This is my 3rd time beating Greater Rift 52 solo. I have two of the three runs recorded on video. You can find them both on my Youtube page from the video link.
My Raekor play style and how it works on high Greater Rifts:
My particular theory to defeating these Greater Rifts is to find the right rift that has easy to kill mobs such as skeletons or spiders with good density so that I can spawn the final boss with time left to kill it with a Conduit Pylon. Surviving the elemental affixes on elites through the Greater Rift is quite difficult, but there are ways to do it. The main way I survive incoming damage from various sources is Ignore Pain. Not only do I take 50% less damage while it is active, it’s rune Ignorance is Bliss allows my Battle Rage shout to serve as a 100k hp heal every time I use it. So this allows me to survive incoming damage and heal myself constantly since I have a generous pool of fury from charging mobs. This does not mean that I can take any amount of incoming damage and survive it with this up and using it’s heal. In general, I cannot fight any elite with molten or arcane sentry or fire chain. But because of my Xephirian Amulet, those are mainly the only affixes I have to worry about so the list is smaller than one of a barbarian without a resistance necklace. Now, since both Ignore Pain and its rune, Ignorance is Bliss are very important to my play style, this means I need a high amount of CDR or cooldown reduction to create no downtime on my Ignore Pain ability. This is different than other barbs who run around 40% CDR and use the Iron Hide rune on Ignore Pain to reduce its cooldown and create no downtime on it. My high CDR, maxing at 62.70% with Gogok of Swiftness stacked up 15times, along with my Pride of Cassius belt make it so that I have practically no downtime on my Ignore Pain ability. This amount of CDR also allows me to only have to charge two targets to reset the cooldown on my Furious Charge ability which I like. Another important aspect of my play style more recently has become the Together as One rune on Call of the Ancients. This idea I took from watching jd_dutch_freak and his unique play style. This rune changes the utility of the Ancients completely. Instead of being a source of damage, they are now a source of survivability that I use strategically through the Greater Rifts. I realized that I do not need the ancients to kill anything because everything I want to kill I kill with my charge and it is generally easy because I do not kill difficult mobs. The damage reduction from the Together as One rune is useful to get through or around fire chain mobs, or perhaps kill mobs which do a little too much damage to you. The reason this is so important is because deaths are very inconvenient to your runs and reduce your chances at completing the RNG rift that has a conduit at the end. So using your ancients in the right situations will allow you to survive and move on with hopefully easier mobs to come. This being said, I don’t run with much survivability to elements, and run with ruby gems in my gear. I strategically avoid mobs that will kill me and move on to those that are easy to kill, and hope that I get a rift that has enough easy mobs to spawn the guardian with a chance at completing it in time with a conduit pylon.
There are a few interesting things about my build that are different from a regular Raekor Barb build that help with high level Greater Rifts. The main differences are War Cry instead of Frenzy, Together as One rune on Call of the Ancients instead of The Council Rises, and Superstition passive instead of Rampage. Let me explain the reason for these differences.
War Cry instead of Frenzy – This change occurred to me as a good idea AFTER watching the former rank1 player jd_dutch_freak. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before that Frenzy was useless because you never want to single target attack. I tried a few different skills in the place of Frenzy such as Leap, Overpower, and War Cry, and ended up finding Leap and Overpower to be not very helpful so I went with War Cry with the resistance rune. I didn’t know what to keybind to my left mouse click instead of frenzy, but Call of the Ancients works good there because it will only activate when u left click on a creature(not when you click on the ground to move) or when you shift + left click.
Call of the Ancients (Together as One) – I previously used the fire rune for Call of the Ancients so they did more damage because I have some stacked fire damage % on my gear. AFTER watching jd_dutch_freak and seeing him use the Together as One rune on Call of the Ancients, I tried it out myself. This change I found to be very useful because I realized I don’t need the ancient’s single target dps to kill the mobs I’m trying to kill. Using them to reduce the damage I take in certain situations really helped me avoid nasty mobs or kill mobs who hurt a little too much for my life per fury spent to keep me alive. Basically the strategy is to use these Ancients to get around or through fire-chain mobs that you do not want to fight. Also it helps with killing reflect damage mobs who can hurt when charging them, or perhaps some molten mobs.
Superstition instead of Rampage – I had been messing around with this passive slot since greater rift 42 because rampage didn’t seem to be very useful. I found it not useful because I wouldn’t stack up rampage very often because of the mobs high health pools, so it was an unreliable source of damage and armor. I had previously been using Tough as Nails passive with the strength gems I use I figured the armor boost might be worth it. In the end I chose Superstition because elemental damage is really what kills me while doing rifts and avoiding death is nice.
One last thing I’d like to address about my build is Ignore Pain with Ignorance is Bliss rune. This is a vital part of my play style. If you are not familiar with this rune, it gives you around 5k life per fury spent while Ignore Pain is active. This means when you use Battle Rage which costs 20fury while Ignore Pain is active, you will be healed around 100k health every time you press Battle Rage. Some people use the Iron Hide rune with Ignore Pain so that they have no downtime on it, but with as much CDR as I have, I already don’t have any downtime on Ignore Pain and I NEED the life per fury spent aspect of it to heal myself.
These are my un-buffed stats with Superstition passive, with Battle Rage and War Cry active, my damage goes to 974k and my toughness goes to 14.9mil roughly.
Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage – You want CC in amulet, helm, gloves, bracer, and perhaps a ring like your unity. You want CD in amulet, gloves, weapon gem, and perhaps a ring but I couldn’t find room for it on any ring.
Cooldown Reduction – This is the stat that most people who are learning the Raekor Charge Barb build seem to be interested in, and this is for good reason. I think the main thing people have learned about CDR, is that 40% and 60% are the two general breakpoints. These are breakpoints because at 40% CDR, you only need to charge three targets to have no cooldown on Furious Charge and at 60% CDR you only need to charge two targets for the same effect. CDR has more importance than just that of for your Furious Charge ability. Another important use of CDR is for Ignore Pain. As you can see, my CDR is 56.10%, and with the legendary gem Gogok of Swiftness stacked up 15times, my CDR maxes at 62.70%. With this much CDR, the downtime of Ignore Pain is practically non-existent, EVEN with ignorance is bliss rune. I believe jd_dutch_freak uses the Iron Hide rune on Ignore Pain, increasing its duration to reduce downtime, because he does not use as high CDR in his gear, instead he goes for defensive stats and ultimately doesn’t need the Ignorance is Bliss heal from Ignore Pain. But with my play style, I like to use the heal from Battle Rage that Ignore Pain gives you, and so the high CDR helps me have no downtime on Ignore Pain which is very necessary to stay alive in these high level greater rifts. All that being said, I suggest a CDR of 51% + so that with your Gogok gem stacked up to 15, your CDR is around 60% which I enjoy having so that you only have to charge two targets to reset the cooldown on Furious Charge. Though, the CDR that I am at, 56.10% unbuffed, seems to be very nice because as I said when maxed with Gogok, Ignore Pain has no downtime.
Fire Damage Increase and Furious Charge Damage Increase – Fire Damage is good but it doesn’t fit on many pieces of gear. Obviously you go for it on Strongarm Bracers, and other than that it only fits on an amulet barely and not even necessarily. This stat seems to be only mainly important to have on your bracer because it is a waste to not have it there. Furious Charge Damage Increase is an interesting stat, you can get it on two places, shoulder and chest. You have to sacrifice good defensive stats to get this so I wasn’t completely sure it was worth it. In the end I think it worked out because I was able to survive well enough in the greater rift with other techniques so the bonus damage helps.
All Resistance – I don’t have much AR, you want to get it on your belt, legs, boots, and try to get good singular resistances for some secondary stats. I am very squishy in terms of how much damage I take, so even with War Cry Impunity rune, I still cannot fight any desecrator or fire chain mobs. So since this is the case, I don’t need much resistance because I simply cannot fight certain packs, while other packs do nearly no damage to me because they are being dragged the whole time until they die. This is also why you see me using Rubies instead of Diamonds, not only do Rubies give me damage, they also give me armor which seems to be a type of mitigation I can get away with using if I get the right rift with the right mobs that have the right affixes
There a few important things to point out about my particular play style and how gear plays a role in that.
Amulet – I am using a Xephirian Amulet with nice rolls, the secondary is the main juice behind the amulet. This means I not only don’t have to avoid any electric packs, I can attack them head on and with great confidence that they will not hurt me, unless they are combined with other bad affixes. I don’t think this amulet is necessary, but I do think it reduces the RNG factor in the Greater Rift you have to find. This is because currently I get screwed over by certain affixes on packs such as Fire Chains, and it can ruin my whole run if there are too many Fire Chain packs. This same thing can happen to barbs who do not use a Xephirian Amulet, so for this reason, a Xephirian wearing barbarian will have less packs to be afraid of and a greater chance for overall success in spawning the Rift Guardian in the time allotted.
Belt – Pride of Cassius is a must because you need the longer duration on Ignore Pain. Ignore pain with my current set up of CDR and this belt has no downtime which is what you need to survive in the higher greater rifts.
Weapon – Furnace is what I am using, ideally the stats on it would be strength/10%dmg/10%cdr but mine has vitality instead of 10%dmg. I chose to use CDR on my weapon instead of %dmg because the play style I have needs high CDR, and actually the 62.70% CDR I am maxed at perfectly gives me no downtime on Ignore Pain and makes for enjoyable gameplay. I could change it to %dmg and go down to like 51% CDR, but this play style is not as fun because of the downtime on Ignore Pain, it really sucks to kite for a second while it is on cooldown so I decided to stay with CDR on my weapon instead of %dmg.
Legendary Gems – I used Bane of the Trapped and Gogok of Swiftness gems. I need the Gogok gem because I like the CDR increase it gives me, allowing Ignore Pain to have no downtime. The other gem I was choosing between Bane of the Trapped and Bane of the Powerful. I wasn’t sure how good the buff from Bane of Powerful was going to be, but it probably would be a fine choice as well in that gem slot. The smite gem is worth noting, I used to use this gem when I would complete Greater Rifts legit and kill the Rift Guardian because I needed the single target dps. But since this is no longer the strategy in the higher rifts, the smite gem has no real use.
Final Notes:
I’ve found that getting the trial keys for the Greater Rifts takes almost as long as doing the rifts themselves. It doesn’t take long into a rift before you rage quit and are too far behind in progress to catch up. I suggest stocking up on TONS of Greater Rift keys, as the key to succeeding is just by getting a lucky rift. I did about 60-80 of these level 45 Greater Rifts before getting the right one. You should expect to burn through the Greater Rift keys very fast like candy. Keep in mind that the more Greater Rifts you are able to spawn the Guardian before the timer is over, the more chances you have at succeeding with a conduit. So “passing” rifts that you are capable of doing is very important so you don’t miss the RNG of a conduit shrine that might be there waiting for you.
Hopefully this information helps you on your journey to becoming a godlike Barbarian, and remember this is only my current opinion on how to succeed and there are many ways to do it. Feel free to stop by my stream when I’m streaming for any barb questions or for some sick barb gameplay at http://www.twitch.tv/buleh. You will find an awesome highlight of a Greater Rift 45 where I cleared it with 10minutes left for the boss, but no conduit in sight. It was the best rift I’ve ever seen.
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Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_GGvF8ZL_M
This is my 3rd time beating Greater Rift 52 solo. I have two of the three runs recorded on video. You can find them both on my Youtube page from the video link.
My stream is http://www.twitch.tv/Buleh if you want to tune in for some Barb action.
I hope you like the video!
- Buleh
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Video of run: http://www.twitch.tv/buleh/c/5160552
Twitch Channel: http://www.twitch.tv/buleh
My Raekor play style and how it works on high Greater Rifts:
My particular theory to defeating these Greater Rifts is to find the right rift that has easy to kill mobs such as skeletons or spiders with good density so that I can spawn the final boss with time left to kill it with a Conduit Pylon. Surviving the elemental affixes on elites through the Greater Rift is quite difficult, but there are ways to do it. The main way I survive incoming damage from various sources is Ignore Pain. Not only do I take 50% less damage while it is active, it’s rune Ignorance is Bliss allows my Battle Rage shout to serve as a 100k hp heal every time I use it. So this allows me to survive incoming damage and heal myself constantly since I have a generous pool of fury from charging mobs. This does not mean that I can take any amount of incoming damage and survive it with this up and using it’s heal. In general, I cannot fight any elite with molten or arcane sentry or fire chain. But because of my Xephirian Amulet, those are mainly the only affixes I have to worry about so the list is smaller than one of a barbarian without a resistance necklace. Now, since both Ignore Pain and its rune, Ignorance is Bliss are very important to my play style, this means I need a high amount of CDR or cooldown reduction to create no downtime on my Ignore Pain ability. This is different than other barbs who run around 40% CDR and use the Iron Hide rune on Ignore Pain to reduce its cooldown and create no downtime on it. My high CDR, maxing at 62.70% with Gogok of Swiftness stacked up 15times, along with my Pride of Cassius belt make it so that I have practically no downtime on my Ignore Pain ability. This amount of CDR also allows me to only have to charge two targets to reset the cooldown on my Furious Charge ability which I like. Another important aspect of my play style more recently has become the Together as One rune on Call of the Ancients. This idea I took from watching jd_dutch_freak and his unique play style. This rune changes the utility of the Ancients completely. Instead of being a source of damage, they are now a source of survivability that I use strategically through the Greater Rifts. I realized that I do not need the ancients to kill anything because everything I want to kill I kill with my charge and it is generally easy because I do not kill difficult mobs. The damage reduction from the Together as One rune is useful to get through or around fire chain mobs, or perhaps kill mobs which do a little too much damage to you. The reason this is so important is because deaths are very inconvenient to your runs and reduce your chances at completing the RNG rift that has a conduit at the end. So using your ancients in the right situations will allow you to survive and move on with hopefully easier mobs to come. This being said, I don’t run with much survivability to elements, and run with ruby gems in my gear. I strategically avoid mobs that will kill me and move on to those that are easy to kill, and hope that I get a rift that has enough easy mobs to spawn the guardian with a chance at completing it in time with a conduit pylon.
Build: http://imgur.com/8PH57ZP
There are a few interesting things about my build that are different from a regular Raekor Barb build that help with high level Greater Rifts. The main differences are War Cry instead of Frenzy, Together as One rune on Call of the Ancients instead of The Council Rises, and Superstition passive instead of Rampage. Let me explain the reason for these differences.
War Cry instead of Frenzy – This change occurred to me as a good idea AFTER watching the former rank1 player jd_dutch_freak. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before that Frenzy was useless because you never want to single target attack. I tried a few different skills in the place of Frenzy such as Leap, Overpower, and War Cry, and ended up finding Leap and Overpower to be not very helpful so I went with War Cry with the resistance rune. I didn’t know what to keybind to my left mouse click instead of frenzy, but Call of the Ancients works good there because it will only activate when u left click on a creature(not when you click on the ground to move) or when you shift + left click.
Call of the Ancients (Together as One) – I previously used the fire rune for Call of the Ancients so they did more damage because I have some stacked fire damage % on my gear. AFTER watching jd_dutch_freak and seeing him use the Together as One rune on Call of the Ancients, I tried it out myself. This change I found to be very useful because I realized I don’t need the ancient’s single target dps to kill the mobs I’m trying to kill. Using them to reduce the damage I take in certain situations really helped me avoid nasty mobs or kill mobs who hurt a little too much for my life per fury spent to keep me alive. Basically the strategy is to use these Ancients to get around or through fire-chain mobs that you do not want to fight. Also it helps with killing reflect damage mobs who can hurt when charging them, or perhaps some molten mobs.
Superstition instead of Rampage – I had been messing around with this passive slot since greater rift 42 because rampage didn’t seem to be very useful. I found it not useful because I wouldn’t stack up rampage very often because of the mobs high health pools, so it was an unreliable source of damage and armor. I had previously been using Tough as Nails passive with the strength gems I use I figured the armor boost might be worth it. In the end I chose Superstition because elemental damage is really what kills me while doing rifts and avoiding death is nice.
One last thing I’d like to address about my build is Ignore Pain with Ignorance is Bliss rune. This is a vital part of my play style. If you are not familiar with this rune, it gives you around 5k life per fury spent while Ignore Pain is active. This means when you use Battle Rage which costs 20fury while Ignore Pain is active, you will be healed around 100k health every time you press Battle Rage. Some people use the Iron Hide rune with Ignore Pain so that they have no downtime on it, but with as much CDR as I have, I already don’t have any downtime on Ignore Pain and I NEED the life per fury spent aspect of it to heal myself.
Stats http://imgur.com/C6rN7Xh:
These are my un-buffed stats with Superstition passive, with Battle Rage and War Cry active, my damage goes to 974k and my toughness goes to 14.9mil roughly.
Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage – You want CC in amulet, helm, gloves, bracer, and perhaps a ring like your unity. You want CD in amulet, gloves, weapon gem, and perhaps a ring but I couldn’t find room for it on any ring.
Cooldown Reduction – This is the stat that most people who are learning the Raekor Charge Barb build seem to be interested in, and this is for good reason. I think the main thing people have learned about CDR, is that 40% and 60% are the two general breakpoints. These are breakpoints because at 40% CDR, you only need to charge three targets to have no cooldown on Furious Charge and at 60% CDR you only need to charge two targets for the same effect. CDR has more importance than just that of for your Furious Charge ability. Another important use of CDR is for Ignore Pain. As you can see, my CDR is 56.10%, and with the legendary gem Gogok of Swiftness stacked up 15times, my CDR maxes at 62.70%. With this much CDR, the downtime of Ignore Pain is practically non-existent, EVEN with ignorance is bliss rune. I believe jd_dutch_freak uses the Iron Hide rune on Ignore Pain, increasing its duration to reduce downtime, because he does not use as high CDR in his gear, instead he goes for defensive stats and ultimately doesn’t need the Ignorance is Bliss heal from Ignore Pain. But with my play style, I like to use the heal from Battle Rage that Ignore Pain gives you, and so the high CDR helps me have no downtime on Ignore Pain which is very necessary to stay alive in these high level greater rifts. All that being said, I suggest a CDR of 51% + so that with your Gogok gem stacked up to 15, your CDR is around 60% which I enjoy having so that you only have to charge two targets to reset the cooldown on Furious Charge. Though, the CDR that I am at, 56.10% unbuffed, seems to be very nice because as I said when maxed with Gogok, Ignore Pain has no downtime.
Fire Damage Increase and Furious Charge Damage Increase – Fire Damage is good but it doesn’t fit on many pieces of gear. Obviously you go for it on Strongarm Bracers, and other than that it only fits on an amulet barely and not even necessarily. This stat seems to be only mainly important to have on your bracer because it is a waste to not have it there. Furious Charge Damage Increase is an interesting stat, you can get it on two places, shoulder and chest. You have to sacrifice good defensive stats to get this so I wasn’t completely sure it was worth it. In the end I think it worked out because I was able to survive well enough in the greater rift with other techniques so the bonus damage helps.
All Resistance – I don’t have much AR, you want to get it on your belt, legs, boots, and try to get good singular resistances for some secondary stats. I am very squishy in terms of how much damage I take, so even with War Cry Impunity rune, I still cannot fight any desecrator or fire chain mobs. So since this is the case, I don’t need much resistance because I simply cannot fight certain packs, while other packs do nearly no damage to me because they are being dragged the whole time until they die. This is also why you see me using Rubies instead of Diamonds, not only do Rubies give me damage, they also give me armor which seems to be a type of mitigation I can get away with using if I get the right rift with the right mobs that have the right affixes
Gear http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Buleh-1655/hero/51769204:
There a few important things to point out about my particular play style and how gear plays a role in that.
Amulet – I am using a Xephirian Amulet with nice rolls, the secondary is the main juice behind the amulet. This means I not only don’t have to avoid any electric packs, I can attack them head on and with great confidence that they will not hurt me, unless they are combined with other bad affixes. I don’t think this amulet is necessary, but I do think it reduces the RNG factor in the Greater Rift you have to find. This is because currently I get screwed over by certain affixes on packs such as Fire Chains, and it can ruin my whole run if there are too many Fire Chain packs. This same thing can happen to barbs who do not use a Xephirian Amulet, so for this reason, a Xephirian wearing barbarian will have less packs to be afraid of and a greater chance for overall success in spawning the Rift Guardian in the time allotted.
Belt – Pride of Cassius is a must because you need the longer duration on Ignore Pain. Ignore pain with my current set up of CDR and this belt has no downtime which is what you need to survive in the higher greater rifts.
Weapon – Furnace is what I am using, ideally the stats on it would be strength/10%dmg/10%cdr but mine has vitality instead of 10%dmg. I chose to use CDR on my weapon instead of %dmg because the play style I have needs high CDR, and actually the 62.70% CDR I am maxed at perfectly gives me no downtime on Ignore Pain and makes for enjoyable gameplay. I could change it to %dmg and go down to like 51% CDR, but this play style is not as fun because of the downtime on Ignore Pain, it really sucks to kite for a second while it is on cooldown so I decided to stay with CDR on my weapon instead of %dmg.
Legendary Gems – I used Bane of the Trapped and Gogok of Swiftness gems. I need the Gogok gem because I like the CDR increase it gives me, allowing Ignore Pain to have no downtime. The other gem I was choosing between Bane of the Trapped and Bane of the Powerful. I wasn’t sure how good the buff from Bane of Powerful was going to be, but it probably would be a fine choice as well in that gem slot. The smite gem is worth noting, I used to use this gem when I would complete Greater Rifts legit and kill the Rift Guardian because I needed the single target dps. But since this is no longer the strategy in the higher rifts, the smite gem has no real use.
Final Notes:
I’ve found that getting the trial keys for the Greater Rifts takes almost as long as doing the rifts themselves. It doesn’t take long into a rift before you rage quit and are too far behind in progress to catch up. I suggest stocking up on TONS of Greater Rift keys, as the key to succeeding is just by getting a lucky rift. I did about 60-80 of these level 45 Greater Rifts before getting the right one. You should expect to burn through the Greater Rift keys very fast like candy. Keep in mind that the more Greater Rifts you are able to spawn the Guardian before the timer is over, the more chances you have at succeeding with a conduit. So “passing” rifts that you are capable of doing is very important so you don’t miss the RNG of a conduit shrine that might be there waiting for you.
Hopefully this information helps you on your journey to becoming a godlike Barbarian, and remember this is only my current opinion on how to succeed and there are many ways to do it. Feel free to stop by my stream when I’m streaming for any barb questions or for some sick barb gameplay at http://www.twitch.tv/buleh. You will find an awesome highlight of a Greater Rift 45 where I cleared it with 10minutes left for the boss, but no conduit in sight. It was the best rift I’ve ever seen.
- Buleh