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
The point of this leveling guide is to quickly take your character from Level 1 to 50 while using the 
Upheaval skill and prepare you for to easily transition into our Upheaval Endgame Build. This guide will review skill point placement as you level from 1 – 50, explaining the purpose and how each passive and skill work together to create power to tackle whatever leveling format you choose. We will also discuss which Legendary Aspects, Affixes, Gem, and Elixirs we can utilize for purposes of accelerating the leveling process.
Our primary skills in this build are 
Lunging Strike as our primary Fury Generator. We augment this skill using:
- Enhanced Lunging Strike – The major benefit to this augment is the opportunity to heal.
- Combat Lunging Strike – This helps us maintain a state of Berserking through the use of Critical Strikes, it can be used as a trigger or as a way to extend the Berserking buff longer.
Our Core skill in this is Upheaval. This is our primary spender and what we will be using to smash our enemies into oblivion. We augment this skill using:
- Enhanced Upheaval – The Stun effect can break up combat and offer us the chance to reposition or remove ourselves from a bad situation.
- Violent Upheaval – As with our previous skill, we are focusing on our state of Berserking, being in Berserk will be a key component to this build.
Now that we understand our two most basic skills, our Generator and Spender, 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 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 Stones for Barbarians, ranked by importance.
- Protect: The Seneschal Construct materializes a protective Barrier on the player for a portion of their Maximum Life.
- Reconstruct: The Seneschal Construct channels a reconstruction beam Healing the player for a portion of their Maximum Life over time.
You will be limited on what Tuning Stones you will have available for these skills. Pick and choose from the list below, however, some of the tuning stones are a rare drop.
- Safeguard Support: When used, the supported Skill grants Damage Reduction to you.
- Fortify Support: When the Seneschal Construct uses the supported Skill, you gain Fortify. Skills with slower attack speeds or skills with cooldowns will increase the amount of Fortify granted.
- Tactical Support: Decrease the cooldown of the supported Skill.
- Duration Support: Supported Skills have their durations increased.
- Initiative Support: The supported Skill will cause the Seneschal Construct to teleport to the target if out of range. Can only occur once every so often seconds.
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 | Lunging Strike |
| 2 | Enhanced Lunging Strike |
| 3 | Combat Lunging Strike |
| 4 | Upheaval |
| 5 | Enhanced Upheaval |
| 6 | Violent Upheaval |
| 7 |  Rallying Cry |
| 8 | Enhanced Rallying Cry |
| 9 | Tactical Rallying Cry |
| 10 |  Challenging Shout |
| 11 | Enhanced Challenging Shout |
| 12 |  War Cry |
| 13 | Enhanced War Cry |
| 14 | Mighty War Cry |
| 15 |  Booming Voice |
| 16 | Booming Voice Level 2 |
| 17 | Booming Voice Level 3 |
| 18 |  Swiftness |
| 19 | Swiftness Level 2 |
| 20 | Swiftness Level 3 |
| 21 |  Aggressive Resistance |
| 22 | Aggressive Resistance Level 2 |
| 23 | Aggressive Resistance Level 3 |
| 24 |  Iron Maelstrom |
| 25 | Prime Iron Maelstrom |
| 26 | Supreme Iron Maelstrom |
As you can see in the table above, we have all of our skills outside of our Key Passive. 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:
Rallying Cry War Cry Challenging Shout Iron Maelstrom Lunging Strike Upheaval 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 Upheaval to Level 5.
Prolific Fury Level 3
Unconstrained
Raid Leader Level 3
Imposing Presence Level 1
Martial Vigor to Level 3
Thick Skin to Level 1
Counteroffensive to Level 3
Defensive Stance to Level 3
Guttural Yell Level 3
Heavy Handed Level 3
Hamstring Level 1
Pit Fighter 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 Upheaval 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
Lunging Strike 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 in our Fury Generation. The advantage of using this skill is the built-in heal and damage increase for a strike against any Healthy (life above 80%) monster. Essentially, you are trying to hit every full life monster around as you rotate through your skills. The second advantage we have here is Critical Strikes trigger Berserking. This will become more common as we equip our targeted affixes (Critical Strike Chance) for rings and gloves.
Core Skills
Our Core skill is Upheaval, this is used as our main Fury spender. As we gain Fury through Tactical Rallying Cry, Prolific Fury and Lunging Strike attacks, we will then deplete our pool by spamming Upheaval. 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 has three of our skills and should be obtained quite quickly, especially if you are playing a new season. These skills are powerful components to keep us fighting effectively and quickly. Let’s look at our choices below.
- Rallying Cry – This skill is one of the main drivers for our Fury Generation, not only does it grant us 20 Fury upon activation but increases our generations by 40%. However, this skill comes with a significant defensive capability: Unstoppable. This is our crowd control breaker, it will allow us free movement for 6 seconds. Very important, especially with Boss encounters.
- Challenging Shout – This skill gives us Damage Reduction and an increase in Life, perfect for surviving large packs of enemies. It also comes with the added ability of Thorns which can prove to be helpful, as this deals additional damage as enemies deal damage to us.
As for the passives in this cluster, we take two levels of Imposing Presence and all three levels of Martial Vigor. These increase our survivability and are helpful all the way into the endgame.
Brawling Skills
This cluster is all about passives. These passives are going to enhance this build and make everything from our Shouts to Berserking feel smoother. Let’s look at each one below.
- War Cry – Grants us Berserking and Fortified Life.
- Swiftness – Movement speed is always a priority.
- Booming Voice – Increases the duration of our Shouts.
- Raid Leader – Heal every second while a Shout is active.
- Aggressive Resistance – Increases our Damage Reduction while Berserking.
- Prolific Fury – Increases our Fury Generation
Weapon Mastery Skills
Again, here we focus on passives only. Let’s look at each one below.
- Pit Fighter – Increases offenses and defenses for Close 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 Iron Maelstrom. This is a great 3-step AoE that is fantastic against a ton of mobs. The augments are straight forward and quite powerful, the first gives us a huge boost to the Critical Strike Chance and the second reduces the cooldown each time we swap weapons, so if we set our Upheaval and our Lunging Strike to different weapon slots, the cooldown on Iron Maelstrom will vanish.
Key Passive
Unconstrained is our choice for the increase in Berserking duration and overall damage. This amplifies all of our abilities, and as we raise our Critical Strike Chance, we will be able to trigger it easily with our basic attack Lunging Strike.
Mechanics and Playstyle
The majority of your power in this leveling build comes from Upheaval, aiming this into a group of mobs and cutting them down is your goal. Start off with War Cry and Rallying Cry to keep our Fury generation high and trigger Berserking, we can easily manage our enemies by using our basic attack skill or offloading all of our Fury with Upheaval then building back up again, all the while having our Ultimate, Iron Maelstrom, to take out large packs.
Our other defensive skills and Challenging Shout, will be use to manage the monsters during the downtime when we do not have enough Fury for Upheaval. 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.
Berserking
The most challenging component you are going to have to learn is how to manage Berserking. We have a couple of options to trigger a state of Berserk and add to its uptime, and when done properly, you can keep this state triggered indefinitely. This requires a lot movement to ensure you’re hitting multiple targets with your Upheaval. We gain two seconds of Berserking from our Violent Upheaval perk when two or more enemies are hit. Keeping this in mind and cycling your shouts properly should keep your Berserking renewed constantly. This will become challenging in the early levels when you are struggling with Fury generation, but will vastly improve as you level up and add the needed Legendary Aspects to this leveling build. Additionally, as you begin to use gear with the increase to Critical Strike Chance affix, you will be able to trigger Berserking through your basic attack Combat Lunging Strike. Lastly, and most dependable is War Cry for easy trigger for Berserking.
Iron Maelstrom
While the section above covers the main skill rotation and Berserking, we also have included the Ultimate skill Iron Maelstrom to help support the leveling process. 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, but Iron Maelstrom also carries an interesting perk with Supreme Iron Maelstrom. This enhancement allows us to reduce the cooldown by one second every time we swap weapons – so set your Upheaval and Lunging Strike to different weapons. This means as you thread your Lunging Strike attacks in between your Upheaval hits, you will trigger this perk.
Now that you understand the skill rotation and benefits from only using the build’s main skills, let’s look at what gear affixes we need to target as we level up.
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
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.
Forsaken Quarry in Fractured Peaks – Level 1 to 25 recommended.
Sarat’s Lair in Scosglen – Level 25 to 50 recommended. High Poison Resistance needed.
Uldur’s Cave in Kehjistan – Level 25 to 50 recommended.
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.
Season 2 Update (Patch 1.2.0): Critical Strike Damage and Vulnerable Damage affixes are changed to be additive with other damage increases. All additive damage increases of the same amount are equal in value, as long as their conditions are active.
| Gear Slot | Targeted Affixes |
|---|---|
| Helm | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Attack Speed 3. Maximum Life 4. Needed Resistance |
| Chest | 1. Maximum Life 2. Damage Reduction while Fortified 3. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 4. Damage Reduction from Enemies that are Bleeding |
| Gloves | 1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Ranks of Upheaval3. 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. Needed Resistance |
| Amulet | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Fury Cost Reduction 3. Damage Reduction while Fortified 4. Ultimate Skill Damage |
| Rings | 1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Maximum Life 3. Resource Generation 4. Lucky Hit |
| Weapons | 1. Strength 2. Core Skill Damage 3. Damage to Close Enemies 4. Critical Strike Damage |
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 [0.6 – 1.1%] increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to [36 – 66%]. |
| 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 |  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. |
| Amulets(50% bonus) |  Wind Striker Aspect | Critical Strikes grant [8.0-16.0]% Movement Speed for 1 second, up to 6 seconds. |
| Ring |  Aspect of Echoing Fury | Your Shout Skills generate [2.0-4.0] 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 (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 | Aspect of Retribution | Distant enemies have a 8% chance to be Stunned for 2 seconds when they hit you. You deal [10-20]%[x] increased damage to Stunned enemies. |
| Dual-Wield Weapon 2 | Rapid Aspect | Basic Skills gain [15-30%] Attack Speed. |
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 Upheaval 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:
Topaz for Basic Skill Damage. - 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. 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
- January 21st 2024: Season 3 speculative changes.
- October 23rd 2023: Revamp for Season 2.
- October 13th 2023: Build adjusted to prepare for Season 2 launch.
- August 23rd 2023: Creation of Leveling Guide
