Leap Quake Barbarian Endgame Build for Diablo 4 (Season 1)

Build Introduction

This is your comprehensive guide for building a crazy titan who leaps into the air and crashes back down to the ground with a thunderous explosion of raw power. Welcome to our Leap Quake Barbarian! This build is pure fun – leaping across the map, crushing enemies beneath your boots each time you land, and leaving behind an earthquake of molten rock. Incredibly mobile, with both strong defensive and offensive capabilities, this build is a blast to play solo or in a group.

Our guide will cover all basic mechanics and deep dive into the optimal setup for skills, paragon, and gear for the build. Further down below, you will find a supporting YouTube video as well to showcase the build in action.

Strengths and Weaknesses

To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.

Build Requirements

This build has several Legendary Aspects that are required before it will function properly. The Legendary Aspects you will need the following at a minimum to make the build work at its most basic level. These Aspects are all non-codex, which means you will need to find them on a Legendary Item and then imprint them onto specific gear.

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Earthquake Aspect

Bear Clan Berserker’s Aspect

Aspect of Giant Strides

Conceited Aspect

To even begin this build, we recommend you have these four Aspects ready for imprinting at a minimum. For the build it become fully functional, we recommend you have all the Legendary Aspects listed further in this guide for the build to work optimally.

Season of the Malignant

This build was created within the current Season and utilizes the current in game information and Aspects. We will note any future changes to this build here.

Patch 1.1.1

The second major update for Season 1, Patch 1.1.1 released on August 8th 2023, brings some positive changes to Barbarian. This includes adjustments to Basic Generator Skills, Key passives, skill passives and Legendary Aspects. The changes that directly affect this build are listed below.

• Lunging Strike – Fury gained increased from 10 to 12.
• Aggressive Resistance – Damage reduction increased from 3% to 4%.
• Unconstrained – Berserking damage bonus increased from 25% to 35%.
• Aspect of Bul-Kathos – Damage reduction while in Earthquakes increased from 5-15% to 15-25%.
• Earthquake Aspect – Damage bonus in Earthquakes increased from 5-15% to 15-25%.

None of these changes are build-breaking and we still have full confidence in this build.

Malignant Hearts

The theme for Season 1 introduces a new form of legendary gem called Malignant Hearts. There are three types of hearts that need to be socketed into matching colored sockets on all equipped jewelry, and one type of heart that can be placed into any socket. For more information about the Malignant Hearts theme for Season 1 check out our Malignant Hearts guide.

Listed below are the ideal Malignant Hearts for this build, ranked by importance. Stats displayed reflect what a Level 20 character would receive as a drop. Note that this list is based on our early opinions on the Malignant Hearts, and we will update it as and when it is necessary.

• Caged Heart of Ignoring Pain
• Caged Heart of Revenge
• Caged Heart of Focused Rage

Video Guide

Please note that since this written build guide is ever-evolving and videos cannot easily be updated, the below video should serve as more of a guideline, whereas the written guide will always have the most accurate information.

Skill Tree Points and Skill Bar

Skill Bar Setup for the Leap Quake Build (Order does not matter)

Leap Ground Stomp Kick Iron Skin Iron Maelstrom Lunging Strike

Follow the points allocated in the image above for the complete 58 point build. The additional 10 skill points are completed using the Renown system.

Priority Skills	Cluster
Lunging Strike Level 4, Enhanced Lunging Strike, Battle Lunging Strike	Basic Skill
	Core Skill
Ground Stomp Level 3, Enhanced Ground Stomp, Strategic Ground Stomp, Iron Skin Level 1, Enhanced Iron Skin, Strategic Iron Skin, Imposing Presence Level 1, Martial Vigor Level 3	Defensive Skill
Kick Level 5, Enhanced Kick, Power Kick, Leap Level 5, Enhanced Leap, Power Leap, Aggressive Resistance Level 3, Prolific Fury Level 3	Brawling Skill
Pit Fighter Level 3, No Mercy Level 3, Hamstring Level 1, Thick Skin Level 1, Counteroffensive Level 3	Weapon Mastery Skill
Iron Maelstrom, Prime Iron Maelstrom, Heavy Handed Level 3, Wallop Level 3	Ultimate Skill
Unconstrained	Key Passives

Weapon Expertise – The Barbarian Specialization

Weapon Expertise is a set of benefits tied to which weapons you use as a Barbarian. To unlock your Expertise, simply hit Level 5 and the tab below will be made available. Simply by using a certain weapon type you will begin to gain ranks with that weapon as you fight. The ranks are from 0 to 10 and will level up moderately quickly as your character gains experience. Once your expertise hit rank 10, you will be maxed out on the benefit for using that weapon with your skills. Just a reminder, to swap your assigned weapon to the skill you are using go to your Skill selection list (not skill tree) and you will see how to switch it (Middle mouse button on PC.) At Level 15, you will unlock the Masters of Battle quest. This quest will be available in the township of ‘Ked Bardu’ from the Forgemaster Gerti. Upon completing this quest you will unlock the Technique slots as seen below, this will offer you an additional permanent bonus from one of the weapons regardless of whether you have it equipped to a skill or not.

For the Leap Quake build, we will be focused on using the Technique of Two-Handed Axes for the bonus. Below we have listed both bonuses for the Two-Handed Axes, while we recommend using the Technique, you do have the option of assigning Two-handed Swords to your skills and using a different Technique.

Paragon Points

Rare Node	Effect
Brawl	– Paragon nodes within range gain +55.0% bonus to their Physical damage and damage reduction modifiers – Additional Bonus unlocked after 25 Willpower points are purchased in the glyph’s range: Brawling Skills deal 18%[x] increased damage
Ire	– For every 5 Strength purchased within range, you deal +[5.3]% increased damage while Berserking. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 40 Strength points are purchased in the glyph’s range: While Berserking, you take 10% reduced damage from Elites.
Exploit	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal +[3.85]% increased damage to Vulnerable targets. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 25 Dexterity points are purchased in the glyph’s range: When an enemy is damaged by you, they become Vulnerable for 3 seconds. This cannot happen more than once every 20 seconds per enemy.
Warbringer	– For every 75 Fury you spend, gain 12% of your Maximum Life as Fortify.
Territorial	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal +[10]% increased damage to Close targets. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 25 Dexterity points are purchased in the glyph’s range: You gain 10% Damage Reduction against Close enemies.
Might	– Grants + [120%] bonus to all Magic nodes within range. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 40 Strength points are purchased in the glyph’s range: You deal x8% increased damage while wielding Two-Handed weapons.
Wrath	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, Core Skills deal + [7.2%] increased Critical Strike Damage. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 25 Dexterity points are purchased in the glyph’s range: Skill that Critical Strike generate 3 Fury.

We recommend using these Legendary Nodes and Rare Glyphs to truly take this build into the endgame. Note that each Rare Glyph’s information listed below is for the Level 21 version.

Let’s break down each of these beneficial Nodes and where our Paragon Points are positioned in each of the paragon boards we use. This part of the build is presented in order of importance, so if you do not have enough Paragon Points for use in your Paragon Tree, just slowly work towards each step.

Starting Board

1. We are going to head up the right hand side of the board and take the Rare Node Brawn. This node will give us a small increase to our Maximum Life and Physical damage bonus.
2. Next path towards the Glyph slot and insert Territorial, this glyph will grant us increased damage towards Close Enemies. Be sure to collect all of the Dexterity nodes shown above.
3. Take the two Rare Nodes, Raw Power and Iron Strength, these will give us another Physical damage boost and some flat armor increases.
4. Head to the top of the board and attach our next Paragon Board, Decimator.

Decimator (2nd Board)

1. Head towards the open Glyph slot and pick up the Rare Node Destroyer. This Node and the two Magic Nodes chosen with it will increase our damage with Vulnerable Damage and Two-Handed Slash Damage.
2. Take the Rare Node Brawn for the Physical Damage increases.
3. Now head to the Glyph slot and insert Might, this Glyph will amplify all the Magic Nodes around it as well as give us an increase to our Two-handed weapon’s damage.
4. Select the two Rare Nodes inside the Glyph radius, Arrogance and Demolish. These will increase our damage to Vulnerable enemies and increase our damage reduction while fighting them.
5. Now head towards the right hand side of the board and pick up the Rare Node Pillage, before you select the attachment point. This Node focuses on Vulnerable Damage increases.
6. Now attach our next Paragon Board, Carnage.

Carnage (3rd Board)

1. Path towards the open Glyph slot and pick up the Rare Node Enraged along the pathway. This Node will increase our Berserking Damage and Duration.
2. Head to the Glyph slot and insert Ire. This Glyph will increase our Berserking damage.
3. Inside the Glyph radius take both Rare Nodes Brash and Fierce. These two Nodes will focus on more Berserking Damage and Damage to Close Enemies.
4. Now go to the bottom of the board and select the attachment node to add the next Paragon Board, Warbringer.

Warbringer (4th Board)

1. Head toward the Legendary Node Warbringer, and pick up the Rare Node Hungering Fury for the boosts to Fury on kill.
2. Now select the open Glyph slot and insert Exploit, this will increase our damage towards Vulnerable Enemies.
3. Take the Rare Node in the Glyph radius, Raw Power, for the increase in Physical Damage. Also be sure to take all the Dexterity nodes in Glyph radius.
4. Now we are going to back to the Decimator paragon board and head to the left side of the board. Attachment the next paragon board Weapons Master.

Weapons Master (5th Board)

1. Head towards the open Glyph slot and insert Brawl, this Glyph will amplify the Magic Nodes inside this Glyph radius by 55%.
2. Take the two Rare Nodes, Raw Power and Iron Strength, these Nodes will boost your Physical Damage and increase your Armor.
3. Path toward the next Rare Node Brute for the increase Attack Speed and Physical Damage.
4. Finally, head to the top of the board and attach our final Paragon Board, Bone Breaker.

Bone Breaker (6th Board)

1. Select the Nodes towards the open Glyph slot and insert Wrath, this will increase our Critical Strike Damage and assist with Fury Generation. Be sure to take the needed Dexterity Nodes within the Glyph Radius.
2. Lastly, take the Rare Node Vigor for the Damage Reduction against Healthy Enemies and a small damage increase.
3. This completes the Paragon Tree for this build.

Paragon board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.

Mechanics and Playstyle

There is only one opening for this build, and that’s to use Leap! We use a particular rotation of skills to keep resetting our Leap‘s Cooldown using the Aspect of Perpetual Stomping. We also take advantage of Aspect of Giant Strides to lower the cooldown on Leap. This allows us to essentially have Leap always available and we can then spam it. The attack rotation for this build is important to keep Leap off Cooldown and is also very easy to follow, lets take a closer look at it.

1. Opening Leap.
2. Ground Stomp to stun enemies.
3. Leap is now reset.
4. Leap onto your enemies once again.
5. Kick your enemies, then use all stored Fury with Power Kick.
6. Leap resets, so Leap again.
7. Now we can Kick again.
8. Then back to Leap.

The rotation will then loop back to Ground Stomp and start up again. As you loop through these steps, you will trigger several Aspects to proc damaging ground effects against your enemies. They are as follows:

• Aspect of Bul-Kathos
• Earthquake Aspect

The goal is to keep yourself and your enemies inside these areas, this will increase your overall damage and add continuous damage to the enemies as they fight inside of it.

Berserking

This buff is almost always activated on our character, and there is very little we do to manage it. The Battle Fervor is our trigger for Berserking and because we will be constantly using our Brawling Skills (Leap and Kick), it will auto-renew.

Iron Maelstrom

While the section above covers the main skill rotation and Berserking, we also have included the Ultimate skill Iron Maelstrom in the build. This skill is an amazing screen-wide attack with a huge boost to Critical Strike Chance and Damage. As with most Ultimate Skills, Iron Maelstrom has a very high cooldown of 45 seconds, and we primarily use this for finishing off large packs of enemies. The cooldown gets reduced by the Strategic Ground Stomp for each enemy we hit with our Ground Stomp.

Now that we have reviewed the Skill rotation and benefits, let’s look at some of the additional benefits our other skills, Iron Skin and Lunging Strike, provide.

Iron Skin

This skill is our other Defensive Skill that is used to control our health pool, but also grants us Unstoppable while we move around the map Leaping. We use the Aspect of the Iron Warrior for that benefit, and it must be equipped, or you will lose the ability to have Unstoppable ready for any Crowd Controlling effects that hit you.

Lunging Strike

Lunging Strike is looped into our rotation and offers us two main benefits. First, it heals our character with every strike helping to keep our Life at maximum. Secondly, it triggers Hamstring on enemies that are likely to run away from us. This is very useful to keep them slowed, so we can accurately Leap on top of them.

Gear Choice and Stat Priority

As you begin to farm in World Tier 3 and 4, Rare and Legendary item drops will begin to appear with some regularity depending on your luck. We recommend saving the targeted Legendary items that have the needed Legendary aspects listed below. We also recommended to keep multiple copies of the build’s Aspects in your Stash for future upgrades.

As for the Rare items, you will need to inspect each one for targeted affixes for use in each specific slot and do your best to match the recommended rolls. We have listed our targeted Affixes in order of importance. Check the chart below and make note of what Affixes you are searching for when you see a Rare gear piece drop.

Gear Slot	Targeted Affixes
Helm	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Damage While Berserking  3. Maximum Fury 4. Strength 5. Total Armor
Chest	1. Rank Up Ground Stomp 2. Rank Up Iron Skin 3. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies  4. Damage Reduction while Fortified 5. Damage Reduction  6. Damage
Gloves	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Attack Speed 3. Strength 4. All Stats 5. Critical Strike Chance Against Injured Enemies
Pants	1. Rank Up Leap 2. Rank Up Kick 3. Damage Reduction while Injured 4. Damage Reduction while Fortified 5. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies  6. Berserking Duration 7. Maximum Life
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Strength 3. Damage Reduction while Injured 4. All Stats 5. Berserking Duration
Amulet	1. Cooldown reduction  2. Movement Speed 3. Rank Up Wallop 4. Rank Up of all Brawling Skill 5. Damage Reduction
Rings	1. Damage to Vulnerable enemies 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Critical Strike Chance 4. Damage With Berserking 5. Maximum Life
Weapons	1. Damage to Vulnerable Enemies 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Strength 4. Damage while Berserking 5. Damage to Close Enemies 6. All Stats

Please note that these Affixes are the recommended picks for the blank, but that is simply our opinion. Other Affixes could certainly work instead of the ones listed above, but may not be optimal. Also, there are several very specific Affixes that are required to make the build work, they are as follows:

1. Ranks to skill and passives – this is self-explanatory.
2. Cooldown Reduction – this is always a prime stat to get, and helps to keep Leap ready just incase our skill rotation gets messed up.
3. Damage while Berserking – We will be in the state of Berserking the majority of our time, so any boost to this are beneficial.

A final point on acquiring the right Affixes and Legendary Aspects – use your Obols to target farm them. Obols are awarded from many different activities in the game, you will always stockpiling them until you hit your maximum. Instead of just randomly spending them on a random pick, use them to target what you might be missing from this build. It is a great way to target a specific slot of loot and find what you need.

If you are interested in checking out a new tool for gambling Obols check out this link below from Icy Veins.

Legendary Aspects

Below you will find the optimal setup for Legendary Aspects for the Leap Quake build. Each aspect is listed with its matching gear slot. Do your best to keep each aspect in the slot it was posted with.

Listed below are all the best-in-slot Aspects found on Legendary items that are important for the Twisted K-9 Druid build. Aspects from the Codex of Power can be used if you cannot find the proper Legendary drops, but they have weaker effects. Extract Aspects from lower level Legendary items and imprint them onto better Rare items with preferred stats. The endgame itemization goal will be to imprint Aspects with the best values Ancestral Rare items with Item Power above or as close to 800, then upgrade them through the Blacksmith.

Gear Slot	Legendary Aspect	Legendary Aspect Power
Helm	Aspect of Disobedience	You gain [0.25-0.50]% increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to [15.00-30.00]%.
Chest	Aspect of the Iron Warrior	Iron Skin grants Unstoppable, and [10-20%] Damage Reduction.
Gloves	Earthquake Aspect	Ground Stomp creates an Earthquake damaging enemies for [X] Physical Damage over 4 seconds. While standing in Earthquake, you deal [5-15%] increased damage.
Pants	Aspect of Might	Basic Skills grant 20% Damage Reduction for [2.0-6.0] seconds.
Boots	Aspect of Perpetual Stomping	Damaging an enemy with Kick or Ground Stomp resets Leap’s Cooldown.
Amulets(50% bonus)	Aspect of Bul-Kathos	Leap creates an Earthquake that deals [X] Physical damage over 4 seconds. While standing in Earthquakes, you gain [5-15%] increased Damage Reduction.
Ring	Bear Clan Berserker’s Aspect	Killing an enemy while Berserking has a 40% chance to grant [16-32%] increased Cooldown Reduction to your Brawling Skills for 2 seconds.
Ring	Aspect of Giant Strides	Reduces the Cooldown of Leap by [3-5] seconds per enemy hit, up to a maximum of 9 seconds.
Bludgeoning Weapon(200% bonus)	Conceited Aspect	Deal [15-25%] increased damage while you have a Barrier active.
Slashing Weapon(200% bonus)	Aspect of Retribution	Distant enemies have a 8% chance to be Stunned for 2 seconds when they hit you. You deal [20-40]%[x] increased damage to Stunned enemies.
Dual-wield weapon 1	Rapid Aspect	Basic Skills gain [15-30%] Attack Speed.
Dual-wield weapon 2	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.

Gems

Listed below are the best gems to socket into gear for each slot type.

• Weapon: Royal Emerald for critical strike damage to Vulnerable enemies.
• Armor: Royal Sapphire for damage reduction while Fortified.
• Jewelry: Exclusively using our Malignant Hearts for these slots.

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. Use an Elixir providing any Resistance you need most, or the Assault Elixir to increase Attack Speed.

Return to the Alchemist again when you reach Level 20, 30, 45, 60, 70, 80 and 90, to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival.

Changelog

• August 8th 2023: Added notes about Patch 1.1.1.
• August 5th 2023: Malignant Hearts and Paragon updated for clarity.
• July 27th, 2023: Build creation Season 1.