General Leveling Tips
To find out more general information about leveling as a Barbarian in Diablo 4, you can check out our main Barbarian Leveling guide. You can also go to our Barbarian Builds page for a list of other leveling and endgame Barbarian builds for you to choose from.
In regard to leveling up on the seasonal realm, you might also want to check out our season checklist, as it will give you some useful tips and tricks for Season 3 of Diablo 4. Don’t miss this chance to make the most out of your leveling journey!
Season ChecklistBuild Introduction
This build focuses on using Hammer of the Ancients to quickly decimate groups of enemies and sunder elites and bosses with powerful slams. While leveling, we use the class-exclusive Berserking status effect to increase our damage, movement speed, and resource generation even more, so we can continue smashing away at hoards of demons.
- Hammer of the Ancients – The centerpiece of the build and your main Fury spender
- Enhanced Hammer of the Ancients– This skill will help smooth our Fury generation while leveling
- Furious Hammer of the Ancients – This skill gives us a massive damage multiplier based on our Fury
- Lunging Strike – Our basic attack and Fury generator. This skill provides us with movement, which is invaluable while leveling
- Enhanced Lunging Strike– This gives us a bit more damage and sustained healing while we lunge into packs
- Combat Lunging Strike– This will help us trigger the Berserking status for a short time, which we will improve with other skills and aspects to increase our movement speed and damage.
The main gameplay loop with these two skills will be diving into packs with Lunging Strike or Charge , triggering Berserking, and slamming down with Hammer of the Ancients to finish everything off. This build also has strong single target damage, allowing us to quickly finish off dungeon bosses or seasonal questline bosses fairly easily.
Now let’s take a look at how we will progress from Level 1 to 50 and jump towards the endgame.
Season of the Construct
Seneschal Construct Companion Powers
The Season 3 theme introduces a Seneschal Construct Companion that can deal damage or provide support to complement your character. Equip the Seneschal with two Governing Stones to activate their abilities, and then link them to three Tuning Stones each to augment the abilities. There are 12 different Governing Stones and 27 different Tuning Stones that can be found in Vaults scattered across Sanctuary. Fuse together duplicate stones to level them up, increasing the potency of Governing Stones or adding augments to Tuning Stones.
Listed below are the general recommended Governing and their respective Tuning Stones for Barbarian.
- Flash of Adrenaline: The Construct administers a quick flash of adrenaline into the player, giving them a large increase to damage dealt for 8 seconds.
- Tactical Support: Decrease the cooldown of the supported Skill.
- Duration Support: Supported Skills have their durations increased.
- Gripping Support: This helps us group up enemies when Flash of Adrenaline is cast on us allowing us to maximize our damage buff and kill the most demons. If you acquire the Genesis uber unique stone, replace this one with it.
- Tempest: The Construct electrically charges an enemy, causing it to deal damage to themselves and one additional enemy each second for 5 seconds spreading to another target if the enemy is killed.
- Tactical Support: Decrease the cooldown of the supported Skill.
- Duration Support: Supported Skills have their durations increased.
- Gripping Support: This helps us group up enemies when Flash of Adrenaline is cast on us allowing us to maximize our damage buff and kill the most demons. If you acquire the Genesis uber unique stone, replace this one with it.
You will be limited on what Tuning Stones you will have available for these skills. Pick and choose from the list.
Allocation of Skill points
Our first priority with skills is to descend down the tree as quickly as possible to get all of our skills and the key passive. After we’ve acquired our key passive, we’ll head back up the tree to grab some useful passives or increase the ranks of some skills.
Skill Point Order | Skill | Skill Cluster |
---|---|---|
1 | Lunging Strike | Basic Skills |
2 | Enhanced Lunging Strike | Basic Skills |
3 | Hammer of the Ancients | Core Skills |
4 | Enhanced Hammer of the Ancients | Core Skills |
5 | Furious Hammer of the Ancients | Core Skills |
6 | Combat Lunging Strike | Basic Skills |
7 | Rallying Cry | Defensive Skills |
8 | Enhanced Rallying Cry | Defensive Skills |
9 | Tactical Rallying Cry | Defensive Skills |
10 | Hammer of the Ancients | Core Skills |
11 | Hammer of the Ancients | Core Skills |
12 | Charge | Brawling Skills |
13 | Enhanced Charge | Brawling Skills |
14 | Power Charge | Brawling Skills |
15 | War Cry | Brawling Skills |
16 | Enhanced War Cry | Brawling Skills |
17 | Mighty War Cry | Brawling Skills |
18 | Hammer of the Ancients | Core Skills |
19 | Hammer of the Ancients | Core Skills |
20 | Endless Fury | Core Skills |
21 | Endless Fury | Core Skills |
22 | Endless Fury | Core Skills |
23 | Swiftness | Brawling Skills |
24 | Wrath of the Berserker | Ultimate Skills |
25 | Prime Wrath of the Berserker | Ultimate Skills |
26 | Supreme Wrath of the Berserker | Ultimate Skills |
27 | Swiftness | Brawling Skills |
28 | Swiftness | Brawling Skills |
29 | Aggressive Resistance | Brawling Skills |
30 | Battle Fervor | Brawling Skills |
31 | Battle Fervor | Brawling Skills |
32 | Battle Fervor | Brawling Skills |
33 | Prolific Fury | Brawling Skills |
34 | Unconstrained | Key Passive |
35 | Charge | Brawling Skills |
36 | Charge | Brawling Skills |
37 | Charge | Brawling Skills |
38 | Charge | Brawling Skills |
39 | Prolific Fury | Brawling Skills |
40 | Prolific Fury | Brawling Skills |
41 | Pit Fighter | Weapon Mastery Skills |
42 | Pit Fighter | Weapon Mastery Skills |
43 | Pit Fighter | Weapon Mastery Skills |
44 | Imposing Presence | Defensive Skills |
45 | Imposing Presence | Defensive Skills |
46 | Imposing Presence | Defensive Skills |
47 | Thick Skin | Weapon Mastery Skills |
48 | Counteroffensive | Weapon Mastery Skills |
49 | Counteroffensive | Weapon Mastery Skills |
50 | Counteroffensive | Weapon Mastery Skills |
51 | Heavy Handed | Ultimate Skills |
52 | Heavy Handed | Ultimate Skills |
53 | Heavy Handed | Ultimate Skills |
54 | Wallop | Ultimate Skills |
55 | Wallop | Ultimate Skills |
56 | Wallop | Ultimate Skills |
57 | Booming Voice | Brawling Skills |
58 | Booming Voice | Brawling Skills |
Skill Tree
Here is the completed skill tree for the build:
Skill Clusters
We are going to take a look at each group of skills in our tree and talk about why we’re taking the skills we are so we can have a good understanding of how the build functions before we transition to an endgame version.
Basic Skills
Lunging Strike is our choice for the basic skill with this setup. It provides us with near-infinite mobility, allowing us to chase down mobile bosses, treasure goblins, and generate our Fury to spend. Thanks to Combat Lunging Strike, this skill can also provide us with one additional source for triggering Berserking.
Core Skills
Hammer of the Ancients is the centerpiece and main skill of this build. We want to cast it as often as we are able into large groups of enemies. The Aspect of Ancestral Force will grant us a damage buff and provide a wider area for this skill, which significantly increases its power. We want to cast this as close to maximum Fury as possible to take advantage of Furious Hammer of the Ancients. A general guide while leveling is to adopt a 3:1 ratio of Lunging Strike to Hammer of the Ancients, and as you level up and unlock more skills and more resource generation, drop down to a 2:1 ratio.
Endless Fury is our passive node on this cluster, which will help our Fury generation while leveling, as long as we are using the Arsenal System to assign a 2-Handed Weapon to our Lunging Strike, and will help make the build feel less resource intensive, especially before acquiring the Resource Generation affix only available on Ancestral Rings.
Defensive Skills
Rallying Cry is our main defensive ability. It provides us with on-demand Unstoppable through Enhanced Rallying Cry and even more resource generation thanks to Tactical Rallying Cry.
Imposing Presence will be our passive node here. It provides a substantial boost to your total health pool, allowing us to shrug off more hits and not burn through our potions during more difficult encounters.
Brawling Skills
Charge is our main brawling skill, and thanks to the buff it received in Season 3, this skill provides a great source of mobility, damage, and yet another method to trigger Berserking, all in one convenient button. It provides some minor crowd control through Enhanced Charge, but the real power comes from the aptly named Power Charge, which grants a large amount of built-in cooldown reduction, allowing us to charge far more often.
War Cry is a supportive skill that provides us with a damage increase. Enhanced War Cry provides us with another source of on-demand Berserking, and Mighty War Cry gives us some Fortify every time we press it. In general, we will want to use this against Elites, Bosses, or large packs.
Swiftness is a passive movement speed buff, which is always a high priority in any type of content.
Aggressive Resistance is taken for some damage reduction while we are in the Berserking state.
Prolific Fury provides us with a nice boost to resource generation during Berserking.
Battle Fervor is our main method of entering Berserking while leveling. Thanks to Charge‘s built-in cooldown reduction, any time we charge into a pack, we will go Berserk for at least 3 seconds.
Weapon Mastery Skills
Pit Fighter is a nice damage-amplifying passive that increases our damage to close targets, which is every target we’ll be smashing with Hammer of the Ancients, and gives some defensive value by making us take less damage from far away enemies trying to snipe us off screen.
Thick Skin grants a minor amount of Fortify while leveling, helping us survive when we take on big groups.
Counteroffensive gives us another damage multiplier while we have at least half of our life Fortified, something we will be able to do pretty easily through some Aspects and other skills.
Ultimate Skill
Wrath of the Berserker is our ultimate of choice. It grants us both Berserking and Unstoppable for 5 seconds, and any time we use Lunging Strike for 10 seconds after, we will gain Berserking again if it falls off, giving us high uptime.
Prime Wrath of the Berserker enhances our ultimate with some movement speed, which is always nice, and resource generation, allowing us to keep smashing.
Supreme Wrath of the Berserker gives us a massive multiplier for spending Fury during Berserking. This damage bonus lasts until you lose that particular Berserking status, so we will aim to keep as much uptime on it as possible to maintain this buff.
Key Passive
Unconstrained is our key passive of choice. With all the various methods to trigger Berserking, and thanks to a large buff this skill got in Season 3, it provides us with much easier management of our Berserking timer and grants us another massive damage buff while we’re in it.
Barbarian Mechanics
There are two main mechanics we will be interacting with while leveling. These are the Arsenal System, which lets the Barbarian hold more weapons than every other class, allowing for extra stats and legendary aspects, and Berserking, which is a class-unique status effect that we can trigger through certain skills and conditions.
Arsenal System
The Arsenal System allows us to wield four weapons and assign specific weapon types to specific skills, as well as granting us passive bonuses through Weapon Expertise. At Level 15, we will receive our class quest to head over to Ked Bardu and begin unlocking the full power of these bonuses. Each weapon provides a bonus while you’re using that type of weapon. After completing the quest, we will acquire the Technique Slot, allowing us to assign one weapon’s expertise bonuses to us at all times, even if we are not using that weapon type.
Remember, you must have a weapon type leveled to at least Level 1 to assign it to the Technique Slot. For leveling, we will be using 2-Handed Sword Technique which applies bleeds from all of our attacks and is a strong leveling option. Once we get further into the game, we will be switching to the 2-Handed Axe Technique for its strong damage multiplier once we have a reliable way to apply the Vulnerable condition so we can take advantage of it.
As a final reminder, our main attacking skill, Hammer of the Ancients, requires that we use a 2-Handed Mace, which means we will always be benefiting from this specific Weapon Expertise bonus, so it is a poor choice for our Technique Slot.
For weapon assignments, we will want to assign the 2-Handed Slashing Weapon to Lunging Strike, the highest DPS weapons we have to Charge, and Hammer of the Ancients cannot be assigned as it requires the 2-Handed Bludgeoning weapon. This setup allows us to take advantage of a few weapon swap powers we may want to use, such as Earthstriker’s Aspect.
Berserking
Berserking is a unique status effect for the Barbarian class. When it triggers, we will gain a damage multiplier and movement speed for a certain amount of time. We can increase the value of this damage buff through various skills, passives, and aspects, as well as through the paragon board once we move into the endgame. While leveling, we will be triggering this status pretty reliably through Battle Fervor whenever we hit something with Charge. We are also able to enter it on-demand through either War Cry or our ultimate Wrath of the Berserker. Lastly, we have a chance to enter it early on whenever we critically strike with Lunging Strike, thanks to Combat Lunging Strike. Our key passive, Unconstrained, provides us with a substantial buff to this status, so we will want to be in it as often as possible while fighting.
Gear Affixes
Below, you will find a list of the recommended stats to look for on each piece of gear. Remember, that while leveling, you will be swapping gear often as you find more and more powerful items. The stats below serve more as guidelines than hard rules.
Gear Slot | Targeted Affixes |
---|---|
Helm | 1. Strength 2. Attack Speed 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Maximum Life |
Chest | 1. Strength 2. Total Armor 3. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 4. Maximum Life |
Gloves | 1. Ranks of Hammer of the Ancients 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Strike Chance 4. Strength |
Pants | 1. Ranks of Charge 2. Total Armor 3. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 4. Total Life |
Boots | 1. Movement Speed 2. Strength 3. Berserk Duration 4. Damage Reduction While Injured |
Amulet | 1. Movement Speed 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Damage Reduction while Fortified 4. Strength |
Rings | 1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Maximum Fury 3. Damage to Close Enemies 4. Maximum Life |
2-Handed Weapons | 1. DPS (Bludgeoning Weapon Only) 2. Damage to Close Enemies 3. Core Skill Damage 4. Basic Skill Damage 5. Strength |
1-Handed Weapons | 1. Damage to Close Enemies 2. Core Skill Damage 3. Basic Skill Damage 4. Strength |
Legendary Aspects
Below, you will find the Legendary Aspects to use while leveling. All of them can be found in the Codex of Power and provide a good source of damage and utility. We don’t recommend placing these on your weapons, as you should aim to replace your weapons very frequently, and imprinting them can waste valuable resources and time. That said, we will still list some options here in case you want to imprint on them.
Gear Slot | Legendary Aspect | Legendary Aspect Power |
---|---|---|
Helm | Aspect of Might | Basic Skills grant 20% Damage Reduction for [2.0-6.0] seconds. |
Chest | Aspect of Disobedience | You gain [0.6 – 1.1%] increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to [36 – 66%]. |
Gloves | Aspect of Ancestral Force (MUST HAVE!) Relentless Berserker’s Aspect (If Ancestral Force is on your Bludgeoning Weapon) | Hammer of the Ancients quakes outwards, and its damage is increased by [5%-15%] Lucky Hit: Damaging an enemy with a Core Skill has up to a [22-40%] chance to extend the duration of Berserking by 2 seconds. Double this duration if it was a Critical Strike |
Pants | Iron Blood Aspect | Gain [2.0-4.0%] Damage Reduction for each Nearby Bleeding enemy up to [10-20%] maximum. |
Boots | Ghostwalker Aspect | While Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after, you gain +[10 – 25]% increased Movement Speed and can move freely through enemies. |
Amulets(50% bonus) | Edgemaster’s Aspect | Skills deal up to [10-20%] increased damage based on your available Primary Resource when cast, receiving the maximum benefit while you have full Primary Resource |
Ring | Aspect of Echoing Fury | Your Shout skills generate [6-10] Fury per second while active. |
Ring | Aspect of Unrelenting Fury | Killing an enemy with a Core Skill refunds [10.0-20.0%] of its base Fury cost. Can only happen once per Skill cast. |
Bludgeoning Weapon (100% bonus) | Aspect of Ancestral Force (MUST HAVE!) Aspect of the Expectant (If Ancestral Force is on your gloves) | Hammer of the Ancients quakes outwards, dealing [32-50]% of its damage to enemies. Attacking enemies with a Basic Skill increases the damage of your next Core Skill cast within 5 seconds by [5-10%] up to 30% |
Slashing Weapon (100% bonus) | Aspect of Berserk Ripping | Whenever you deal direct damage while Berserking, inflict [20-30%] of the Base damage dealt as additional Bleeding damage over 5 seconds. |
Dual-Wield Weapon 1 | Rapid Aspect | Basic Skills gain [15-30%] Attack Speed. |
Dual-Wield Weapon 2 | Earthstriker’s Aspect | After swapping weapons 8 times, your next skill will Overpower and deal [30-50%] increased Overpower damage. |
Wrapping Up
Once you hit Level 50 with this build, you will be ready to tackle your first Capstone Dungeon and unlock World Tier 3. This will allow you to move towards the endgame and begin collecting Sacred Items, for more power, as well as Legendary Aspects not in the Codex of Power, and, of course, begin earning Paragon Points. If you would like to keep smashing, you should look to transition into the Endgame Hammer of the Ancients build to keep crushing demons into mush as you move into later world tiers and Nightmare Dungeons.
Gems
Listed below are the best gems to socket into gear for each slot type.
- Weapon: Topaz for Basic Skill Damage (before Level 40) Ruby for Overpower damage (after Level 40)
- Armor: Ruby for the increase to Maximum Life.
- Jewelry: Diamond for the All Resistances.
Elixirs and Health Pots
Visit the Alchemist in any main town to craft helpful Elixirs that increase stats and experience gain for 30 minutes. Make sure to forage plants and pick up the necessary crafting materials during your adventures; they randomly spawn around the world. We recommend using Assault Elixir or Elixir of Resourcefulness, but while leveling, any Elixir will do, as they all provide a 5% increase to your experience gains, making you level that much faster.
Return to the Alchemist again when you reach Level 20, 30, 45, 60, 70, 80, and 90, to upgrade your healing potion. The extra healing they provide will be essential to surviving as you advance.
Changelog
- April 4th 2024: Ownership of page transferred, page restructured for improved readability, explanations, and options.
- February 6th 2024: Adjustments to build.
- January 21st 2024: Season 3 speculative changes.
- October 23rd 2023: Revamped build for Season 2.
- October 13th 2023: Build adjusted to prepare for Season 2 launch.
- September 16th 2023: Leveling Guide revamp