Frenzy HotNS Barbarian RGK Variation
Horde of the Ninety Savages Frenzy Barbarian Rift Guardian Killer Variation
The HotNS Frenzy Barbarian can deal reasonably well with the role of a Rift Guardian Killer in high tier Greater Rifts. Although the build is not considered the best for the role, it can viably take the RGK spot and serve in a non-competitive party composition.
The Rift Guardian Killer role demands focus from the character entirely into single target damage, eschewing any consideration for Area Damage or trash killing purposes. Your skill and especially your gear choices will reflect that.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
When serving as the Rift Guardian Killer, most of the Frenzy HotNS Barb
rotation remains the same as the solo progression build. You will still be
applying the trio of shouts — Battle Rage,
War Cry and
Threatening Shout — whenever applicable, either to refresh their
duration or affect a newly engaged group of enemies.
Frenzy
— either empowered by
Wrath of the Berserker, or on its own —
will be your main damage dealer, and its tremendous attack speed in
conjunction with a socketed
Bane of the Stricken will be taking the Rift
Guardians down. Your value to the group comes in the form of toughness buffs
(the aforementioned
War Cry), as well as an additional long range pull
via
Ancient Spear
Rage Flip.
Adapting Skills and Passives
The vast majority of your skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, with minor adjustments to accommodate the group progression playstyle.
- The Frenzy HotNS Barb retains nearly all of its GR solo skill setup, using
Battle Rage
Bloodshed,
Threatening Shout
Falter and
War Cry (albeit with
Impunity for a greater team benefit) as the Shout-related set base, as well as
Wrath of the Berserker for its tremendous self buffs during damage output. The Passives lineup sticks with staples like
Ruthless,
Boon of Bul-Kathos and
Berserker Rage. The final slot can be either
Nerves of Steel during high end group GR pushing, or altered to
Rampage during slightly lower XP farm.
- It should be noted that due to the focus on this group variation on pure
attack speed and Rift Guardian killing, you will be dropping the solo staple
Azurewrath and its Freeze mechanics for more generic, element-neutral equipment (see below).
- Deviating from the main build, you will be using
Ancient Spear
Rage Flip as an efficient way of spending Fury for the
Focus and
Restraint bonus, while also assisting your support with pulls. When you are still learning the build, or if you are too bothered by the lack of mobility in such a setup, you can alter this skill slot to
Whirlwind
Wind Shear for a cheap repositioning tool (which will still proc the ring set bonus).
Adapting Gear
Most of the gear from the Greater Rift solo progression build will still make sense for the group RGK variation, but a few alterations will be necessary in order to maximize your potential in this role.
You will be wearing the entirety of the Horde of the Ninety Savages set,
but when it comes to gear rolls, you can drop any consideration of Area Damage
rolls from the Spines of Savages and
Claws of Savages. You will
maintain the overall direction with stat priority over the rest of the gear,
getting
Frenzy skill bonuses on both the belt
(
The Undisputed Champion) and
Leggings of Savages, focusing on
high toughness rolls on the
Skull of Savages (alongside Crit Chance),
and committing fully to it on the
Markings of Savages and
Heel of Savages.
Unlike solo progression where there is room for preference,
Mortick's Brace is the mandatory bracer for RGK, as you will focus
entirely on damage and leave mitigation and healing considerations to your
Support teammates.
There is some room for variation in your jewelry, either by trying to balance some survivability in your setup (generally recommended), or fully glassing out for the purposes of your group.
In a more balanced spec, you will be wearing the Endless Walk set —
The Traveler's Pledge and
The Compass Rose along with a
Convention of Elements, which provides at least a measure of protection
as you move from fight to fight. If you choose to commit fully to glass cannon
damage dealing however, you can squeeze out every last bit of DPS with a
combination of
Focus and
Restraint, plus a
Squirt's Necklace. Naturally, you will be proccing the generator portion
of
Focus and
Restraint with
Frenzy, and you
will have to pull with
Ancient Spear (or tap
Whirlwind for a
second) to maintain the spender half of the bonus.
Squirt's Necklace
provides a massive damage bonus with an equally painful damage intake
trade-off, which you will be able to mitigate in groups thanks to the Support
characters.
Weapons-wise, you will maintain Oathkeeper from the main build, but
solo-oriented choices like
The Burning Axe of Sankis and its extra
survivability, and the
Azurewrath and its hard CC procs have no place
in group progression. In their stead, you have the choice between
Pig Sticker for its unrivaled attack speed and elite damage
capabilities (preferred for high end group GR progression) and
Sun Keeper for its generic elite damage bonuses (for GR group XP
farming).
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
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Head |
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Shoulders |
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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
You will maintain the same legendary gem setup as the solo GR progression
build, with Bane of the Trapped,
Simplicity's Strength and
Bane of the Stricken remaining as your most desirable gems. The Frenzy
Barb's ability to quickly stack the latter opens its viability in the RGK role
in the first place.
Slot | Gems |
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Jewelry | |
Helm | |
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
Both Bastion's Revered and
Depth Diggers are maintained from
the main solo GR progression spec, as they are mandatory for the function of
the build overall.
Bastion's Revered extends the stacking mechanic of
Frenzy and provides a valuable damage chaining effect (although
less pronounced in the RGK role), while
Depth Diggers are a straight up
DPS increase in Primary skill-focused build.
Your final Cube slot depends on your jewelry setup, as explained above. In
the general Endless Walk-wearing version, you will be cubing
Squirt's Necklace for an extra source of damage multiplication. In the
daredevil
Focus and
Restraint wearing version, you will be
amping up your DPS even further with a cubed
Convention of Elements.
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.
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. 2020: Included additional information. Minor clarifications and fixes.
- 28 Mar. 2021: Revised skill recommendations.
- 18 Nov. 2020: Revised rune and weaponry choices. Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 30 Jun. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 09 Mar. 2020: Page added.
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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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