Diablo IV’s Season of The Malignant has been going on for about a week now. Over the last week, the community has seen the game’s meta shift and morph into where it is today. With this comes changes to how classes are played and what builds are considered the best. For Barbarian mains, a lot of the game has gotten a bit less exciting than how it was before this latest patch. Damage nerfs abound for the angry buff lads and lasses.
This guide is going to go over a leveling build for Barbarian. You can play this build in the new Season of The Malignant or you can just play it in the core experience of the game, it’s up to you!
Leveling Hammer Of The Ancients Barbarian Build In Diablo IV
The Barbarian class is centered around gaining and spending Fury. For Barbarians, Fury is represented by a circle on the right side of the main HUD of the game. Fury is similar to all of the other resources classes have, which allows them to use their attacks. The Barbarian class is meant to be played as aggro, taking tons of damage and ignoring anything in the way.
When you hit level 50 you should have a total of 48 skill points from leveling and 10 skill points from completing the Renown challenges in each Act zone.
If you are playing a seasonal Barbarian you will want to keep an eye out for these Malignant Hearts: Ignoring Pain, The Picana, and Punishing Speed.
- Ignoring Pain: Incoming damage has a 5-15% chance of being ignored. Instead, it will heal you.
- The Picana: Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage is absorbed, then the damage erupts onto surrounding enemies.
- Punishing Speed: Skills have a 20% chance to Knock Down all enemies when the skill’s attack speed is higher than 25%.
The Core Skills
Your hotbar should consist of Hammer of The Ancients, Death Blow, Frenzy, Rallying Cry, Wrath of The Berserker, and Leap.
All of your main skills should be maxed out by level 26.
You want to use Enhanced Frenzy, Rallying Cry, and Power Leap to generate Fury. Hammer of The Ancients is a core skill that deals damage in an AoE and can deal 50% of the total damage capability of your build.
While frenzied, Enhanced Frenzy grants a 60% bonus Attack Speed and generates 2 additional Fury. Rallying Cry will increase movement speed by 30% and resource generation by 40% for 6 seconds. Power Leap, if this skill damages at least one enemy, will gain you 40 Fury.
To fully optimize playing as the Barbarian you will need to pick up the passive skill called Walking Arsenal. This skill will allow 10% extra damage to be dealt for 6 seconds when using Two-Handed Bludgeoning, Two-Handed Slashing, or Dual Wielded weapons. If you have all three bonuses active you gain a 15% increased damage buff.
What this means is, you will need to weapon swap a lot! Walking Arsenal allows you to assign weapons to a specific skill. The ideal way to approach this playstyle is Dual Wielding to build Fury with Frenzy then swapping to the Two-Handed Bludgeoning weapon and going crazy with Hammer of The Ancients. Then following up with the Two-Handed Slashing skills with Leap and Death Blow.
The leveling path looks like this:
- Frenzy to Enhanced Frenzy
- Hammer of the Ancients to Furious Hammer of the Ancients
- Enhanced Frenzy to Combat Frenzy
- Rallying Cry to Tactical Rallying Cry
- Hammer of the Ancients to Level 3
- Leap to Power Leap
- Hammer of the Ancients to Level 5
- Death Blow to Warriors Death Blow
- Death Blow to Level 5
- Wrath of the Berserker to Supreme Wrath of the Berserker
- Pit Fighter to Level 3
- Tempered Fury
- Furious Impulse to Level 3
- Walking Arsenal
- Hamstring
- No Mercy
- Expose Vulnerability to Level 3
- No Mercy to Level 3
- Swiftness to Level 3
- Thick Skin to Level 3
- Counteroffensice to Level 3
The above leveling path is just a soft suggestion. But this is what you should be sitting on at Level 50. Ideally, as long as you stick to the core skill synergies that were mentioned, you will be in good hands.
If you’re playing a Barbarian now in the new Season of The Malignant, let us know what build you’re playing!
