benefits of this omnipotent buff.
The power of the triumvirate interaction between a Follower-worn
Avarice Band (massively extends your pickup radius), a
Boon of the Hoarder socketed in your jewelry (provides a constant stream
of Gold), and
Goldwrap in the armor Cube slot (scales Armor as you
pick up Gold) cannot be understated in T16 farming.
In order to mix in the Raekor set with the craftable Captain Crimson set,
you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I
bounties, to tie the two set bonuses
together.
The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.
Follower
The recommended follower for this build during standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.
For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.
Legendary Potion
The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
(allows you to break up walls that impede your ranged DPS) and
Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (provides a secondary source of crowd
control immunity during
Wrath of the Berserker downtime).
Changelog
- 13 Sep. 2023: Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023: Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 13 Apr. 2022: Thorough rework of this guide into an Ancient Spear - Boulder Toss build.
- 09 Dec. 2021: Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 22 Jul. 2021: Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 31 Mar. 2021: Revised gear and skill recommendations, and added follower recommendation.
- 18 Nov. 2020: Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 30 Jun. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 19 Nov. 2019: Guide revised and updated for Season 19.
More Barbarian Guides
Builds from Other Classes
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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