Support Barbarian BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points (2024)

Following the role stereotypes, the Support Barb uses a mixture of sets andutility legendaries to maximize Toughness, cooldown and resource management.

The desired armor set mixture is TheLegacy of Raekor and Hordeof the Ninety Savages, incorporating three Raekor pieces (between Raekor's Will, Raekor's Wraps, Raekor's Burden, Raekor's Breeches and Raekor's Heart) and two Horde of the NinetySavages set pieces (between Skull of Savages, Claws of Savages, Spines of Savages, Leggings of Savages and Markings of Savages). The Raekor 4-piece bonus will of course be attainedthrough a cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur. This way you gain all the necessarymobility and utility from Raekor, as well as the tremendous Shout-relatedbonuses from Horde of the Ninety Savages. Check a sample split between the twosets in the table below.

Free of damage dealing concerns, the support Barbarian can focus on pureutility in the jewelry. You have three recommended rings — Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Oculus Ring and Ring of Royal Grandeur— two of which you will equip and Cube the third, according to yourbetter rolled items. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is a powerful tool forthis cooldown-heavy build: benefiting greatly from the heavy Ancient Spear use, it allows for permanent uptime of crucial abilitieslike Ignore Pain, Threatening Shout, and War Cry (see this build's skills page for moreinformation). Ring of Royal Grandeur is necessary to complete the 4-piecebonus of Raekor. Finally, the revamped Oculus Ring will provide up to theimpressive 85% multiplicative damage buff in a circular area for your DPS partymembers to stand in. While its wording is vague, it does trigger off assists,and will thus work on support characters.

To complete the jewelry, initially it is recommended to obtain an immunityamulet for a highly lethal source of elemental damage. Xephirian Amulet,which renders you immune to lightning, or The Star of Azkaranth against fire,are highly desirable options during lower Paragons, when your survival still isnot cemented. With a highly progressed character, you should branch out into theincreased pickup radius of Rondal's Locket to improve group utility, oreven better — the doubling of Pylon duration coming from The Flavor of Time.

A crucial piece for the Support Barbarian is the mighty belt Pride of Cassius, whose legendary power extends the duration of Ignore Pain by up to 6 seconds. Obtaining the maximum value of the uniquebonus solidifies the uptime of your strongest mitigation buff, and thankfully thebelt is common enough to obtain a BiS roll relatively quickly. Regardless, it canbe cubed if you get a well-rolled Chilanik's Chain first; stat-wise the twobelts are interchangeable, but Chilanik's Chain is easier to maximizethrough Kanai's Cube because of its broader legendary affix range.

You have some wiggle room when deciding on your bracer; the defaultrecommendation is the party-wide additive damage increase of Strongarm Bracers, triggered by the Furious Charge knockup.Alternatively, you can take the elite-spawning Nemesis Bracers to shortenthe time spent looking for champion packs — at least one elite spawnershould be present in the group, and you are adequate for the task.

Illusory Boots are a crucial piece for the mobility of the build,allowing you to ignore collision and pass freely through enemies — anindispensable bonus for a character tasked with scouting and monster control.These boots are farmed through Act IIbounty caches, and are relatively easy toobtain with a good roll due to their fixed stats and no-range affix. Stat-wise,aim strictly for Toughness.

You have a degree of freedom in choosing your weapon and offhand, with manyrecognized and highly ranking viable combinations. If you are new to the playstyle,you can start out with a Pig Sticker — Stormshield combo.The experienced Barb support however will wield the set swords Little Rogueand The Slanderer for endgame pushing. While depriving you of the Stormshield defensive bulwark, these weapons will sync with the overallgoals of the support Barbarian by supplying you with 30% Armor and Attack Speedwhen fully stacked. Stat-wise, supports care nothing about Weapon Damage, so yourmain- and off-hand items are a pure stat sticks that needs Strength,Vitality, Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed, and ideally the damage range getsrerolled into Resource Cost Reduction (or one of the missing aforementionedstats).

You should ideally augment your gear with Intelligence for the All Resistancegain.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two veryuseful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide tohelp you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear anda Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised andre-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — Forvirtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual toadvanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the pathoutlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of lifefirst, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive andedge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary PotionPowers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separateresource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Setitems of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, andin the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powersin our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

Wreath of Lightning provides you with a nice AoE proc to aggro enemieswith, along with an extremely helpful 25% movement speed for the duration of theproc — easily obtainable from the gem's level 25 property.

Gogok of Swiftness synergizes well with the build, indirectly providingthe entire party with more survivability by increasing your essential CooldownReduction, as well as substantial personal Toughness from the Dodge bonuses.

The recommended gem for your third and final jewelry slot is Gem of Efficacious Toxin, for the party-wide damage increase against —and reduced damage from — enemies affected by its poisonous DoT.

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

You have several viable options for the weapons slot in Kanai's Cube dependingon your GR goals. For high-end GR progression, the general recommendationfor this slot is either Messerschmidt's Reaver for the cooldown reduction,or The Executioner for its culling proc on enemies below 10% health.

One core Kanai's Cube item is Chilanik's Chain for the armor slot. Thisbelt provides a party-wide movement speed buff when you activate War Cry,essential both during XP runs (for efficiency) and progression content (to skipbad fights). As mentioned above, this slot is interchangeable with Pride of Cassius depending on your better rolled item.

As previously mentioned, your jewelry slot will be taken up by your worst rollof the three necessary rings for the build — Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Ring of Royal Grandeur and Oculus Ring.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Pleaserefer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The seasonal theme for Season 31 will be completely flexible slots forKanai's Cube, which means you can use anypiece of gear in any slot of the Cube.

This is one of the builds where we don't recommend making any changes, sincethe options presented in the default build already make up the strongestKanai's Cube composition possible for the setup.

As a support, you will gain additional utility from being able to break downwalls with the Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid.