Furious Charge IK/Raekor Barbarian Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Furious Charge IK/Raekor Barbarian in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6.10 and Season 22.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
The build starts runs with an activation of Call of the Ancients and
Wrath of the Berserker; both skills are to be kept up throughout the rift
using the Immortal King set bonus. While
Wrath of the Berserker needs to be
cast on cooldown, only resummon
Call of the Ancients when one or more of
them fall in battle. Your battle strategy when using the Raekor/Immortal King
mixture is to seek out high monster density in Rifts, where the combined power
of the
Furious Charge runes shines. Seeking out density is especially
important for the endgame, as the build generally eschews Cooldown Reduction
on gear, and relies on constantly hitting over 5 enemies for a
Merciless Assault reset (or hitting just one, due to the Raekor 2-piece
bonus).
Furious Charge will also quickly build up your Fury reserves,
which you need to dump regularly through
Seismic Slam
Rumble or
Ancient Spear in order to reset the cooldowns of
Wrath of the Berserker and
Call of the Ancients. Several buffs round
out your rotation: you will need to reapply
Sprint
Marathon as soon as
its 4-second duration falls off, as well as maintain the
Battle Rage buff
throughout the rift.
Skills and Runes
Furious Charge is a centerpiece of the build. If you choose to focus on
Furious Charge as your primary means of delivering damage (recommended),
the rune selection is adaptable to the element of your best rolled gear. If you
choose
Boulder Toss as your main damage dealer, you need to pick a
synergistic rune like
Stamina or
Merciless Assault and gear for
Physical damage accordingly. Regardless of your choice, you will still enjoy the
benefits of all the runes because of the Reakor set bonus. The damage of
Battering Ram, the cooldown reduction of
Merciless Assault, the
freezing effect of
Cold Rush and the double charge effect of
Dreadnought work together to ensure devastation of your enemies and the
build's signature supercharged speed.
The role of a spender in the build needs to be taken by efficient Fury
spenders. You can take the long standing favorite
Ancient Spear
Boulder Toss for precise, small radius nuke, or the 2.5
rework
Seismic Slam
Rumble for larger, but relatively weaker AoE.
Regardless of your choice, incorporating a pure Fury dump is important in order
to take significant chunks off massive cooldowns like
Call of the Ancients
and
Wrath of the Berserker via the 4-piece IK bonus (see this build's gear page for more information),
as well as to heal yourself through Life per Fury Spent on gear.
Battle Rage boosts both your overall damage and your Crit Chance.
While it can be considered a fire-and-forget skill with its impressive 2-minute
duration, never neglect to activate and keep it up. You will adjust runes
according to content: for example, the
Bloodshed damage procs are
superior in the prolonged fights of Greater Rifts.
Removing the timed limit of Call of the Ancients, the 2-piece bonus of
IK keeps the powerful trio of warriors permanently at your side. While they
certainly can fall in battle, you should be able to promptly resummon them, as
their cooldown is reset by the 4-piece IK set bonus. In fact, never neglect to do
so, as the
Together as One rune will be the basis of your survivability and
ignoring the ancients upkeep will promptly kill you.
The signature barbarian steroid Wrath of the Berserker is strengthened
further by the damage rune
Insanity. Using the 4-piece IK bonus, you
should be able to harness the potential of this skill permanently and boost your
Dodge, Crit Chance, Attack and Movement Speed by significant percentages.
As soon as you obtain the powers of the
Mortick's Brace, which adds all
the runes of
Wrath of the Berserker to the build, this skill slot selection
becomes a no-brainer.
You will pick your final self buff according to the build variation you go
for: Sprint for a
Furious Charge-centric build (recommended), or
War Cry for a spender-centric build. Usually perceived as a movement
speed utility skill,
Sprint gains a damage-oriented twist from the
unique power of the
Standoff polearm, tucked away in the cube. This
legendary item property increases the damage of
Furious Charge to 500% of
your bonus movement speed. If you opt to empower your
Furious Charges,
you will be taking the speediest and lengthiest of the runes,
Marathon,
for a 40% increase of movement speed for 4 seconds. If you favor the spender
variant instead, take
War Cry for a utility skill with a powerful
Toughness angle coming from the
Veteran's Warning rune. The 2-minute
duration of the buff long exceeds the decent 20-second cooldown, but you have a
strong incentive to use it as soon as it is available again — resource
generation for your Fury dumps.
This rounds out the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.
Passives
With a bulldozing playstyle that emphasizes both brutality and agility, the
Raekor Barbarian uses the Rampage passive to great efficiency. With the
potential to stack up to 25% additional Strength, increasing your damage and
toughness substantially, it is important to learn to keep this passive up.
Always being on the move towards bigger fights, where killing minor enemies will
feed your stacks, is key.
Picking Berserker Rage as our second passive takes advantage of
Furious Charge's utility powers. Building you up to full Fury near
instantaneously through the
Stamina rune, you will barely notice this
passive falling off from Fury dumping, and enjoy a significant uptime of this
strong damage multiplier.
Completing the triad of amplifiers, Ruthless makes a tight fit
and edges over
Brawler for one simple reason — it is a
multiplicative bonus that shines during Greater Rift fights. Once you bring your
target below 30% health, your damage skyrockets with an additional 40%, ensuring
the mortal blow will be dealt well ahead of the timer.
You have some room for personal preference in the final passive slot. The
general recommendation is Nerves of Steel, adding a cheat death backup
plan to a generally glassy spec. If you focus on spender damage,
Animosity will expand your reserve with another 20 Fury and add to the
Boulder Toss or
Rumble burst potential. Other viable options
include density-dependent damage increase from
Brawler, or the emergency
protection and recovery of
Relentless.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2020: Revised Fury spender default choice.
- 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.
- 23 Oct. 2019: Guide revised and moved to the single build format and revised for Season 19.
- 22 Aug. 2019: Skill recommendations were revised for Season 18.
- 13 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 16 Jan. 2019: Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
- 31 Oct. 2017: Wording changes to reflect the changes in the jewelry items in the build (we are no longer using Focus and Restraint).
More Barbarian Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
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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