Rend Wastes Barbarian Speed Farming Variation

The Wastes Rend Barbarian deals with Normal Rift farming excellently, its relaxing and smooth playstyle makes it very suitable for the purpose. 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
Furious Charge Merciless Assault Whirlwind Wind Shear 1 Rend Bloodbath 2 Sprint Marathon 3 Battle Rage Ferocity 4 Wrath of the Berserker Insanity
Passive Skills
Berserker Rage Rampage Pound of Flesh Boon of Bul-Kathos

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

A large part of your rotation will remain the same during speed farming; you will still spend the majority of your time Whirlwinding left and right, which applies Rends through the Ambo's Pride legendary power. On the buff side, you apply Wrath of the Berserker on cooldown and still keep Battle Rage active at all times, but you will add a mobility layer on top by chaining Sprint activations as well. You will be using Furious Charge Merciless Assault as an instant charge from one enemy pack to the next, as well as a trigger for Band of Might (if you choose to maintain it during speed farming).

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.

• Whirlwind Wind Shear is maintained from the progression build, as it will still be responsible for the application of Rend Bloodbath (also retained) through the Ambo's Pride legendary power.
• Wrath of the Berserker Insanity is an omnipresent self-buff in both versions of the build.
• Battle Rage stays in the build from the GR progression spec, but swaps runes from the healing-oriented Swords to Ploughshares to the extra movement speed of Ferocity.
• The duo of enemy displacement skills from the progression build — Ancient Spear Rage Flip and Ground Stomp Wrenching Smash — will give way to two mobility skills, Sprint Marathon and Furious Charge Merciless Assault. Note that if you choose to drop Band of Might from your setup, you can slot Ignore Pain Bravado in the place of Furious Charge with similar success.
• Rampage, Berserker Rage and Boon of Bul-Kathos will be a solid, damage-oriented foundation of your passive selection.
• You can change the flexible fourth passive slot from progression staples like Ruthless to the globe-consuming movement buff of Pound of Flesh to further speed up your clears.

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 speed farming variant of the Wastes Rend Barbarian still utilizes the 6-piece powers of the Wastes set, but a useful alteration you can make is to drop Tasset of the Wastes in favor of Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan, of course cubing Ring of Royal Grandeur in the process. These legendary pants make resource management in this constantly moving build a breeze, as well as adding a smattering of damage to your overall Rend burst.

Lamentation is kept in the speed farming variant, as it contributes too much to the Rend playstyle to be dropped.

In your jewelry, the recommended setup shifts away from the steady trickle of cooldown reduction of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and the timing-based damage bonuses of Convention of Elements. Early on in character progression, or if you prefer a simpler setup to play with in general, you can play with a setup of Avarice Band and a Band of Might. Avarice Band is an Act 3 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 of Boon of the Hoarder, as well as Pound of Flesh. The Band of Might is there to provide you with its incomparable damage reduction bonuses, triggered via Furious Charge in a speed farming setup.

If you want to hyper-optimize your speed farming performance, you can alter the second ring slot to Rechel's Ring of Larceny for its Fear-based speed proc, which takes advantage of the guaranteed Fear-on-hit roll of a worn Echoing Fury.

During speedfarming, where the multiple runes of Wrath of the Berserker that come from Mortick's Brace are overkill in many regards, the preferred bracers become Warzechian Armguards, for the environment destruction speed buffs that are easily provided by the AoE of this build. The former favorites, the elite spawning Nemesis Bracers, are still very valuable, but they can now be equipped on the follower while still getting their bonus via the Emanate mechanics. You should still equip them in groups, where you cannot have a follower with you. The Nemesis Bracers value comes from the additional loot — not to mention progression — coming from the extra elite spawns. They let you finish standard rifts that much faster, and acquire the coveted GR keys in greater amounts.

Finally, the Istvan's Paired Blades set will be too defensive for the limited challenges of standard Rifts. You have two solid options for the weapons during speed farming. In a simpler, more straightforward setup, you can use the Bul-Kathos's Oath set — Bul-Kathos's Warrior Blood and Bul-Kathos's Solemn Vow — for their combination of convenient Fury generation and Movement Speed bonuses. If you want to hyper-optimize your speed farming however (at the cost of a slightly more demanding gearing), your weapon slots will be best taken by Ambo's Pride (leaving space in the Cube for speedrun-oriented powers) and Echoing Fury (mostly for its Movement Speed bonuses from the Frenzy buff).

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Helm of the Wastes	Strength Socket Crit Chance Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Pauldrons of the Wastes	Strength Rend % Cooldown Reduction All Resistance Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Cuirass of the Wastes	Strength 3 Sockets Rend % Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Warzechian Armguards (solo) Nemesis Bracers (groups)	Strength Critical Hit Chance Physical Damage Vitality Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Hands	Gauntlet of the Wastes	Strength Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Lamentation	Strength Vitality All Resistance Life per Fury Spent Maximum Fury (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Tasset of the Wastes (Best in Slot) Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan (Alternative)	Strength 2 Sockets Vitality All Resistance Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Sabaton of the Wastes	Strength Vitality All Resistance Armor Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	Hellfire Amulet of Strength	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Physical Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	Avarice Band	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Band of Might (Best in Slot) Rechel's Ring of Larceny (Alternative)	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Weapon #1	Gimmershred (Best in Slot) Bul-Kathos's Warrior Blood (Off-season)	Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) High Weapon Damage Strength Cooldown Reduction Damage % Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Weapon #2	Echoing Fury (Off-season) Bul-Kathos's Solemn Vow (Off-season)	Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) High Weapon Damage Strength Cooldown Reduction Damage % Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)

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 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.

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.

Taeguk remains a universally desired damage and defense amplification gem for channeling-based builds.

You will be using Wreath of Lightning as a replacement of Bane of the Trapped strictly for its level 25 property — a sizable movement speed bonus (in fact, you can stop leveling the gem right then and there). Note that you can (and should) utilize Bane of the Trapped for as long as you feel the need for its damage multiplier, and only transition to Wreath of Lightning when you comfortably overpower the content.

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.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Wreath of Lightning Bane of the Trapped (alt) Taeguk Boon of the Hoarder
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Ruby (Damage) Flawless Royal Diamond (Toughness)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

In the easier, initial setup you will match the weapon Cube slot to the progression build, using Ambo's Pride for its crucial Rend bonuses while wielding the Bul-Kathos set. In an optimized setup where you wield Ambo's and Echoing Fury, you will be using Messerschmidt's Reaver in this slot for its CDR-per-kill powers, which offer a speedfarm-appropriate counterpart to the more GR-oriented Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. You can also alternate to In-geom in this slot, and see which one fits your playstyle better. The goal of both is to provide you with a Wrath of the Berserker reset as soon as possible, ideally overlapping.

Goldwrap is a speedfarming staple which renders you near-invulnerable as you pick up gold; it offers tremendous synergy with the triumvirate of Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder.

In the more traditional setup, this slot should be taken by your weakest roll of the three jewelry recommendations — Avarice Band, Band of Might of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (if you go according to the table above for example, you would cube ORotZ). If you go for the hyper-optimization route with worn Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan, you will need to complete the Wastes 6-piece bonuses with a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.

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.

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.

Waller affixes are problematic for Rend Barb builds, since they greatly limit your opportunities to weave and DoT from one pack to the next, back and forth, which is the general playstyle of the build. As such, our general recommendation for your legendary potion — especially for standard Rifts, where threats are significantly lower — is the Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid, which allows you to break through Waller affixes.