The guide has been updated to Season 20. No big changes, really. Early on, Season players will likely want Stone Gauntlets in the Cube for the extra toughness, but true top-end pushes, and higher-Paragon non-Season pushes, will likely still prefer Mantle since you’ll still get a lot of uptime on the item’s damage bonus throughout the rift and vs the RG.
To clarify, this build plays exactly the same in Season 20 as it does in non-Season play.
I recommend the following setup:
Armor: Core Zodiac
Weapons: Istvan’s Paired Blades
Cubed Items: Ambo’s, Stone Gauntlets (until strong enough to go without, then switch to Mantle), your worst ring
Stack Area Damage on gear
Rend to win, fellow Barbs!
P.S. This is the longest running guide on the Barb forums!
I’m thinking we might want to swap Furnace for Mantle in season 20 as soon as we have enough toughness to support that. I’m going to give it a try anyway.
Focus + Restraint and Band Of Might + Zodiac + Ambo cubed seems like a great combo for the season start. I did 114 in under 10 minutes with that at 800 paragon
So I like to joke about how I have clearly at some point angered the RNG Gods, because of how much the beginning of seasons love to troll me.
This season I have taken to pushing up through GRs with a 2 hander build, using IK BB that I got as part of the season journey.
In the day and a half up to last night, I have had 19 BK swords, through natural drops, or upgrading through the cube…and every single one of them has been a Warrior Blood. Not a single Solemn Vow
Yes that was 19…one - nine…that was not a mistype, nor was it some kind of comedic exaggeration.
In good news, I do have a pretty decent ancient BK Warrior Blood ready to go if I ever get the Solemn Vow
I completed GR70 last night, and had the thought, wouldn’t it be funny if it dropped another BK WB as my free primal…
Than it occurred to me that it would not be funny at all, it would actually be very expensive, as there is a better than fair chance that would have resulted in my laptop being ejected from the house…through a wall
I finished Guardian tonight (EU). Took a couple of screenies…
Summary - https://i.imgur.com/4Cgucvs.jpg
Records - https://i.imgur.com/dC1UgUC.jpg
Paragon 590 when I finished, highest GR was a solo GR80, 7/13 ancients, a single rank 50 Caldesann’s. Could have shaved a couple of hours off the time if I hadn’t have stopped along the way to boost over a dozen people 1-70 but that’s what you get for being a nice guy.
Next target is to see how low paragon I manage a GR100 at.
I think I am paragon 300 and something when I finished my 70 last night, then I went to bed lol
I’ve only done the first 4 legs of the Journey so far, have been trying to get another sword to make it a bit easier
I was a little surprised at how well it performed with the two hander, but then again at 70, I could probably spin wet noodles and let ambo’s & lamentation do their thing, as long as I could stay alive.
I’m still on BK weapons, but I managed to do a 95 in 7 mins (630p), so I imagine a 100 is just around the corner. I’m wondering if the Istvan weapons will provide me with enough survivability to push. I also imagine that the Istvan build runs out of fury quite quickly? Even as BK, I can come close to running out if I’m not monitoring resources closely.
If you use Istvan’s, your WW rune will be Wind Shear. All aspects of the build are covered in the OP, so if you’re wondering how something works, check there!
