Hellforge #1 – Monstrous’ Boulder Barbarian

by Stephen Stewart - 7 years ago

One of the most epic parts of being a nephalem in Sanctuary is that there are so many of us! On a daily basis, players are wracking their brains, stashes, and forums for new ideas on how to build a better demon slaying machine. The Hellforge is an iconic location steeped in lore and visited briefly in Diablo II – it is a place for getting dangerous deeds done. We wanted to bottle that same ethos and create a compendium of possible builds for players new and old to research, test, and iterate upon. We will scour the community’s offerings to bring you some of the more intriguing entries in celebration of innovation and inspiration for new creations.

Now that the official release date for Reaper of Souls draws closer than ever before, many players in the Closed Beta (and equally those observing the Beta) have been working hard to come up with new builds that they will be able to utilize to hit the ground running on opening day. As part of the expansion, the developers took the opportunity to go back through the original classes and their skills and make, in a few cases, rather drastic changes. As a result, some of the builds you once knew and love will no longer exist in Reaper of Souls. One of the hardest hit classes/builds would arguably be the Barbarian’s Whirlwind/Sprint build. Famous beyond description at this point, the build served to be one of the most efficient and cheap modes of farming the game as it currently exists on the live servers. “Nevermore!” to borrow a phrase from the Demon Hunter’s Raven. This development did not dissuade Monstrous, one of the better known contributors to the community both through his MVP presence on the official forums and also as one of the most innovative posters on the forums over at DiabloFans, from dusting off his Barbarian and attempting to discover a new way to play. So thus, the Boulder Barbarian build was born.

Discovered the greatest barb build today, 30 mil crits with terrible gear for the spec. Need to gear up, I could easily reach 50+ #RoS — Monstrous (@MonstrousD3) January 19, 2014

This is one angry Barbarian. The goal behind the Boulder Barbarian is to generate and spend as much Fury as possible whenever possible. Monstrous utilizes a synergistic skill set up that allows him to do this and cause massive amounts of burst damage with relatively low quality gear. Let’s analyze the skills at use here:

Cleave – Reaping Swing: This fury generator allows the Barbarian to gain 7 Fury per swing and it also serves to hit multiple targets at once. Nothing fancy here.

– Reaping Swing: This fury generator allows the Barbarian to gain 7 Fury per swing and it also serves to hit multiple targets at once. Nothing fancy here. Ancient Spear – Boulder Toss: Now things start to get interesting. This skill requires 15 Fury to be used any at all, but in doing so, you actually dump all of your Fury in the process with the tradeoff being that, for each point of Fury spent, the attack increases by 20%. Did I also mention that this skill has a 9 yard radius in all directions from the point of impact? Nuke city. Barbarians start out with 100 Fury at the maximum, but this number can be bolstered through gear choices, passives, and Paragon 2.0 allocation. A little math tells us that, even at the most normal maximum, that’s still 2,000% weapon damage. Hm…

– Boulder Toss: Now things start to get interesting. This skill requires 15 Fury to be used any at all, but in doing so, you actually dump all of your Fury in the process with the tradeoff being that, for each point of Fury spent, the attack increases by 20%. Did I also mention that this skill has a 9 yard radius in all directions from the point of impact? Nuke city. Barbarians start out with 100 Fury at the maximum, but this number can be bolstered through gear choices, passives, and Paragon 2.0 allocation. A little math tells us that, even at the most normal maximum, that’s still 2,000% weapon damage. Hm… Sprint – Marathon: Utility skill. This gets you from Pack of Monsters A to Pack of Monsters B faster. You wouldn’t want to touch this button in battle as every point of Fury spent elsewhere effectively harms your potential DPS, but, in dire situations when you’re standing in pools of nastiness, this can help you quickly re-position yourself.

– Marathon: Utility skill. This gets you from Pack of Monsters A to Pack of Monsters B faster. You wouldn’t want to touch this button in battle as every point of Fury spent elsewhere effectively harms your potential DPS, but, in dire situations when you’re standing in pools of nastiness, this can help you quickly re-position yourself. Warcry – Invigorate: Defensive buff. Most Barbarians are more than familiar with Warcry at this point, but maybe not this rune. Warcry innately grants you 20% more Armor upon use, but Invigorate gives you 10% additional Life (and considering the new totals of Vitality achievable with Level 70 gear, that 10% can represent quite a healthy chunk of hit points) and Life Regeneration, with the actual number there being dependent on your current level, I believe. In the demo video that Monstrous put together (viewable below), he was getting 8,253 Life Per Second (LPS), which is higher than most Hardcore Barbarians have on the live servers right now when that’s all they’re purposefully trying to stack. This skill also buffs additional party members.

– Invigorate: Defensive buff. Most Barbarians are more than familiar with Warcry at this point, but maybe not this rune. Warcry innately grants you 20% more Armor upon use, but Invigorate gives you 10% additional Life (and considering the new totals of Vitality achievable with Level 70 gear, that 10% can represent quite a healthy chunk of hit points) and Life Regeneration, with the actual number there being dependent on your current level, I believe. In the demo video that Monstrous put together (viewable below), he was getting 8,253 Life Per Second (LPS), which is higher than most Hardcore Barbarians have on the live servers right now when that’s all they’re purposefully trying to stack. This skill also buffs additional party members. Battle Rage – Into The Fray: Damage buff. Another skill most Barbarians should be quite familiar with by now, but this is one of those aforementioned Whirlwind/Sprint skills that received a heavy nerf in Reaper of Souls. This skill now provides a 10% boost to your damage and 3% Critical Hit Chance for its base, while the rune has been drastically changed to grant 1% more Critical Hit Chance for every enemy within 10 yards. This skill will no longer help your Fury generation, unfortunately, but it does provide a pretty sizable damage boost by allowing more frequent massive crits from Boulder Toss when you’re surrounded by a throng of foes.

– Into The Fray: Damage buff. Another skill most Barbarians should be quite familiar with by now, but this is one of those aforementioned Whirlwind/Sprint skills that received a heavy nerf in Reaper of Souls. This skill now provides a 10% boost to your damage and 3% Critical Hit Chance for its base, while the rune has been drastically changed to grant 1% more Critical Hit Chance for every enemy within 10 yards. This skill will no longer help your Fury generation, unfortunately, but it does provide a pretty sizable damage boost by allowing more frequent massive crits from Boulder Toss when you’re surrounded by a throng of foes. Wrath of the Berserker – Insanity: Super buff. No way to classify this skill except for God Mode. Thrive on Chaos is no longer the go to rune here, as Insanity boosts your damage an additional 60%, aside from the innate bonuses granted when flipping the Wrath of the Berserker switch (10% increased Critical Hit Chance; 25% increased Attack Speed; 20% increased Dodge; and 20% increased Movement Speed [still effective above the 25% cap] – all additive) for 20 seconds. This is your go to skill for burning down Elite packs and Bosses as quickly as possible and is also your best “Oh, sh!t” button for when things get too heavy and you need to make moves.

Most of that makes a good amount of sense based on what we know of the Barbarian class from the past, with the major exception being the use of Ancient Spear – Boulder Toss. Let’s throw the passives into the mix and see how the stew changes color here:

Brawler – Complete synergy with the new Into the Fray rune. This gives an outright buff to damage by 20% as long as there are 3 enemies within 8 yards of you.

– Complete synergy with the new Into the Fray rune. This gives an outright buff to damage by 20% as long as there are 3 enemies within 8 yards of you. Animosity – Complete synergy with Ancient Spear – Boulder Toss. This gives you more Fury to spend, increasing your maximum by 20, and also helps you get more of it faster through bolstering generation by 30%.

– Complete synergy with Ancient Spear – Boulder Toss. This gives you more Fury to spend, increasing your maximum by 20, and also helps you get more of it faster through bolstering generation by 30%. Superstition – Remember what I said about using Sprint to run out of all those nasty elemental effects on the floor? NOT SO FAST! Here’s some synergistic inspiration to remain rooted in those tougher fights, as Superstition not only reduces all non-Physical damage by 20%, but also has a chance to give you 3 Fury every time you take damage from a ranged or elemental attack. Surprise Fury is sometimes the best Fury.

– Remember what I said about using Sprint to run out of all those nasty elemental effects on the floor? NOT SO FAST! Here’s some synergistic inspiration to remain rooted in those tougher fights, as Superstition not only reduces all non-Physical damage by 20%, but also has a chance to give you 3 Fury every time you take damage from a ranged or elemental attack. Surprise Fury is sometimes the best Fury. Sword and Board – This is a brand new passive introduced with Reaper of Souls and now it’s one of the cornerstones of a Fury intensive build like this. Whenever you block an attack, you gain 20 Fury. Yup. You just got a reason to use a shield. Even in Softcore (if that’s your mode).

If you take all of the skills and passives together, you begin to see how this build potentially plays out. Herding up big crowds of mobs, whether on purpose or not, plays to your advantage as your damage potential is greatly increased in crowds, your chance to block attacks inherently goes up (more potential incoming attacks) meaning faster Fury generation, and the effective radius of your Boulder Tosses should be chockablock full of monsters to slay. But, don’t just take my word for it. In the video below, you can get a detailed look at how the build moves and operates, as well as the gear that Monstrous was using at the time and the specific skill set up.

I was also lucky enough to receive some additional information from Monstrous himself as he reflected on the build a little bit, now that he has been living with it for a couple of weeks. Here’s a summary of what he had to offer:

Gear To Look Out For

– Three Hundredth Spear (Obvious synergy with Ancient Spear skill)

– Stormshield (High block percent and melee damage reduction)

– Doombringer (Physical Damage bonus)

– Bul Kathos’ Set (Option to forego a shield and thus free up a passive, but gain higher Fury potential with the set)

– Immortal King’s Set (Max Fury bonus from Tribal Binding; Life Per Fury Spent bonus; also allows for substituting in Call of the Ancients)

– Stone of Jordan (Bonuses to Max Fury, Physical Damage, and Damage to Elites)

– Ess of Johan (Useful on your follower)

Theorycrafting Maximum Fury

Max Fury: Stone of Jordan – ? 6 ? (Haven’t seen the new Barbarian version yet.) IK belt – 12 IK 3 pc bonus – 10 BK Swords – 24 BK bonus – 10 Passive – 20 Paragon – 50 This means a potential of roughly 230 Maximum Fury, which would equal 4600% weapon damage. That’s before any +skill%, +physical%, critical hits, and passives/skills. In the video, I was demonstrating with only 160 and hardly any gear that had bonuses. Base fury – 100