LINKS
THE BUILDAlternate Gear (will address later)
- The Basics:
You are not the primary dps, you are the hardened warrior of ice and snow. You will be primarily using a 1h and a shield, although there a variant weapons to be discussed later.
- The Skills
Your main damage dealer and crowd control skill. This will fling your sculpted mass of muscles and frost, and freeze the enemy in place. Using the Raekor's Set, this skill will gain the effect of every rune. You select the Cold Rush rune to change its element type to Cold, to synergize with your weapon. Start off fights with this. Charge at your enemy and freeze and bleed them up.
Secondary - Rend, Mutilate
An AoE bleed ability with the frost elemental rune selected, Mutilate. "Affected enemies are Chilled and take 10% increased damage from all sources." Your first party *buff* per se. Stays with the cold damage to get the bonus from your weapon and bracers, makes mobs take more damage from your bros in the backline. The bleed damage is alright, nothing to holler about, easy to use, cheap and spammable with this build setup. 100% uptime not hard to achieve. 10% for 4 players, not bad.
You will use this skill usually third; after charging in and Ground Stomp or Leap to group.
Possible alternatives to Rend:
Seismic Slam, Permafrost (Chills enemies by 60% for 1 sec). Possible alternative for more control than rend, but at expense for a lot of potential damage. Frost damage consistent.
Whirwind, Hurricane Used for grouping and proccing your bracers. Trading a lot of potential damage from Rend, but gaining quite a bit more control. Determine your groups needs and adjust accordingly. Frost damage consistent.
Ancient Spear, Harpoon. Yes I know its silly, but it's actually pretty decent control. Its a ranged knockback, pull, and slow all in one and spammable. Null damage but good for stragglers or saving your DHs. Phys dmg so no bonuses, plus you lose potenial Rend damage. Still thought worth noting down because its a good filler CC while your other skills are on cooldown.
1 Ability
The next four skills are in no particular order, and you can map them to your keys however you feel fit! First up is:
Avalanche, Snow-Capped Mountain
This is a ranged grouping ability that shoves mobs together and slows them. Frost damage consistent. The range is about from waypoint to stash in New Tristram. Example The skill sends 3 waves resulting in 3 knockbacks and slows.
2 Ability
Ground Stomp, Wrenching Smash
This thing is baller. All non frost vikings within 24 yards rush to your feet and bow down in praise. Kneel before the man of ice. Quick cooldown, makes fury, stuns and groups. Hell yes.
3 Ability
Leap, Call of Arreat
Your other grouping ability. Slightly different than Ground Stomp, and more versatile. This one is ranged, first off, so if you are not in a place to ground stomp, you can always leap there. Secondly, Ground Stomp, as awesome as it is, is not always available. You may charge in, freeze a pack then have no way to group. This is your back up grouper. Instead of stunning it slows.
It can also be used to get you out of danger, hop Waller Elites, skip map gaps, or pre group before a freezing charge.
4 Ability
Battle Rage, Bloodshed
OR
Wrath of the Berserker, Insanity
Pick your poison. Do you want consistent damage, or burst damage? Wrath comes with the perk of negating CC, which is very good for a tank, but its main damage allure (disregarding rune choice) is attack speed, which this build uses none of. A third possible alternative would be Wrath of the Berserker with Striding Giant Rune (50% less damage taken) which gives you on command tankiness.
A more defensive approach to your final Skill would be either:
War Cry, Impunity For good armor and ele resist to you and your group. However, if you are running with another barb, chances are he is WW spec and he already has this rolling on the group. Although, if you are running 4 man premades, chances are you are the only barb there hehe. Consider for moderate defense. Gives no benefit of control.
Ignore Pain, Iron Hide This is good panic button. You always see those silly barbs running in thinking they're invincible. The ones who come back alive are using this. This skill has a very good belt that synergizes with it.
All in all your 4th skill is up to you, damage or defense, see what you need adjust accordingly. The rest of the skill are core, the final skill is your choice. I recommend either Ignore Pain or Battle Rage. Ignore Pain has a very good belt that synergizes with it. I included that belt in the original build at the top of the page.
- The Gear
Weapon!
Gotta hit this first because everyone needs to know your weapon of choice in the great battleNow, there are a lot of great options for this build, but this is what we got up first: Azurewrath. The Cold damage increase and chance to freeze is the icon of this build. This makes sure you hit hard, and keeps the brewskis chilled.
Because this is a one-handed weapon, your shield to match is just the tankiest thing you can find since there are no shields with coordinating affixes, bar Freeze of Deflection. This shield is decent, but the proc is such a small chance (a percent of a percent), it's not worth it considering your other option of shield. The one you want is the Stormshield. The huge melee damge reduction makes it one of the tankiest, if not the tankiest shield in the game. A must-have for a sword and board champion of the snow.
Alternatives are a bit numerous. I will refer to the image at the top of this guide again: Alternative weapons
The Furnace sacrifices a majority of your crowd control and defenses for Raw. Big. Dick. Damage. The slow attack speed and massive damage buffs go great with Raekor's set for DPS builds. However, this is not a DPS build, it is a CC Tank/zDPS build. When using this weapon, you are not exactly a tank.
Blood Brother is a super cool weapon that fits in this build very nicely. 2 hand weapons are very good for Furious Charge builds, and this one adds block! Block is good for tanking, guys. Guys. On top of that, whenever you block you get a 30% damage increase to your next skill! Whopping damage on your charges incoming. Not as tanky as Azurewrath and Stormshield, but hella more DPS. Save this for speed runs if you have it.
Vigilance. Ok. You might be wondering why put a monk weapon on this list. Because it works. You ever see a Barb cast Inner Sanctuary? Well roll a monk, pick one of these up, flip it to your Barb, and blow people's minds. I have personally tested this myself to see if it works and it does! Picture 1Picture 2 (i know I can gift it, i have 8 in the bank, chillll (get it?))
Madawc's Sorrow This thing is kind of cool. You charge in, they all get stunned. Now they are already getting frozen from your charge, so this doesnt synergize too well, but maybe you started off with a leap or an avalanche. Just more CC if you dont have any of the other first choice weapons.
Eun-Jang-Do A 1-hand alternative to Azurewrath. You trade a bit of damage, for a different flavor of CC. Azurewrath give you a chance to freeze at anytime, this one locks em down for sure after a certain threshold. It being a dagger again means your damage is gutted, because Furious charge likes slow weapons, and this is all shanky and fast.
Fjord Cutter A not widely popular weapon, mostly because of the long time bug it used to have, but now fixed, it just hasn't found its way to any true build. The aoe aura acts like Bane of the Trapped, but also has a chance to freeze in addition to its slow. Kind of cool! (hehe) Also has freeze on hit, which is super good for us. Lacks the damage Azurewrath has, however.
Rimeheart A curious weapon I can't really recommend seeing as I don't have one, and haven't tried one. The damage proc piqued my interest so I thought I might throw it on this list to see if someone got great damage out of it somehow.
Gems
You are a Frost Viking, and you do what a Frost Viking Pleases. Your gems will determine how each Frost Viking behaves. Solid choice of gems for tank would be Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard and Esoteric Alteration. A third and very good gem to support your team would be Gem of Efficacious Toxin. This nifty little gem gives a good damage boost to your damage dealers without you having to do a thing. Nice. This build does not use Taeguk as you are not spending resource fast enough, or consistent enough to make it worthwhile.If you dont feel like the two tanky gems because your CC is so top notch, Bane of the Trapped and Bane of the Powerful are always solid choices.
Some may want to use Pain Enhancer, as it is better dps than Efficacious Toxin, but only on your screen. Remember, Toxic buffs the real big dps like the wizards and demon hunters, so overall, the mobs will die faster with Efficacious Toxin. Plus, the attack speed from Pain Enhancer benefits you in no way whatsoever.
Rings
You do not use the Ring of Royal Grandeur and a second ring of your choice (CoE, Unity, Wyrdward, etc.), but instead, Focus and Restraint. You will get the first buff from charging, and the second buff from Rend.Remember You are not useless dps. This Ring combo will actually help you do a ton of damage while you are maintaining order of the mobs. Your primary role is to form that mob pillar, but this will chug away dps in the background.
Shoulders
Your choice is between Pauldrons of the Skeleton King and Vile Ward. For that 9th life, the Pauldrons keep the groups tank (you) alive and protecting the backline. Vile Ward makes your DPS go outstandingly high and I regret not putting it on the main build linked at the top lol. But this is supposed to be a tank build so you guys understand, right?Neck
The Ess of Johan To help group. Normally your templar wears this, but now you are in a group, so now it's yours. Alternatives would be Mara's Kaleidoscope, Xephirian Amulet, or Eye of Etlich.Belts
If you are running Ignore Pain as your fourth ability, Pride of Cassius is your main choice. Otherwise, Cord of the Sherma is a great choice to add another layer of CC.Bracers
One choice here, Strongarm Bracers. You are constantly knocking mobs back, so this will up the group's dps considerably. Roll +Cold damage and crit on them.- Passives
Tough as Nails Nerves of Steel Superstition and Juggernaut
You can do that if you like, but I would recommend dropping Juggernaut for something more damage oriented like Rampage, Ruthless or Weapons Master.
- Playstyle Tips
That just about wraps up the guide and build! I hope you guys took the time to read it and enjoyed it. Maybe this might spark some new ideas from all you clever girls out there. (Jurassic World soon!!)
I've been sick these past couple days so I had the time to think all this up for you guys and hope Barbs can start appearing in the 4 person ladder!
Guide by by Master__Roshi
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