Diablo 4 Highest Damage Barbarian Leveling Build (Skills & Aspects)

Diablo 4 Highest Damage Barbarian Leveling Build (Skills & Aspects) | D4 Best Barb Build

6/2/2023 4:12:21 PM

Here we focus on creating the highest damage build for Barbarian that could help you level to 100 fast and easily!

Diablo IV Highest DPS Barbarian Build Guide

We have now just reached the Early Access release of Diablo 4 for anyone who pre-purchased the larger versions of the game. Whether you are playing yet or just chomping at the bit for your opportunity on the full release on June 6th, either way, your first question is probably how will you get to level 50 the fastest. This stage of the game is realistically just sort of a precursor to the full game which starts to unlock properly in World Tier 3. So how can you get there the fastest with your respective class? Today we are going to be going over my theory crafting for the leveling path that we've chosen for the Barbarian class, talking about which skills to take, when which technique slot you're going to want, what legendaries you want to look for most specifically the ones that you can manually unlock the aspect for by completing specific dungeons along the way, and also which weapons you want to use and which ones you want to use with each skill.

Without further ado, then let's get down and dirty into all details:

Skills Setup for Highest DPS Barbarian:

Best skills to setup the highest DPS Barbarian build for leveling fast:

Basic Skills

Lunging Strike -> Enhanced lunging Strike

It provides a lot of movement speed as you can obviously lunge from enemy to enemy very well and quickly. This may not be the highest damage ability that you can get on this list, but it is very quickly solving one of Barbarian's early issues which is movement speed and that's a big deal as we talk about blasting from Level 1 up to Level 50.

Enhanced lunging Strike gives lunging strike a 30% damage increase and makes it heal you for 2% of your max Health, when it hits an enemy that is above 80 Health, as well you want to set the skill to use your dual wielding weapons as this will increase the attack speed and therefore the fury generation of the skill.

Core Skills

Rend (1/5) -> Enhanced Rend -> Furious Rend

A cleave attack that applies a strong bleed to all enemies that are hit this is a bleed build first and foremost this bleed simply does a ton of damage even in group clearing scenarios where damage over time classically has been weaker in previous Diablo entries.

From here you want to get some enhancements for Rend, the first one makes the direct damage part of Rend extend the duration of the vulnerable debuff on enemies by 2 seconds - vulnerable makes enemies take 20% more damage as a base but we can increase that as well, it is really strong as a status to apply to things so of course whether it's going to be a part of this build

This makes direct damage from Rend give you four Fury per enemy hit up to a maximum of 20 which is about a 60 refund on the overall cost of rent when used in AOE.

Pressure Point (3/3 Passive)

You can change off of this later if you want to but it is a great early Synergy for Rend with lucky hit up to a 30% chance to make enemies vulnerable for 2 seconds when hit by a core skill, Rend has a 33 lucky hit chance, which means combined with this it has a 10% chance of applying the vulnerable status combine that with the Enhanced Rend that also increases the duration of vulnerable by 2 seconds every time that you hit with it and that is a really nasty combo even to start off with. We get another way of applying vulnerable later on so you don't necessarily need to keep this the entire time that you're leveling up but for now this is absolutely invaluable.

Defensive Skills

Ground Stomp -> Enhanced Group Stomp

This is just a big AOE, 3 seconds done on a 16 second cooldown take the Enhanced Group Stomp to increase it to a 4 second stun on top of that, then we go back and put a second Point into Rend which will unlock the brawling node of skills.

Brawling Skills

Leap (1/5) -> Enhanced Leap -> Power Leap

This is just a decent drains jump forwards with fair damage that also knocks back any nearby enemies when you land, more than anything this is just another way of increasing our Mobility as again our goal is to level quickly, and part of leveling quickly is moving quickly as base walk speed is terrible.

Get the first enhancement for this as well for a 4 second cooldown reduction if leap doesn't hit any enemies making it even better it's just a general movement tool

Power Leap gives you 40 Fury, if leap damage is an enemy you'll want to set the skill to use your two-handed bludgeoning weapon simply for how it will interact with the key passive that we pick up later on in the build.

After that go around back up and put 2 more points into Rend once more as again as our main damage ability this unlocks the weapon Mastery node cluster.

Weapon Mastery Skill

Rupture (1/5) -> Enhanced Rupture -> Warrior's Rupture

This lets you do a frontal attack that pops all bleeding damage that is slowly ticking away, and then grab the enhancement that makes it cause an explosion that applies more bleed damage on the way out as well, then you'll want Warrior's Rupture which gives you a 20% boost to attack speed for 4 seconds after using Rupture. Rupture is a 10 second cooldown, so you get to have this attack speed boost active around 40% of the time during active combat.

Hamstring (1/3) -> Cut to the Bone (1/3)

Put 1 point to Hamstring passive makes it so that any enemy that is actively bleeding is also slowed by 10%, this is great as it allows you to activate any armor skills that boost damage against slow or crowd controlled enemies, just by having this bleed applied.

It also is a great gateway to the cut to the Bone passive that we want to take all three ranks of, they increase the bleeding damage that enemies take when vulnerable by 18% to Max ranks, and this will unlock the ultimate skill node cluster.

Ultimate Skills

Iron Maelstrom -> Prime Iron Maelstrom -> Supreme Iron Maelstrom

This lets you stun surrounding enemies for 2 seconds apply a strong bleed to enemies in front of you and do just a pop of AOE damage around you as well. After that, we want both enhancements for the skill the first one gives Iron Maelstrom a 10% bonus crit chance and also 20% bonus crit damage. Then the more important second one reduces the cooldown of iron Maelstrom by 1 second every time you deal direct damage after swapping weapons, this is part of why Rend and rupture will be set to use your two-handed slashing weapon, lunging strike is set to use your dual-wielded weapons, and leap is set to use your two-handed bludgeoning weapon. Every time you swap between these different skills you lower the cooldown of this massive damage skill by one second, on which note this is where we go back up to ground stop and take its second enhancement strategic ground stomp which will give you a reduction to your ultimate skill cooldown by one second for each enemy that is hit by ground stomp's damage.

Pit Fighter (3/3) -> Slaying Strike (1/3) -> Expose Vulnerability　

After that, you want to put 3 points in the Pit Fighter passive which will give you 9% bonus increased damage to close enemies and 9% damage reduction from distant enemies. As a melee Focus class and build, this is just pure goodness for us. Then one skill point into Slaying Strike which will give you 8% increase damage image on enemies that are under 35 health. Then 3 points into Expose Vulnerability, this makes it so after using a weapon Mastery skill using a core skill will make enemies vulnerable for 3 seconds, this means once you use rupture the next time that you use Rend you will apply vulnerable, then you can use Rend again after that to extend the vulnerable debuff even further.

Then head all the way back up to your basic skills and take battle Lunging Strike to make Lunging Strike also apply a small bleed effect on each hit, with that you've unlocked your key passive section.

Walking Arsenal

Walking Arsenal passive makes it so that dealing direct damage with any of your three weapon types, gives you 10% increased damage for 6 seconds afterward. This stack so if you attack with a dual-wielded weapon, then attack with a two-handed slashing weapon, then attack with a two-handed bludgeoning weapon you will do 30% increase damage. On top of that if all three bonuses are active it gets a 15% bonus damage increase so you actually deal 45% increased damage when all these bonuses are active together.

More Passive Skills

Swiftness (3/3)

With that the main core of your build is going complete, we have all of our active skills and most of our general synergies are active, then head back to the brawling tree and grab all three ranks of the swiftness passive which will give you a 12 general movement speed increase once again just for the increased Mobility.

Tempered Fury (3/3) -> Furious Impulse (3/3) -> Invigorating Fury (3/3)

Then back down to the ultimate node, we're going to be taking some more passives take one rank of Tempered Fury over here, this increases your maximum Fury by 3, and just lets you get both of the other passives here which are both incredible. We put both of these to Max ranks at which point, Furious Impulse will give you six Fury every time you switch weapons and then Invigorating Fury will heal you for 9% of your maximum health for every 100 Fury that you spend, this is a ton of health regen with a way that we'll be playing in the way that we'll be spending loads of Fury.

Imposing Presence (3/3) -> Martial Vigor (3/3)

Jump back up to the core skills all the way over here to put the final Point into Rend then go over to the defensive node to pick up some more passives. First grabbing all three ranks of Imposing Presence over here which will give you a 15% increase to your maximum health then all three ranks of Marshall Vigor for 9 damage reduction against Elite enemies.

Thick Skin (3/3) -> Defensive Stance (2/3)

With that we have 5 skill points left to spend, if you've gotten all the bonus ones from Renown and we'll use this for a bit more damage reduction down to the Weapon Mastery tree. Taking all 3 points of the passive skill thick skin which gives you a 1.2% amount of your base health is fortify every time you are hit by an enemy attack, then finally two ranks of Defensive Stance which increases the damage reduction that you have while fortified by 4%.

Weapons for Highest DPS Barbarian:

That's all of your skill points taken care of, but arguably just as important are your weapon choices and your Technique slot Choice as well.

One-Handed Sword Expertise

As for your dual-wielding weapons, one-handed swords have the best bonus for us specifically as we are dual wielding during our basic skill and this gives you a 10% chance to gain 5 bonus Fury when hitting a crowd-controlled enemy. Every time we apply bleed to an enemy because of Hamstring, you will be slowing them and thus activating this effect.

If you can get two one-handed swords at the same time that is ideal, but while leveling that is unlikely generally you're better off just using the best one-handed weapons the game will give you statistically rather than just focusing on only using one-handed swords. Your two-handed bludgeoning weapon can be whatever you wind it doesn't really matter that much then your two-handed slashing weapon should, either always be an ax or a sword with the other of the two taking your Technique slot so you can have both of these bonuses active constantly.

Two-Hand Axe Expertise

The two-handed axe expertise bonus is up to 15% bonus damage against vulnerable enemies with the rank 10 bonus being 10% increased crit chance on vulnerable enemies too, this is obviously incredible as a large portion of our skills are built to keep the vulnerable debuff on enemies as much as physically possible.

Two Handed Sword Expertise

The two-handed sword expertise is up to 20% of all direct damage that you deal is inflicted as bonus bleeding damage with the rank 10 bonus being a 30% bonus to all bleed damage that you do for 5 seconds after killing an enemy. Again this is a bleed-focused build and so this is an incredible boon to what we're doing here with that covered.

Legendaries for Highest DPS Barbarian:

Then let's talk finally about our legendaries:

Aspect of Might - For a 20% damage reduction for a short period after using lunging strike you can get this aspect from a dungeon in Act 2

Rapid Aspect - Increases the attack speed of your basic skills by 15 to 30% attack speed depending on the role, you can get this as an aspect from a different dungeon that's in Act 2 so you can actually guarantee to get both of these effects very early on as early as level 30 even without RNG.

Aspect of Retribution - It gives distant enemies an 8% chance to be stunned for two seconds when they hit you which is quite nice but it also gives you 20 to 40% bonus damage against stunned enemies which synergizes wonderfully with ground stomp, this one comes a bit later on in the game but again it is an aspect that you can guarantee yourself from completing a dungeon

Skullbreaker's Aspect - This one has no guarantee of dropping at any point it isn't an aspect you can unlock from a dungeon but if you happen to get this as a legendary drop, just know that it will boost your damage with this build quite an impactful amount making it so when a bleeding enemy is stunned they take 22 to 40% of their total bleeding amount as physical damage just creating another really nice Synergy in this build for Ground Stomp.

That's the full-on guide to how to be level the highest damage Barbarian in Diablo 4.