The BEST Barbarian Build in Diablo 4

Diablo 4 has introduced some of the old classic classes, including the Barbarian. This brutal juggernaut of a class focuses on front-line melee damage and smashing through enemies with brute strength.

In this Barbarian guide for Diablo 4, I will be showing you how to build the Barbarian properly, what skills you should focus on getting, and what the best skills/build is for leveling.

Now that the game has finally been released, we will update this over time with the current best build. Until then, enjoy our current best Barbarian build in D4.

Best Barbarian Build in Diablo 4

For this Barbarian build, you will start by picking up just a few skills until about level 8. At level 8, you unlock more skill slots to use more abilities than the two you start out with. To do this, we’re going to be upgrading the first two abilities we have.

Updated for the whirlwind nerf.

For the Barbarian, this will be Bash and Hammer of the Ancients (HotA).

The Barbarian uses Fury as a resource to cast stronger abilities, so you’ll need a strong fury generator like Bash to do so. HotA builds are very fury heavy, so later on, you will need many different abilities to keep at full fury.

Here is the initial skill build (level ten) for Barbarians:

1. Bash
2. Enhanced Bash
3. Hammer of the Ancients
4. Enhanced HotA
5. Furious HotA
6. Battle Bash
7. Rallying Cry
8. Enhanced Rallying Cry
9. Tactical Rallying Cry

With this build, you will have lots of damage coming from your HotA skill. You’ll have some CC from your Bash, which stuns enemies, and some good resource regeneration from Rallying Cry to spam your HotA.

This build can do well solo if you prefer, but it is also quite good for groups. Rallying Cry also helps everyone in the party, so you’ll receive lots of praise from your friends if you spam it.

I’m secretly trying to concoct a thorns build for the Barbarian, but this build will do fine while that’s cooking.

Here is the full skill build for level 25 Barbarians:

1. Bash
2. Enhanced Bash
3. Hammer of the Ancients
4. Enhanced HotA
5. Furious HotA
6. Battle Bash
7. Rallying Cry
8. Enhanced Rallying Cry
9. Tactical Rallying Cry
10. HotA
11. HotA
12. Challenging Shout
13. Enhanced Challenging Shout
14. Tactical Challenging Shout
15. War Cry
16. Enhanced War Cry
17. Tactical War Cry
18. HotA
19. HotA
20. Booming Voice
21. Booming Voice
22. Booming Voice
23. Raid Leader
24. Call of the Ancients

So to summarize all of those skills, basically, you’re going to be maxing out HotA as much as possible, as it is your main DPS tool.

Shouts are what makes the Barbarian class one of the best in the entire game, even after nerfs which took entire items out of the game. Therefore, we will be using them here. Rallying Cry gives you Unstoppable + fury generation, while War Cry gives you damage + berserking. Taking some passives also allows you to increase their duration and heal you at the same time.

Once you finally reach your ultimate, grab Call of the Ancients. These ancient allies do really good early game, and the bonuses you get from the enhanced version make it even better. We will swap this out late-game, but until then, this should carry you through the story.

Full Level 50 Build For Barbarians

Now that I’ve finally got to it and done some testing, here is what the full level 50 build for Barbarians should look like.

Other builds I would look at would require you to have really good gear and RNG aspect drops. When I tried running those without the gear, the build fell apart. So this is my approach to the HotA Barb end-game build.

Keep in mind, this is right before you do the World Tier 3 capstone dungeon. You won’t be fully geared, and this isn’t the final form of the build. The real game just started!

1. Bash
2. Enhanced Bash
3. Hammer of the Ancients
4. Enhanced HotA
5. Furious HotA
6. Battle Bash
7. Rallying Cry
8. Enhanced Rallying Cry
9. Tactical Rallying Cry
10. HotA
11. HotA
12. Challenging Shout
13. Enhanced Challenging Shout
14. Tactical Challenging Shout
15. War Cry
16. Enhanced War Cry
17. Tactical War Cry
18. HotA
19. HotA
20. Booming Voice
21. Booming Voice
22. Booming Voice
23. Raid Leader
24. Wrath of the Berserker
25. Prime Wrath of the Berserker
26. Supreme Wrath of the Berserker
27. Swiftness
28. Swiftness
29. Swiftness
30. Outburst
31. Tough as Nails
32. Unbridled Rage
33. Hamstring
34. Endless Fury
35. Endless Fury
36. Endless Fury
37. Tempered Fury
38. Invigorating Fury
39. Invigorating Fury
40. Invigorating Fury
41. Pit Fighter
42. No Mercy
43. No Mercy
44. No Mercy
45. Aggressive Resistance
46. Prolific Fury
47. Prolific Fury
48. Prolific Fury
49. Imposing Presence

And that’s the majority of the build. Feel free to mix and match some of the passives or skill points as you see fit. Keep in mind, the main objective is to have lots of fury generation for spamming HotA as often as possible.

Barbarian Rotation

For your ability rotation, you will be doing the following:

1. Group as many enemies up as possible
2. Use Challenging Shout to taunt enemies and get DR
3. Use both other shouts (Rallying and War Cry)
4. Pop Wrath of the Berserker
5. Spam HotA until out of fury
6. Spam bash until fury is full
7. Repeat 5-6 until everything is dead

Challenging Shout is your way of making sure you don’t die in the middle of 10 elites while at the same time generating more fury every time an enemy hits you. A terrific underutilized ability, in my opinion.

RC and WC will give you more buffs, damage, and resource regen, while at the same time reducing enemy damage. While your shouts are active, you are taking less than 50% damage without any other DR factored in.

Wrath of the Berserker will give you the Berserking buff, which will give you damage reduction, movement speed, bonus damage, and bonus fury generation. Also, for every 50 fury, your damage bonus from berserking goes up by 25%. Something that will add up quickly.

Finally, you just spam your main damage skill and watch everything melt. Realistically, even under-geared like I was when I theory crafted this build, you can take a boss to half HP in a single rotation. That’s without any special aspects or drops that require luck.

Best Weapons and Aspects for Barbarians

Note: I am updating this section.

The best weapon for this Barbarian build is the Mace of Ancestral Force. This aspect is the best weapon aspect for the Hammer of the Ancient build because of it’s unique passive: “Hammer of the Ancients quakes towards, dealing 64% of its damage to enemies.”

This is what makes the HotA build so strong and is the most important aspect to get on Barbarian.

Here are some good aspects for this build:

As for stats to prioritize, any effect on the gear that gives you reduced fury cost or resource generation, those are the best. You’ll also want CDR for the cooldown on your shouts, which are important for the build to work. Core skill damage is another stat that has priority here.

Alternatively, there are some items that will give you levels of skill for free. Items like these can save you skill points so you can spend them elsewhere. This is very situational, as the item itself can be low-quality, but always keep an eye out.

That’s about it for this Barbarian build guide. I’ll add more to this guide if more information is available, but this should just about wrap it up.