Best Barbarian builds in Diablo 4 Season 4 for levelling & endgame

If your ideal journey through Diablo 4 Season 4 involves swinging large weapons as hard as you can, then these Barbarian levelling and endgame builds are for you. Diablo 4 has refreshed itself again with the launch of the Season of Loot, bringing many changes to the game alongside new additions.

The best Barbarian builds for levelling and endgame content will get you through the early levels and then set you spinning to win in Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, and against World Bosses.

According to Maxroll.gg, one of the best levelling builds for Barbarians is the Upheaval Barbarian build. It's a pretty straightforward build that relies on Upheaval, one of the Barbarian's few ranged attacks, to clear out groups of enemies. 

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The general plan of this build is to rush past a group of enemies, buff yourself with some shouts, turn around, and delete the group charging at you with a single blast of Upheaval. At least, that's the plan. This method should be really strong in early-to-mid-game content, and easily clear out the mobs in dungeons.

The only thing it lacks is single-target damage for bosses, but by incorporating Lunging Strike for its damage, Fury generation, and movement, you can adjust the build to take on bosses quite well. If you are playing through the campaign or just levelling up a Barb for Season 3, this build will easily carry you through World Tier 1 and into World Tier 2.

Upheaval skills

Here are the skills we recommend for this build:

Half of these skills are buffs and debuffs, with good reason. It might seem like busy work, but activating these buffs before diving in and using Upheaval can be the difference between wiping out a group of enemies in one swoop, and being left with a bunch of half-dead monsters still charging at you.

You've also got plenty of movement with the two Brawling skills, allowing you to always stay on the go, avoiding attacks, and crushing any enemies that you pass.

Upheaval Barbarian gear stats

Here are the stats you want to prioritise throughout your gear. The most important thing you need is to keep a two-handed weapon in your hands, as Upheaval requires one.

Weapons

• Strength
• Damage to Close Enemies
• Core Skill Damage
• Sockets

Armour

• Cooldown Reduction
• Life
• Strength
• Movement Speed
• Fury Cost Reduction
• Physical Damage

Jewellery

• Defensive Skill Ranks
• Fury Cost Reduction
• Damage
• Movement Speed
• Critical Strike Chance
• Critical Strike Damage
• Physical Damage
• Damage to Close Enemies

There are plenty of factors that play into making this build stronger, which also means there are plenty of items you can equip that will be beneficial. So long as you focus on the stats above, you should have a build that wipes hordes of monsters off the map.

One of the best builds to currently work towards in Season 3 is the ‘Thorns Barbarian’. This is a bit of a strange build compared to the more active and aggressive playstyles occupied by other strategies, as you'll largely just be standing your ground and asserting dominance here.

This is a low-difficulty playstyle that scales extremely well into the hardest dungeons and against the toughest bosses, and all it largely relies on is you using your abilities and doing what you need to do.

Thorns Barbarian skills

These are the skills you will want to use for the Thorns build:

As this build is based entirely around the effectiveness of the 'Thorns' mechanic - which reflects damage taken back onto enemies - most of the skills here are all about goading foes to attack you and protecting yourself as best as possible.

Something like Bash is great as a Basic skill as it gives you your own outlet of damage, which is great in support of the passive output from Thorns. Challenging Shout and Steel Grasp are the core skills you'll want to master here though, as they are what draw enemy attention and almost force foes to attack you and in turn, damage themselves.

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Whirlwind Barbarian item stats list

There haven't been too many items added that the Barbarian directly benefits from in this build, meaning you can keep things relatively simple as far as gear goes.

The most important item slot to keep an eye on is the weapon slot. You can only use the Whirlwind ability with a Slashing weapon, so be sure to keep this slot occupied with a high DPS weapon.

Furthermore, as Thorns is core to the build, you'll whenever possible want to prioritise that as a buff or feature on your gear. This is helpful through aspects like Death Wish and Needleflare, but you'll want to look for it, especially on your armour.

Here are some other important stats to keep an eye out for when equipping either weapons, armour, or jewellery:

Weapons

• Critical Strike Damage
• Damage to Close
• Damage to Slowed
• Slashing DPS
• Core Skill Damage
• Thorns

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Armour

• Cooldown Reduction
• Skill Ranks
• Strength
• Life
• Armour
• Critical Strike Chance
• Movement Speed
• Thorns

Jewellery

• Defensive Skill Ranks
• Fury Cost Reduction
• Damage
• Movement Speed
• Critical Strike Chance
• Critical Strike Damage
• Physical Damage
• Damage to Slowed Enemies
• Thorns

We used a variety of resources including Maxroll, as well as our own experience with the game, when putting this build together.

While it might not be as strong as those at the top, the Barbarian has the potential to be a strong class, mixing damage and tank-like playstyles in Diablo 4. On our Diablo 4 class tier list, we've ranked it rather low in the C Tier for solo play, but all classes are powerful in the right hands. This is because Barbarians are huge, hulking characters that can hit very hard, but are also very slow in return.

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That said, if you enjoy whacking demons with big hammers, then you can’t go wrong with the Barbarian class, and there aren't any 'bad' classes in Diablo 4 - they all shine in different ways.

If the Barbarian isn't quite scratching that itch though, why not try out one of our other class builds? There's always time to test something new with the seasonal characters too:

• Druid build
• Necromancer build
• Rogue build
• Sorcerer build

That’s everything you need to know about the best Barbarian class build in Diablo 4. For more, check out our Diablo 4 homepage for guides like the Diablo 4 player count.