[Guide] Raekor HOTA (Season 20)

Is there any video for fasts with this build (T16 and/or GR)? I have tried it but it takes me 3-4 min for GR while with Zodiac WW takes 1.5-2 min. I want to know what I do wrong.

UPDATE

Updated the guide to S20. Don’t think anyone is playing this build anymore, but for any potential stalwarts, there you go.

As always, let me know if there are any errors or omissions.

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this season you can add the one handed mighty weapon on the cube, but yeah is not going to give much more than already do

It’s been quite a while since this build has gotten any play, but that may change with the new leaderboard filters incoming!

So I wanted to go over how this build might look now.

Here’s a build link: D3planner - Maxroll.gg - Diablo 3 Resource Website Season 27

Let me go over a few of the gearing choices I made here:

1: Why no IB?
Because there’s no room for it. Remorseless, with its 3.5x multiplier to HOTA damage, is way too good to give up, no matter how cumbersome it might be in this build.

2: Why Sankis, and not Echoing Fury?
I was a bit torn on this one, and I could well turn out to be wrong. But this build has to balance between building up stacks and then spending them. With EF, you only get the buff when you kill things, and it only lasts 5 seconds. That means that during most of your “building up stacks” time, you’ll get no benefit, and when it comes time to spend those stacks, you’ll blow through them all before you’ve reached the end of your CoE Fire phase. That means you won’t see nearly as big a dps gain as you might expect. Also, fearing enemies while you’re charging around is a pain. On the other side of the equation, Sankis not only gives you a nice flat buff to Fire damage, it also occasionally increases your toughness, which can be very helpful.

3: Why Esoteric and not Gogok?
This one might end up coming down to the personal preference of the player, or end up splitting along paragon lines- Esoteric for lower paragon, Gogok for higher. We saw lots of good clears with both options back in the day. But, with Remorseless now in the build, we are going to be playing a few GR levels higher, which means more incoming damage to weather. We’ve also lost the IB armor bonus. In addition, I think it is likely that we won’t have Ignore Pain on the bar anymore, either. So that means incoming damage is going to be a real problem, and Esoteric (plus copious Physical Resist rolls) will help with that.

4: Why no Ignore Pain?
No room on the bar. COTA, WOTB, HOTA, Charge, and BR: Bloodshed are locked- absolutely essential. That leaves just one spot remaining. For lower paragon players, it may be necessary after all to take IP. But, this means losing TS: Demoralize, which not only helps with survival via the 20% damage debuff, it also significantly increases your damage by packing mobs together. So: take IP if you absolutely must (in which case, you can also take Pride of Cassius)… but TS: Demoralize is probably going to give the highest clears.

5: Why Witching Hour?
If you’re not taking Pride of Cassius, this option adds some dps. Other options are Vigilante Belt (extra roll of CDR lets you pick up an extra AD or damage range roll on a ring) or String of Ears, for extra toughness.

6: Why Aquilla and not Mortick’s?
Because you also need to stay alive when you don’t have WOTB and COTA active. You’ll get a significant toughness buff from COTA:TaO when it’s active, but this is only about 40% of the time. Putting even more of your eggs in the WOTB + COTA basket means you’re likely to die while you’re building up stacks.

7: Why no RoRG + Crimson?
Because it’s less damage than the other options. EW adds more damage than Crimson (+100% vs +50-65%), and in this build, CoE actually adds the full +200% damage, since all of your attacking happens during your Fire phase. And if you drop BoM, you will do 0 damage, since you will always be dead. As for the added CDR, even the +20% you get from Crimson is not enough to get you up to the 65% you need to catch the higher CoE/WOTB breakpoint (you can make it to that point if you use Crimson + Gogok). Also, catching the higher breakpoint is not as good as it sounds, since it gives you only 12 seconds after WOTB goes down to build your stacks up again. In actual gameplay, you will miss out on a lot of the “on paper” damage from that higher breakpoint. If you did want to run Crimson, you would drop EW, wear Crimson Belt + Boots, wear CoE + BoM, put RoRG in cube, and wear a Hellfire for an extra passive (with FoT on a follower).

8: Why Bloodthirst as a passive?
Same reason there’s LPFS on your Remorseless-- for the healing. You’re still going to need to spam BR, for the healing (it used to both heal you and keep up IB stacks). With no Mortick’s, and no IP, you are going to be pretty short on healing.

9: Why Berserker Rage + Brawler as passives, rather than Ruthless + Rampage?
Ultimately, you could use any combo of those 4 abilities. Rampage has the highest benefit “on paper”, but you are going to drop stacks a lot since you only kill things in 5 second windows. Berserker and Brawler each give around +15% damage, which is better than what you get from Ruthless.

10: How do I play this build, again?
You charge around, spamming BR, for healing, and TS: Demoralize, to aggro mobs. Try hard to avoid getting frozen, since you don’t have IP anymore (if you do get frozen, having several good CC reduction rolls will help a lot). Collect the mobs by a wall. Begin wall-charging at least 8 seconds before your CoE Fire phase begins. Just as you reach Fire, pop WOTB and COTA, then hit your enemies with HOTA. If an Oculus circle spawns in a convenient place with Fire time left to spare, charge into it and keep hammering. When Fire has passed, resume wall-charging till it returns, then hammer your foes again. Once WOTB and COTA drop, repeat this cycle.

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You almost had me there, until I read wall-charging. Not my cup of tea, I’ll pass on this build for the new leader boards.

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Haha, yeah… though, have you ever tried it? I seem to be in the minority, but I never really had the same problem with it that other folks did. The main objections seem to be: 1) It’s an unintentional mechanic, and 2) It’s silly.

Unintentional, I’ll grant, but as for silly… isn’t jumping up and down like a jackrabbit, or spinning around and farting out tornadoes… also kind of silly?

Yeah, but neither of those involve repeatedly face-planting a wall on purpose. :wink:

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I would argue that wall charging is the most barbarian thing barbs can do. I mean what is more intimidating then some crazy barb slamming into a wall? All the non barbs will run in fear when someone actually tries this build again. Twirling like a ballerina or hopping around like a kangaroo just looks silly.

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An update:

엔류 up to GR 138, using the setup I suggested (any notes on how well it worked, 엔류?)

About 9k paragon. Rank 1 on Raekor board by (lol) 23 tiers.

I’ve been trying R6 HoTA with the new patch. I haven’t played R6 since charging was a thing. Overall? My biggest issue is not being able to get stacks fast enough to keep the DPS going. It would be easier if it was charges per enemy hit as opposed to per charge cast.

maxroll.gg/d3planner/958952278

Crimson is not “the” recommended best guide for pushing.
Rage has the recommendations at the top of the forum here.
Play what you want, but the build shown is probably inferior to the standard R6 build…

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Well, Free wrote the guide. And I believe it’s actually based on an original version in Portuguese by Lucio. I just added a few updates…

I love crimson with these kinds of builds. Damage, toughness and cooldowns are all there. The bottleneck for me is getting stacks.

Are you wall-charging? That definitely helps with getting stacks faster. Totally agree btw that they need to change the stacking effect to a per-enemy-hit system.

there arent always walls, lol.

You found the hidden rift level that is just the void of outer space?

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What’s, um . . . . what’s going on in here?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

So, over in a different thread, we got into a discussion about Maxroll and their reliability with regards to Barb builds. They have the Crimson variant listed for speeds, not pushes, and . . . okay, sure. I mean, speed GRs with this build don’t really need Crimson’s, but okay. Not the end of the world.

Obviously you don’t push with the Crimson’s variant because taking RoRG means you can’t take the Endless Walk set, and Endless Walk = more damage than Crimson’s + RoRG. All good so far.

What I don’t like is their lack of emphasis on wall-charging, which is–literally–the only thing that truly elevates this build’s damage output over an IK/LoD HOTA build. Wall-charging is essential to pushing with this build, something I emphasize several times in the guide:

This is something Maxroll never does. They don’t sufficiently emphasize a build’s core, the thing that truly makes it tick.

If you’re pushing with R6 HOTA and you’re not wall-charging, you’re not pushing. You’re wasting time.

Im just having some fun with the set. I dont want to aug anymore wastes or mote sets im not going to keep after the season ends. I really like charging all over the place. Fastest set by far. You guys can debate the items. I have found so far in my limited playing the glaring bottleneck is getting stacks (even with wall charging). If you could pump and dump hota 100% of the time this would be a gr140 set.

엔류 up to 146 in 12:10 so far (at roughly 12k paragon) in the very young Era 15. He dropped EW set, and is using RoRG + Crimson, as well as the Ess of Johan amulet. I’d be shocked if we don’t see at least 148 from him.

If anybody should happen upon this thread, please note that Raekor has been reworked to only buff Ancient Spear. Raekor HOTA no longer exists.

The guide for Raekor Ancient Spear is here:

[Guide] Raekor Ancient Spear - Barbarian - Diablo 3 Forums (blizzard.com)

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