Frenzy HotNS Barbarian Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation
Horde of the Ninety Savages Frenzy Barbarian T16 Key Farming Variation
The HotNS Frenzy Barbarian is a capable build for Normal Rift and Bounty farming all the way through the highest Torment difficulties. The build variation suffers from the minor inconvenience of being a predominantly single target build, but with the correct playstyle (mostly ignoring trash and focusing down elite after elite), it handles the task with ease. 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.
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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.
During speed farming, you are allowed much more liberal use of
Wrath of the Berserker; you can pop it as soon as you enter the Rift and
keep it up pretty much indefinitely thanks to the powers of
In-geom.
Aside from WotB, keep up
War Cry and
Battle Rage up at all times
as your staple buffs, and reapply
Sprint as soon as it falls off. The
remainder of the core rotation stays the same; you will be using
Furious Charge to jump between packs and one-shotting the priority
target with one or two quick
Frenzy slashes. Due to the single
target nature and
In-geom proc dependency of this build, always keep in
mind to focus on elites and very dense trash packs, largely ignoring
stragglers on your way as they will only slow down your runs.
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.
Frenzy is still your main damage dealer, but since you will be dropping progression-oriented weaponry like
Azurewrath (and losing the elemental damage bonus as consequence) for
In-geom (see gearing section below) you can change from the Cold rune
Berserk or the Fire rune
Maniac to any one you like. For the sake of example, we have swapped to
Vanguard, though it should be noted you receive all rune effects regardless, due to
The Undisputed Champion.
Furious Charge retains its role as a movement skill, along with the cooldown-resetting powers of the rune
Merciless Assault.
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 solo speed farming, use the slot usually occupied by
Threatening Shout for the short bursts of speed from
Sprint
Marathon — useful when there is no one to
Furious Charge to, and especially so in Bounties.
War Cry stays in the build not so much for its defensive properties (although they are welcome), but for its speed farming synergy from a cubed or worn
Chilanik's Chain — providing a substantial, party-wide movement speed buff.
Wrath of the Berserker
Insanity is still part of your skill lineup, and will have much higher uptime due to
In-geom.
- You will retain the vast majority of your passive lineup from the solo GR
progression build.
Boon of Bul-Kathos is still quite useful for WotB uptime even with
In-geom present, while
Rampage and
Berserker Rage are consistent and straightforward damage buffs for a generator build in speed farming.
- If you feel you confidently overpower the chosen difficulty, you can take
off the excessive damage of
Ruthless (or the defense of
Nerves of Steel, depending on your choice) for the extra movement speed of
Pound of Flesh, which synergizes excellently with
Avarice Band.
Adapting Gear
Most of the gear from the Greater Rift progression build will still make sense for speed farming, but a few variations will be necessary in order to maximize your productivity and momentum during regular Rift clears.
The Horde of the Ninety
Savages set is still worn almost in its entirety, but it is recommended
that you use the Depth Diggers legendary pants as a worn piece (instead
of cubed, as in the progression version). They replace the
Leggings of Savages and necessitate the use of
Ring of Royal Grandeur in your jewelry Cube slot to complete the 6-piece
HotNS bonus. This change however nets you a valuable armor Cube slot for
utility bonuses — see the Cube section below.
During standard rift speed farming, the timing and positioning-reliant
bonuses of the Endless Walk set is greatly diminished in usefulness. In its
place, try wearing a combination of an Avarice Band (or
Rechel's Ring of Larceny) and a
Band of Might.
Avarice Band
is an Act III bounty cache legendary ring that increases your gold and health
globe pickup radius as you pick up gold, stacking to the massive, half-screen
circle of 30 yards — all for a generous 10 second duration. Its
legendary power will greatly assist you in maintaining the movespeed bonuses
from both
Boon of the Hoarder and
Pound of Flesh. Starting in
Patch 2.7 however, your chosen follower can wear this ring and
emanate its power to your character, meaning you get its powers for free. As
such, your next best choice is
Rechel's Ring of Larceny, whose Fear-based
speed proc (and innate Fear on hit roll, making it proc itself) will make your
runs even faster.
Lastly, complete the jewelry with a Hellfire Amulet of Strength (with
Ruthless) in solo play, or with
The Flavor of Time in
groups. The latter doubles the duration of Pylon pickups, which in most speed
farming cases covers for a third to half of a rift clear, further smoothing
out runs. It is not recommended in solo play simply because it can be worn by
the follower and emanated onto you.
During low tier GRs or normal rift speedruns in solo play, an optimized
character can avoid the overkill of toughness in the bracer slot by swapping
to Warzechian Armguards for the additional environment
destruction-based speed boost. The usual recommendation,
Nemesis Bracers, can be worn by the follower starting from Patch 2.7,
but should still be taken by the character themselves in group play.
In order to ensure very high uptime of Wrath of the Berserker during
speed farming, you should drop the
Azurewrath recommendation from the
progression build and use an
In-geom. The cooldown reduction upon elite
kill powers of this legendary sword directly correspond to the elite hunting
playstyle of this build. For the most part of character progression, your
other weapon should still be
Oathkeeper for the significant damage
bonuses it provides. Note however that a high Paragon, optimized gear
character can afford to drop
Oathkeeper in favor of
Echoing Fury to enhance the uptime of
Rechel's Ring of Larceny. The
Fear proc synergy between those two items will further amplify your
mobility.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
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Torso |
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Wrists |
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Hands |
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Waist |
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Legs |
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Feet |
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Amulet |
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Ring #1 |
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Ring #2 |
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Weapon #1 |
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Weapon #2 |
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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
Simplicity's Strength remains a universally desired damage
amplification gem for Primary skill-focused builds.
Boon of the Hoarder is a great speed farming inclusion, as it
increases both your gold income (necessary for empowering GRs) as well as your
movement speed.
Early on in character progression, you can use Bane of the Trapped for
its solid damage increase against targets under the effects of crowd control.
Once you are confident in your damage output however, it is advisable to
change into
Wreath of Lightning simply for its level 25 movement speed
increase, further smoothing out farming runs.
Slot | Gems |
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Jewelry | |
Helm | |
Torso and Pants |
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Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
Tucked away in the cube, Bastion's Revered offers a key legendary
effect for the build — the extension of
Frenzy stacks from
5 to 10. The result is a whopping 150% increase to
Frenzy attack
speed at cap, as well as a 25% damage buff from
Maniac and 50%
additional movement speed from
Vanguard.
As outlined above, taking Depth Diggers into your worn item
selection frees up this slot for the substantial movement speed increase of
Chilanik's Chain. Its legendary powers trigger when using
War Cry, necessitating that you pop it at least once every 10 seconds
to maintain the solid, party-wide MS buff. During solo play, or if you do not
particularly care to boost your speed further than the skill and worn item
recommendations, you can slot
Goldwrap here for its synergy with
Boon of the Hoarder and the
Avarice Band worn by the follower, and
enjoy near-invulnerability as you farm content that drops gold.
In order to balance the 6-piece bonus of the Horde of the Ninety Savages
set with the aforementioned speed farming prerequisites, you will need to slot
a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry Cube slot.
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 T16 rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her utility-laden arsenal of skills, and especially her cooldown reduction bonus, which assists your significant CDR needs during farming. Her balance of increasing survivability while also improving damage makes her an excellent choice during speed farming of any kind.
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
You have two viable potion options for this build; either lean into extra
health sustain with Bottomless Potion of the Leech for its Life per Hit
bonuses, or try to compensate for your lack of permanent CC immunity due to
lesser WotB uptime with
Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered.
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.
- 10 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 09 Dec. 2021: Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 22 Jul. 2021: Added recommendations for Season 24 ethereal weapon.
- 06 Apr. 2021: Minor clarifications and fixes.
- 28 Mar. 2021: Revised itemization choices to accommodate follower changes.
- 18 Nov. 2020: Revised rune and weaponry choices. Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 30 Jun. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 07 Mar. 2020: Page added.
More Barbarian Guides
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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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