Bored of everything else figured I would try them before being done with the seasons. Season one I tried whirlwind and it was pretty awful. Figure I should do a little research this time.
Just posted this to another thread, but applies to yours as well. Good luck:
Really cannot go wrong with HoTA or Upheaval, both are better levelers than WW. Best setups I’ve found are 3 shouts + CoTA for HoTA, and 2 shouts + Ground Stomp + Iron Maelstrom for Upheaval.
Thorns is 100 percent the easiest and fastest barb leveling build. Id argue its actually one of the easiest and fastest in the game.
1 - both aspects needleflare and deathwish are from dungeons
2 - six skill points is all you need plus a talented challenging shout.
3 - you dont need resources. You can literally spam flay or frenzy.
4 - easy to get berserk now. Can just use war cry steel grasp and wotb
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Thanks I’ll give it a shot, any chance you have a linked guide?
maxroll is a good place to find all these builds and more imo.
Or what is your strategy for keeping berserking up for the aspect?
Play what you find fun.
Most things work with Barb.
I am partial to mine because it is fun. But it uses 4 uniques, sort of requires 2 of them.
It still works fine without the uniques but the Ancient’s Oath (2H Axe) and Battle Trance (Amulet) make it so much better. I leveled with this from the start and adapted through discovery.
Im trying WW and a Cold Varient this season …
www.icy-veins.com/d4/guides/cold-whirlwind-barbarian-build/
Just get the two thorns aspects and put them in a 2h.
Get the thorns passives in the third node (the one with the two shouts and ground stomp)
For berserk just use steel grasp
One last question what vampire powers did you use?
Frenzy thornes is good all the way from level 1 to 100 to NM 100
Why Frenzy instead of Flay? Flay gives you extra thorns damage.
Flay is good but once you get a battle trance and some paragon frenzy takes over and is 1000x better. The very little thorns damage flay adds is negligible compared to the immense damage reduction and total dps you get with a battle trance frenzy.
Vampire powers lets see.
Moonrise, jagged spikes, prey on the weak, accursed touch and hectic.
Frenzy is the delivery system for thornes. PPl put way too much points into. Dont need to
Sorry I don’t get it, what does hitting an enemy have to do with thorns which happens when an enemy hits you?
damage goes both ways. plus thornes isnt your only damage. with how the damage buckets work you can spread stuff around.
I like Rend/Rapture… but then I’ve only played Rend builds in Season 0, 1 & 2 (no other builds). It’s strong enough to take out Echo of Lilith and NMD 100. Of course, there are stronger Barb builds, but I play the one I found to be the most fun!
I feel like the Witcher and with as high attack speed as possible you’re definitely “dancing” through them mobs like the Witcher does hah hah. Walk through em and hack anything down as you go.
Just find something that’s fun to play and enjoy!
I feel like Deathblow is a very powerful skill. I use it as a Fury generator until T3ish then swap to Berserk, if the setup suits you. It might feel clunky but it’ll blast apart mobs as fast you can run the rotation (I guess that is any build but other builds/classes feel like I’m just shaking my fist until I can press a Core Skill but properly managing Deathblow feels like a resource/cooldown free Core Skill) and you’ll get a feel for when to adjust to Captain/Brute enemies quickly. Lunge/Frenzy > Deathblow > Hammer of the Ancients rotation is pretty fun because you rarely spam just one ability, Slap- SCHWING- BANG! (Swap HOTA/DB as necessary) And it’ll keep Walking Arsenal up, which is nice because you won’t have access to consistent fury management until Warbringer Paragon or Shout Aspects.
The rotation is probably funner on controller than mouse and keyboard because it practically plays itself by scrubbing the face buttons. A, X, Y, A, X, Y,… 
Add Rally and War Cry to power up HOTA on demand then Wrath of the Berserker for bosses.
Hemomancy is king while leveling but it can screw with Deathblow or soften enemies up perfectly because Hemomancy procs when you press Deathblow before damage is dealt.
In my opinion, Thorns is the safest for HC. However, in general and until T4, I really like frenzy.
I literally don’t need to add aspects or spend on upgrading items. Whatever falls to the ground with the highest average damage, I equip. When I arrive at t4 I already have a lot of gold and materials and can quickly focus on the build I want or continue with Frenzy until the endgame like I did this season.
I uploaded this video this week about speed farming with this build. There’s the planner in the description. https://youtu.be/8F7whqJnd6c
Basically frenzy as main damage, irom maelstrom for area damage and increased frenzy damage. Rest mobility and Iron Skin for survival and damage.
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How can you put 2 aspects in a 2-H?