Diablo 3: Barbarian Might of the Earth Set with Immortal Kings and Seismic Slam Build Review


After feeling disappointed with the Might of the Earth 3 piece and Immortal Kings 5 piece combo, I decided to try going with just the 2 piece Immortal Kings and 5 piece Might of the Earth in conjunction with Seismic Slam. I’m still not fully optimized but I’ll provide my current thoughts with the play style thus far.

One really great thing about the Might of the Earth 6 piece bonus is that it buffs Seismic Slam damage (among other things) by 800% passively. In contrast, Immortal Kings only buffs your overall damage by 250% when both your Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker are up. So the requirements for a Seismic Slam build ultimately are less punishing and the damage is much higher overall.

I decided to do Immortal Kings 2 piece (using the belt and another piece) for the permanent Call of the Ancients effect. I use Together as One for the damage reduction. Along with this I have Unforgiving for having high fury that works with my Leap as my main fury generator. That allows me to spam Seismic Slam since Fury of the Vanishing Peak helps to reduce some of the resource cost to Seismic slam. One optimization I could try in the future is using a different defensive/offensive passive rather than Unforgiving. The issue here is being fury starved occasionally when there is no mob density or when Leap is on cooldown.

Another thing I do is employ Wrath of the Berserker in the mix. I would like to use the three piece Immortal Kings set but the only way to handle that is to use the Boulder Breaker in place of the Fury of the Vanishing Peak and cube that weapon rather than the Blade of the Tribes. In that setup, I feel that the only thing you gain is a more frequent Wrath of the Berserker, which is nice for the speed boost and other things, but not very practical overall in this type of build. I’d rather have the burst damage from your War Cry and Threatening Shout that triggers Avalanche and Earthquake as well as debuffs. Instead, Wrath of the Berserker becomes a good cooldown to use here and there.

One thing I don’t like about this build is that it’s really slow. Yes, you have Leap but once it goes on cooldown, it can be really annoying. Also, it’s better to save your Leaps for mobs rather than using it as a movement boost. Wrath of the Berserker helps a little but you’re still sluggish overall. I was hoping that this build would improve upon Leap but you need to spam cast Seismic Slam, which feels pointless unless there’s mobs. This scenario really hurts in big loops or dead ends where you have to retrace your path.

The thing I do like is that it does an insane amount of burst damage. Leap does cause an Earthquake but the real damage occurs when you invoke War Cry and Threatening Shout. Generally, mobs disappear right after. Also, unlike Ancient Spear builds, you have more frequent, controllable damage in using Seismic Slam, which doesn’t feel as clunky.

One major problem can be defense since you’re forced to use a cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur as opposed to the Band of Might. The compensation is permanent Call of the Ancients with the Together as One rune, which offers 50% damage reduction rather than relying on leaping. Another thing you could do is employ a defensive legendary gem.

At the moment, I’m clearing T9/GR40 with no issues. Probably, the only difficulty outside of speed is distinguishing explosions on the ground because your earthquake/avalache creates a lot of visual noise. So it’s possible that you could get into trouble from Molten or Frozen mobs once in a while, especially if your Leap is on cooldown.

So far, this has been my favorite variation of the Might of the Earth builds. I’m still working on leveling up my gems but I can see myself easily going further another few tiers of GRs without significant issues. I don’t know if the damage output is enough for really high GRs though and if the lack of defense might cause problems later on. Nonetheless, it is a satisfying play style.

 

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