The Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#fdSYRk!ZYf!ZZZYaZ
Fury Generation
First of all you'll notice that there is no usual fury generator, thats because theyre all melee skills and dont really fit with the idea behind this build.
Your bread and butter for fury generation - and also a great single target nuke - is Ancient Spear, with the Skirmish rune it generates 30 fury.
With only a 10 second cooldown, the spell is quite spammable and the passive No Escape resets the cooldown whenever you crit, allowing you to generate another 30 fury - if you hadn't guessed yet, high crit chance is a big part of this build.
War Cry is the other main fury generator, casting it at the start of a fight with the Charge rune generates a massive 60 fury. Couple this with an Ancient Spear and right off the bat you have 90 fury.
90 fury will only get you so far, however, which is why No Escape is so crucial to the build. Critical hits with Weapon Throw have a chance to generate 14 fury. When facing large mobs of enemies - or infact atleast 3 - Weapon Throw's Ricochet rune becomes amazing, each individual crit has a chance to generate 14 fury. While unlikely it is possible to generate 32 fury with a single Weapon Throw ([3*14] - 10).
Gear and Stats
For this build you are going to want crit chance. However, it does not take much crit chance to prevent fury starvation. In fact I find a mere 20% crit chance is enough to stop this happening (and I often forget to recast warcry / use harpoon on cooldown). The great news is that the passives Ruthless and Weapons Master will give you +15% crit chance just for wielding a mace/axe. Ontop of the base 5% crit chance you already have 20%! Battle Rage also gives a bonus 3% crit chance.
The best weapon to be using with this build is a 2 handed mace. This is because your damage relies entire on cooldown spells (Ancient Spear) and a fury spender (Weapon Throw). The low attack speed high damage of a 2 handed mace will give you the most punch for your fury (and cooldown). It is also necessary to use a mace/axe to recieve the 10% crit chance from Weapons Master.
For people curious about the viability of might weapons with this build - Weapons Master does not seem to generate fury with Weapon Throw. Sometimes the first hit seemed to generate 3 fury and sometimes none at all, but I never gained 9 for hitting 3 enemies. If this worked it would be a very effective weapon choice with this build, causing Weapon Throw to effectively cost only 1 fury, aslong as there were 3 enemies to hit.
High crit chance goes hand in hand with high crit damage, Ruthless gets you started with +50% but gear with high crit damage will serve you well, however it should probably still be taken as secondary to strength unless your crit chance is exceptionally high.
You don't need to tank up quite so much with this build as you will be aiming to stay away from the enemies and kiting them, but needless to say having lots of vit and armor is mandatory in higher difficulties.
Guide continued after the page break..
Skill Rundown
I already wrote a lot on Ancient Spear and War Cry so I will skip over those skills in this section.
Weapon Throw is your main damage skill in this build, and Ricochet makes it hit 3 targets, great! The fact that each individual crit with Ricochet can generate fury makes it mostly self-sustaining against hordes of enemies with ~30% crit. Versus bosses, however, replacing Ricochet with Throwing Hammer is recommended because of the great 50% 2 second stun chance. It requires a higher crit chance to reach self-sustainability versus bosses but use of your fury generators should keep fury up.
Battle Rage is just a great self buff, giving 30% increased damage with Marauders Rage and increasing that all-important crit chance by 3%. It costs 20 rage but the increased damage means you require less Weapon Throws to kill the enemy - which in turn reduces fury expenditure. The increased crit chance also helps you gain fury with Weapon Throw and reset the Ancient Spear cooldown for yet more fury.
The remaining 2 spells Furious Charge and Ground Stomp come down to personal preference. These are basically the defensive skills, 1 escape and 1 control. Ground Stomp is increadibly powerful and every Barbarian should have it on their skill bar, but replace it if you want. I use Foot of the Mountain just to help a little more with fury generation. But note that while Wrenching Smash is the usual go-to rune for Ground Stomp, it doesn't work very well with this particular build. Furious Charge can be replaced with Leap if you are more comfortable with it. However, I chose the charge for my escape as with the Merciless Assault rune escaping through enemies keeps the cooldown low, and having your escape off-cooldown is always good.
Gameplay
First of all let me say the build is really FUN to play. Especially after having played lots of hours hitting things at melee range. Its great to mix things up.
The way the build usually works is you start a fight with Warcry for 60 fury, buff youself with Battle Rage, and then throw out Ancient Spear for 30 more fury - if it crits, go again! Now start spamming Weapon Throw. The great thing is it applies a 2 second 60% slow! Spamming it into a horde very quickly applies this slow to all the enemies, making kiting a breeze. The damage on each throw is also great because you're using a 2 handed mace.
For the most part your fury should self-sustain with just Weapon Throw spam as long as you dont leave combat for too long you wont actually need to recast Warcry, keeping it off cooldown for those moments where you get unlucky with crits. Always make sure to cast Ancient Spear when its off cooldown though simply because its a great nuke. Try to cast it on enemies that cant be pulled or will be finished off by the spear, otherwise you might pull something unpleasant next to yourself and have to stomp to get away.
So you basically just run around kiting enemies, using Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear, and buffing with Battle Rage. The other skills are simple for the "oh shit" moments. Need to control? Ground Stomp. Need to escape? Furious Charge. Fury starved? War Cry.
I should probably note here that this build is exceptionally weak to vortex champions, but the 60% slow takes care of kiting pretty well against other types. Of course there are always those horrible combinations out there but every build struggles with them.
Conclusion
This build is really fun and a way for Barbarians to play range that is viable and works. I know many of you will be skeptical about becoming fury starved but I say try it! If you get over 30% crit chance then the chances of getting fury starved become almost impossible.
