Steel Grasp Rend Barbarian Endgame Build for Diablo 4 (Season 1)

Build Introduction

This is your comprehensive guide for building a wild man who hurls chained spears to drag enemies to their death with a single swing of a bloody axe. Welcome to our build guide for Steel Grasp Rend Barbarian! This build is simple and easy to keep control of enemies, running across the map while pulling enemies with Steel Grasp and then gutting each of them with a devastating bleed from Rend. This build is non-stop action as you gather groups of enemies and bleed them of their life, leaving them behind as you sprint towards your next pack of victims. With both strong defensive and offensive capabilities, this build great for both solo play 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 utilizes two required Uniques and four Legendary Aspects. The Legendary Aspects you will need are listed below and are required 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.

Optional Uniques

Ancients’ Oath

Penitent Greaves

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Weapon Master’s Aspect

Accelerating Aspect

Bold Chieftain’s Aspect

Aspect of Limitless Rage

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.

• Flay – Fury gained increased from 10 to 13.
• Aggressive Resistance – Damage reduction increased from 3% to 4%.
• Gushing Wounds – Bleed damage dealt based on Critical Damage bonus increased from 100% to 115%. Bleed damage when Overpowering increased from 11% to 70%.

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.

1. Caged Heart of Creeping Death
2. Caged Heart of Revenge
3. Caged Heart of the Dark Dance

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 Rend Build (Order does not matter)

Rend Flay Steel Grasp Rallying Cry Challenging Shout War Cry

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
Flay Level 1, Enhanced Flay, Combat Flay	Basic Skill
Rend Level 5, Enhanced Rend, Violent Rend, Endless Fury Level 3	Core Skill
Rallying Cry Level 1, Enhanced Rallying Cry, Tactical Rallying Cry, Challenging Shout Level 1, Imposing Presence Level 1, Martial Vigor Level 3	Defensive Skill
War Cry Level 1, Enhanced War Cry, Mighty War Cry, Booming Voice Level 3, Raid Leader Level 3, Guttural Yell Level 3, Swiftness Level 3, Aggressive Resistance Level 1, Prolific Fury Level 3	Brawling Skill
Steel Grasp Level 1, Enhanced Steel Grasp, Fighter’s Steel Grasp, Pit Fighter Level 3, No Mercy Level 3, Hamstring Level 1, Cut to the Bone Level 3, Thick Skin Level 1, Counteroffensive Level 3	Weapon Mastery Skill
	Ultimate Skill
Gushing Wounds	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 Steel Grasp Rend build, we will be focused on using the expertise of Two-Handed Sword for the bonus. Below we have listed both bonuses for the Two-Handed Swords, 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

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.

Rare Node	Effect
Disembowel	– For every 5 Willpower purchased within range, you deal +[7.2%] increased Bleeding damage. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 25 Willpower points are purchased in the glyph’s range: Killing a Bleeding enemy has a 10% chance to reduce the cooldown of your Non-Ultimate active skills by 1 second.
Undaunted	– For every 5 Willpower purchased within range, you deal + [7.7%] increased damage while Fortified. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 25 Dexterity points are purchased in the glyph’s range: You gain 10% Damage Reduction the more Fortify you have.
Marshal	– Grants +[125%] bonus to all Magic nodes within range. – Additional Bonus unlocked after 40 Strength points are purchased in the glyph’s range: After casting a Shout Skill, the active Cooldown of every other Shout Skill is reduced by 1.2 seconds.
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.
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.

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 an 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. Take the pathway up the right hand side of the board towards the open Glyph slot.
2. Along route pick up the Rare Node Brawn, this will boost our flat damage and offer us an increase to Maximum Life.
3. Insert the Glyph Territorial, and take the Dexterity nodes shown to get the bonus. This will help us fight against Close enemies.
4. Inside the Gylph radius we will take both Rare Nodes, Iron Strength and Raw Power.
5. Now move back down the board and take the Rare Node Tenacity for the Armor and increase to Maximum Life.
6. Finally, path towards the connection point at 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 pathway left and pick up the Rare Node Brawn for the Physical Damage increases.
3. Now head to the Glyph slot and insert Marshal, this Glyph will amplify all the Magic Nodes around it as well as give us a benefit to cooldowns on Shouts when you used them.
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. Take the pathway towards the Glyph slot and pick up the Rare Node Enraged and the Magic Nodes around it.
2. Now insert Might into the Glyph slot. This Glyph will boost the Magic Nodes within the radius and grants us more Two-handed weapon damage.
3. Inside the Glyph radius take both Rare Nodes, Brash and Fierce, these Nodes will grant you an increased Berserking Damage and give you an increased Damage Reduction for Vulnerable Enemies.
4. Path towards the bottom of the paragon board and attach the next board, Warbringer.

Warbringer (4th Board)

1. Head to the Glyph slot and insert Wrath, for the increased Critical Strike Damage and the bonus Fury for each Critical Strike.
2. Take the Rare Node Raw Power for the increased Physical Damage.
3. Now that his paragon board is complete, head back to the paragon board Decimator and head to the topside of the board to add Weapons Master.

Weapons Master (5th Board)

1. Head towards the Rare Node Brute, for the Physical Damage and increased Attack Speed.
2. Now path over to the open Glyph slot and insert Disembowel, this will increase our Bleeding damage but more importantly, we will get a chance to lower our Cooldown for our Non-Ultimate skills for every bleeding enemy we kill.
3. Lastly, take the single Rare Node Raw Power, to boost your Physical Damage.
4. This board is completed, head back to the paragon board Decimator and take the path to the left hand side of the board to attach Hemorrhage.

Hemorrhage (6th Board)

1. Take the pathway to the open Glyph slot, picking up the Rare Node Grit along the way to increase your Damage Reduction against Bleeding targets.
2. Insert Undaunted into the Glyph slot and take the need Willpower nodes to activate the bonus.
3. Now take the other Rare Node in the Glyph radius, Butcher, to increase our Bleed damage.
4. Head to the top of the board and attach the final paragon board, Bone Breaker.

Bone Breaker (7th Board)

1. Head towards the open Glyph slot and insert Exploit, this will increase our damage to Vulnerable Enemies.
2. Be sure to take the Dexterity nodes shown above to get your bonus on Exploit.
3. Lastly, take the Rare Node inside the bottom of the Glyph radius, Vigor, to increase our overall damage to Healthy Enemies.
4. This completes the Paragon Tree for this build.

Paragon board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.

Mechanics and Playstyle

This build has a very simple yet rewarding gameplay loop, collect enemies with Steel Grasp (the Unique Ancients’ Oath will help gather more targets) and once they are collected hit them with your Rend. Now run off to the next pack, leaving your enemies behind you to bleed to death. The rotation of these two skills may seem simple, but everything comes down to where you position yourself for the Steel Grasp pull. All of our increases to damage (Berserking, Close enemies, Buffs from our Shouts, etc.) happens in a very small window of time, designed to all stack up right before you use Rend. Mastering this will ensure you can chew through enemies at top speed and continue to charge forward while your enemies die behind you.

Our other unique, Penitent Greaves, offers us a large damage benefit by adding an additional crowd control effect to the mobs we pull towards us with Steel Grasp. This is because of theCaged Heart of Creeping Death. This heart amplifies our Bleeding damage as enemies are slowed by Chill from the icy trail of the boots, but also from Hamstring, which adds another unique slow modifier to Healthy enemies.

Berserking

This buff is almost always activated on our character due Steel Grasp and War Cry. These two skills along with Relentless Berserker’s Aspect should keep you in a Berserking state the majority of the time.

Shouts

Our two main shouts, Rallying Cry and War Cry, are the life blood to this build. Not only do they feed our damage with Berserking and Fury, they also work together to keep our cooldowns low, so we can continue to use our Steel Grasp to pull mobs towards us. Our Challenging Shout can also help us bridge the gap on any needed Cooldown Reduction, but can be used for primarily tanking our opponents.

Flay

Flay is our basic attack and can be weaved into combat as you do your skill rotations with Steel Grasp and Rend. This gives us the benefit of increasing our Bleeding damage after we strike with it, but also keeps enemies Vulnerable as we prepare to use our Rend skill.

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. Rank Up Steel Grasp 3. Basic Attack Speed 4. Strength 5. All Stats 6. Maximum Life
Chest	1. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies  2. Damage Reduction while Fortified 3. Damage Reduction 4. Damage Reduction from Bleeding Enemies 5. Maximum Life 6. Strength
Gloves	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Attack Speed 3. Rank Up Rend 4. Strength 5. All Stats 6. Physical Damage over Time 7. Lucky Hit Chance
Pants	1. Damage Reduction 2. Damage Reduction while Fortified 3. Damage Reduction while Injured 4. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 5. Maximum Life 6. Strength 7. Berserking Duration
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Fury Cost Reduction 3. Damage Reduction while Injured 4. Strength 5. All Stats 6. Berserking Duration
Amulet	1. Cooldown reduction  2. Rank Up Cut to the Bone 3. Movement Speed 4. Damage Reduction while Injured 5. Damage Reduction 6. Fury Cost Reduction 7. Strength % 8. Rank Up Weapon Mastery Skill
Rings	1. Damage to Vulnerable enemies 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Resource Generation 5. Maximum Life 6. Damage to Close Enemies 7. Lucky Hit Chance
Weapons	1. Damage to Vulnerable Enemies 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Strength 4. Damage to Close Enemies 5. Damage while Berserking 6. All Stats

Please note that these Affixes are the recommended picks, 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 Up for Cut to the Bone – Increased bleeding damage to Vulnerable Enemies.
2. Cooldown Reduction – Keeping Steel Grasp on as low Cooldown as possible.
3. Resource Generation – any boosts to Fury generation allow us to Rend as much as possible. The more Fury the more can stack Rend damage.

A final point on acquiring the right Affixes or 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

Listed below are all the best-in-slot Aspects found on Legendary items that are important for the Steel Grasp Rend 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. Each aspect is listed with its matching gear slot. Do your best to keep each aspect in the slot it was posted with.

Gear Slot	Legendary Aspect	Legendary Aspect Power
Helm	Weapon Master’s Aspect	Your Weapon Mastery Skills have an additional Charge. Lucky Hit: Damaging an enemy with a Weapon Mastery Skill has up to a [32-50%] chance to Stun them for 2 seconds.
Chest	Aspect of Might	Basic Skills grant 20% Damage Reduction for [2.0-6.0] seconds.
Gloves	Relentless Berserker’s Aspect	Lucky Hit: Damaging an enemy with a Core Skill has up to a [22-40%] chance to extend the duration of Berserking by 1 second. Double this duration if it was a Critical Strike.
Pants	Aspect of Numbing Wrath	Each point of Fury generated while at Maximum Fury grants [X] Fortify.
Boots	Penitent Greaves
Amulets (50% bonus)	Accelerating Aspect	Critical Strikes with Core Skills increase your Attack Speed by [15-25]% for 5 seconds.
Ring	Aspect of Echoing Fury	Your Shout Skills generate [2.0-4.0] Fury per second while active.
Ring	Bold Chieftain’s Aspect	Whenever you cast a Shout Skill, its Cooldown is reduced by [1.0-1.9] seconds per Nearby enemy, up to a maximum of 6 seconds.
Bludgeoning Weapon(200% bonus)	Aspect of Limitless Rage	Each point of Fury you generate while at Maximum Fury grants your next Core Skill [1-2%] increased damage, up to [15-30%].
Slashing Weapon (200% bonus)	Ancients’ Oath
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.

Unique Items

This build utilizes two unique items: Penitent Greaves and Ancients’ Oath.

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 Ruby for Maximum Life.
• 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 Heart and Paragon updated for clarity.
• July 27th, 2023: Build creation Season 1.