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bw00t
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Joined: 19 Jul 2009
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re: The Barbarian

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Dear Fellow Barbarians,

 

This guide is devoted to Might of the Earth (MOTE) and variants of builds that become viable by taking advantage of this set. I also hope this thread will attract other Barbarians to post their versions of Leap/EQ builds and encourage on-going constructive discussions about pros and cons of different viable Leap/EQ builds.

 

Let’s start with essential gears for Leap/EQ builds:

(1) Might of the Earth full set or three pieces plus Ring of Royal Grandeur.

(2) Lut Socks, the unofficial part of Might of the Earth set. It allows you to leap three times instead of one.

 

If you wear the Ring of Royal Grandeur, you’ll have the flexibility of combining MOTE with some other cool gears, including:

(1) Helms: Andariel’s Visage for up to 20% fire damage, or IK’s Triumph which will allow you to have full set bonus for both MOTE and IK.

(2) Gloves: Magefist for up to 20% fire damange, or IK’s Irons for the same reason above.

(3) Pants: Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan for 25% increased damage on Leap/Earthquake. YES, it DOES increase EQ’s damage too!

 

In terms of elemental damage, fire outperforms all other elementals ATM. Thus I will only cover fire Leap/EQ builds.

 

There are some other gears which can significantly augment your efficiency with Leap/EQ builds, including:

(1) Cindercoat: up to 20% fire damage and 30% resource reduction

(2) Strongarm bracers: mobs knocked back suffer up to 30% more damage, this effect can be triggered by Leap - Call of Arreat or Ground Stomp-Wrenching Smash, thus grants great synergy.

(3) The Burning Axe and Devastator: for more fire damage.

(4) Unity: for obvious reasons if you solo

(5) Harrington Waistguard: for increased overall DPS

(6) Pride of Cassius: if you want to use Ignore Pain

 

With AH gone, we can no longer get gears that we want easily. However, generally speaking, for a fire Leap/EQ build, you want to stack:

(1) Fire damage: you can find +% fire damage on Andariel’s Visage, any amulet, Magefist, any bracer, Cindercoat, SOJ, The Burning Axe and Devastator.

(2) CD Reduction: helm/diamond, amulet, shoulder, glove, rings and weapons.

(3) Elite Damage: if you are farming in rifts, you’d better stack Elite Damage, the best way are SOJ and Sunkeeper. So if you like killing elite a lot, find a decent roll Sunkeeper as main-hand, The Burning Axe as off-hand; otherwise, craft a good Devastator as main-hand, The Burning Axe as off-hand. (Mace usually have higher Ave Dmg, so better as main-hand).

 

Build #1: Leap/EQ/WW Build

Essential Active Skills:

(1) Leap-Call of Arreat

(2) Earthquake-Molten Fury

(3) WW-Volcanic Eruption or Wind Shear if you find it difficult to sustain fury. Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan and Cindercoat should help with fury.

 

Recommended Non-Essential Active Skills:

(4) Battlerage-Bloodshed: great synergy with Leap-Call of Arreat

(5) Ground Stomp-Wrenching Smash: further augment Leap/QE’s and Battlerage-Bloodshed damage, crowd control and better survivability, particularly useful while fighting ranged elites who often try to run away from your EQ’s AOE.

 

Essential Passive Skills:

(1) Earthen Might: gain 30 fury each time you Leap/EQ

 

Non-essential Passive Skills: entirely up to you

 

Note:

 

This is a fairly simple build suitable for most beginners who are lucky enough to have MOTE sets but still need a lot of work on other gears. Basically, the idea is to use Leap/EQ as main damage output and WW for survival. Stack some decent LoH via gears or Paragon points, together with WW’s unhindered mobility, you should have little problem to survive up to T4. In T5 and T6 however, WW is just doing too little damage and becomes sort of waste of skill slot.

 

Build #2: Leap/EQ/HoTA Build

Essential Active Skills:

(1) Leap-Iron Impact

(2) Earthquake-Molten Fury

(3) HoTA-Smash

(4) Ground Stomp-Wrenching Smash: further augment Leap/QE’s and Battlerage-Bloodshed damage, crowd control and better survivability, particularly useful while fighting ranged elites who often try to run away from your QE’s AOE.

 

Recommended Non-Essential Active Skills:

(4) Battlerage-Bloodshed: great synergy with Ground Stomp-Wrenching Smash and HoTA

(5) Wrath of the Berserker-Insanity: if you have high percentage of cool down reduction (CDR), this skill starts to make sense again because your down-time is significantly reduced. And this skill is very useful against many of those most annoying elites and RG.

(6) Avalanche-Volcano: again if you have high CDR, this can be a really good skill with simnifically reduced down-time. Plus it gives you additional 30 fury every time you use it to spam HoTA.

(7) Ignore Pain-Iron Hide or Ignorance is Bliss: choose this skill if you have survivability issue. But you need the belt Pride of Cassius to make it work.

(8) Furious Charge-Bull Rush: better survivability and crowd control

 

Essential Passive Skills:

(1) Earthen Might: gain 30 fury each time you Leap/EQ

(2) Bloodthirst: you will generate tons of fury with Leap/EQ and you will also dump tons of fury using HoTA, so make sure you stack decent Life per Fury and you will be able to face tank most elites

 

Non-essential Passive Skills: decide for yourself if you want more offence or defence.

 

Note:

This is a “balanced” build most suitable for T5 and T6 rift, because with this build you can handle almost any combat situation in this game. To use this build, you should already have decent gears that grants you good stacks on (a) fire damage (I’d say 60% minimum, your aim should be 100%), and (b) CDR (30% minimum, 40% should be your aim and 50% will be really nice), keep in mind that CDR not only helps to spread your Leap/EQ damage (you can attack more groups of mobs in a given period of time), but also contribute directly to increase your Leap/EQ damage. Much like Increased Attack Speed (IAS), say you have 10% CDR, it means your Leap/EQ attacks 10% faster and hence 10% increase on your existing DPS. However, because you can only have 4 primary stats on a gear, picking up CDR often means dropping CHC, CHD etc.

 

So the basic formula for this build is as such:

 

Ground Stomp -> Leap/QE -> HoTA -> Leap/QE -> HoTA -> Leap/QE -> HoTA.

 

So this is a full cycle. The idea is to pull and stun all mobs around you and close to each other so that you can max out the damage output of EQ+HoTA+Battlerage/Bloodshed (Battlerage/Bloodshed contributes significantly here if you choose to use this skill). And because each Leap/QE generates 30 fury for you and HoTA only cost up to 20 fury (if you have 0 resource reduction, but if you use cindercoat, it costs significantly less), your fury will almost always at max level which in turn translate to Crit Hit Chance for HoTA and thus augment its overall damage.

 

A quick note on Ground Stomp-Wrenching Smash: its function in this build is three folds: (a) pull mobs together to augment EQ+HoTA+Battlerage/Bloodshed and Strongarm bracers’ debuff (if you use Battlerage and Strongarm); (b) stun mobs to improve survivability and (c) stun mobs so that mobs cannot knock back or stun which will stop you from completing Leap/EQ -> HoTA cycle. Once you are knocked back or stunned, your Leap will almost certainly enter cool down.

 

After the first cycle, most trash and some weak elites should already be dead if you have decent gears. But for those who survive your first cycle. You can go either of the two ways:

 

(1) You will enter cool down for Ground Stomp (12s) and Leap/EQ (10s). Depends on your CDR, they vary. So option #1 is that you keep spamming HoTA until cool-downs end. This way you’re still doing decent damage and regenerating enough health from Life per Fury. The drawback is you are gonna deplete your fury and hence reduce the efficiency of HoTA. Nevertheless, you should have enough fury to last you through the cool-down period, otherwise either your CDR is too low or you need Cindercoat or both. Once cool-down ends, you re-start the cycle.

 

(2) After the last Leap/QE, do 2-3 HoTAs, but no more. Then use Furious Charge-Bull Rush to charge out, wait a bit for CD to end. Then you re-engage the mobs and do the full cycle again. But you need high percentage of CDR (40% and above) to make this work efficiently, because the shorter you wait for CD, the better. The benefits are four folds: (a) improved survivability for obvious reasons; (b) due to elites’ ground effect and all kinds of annoying effect such as Ice Pulse etc, it is probable you want to reposition yourself anyway after a Leap/EQ->HoTA cycle, so charge out is usually a good option; (c) Bull Rush rune stuns mobs on your way out, it’s safer for you and it will also make mobs stay in your EQ AOE for longer while you are waiting for CD; (d) you preserve fury and hence improve the efficiency of your HoTA in the next cycle.

 

In addition, don’t forget to cast EQ itself when it’s ready. If you also use Avalanche-Volcano, you can alternate between casting EQ and Avalanche as such: Ground Stomp-Leap/EQ cycle -> EQ -> Ground Stomp-Leap/EQ cycle -> Avalanche -> Repeat …

 

Conclusion:

Leap/EQ/HoTA is very “balanced” build. With this build, depending on your gears, you have many options to choose from and you can easily switch between offence and defence. IMHO, this is the best build for rifts in which you have no control of your combat environments as maps and mobs in rifts are fully randomised.

 

Build #3: Pure Leap/EQ Build for Speed Exp Farming

This is the build I currently use for speed T6 Exp farming, where you have totally predictable combat environments (unlike rifts).

 

This build is based on the idea that, for best Exp per hour, you want to kill trash mobs as fast as “Barbarianly” possible without engaging elites unless it is absolutely necessary (for example, some bounty quests with really nice Exp require you to kill elites to complete, but don’t worry, I assure you that you can still kill elites pretty fast even without HoTA). Thus you don’t want to stop and HoTA mobs, you only want to leap through mobs and let EQ kill them after you so that you can keep moving forward without stopping.

 

Essential Active Skills:

(1) Leap-Call of Arreat

(2) Earthquake-Molten Fury

(3) Sprint-Marathon

(4) Ground Stomp-Wrenching Smash

(5) Battlerage-Bloodshed

(6) Furious Charge-Bull Rush

 

Essential Passive Skills:

(1) Earthen Might

(2) Rampage

(3) Brawler

(4) Bersker Rage

 

The build works as such:

Leap/EQ -> Leap/EQ -> Leap/EQ -> Sprint to next group -> Ground Stomp -> Earthquake -> Charge out -> Sprint to next group -> Leap/EQ -> Leap/EQ -> Leap/EQ …

 

You should be able to repeat the cycle infinitely if you have enough CDR. Your aim is to max out your EQ’s DPS so that you can kill a small group of trash mobs with each EQ and repeat the pull/EQ cycle infinitely with sprint to speed up between groups. Should you need to kill elites to complete bounty quests, your main DPS is EQ obviously and you should use Ground Stomp and Charge in turns to stun lock elites, particularly ranged elites, to make sure they stay in your EQ’s AOE. In addition, you need stack LoH and Life Regen/Sec via gears and/or Paragon points to stay alive. I usually combine trash killing with bounty quests for maximum Exp rewards.

 

 

One little trick for this build is, because EQ is your only mean of damage output, once you casted Leap/EQ 3 times on elites, you pretty much have nothing to do except waiting. As such, Homing Pads becomes a really interesting item now because if you teleport back to town with Homing Pads, it will protect you from pretty much EVERYTHING except stun. So while you are waiting for elites to die, why not put on your Homing Pads temporarily and start to teleporting to town, you can always cancel when you are ready to cast another round of Leap/EQ …

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