Has anyone made this work in the lategame? Every build and discussion I see simply assumes everyone picks all the shouts. Trouble is, I love Barb but despise this playstyle. Am leveling without shouts rn and it’s fine but am worried my character will just break once I reach 50+ and I CBA playing a build I don’t like because Blizzard CBA creating more build variety than the 23 years old sequel.
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That’s what I came to post about. Every barb build is 3 shouts + core skill. Anything else generates less fury and is therefore less efficient.
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I am actually using my own build that only uses Rallying cry.
Its based on using the walking arsenal passive and iron maelstrom ultimate.
Basically its frenzy, rend, upheaval, leap, rallying cry and maelstrom.
It wont be doing the godlike dmg, but its a more active build with actual abilities rather than just WW and shouts…
Thinking I might write a build guide on it in a few days.
This still seems like it’d rely heavily on Rallying Cry for sufficient resource generation, especially with 2 core skills selected and this still be very much built around using a shout.
Rallying Cry is BY FAR the most problematic one as Barb resource generation seems to be entirely designed around this 1 skill.
Thats why swapping weapons builds fury, so does leap and rend to some extent. Rallying cry just smoothes it out and is a must for CC breaking
That still makes it a must though. This only highlights that it’s mandatory for more than one reason, too many effects were put into this 1 ability.
Hmmm I would say that CC currently is just too much of an annoyance, at least for my build.
Still, didnt want to end up running another ww build with shouts like the previous games.
Yeah this is the issue, the level of CC in this game is bordering on the absurd and each class tends to only have 1-2 ways of dealing with it = mandatory skill, goodbye build flexibility.
And yeah WW+Shouts is iconic and it SHOULD absolutely be a thing…but I also want to have something else as an alternative and I feel D4 failed miserably at that.
I’ve been running a no shout build for the last few days. Prior to that I was running a one shout build (War Cry instead of Ground Stomp).
Abilities:
Flay, Rend, Ground Stomp, Steel Grasp, Death Blow and Call of the Ancients.
Ground Stomp and Death Blow are sufficient Fury generation as long as you don’t let Death Blow go on cooldown. Opening on a pack is generally getting into a position so I’ll stun a lot of them with Ground Stomp, then using Death Blow with the increased damage for the 4 seconds of stun (I’ve not yet come across a situation where this doesn’t kill a non-elite). At that point I have a lot of Fury built up and can Rend to spend it, while using Death Blows to kill so that I’m getting Fury back from that.
I was able to pretty comfortably clear nightmare dungeons in the low-30s at level 75 with my no shout build; I don’t feel like damage or survivability (outside of CC) was a problem at all, so I could likely push much higher if there was a reason to do so.
CC is the big problem, though. That more than anything else is what’s preventing no shout builds from being truly viable. I really like Steel Grasp (when it actually works and pulls enemies to you), but I’ll probably drop that for Rallying Cry at some point for access to Unstoppable, though without all of the cooldown reduction on shouts it wouldn’t be 100% uptime. I think the only other option is the aspect that grants Unstoppable when you become Injured while crowd controlled.
Legendary aspects:
Helm - Weapon Master. The chance to stun is occasionally useful, but lucky hits don’t proc often enough to be reliable. This is mostly for the extra charge on Death Blow to avoid it going on cooldown when it doesn’t kill; multiple kills with a single use will reset multiple charges.
Chest - Iron Blood. You normally have multiple bleeding targets close to you, so this is additional damage reduction.
Gloves - Inner Calm. Extra damage when you can just stand still and keep swinging.
Legs - Protector. Large barrier just helps make it even tankier.
Boots - Anemia. This one I may change if I can figure out a better replacement, but for now it’s an additional (albeit small) chance to stun.
Amulet - Disobedience.
Rings - Slaking and Umbral. Slaking adds to the amount of Fury you get back when using Rend, though not consistently. Umbral takes advantage of the stun on Ground Stomp and (I believe) the slows from bleed effects due to the point in Hamstring.
Two-Handed Bludgeoning - Retribution. The stun on distant enemies happens too infrequently to be relied on, this is just for the damage increase on stunned targets.
One-Handed - Conceited and Edgemaster. Extra damage with a barrier up synergises with Protector. Extra damage based on Primary Resource is good when a lot of the time you’re not actually spending much.
Two-Handed Slashing - Encroaching Wrath. Up to 200% increase to Death Blow (or Steel Grasp) damage after spending 100 Fury.
Offensive stats:
Primarily strength and anything that increases damage based on slowed, bleeding, crowd controlled, or stunned or increases vulnerable damage. I have a small amount of critical strike chance, cooldown reduction, resource generation and resource cost reduction.
Defensive stats:
Basically any damage reduction I could get. It’s a mixture of damage reduction from close, damage reduction from distant, damage reduction while fortified, damage reduction from bleeding, and a decent amount of percentage increased armor.
Paragons:
The only Legendary node I’m using right now is Warbinger to build Fortify. Otherwise it’s Rare nodes and Glyphs (Territorial, Might, Exploit and Bloodfeeder). My current boards (excluding starting) are Weapons Master, Warbringer and Blood Rage.
Imho Disobedience in Amulet and well rolled barrier is the only reason why you can even survive NM 30 
, you also likely have good DR rolls on legs, royal skulls in jewelry and good amount of main stat (for even more armour). Because barb does feel like it’s survivability is balanced around having Challenging Shout (which became bit problematic, after shout uptime nerfs) and very high amount of main stat on high level (for mad armour). And yeah, as you mentioned, Unstoppable is also very important in high NM tiers. That being said, builds without them might be technically viable, but you are nerfing yourself so hard by not running the shouts though . Fury generation aside (and that’s pretty big thing to put aside ), the survivability of the class multiplies with Rally cry and Challenging shout. Dropping Steel Grasp for Rally cry is probably a good call, you can get vuln from 30% chance to apply with core and Exploit, then extend it some more with Rend. The value of Grasp as gathering skill is highly questionable, because it just doesn’t work much.