Rend Barbarian Leveling Build for Diablo 4 (Season 1)

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 1 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 Rend against packs of enemies, followed up by a devastating Death Blow to end their lives. We utilize several sources of Bleeding, but primarily rely on two skills to stack damage up against our foes.

Rend – our strongest bleed source:
- Enhanced Rend – This helps to extend Vulnerability on enemies for increased damage
- Violent Rend – Increases each strike of Rend against Vulnerable enemies.
Flay – our basic attack bleeds enemies as well:
- Enhanced Flay – This gives us a chance to apply Vulnerability.
- Combat Flay – This gives us two advantages of Thorns and increasing our Damage Reduction.

We will also be triggering an enhancement for even more damage to Bleeds through the Key Passive Walking Arsenal.

Now that we understand our two most basic skills, we can look deeper into how we will be allocating our skill points as we journey from Level 1 to Level 50.

Season of the Malignant

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 Malignant Hearts that are useful 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 the limited pool of Malignant Heart drops until World Tier 3 is unlocked. All other heart option become available in World Tier 3, so if you do not find one of these right away – do not worry. Malignant Hearts are primarily farm in the endgame.

Allocation of Skill points

Your first 20 skill points are used to acquire all of your skills, filling in passive points only as needed to get to the next tier. The allocation of these points is listed below.

Skill Point Number	Allocation
1	Flay
2	Enhanced Flay
3	Combat Flay
4	Rend
5	Enhanced Rend
6	Violent Rend
7	Rallying Cry
8	Enhanced Rallying Cry
9	Tactical Rallying Cry
10	Rend Level 2
11	Rend Level 3
12	Leap
13	Enhanced Leap
14	Power Leap
15	Rend Level 4
16	Rend Level 5
17	Death Blow
18	Enhanced Death Blow
19	Warrior’s Death Blow
20	Hamstring Level 1
21	Cut to the Bone Level 1
22	Cut to the Bone Level 2
23	Cut to the Bone Level 3
24	Wrath of the Berserker
25	Prime Wrath of the Berserker
26	Supreme Wrath of the Berserker

As you can see in the table above, we have all of our skills are obtained within the first 26 points. This completes our entire skill bar relatively quickly. If you are making a Seasonal Character, you already start with 10 skill points, so it is even faster.

Your complete skill bar will look like this:

Now that you are ready to fight the hordes of hell with all your skills filled out, we can fill in your passive points with each level up. As for which passives to take once you have completed your skill load-out and Key Passive, we recommend the following ranked by importance.

Finish Death Blow to Level 5
Pit Fighter to Level 3
Slaying Strike to Level 3
Expose Vulnerability to Level 3
Walking Arsenal Key Passive
Swiftness to Level 3
Aggressive Resistance to Level 1
Prolific Fury to Level 1
Thick Skin to Level 3
Defensive Stance to Level 3
Counteroffensive to Level 3
Tempered Fury to Level 1
Furious Impulse to Level 3

Skill Tree

Here is the completed skill tree for the build:

Skill Clusters

Let’s review each cluster in the Skill Tree and discuss our reasons behind each passive and skill choice, so we have a good understanding of the build before we transition into the Rend Endgame Build or Steel Grasp Endgame Build. Keep in mind, if you are leveling a new seasonal character, you will have some additional skill points to spend at the beginning.

Basic Skills

Flay is our choice for the basic skill in this build and will be kept at Level 1. This skill is used constantly, as our Fury pool will be more challenging to keep up until we have more points to invest into Fury Generation. The advantage of using this skill is it becomes a trigger for Vulnerability, making it extremely important for increasing our damage overall as well as boosting Damage Reduction. Be sure to set one-handed weapon to this skill.

Core Skills

Rend is used as our main Fury spender. As we gain Fury through Berserking, Rallying Cry, Leap and Flay, we will then deplete our pool by spamming Rend. Your positioning will be key during this spam attack. This may take time to feel smooth, but you want to target packs of enemies. Do your best to use it when you have groups of monsters and not waste it on small single target.

Defensive Skills

Our defensive cluster contains our only Shout skill: Rallying Cry. This skill provides us with multiple benefits, first as an escape skill with Enhanced Rallying Cry making us Unstoppable. Then we also benefit from the Tactical Rallying Cry gives us a boost to Fury and increases our generation by 20%.

Brawling Skills

In this cluster we acquire the skill Leap which gives us a huge chunk of Fury and then gives us this the benefits from Aspect of Bul-Kathos and Veteran Brawler’s Aspect. We also take the passives below:

Swiftness – Movement speed is always a priority.
Aggressive Resistance – Increases our Damage Reduction while Berserking.
Prolific Fury – Increases our Fury Generation

Weapon Mastery Skills

Death Blow is used to trigger Berserking and insta-kill enemies, resetting the cooldown and allowing us to use it as a killing blow again.

Pit Fighter – Increases offenses and defenses for Close Enemies.
Slaying Strike – This benefits our Death Blow by increasing our damage to Injured enemies.
Expose Vulnerability – This allows our core skill to trigger Vulnerability on enemies.
Hamstring – this makes Healthy enemies we bleed slow.
Cut to the Bone – this enhances our Bleeds to have more damage against Vulnerable enemies.
Thick Skin – This gives us the ability to trigger Fortify and all of its benefits everything time we get hit.
Defensive Stance – This increases our Damage Reduction while we are Fortified, which from the passive above happens every time we are hit.
Counteroffensive – This increases our Damage output while we are Fortified and still above 50% Life.

Ultimate Skill

For our Ultimate skill we are using Wrath of the Berserker. This is a great power-up for our Character to use against Elites and Bosses. This makes us Unstoppable and grants us Berserking, which boosts damage and movement speed. While the skill has a long cooldown, it is a great skill to use during intense moments.

Key Passive

The Key Passive Walking Arsenal, we trigger this ability by using 3 different types of weapons across our skills. We accomplish this easily by setting our skills to the following weapons:

Flay – One-handed Weapon
Rend – Two-handed Slashing Weapon
Death Blow and Leap – Two-handed Bludgeoning Weapon

This setup will cycle the activation on Walking Arsenal fairly often, giving us the 45% damage bonus.

Mechanics and Playstyle

The majority of your power in this leveling build comes from Rend, which is aimed into a group of mobs to Bleed them, followed by Death Blow to finish them off. Rallying Cry will help keep Fury generation high, and we can easily manage our enemies by using our Flay or offloading all of our Fury with Rend then building back up again, all the while having our Ultimate, Wrath of the Berserker, to take out Elite packs.

During the majority of your fights, you will also be triggering your Walking Arsenal for a good damage bonus. This rotational way of playing will become important as it prepares you for the endgame version of this build which is played with a very similar skill set. Let’s review some other important elements we use to power ourselves up for leveling.

Bleeding

The majority of our damage comes from Bleeding enemies, we do this through our skill but also we trigger some enhancements from our Legendary Aspects. See the list below:

Defenses

The majority of our Defenses come from our Legendary Aspects and Passives. See the list below:

Weapon Expertise

For the Rend Leveling build, we will be focus on using Two-handed swords for the increase to bleeding damage and leveling up this skill to Level 10 for the endgame.

Leveling Options

There are many options to level your character: kill monsters, do quests in each region, follow the Seasonal storyline, farm generic dungeons, participate in regional events, etc. With so many ways to get to Level 50, we have chosen some methods that will accelerate your experience gains.

Open World Activities

The open world is full of monsters and activities, you are welcome to find your own path or leveling areas but if you are looking for some great options, here are two great suggestions for this build:

The Dinidari Flats in Dry Steppes

Dinidari Flats Leveling D4 Barbarian — Dindari Flats

This area is packed with Spiders! Spiders have the unique ability to break down into smaller mobs after the larger version is destroyed. This allows us to pull multiple larger Spiders together and kill them, unleashing a massive group of smaller, very low life spiders for us to grab some additional experience.

Westering Lowlands

This zone has three events that cycle quite frequently (red marks) and some high-density mob areas (in the green) to farm as you move between the events. This is a great spot as we have a waypoint very close, and we do a simple rotation of two or more events. When you add the time needed to kill the dense packs of monsters in each green area, you will have a great non-stop loop for experience.

Dungeons

Lost Achieves in Fractured Peaks – Levels 1 – 25 recommended.

Fractured Peaks Leveling D4 Barbarian — Lost Achieves

Forsaken Quarry in Fractured Peaks – Level 1 to 25 recommended.

Sarat’s Lair in Scosglen – Level 25 to 50 recommended. High Poison Resistance needed.

Scosglen Leveling D4 Barbarian — Sarat’s Lair

Uldur’s Cave in Kehjistan – Level 25 to 50 recommended.

Kehjistan Leveling D4 Barbarian — Uldur’s Cave

Questing

Questing is a necessary evil if you are still grinding out your renown levels for each zone. If you need to complete your Renown, it can be a relatively easy way to get some quick experience along the way. If this is something you need to do, take as many quests as you can from one area and complete them all in one go. It may not feel necessarily faster, but going back and forth for each one is a waste of time.

Gear Affixes

In the early levels, targeting affixes on your gear can be very challenging. Part of the reason is we will be playing in world tier 1 or 2 and the best opportunity for rare gear is a maximum of 3 affixes. So the list below will show us the best four options to choose from.

Gear Slot	Targeted Affixes
Helm	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Attack Speed 3. Maximum Life 4. Strength
Chest	1. Maximum Life 2. Damage Reduction while Fortified 3. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 4. Damage Reduction from Bleeding Enemies
Gloves	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Ranks of Rend 3. Attack Speed 4. Strength
Pants	1. Maximum Life 2. Damage Reduction while Fortified 3. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 4. Damage Reduction from Enemies that are Bleeding
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Damage Reduction while Injured 3. Fury Cost Reduction 4. Berserking Duration
Amulet	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Fury Cost Reduction 3. Damage Reduction while Fortified 4. Ultimate Skill Damage
Rings	1. Vulnerable Damage 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Maximum Life 4. Resource Generation
Weapons	1. Vulnerable Damage 2. Basic Skill Damage 3. Core Skill Damage 4. Strength

Legendary Aspects

The Legendary Aspects chosen below are all available from the Codex of Power, so each Aspect can be found from Dungeons in the open world. If possible, finding each of these Aspect on a piece of Legendary gear will offer you a better roll compared to the Codex of Power.

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 [0.25 – 0.50%] increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to [15.00 – 30.00%].
Gloves	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.
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)	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	Aspect of the Relentless Armsmaster	Gain [20-36%] increased Fury Generation while all damage bonuses from Walking Arsenal Key Passive are 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 (200% bonus)	Aspect of the Expectant	Attacking enemies with a Basic Skill increases the damage of your next Core Skill cast by [5-10%], up to 30%.
Slashing Weapon (200% 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.
Dual-Wield Weapon 1	Rapid Aspect	Basic Skills gain [15-30%] Attack Speed.
Dual-Wield Weapon 2	Veteran Brawler’s Aspect	Each time a Core Skill deals direct damage to an enemy, your next Charge or Leap deals [15-20]% increased damage, up to [225-300]%.

Conclusion

Once you hit Level 50 with this leveling build, you will be ready to complete your first Capstone Dungeon and unlock World Tier 3. This will open up the true endgame and allow you to collect new Sacred Rares and Legendary Aspects you will need to transition into the Endgame Rend Build. Once you upgrade your build to the Endgame build, you will be ready to push into Nightmare dungeons, World Tier 3 Capstone Dungeon, the Paragon Board system and so much more.

Gems

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

Weapon: Amethyst for the increase to Damage over Time effects.
Armor: Ruby for the increase to Maximum Life.
Jewelry: Exclusively using our Malignant hearts for this slot.

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

September 16th 2023, Leveling Guide revamp