Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian Leveling Build Guide for Diablo 4 (Season 3)

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 Checklist

Build 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