Leveling is not that difficult in Diablo 4 but specific builds will allow you to breeze through the first 50 levels of your character in no time.
Part of our complete Diablo 4 class guide.
The Barbarian class is currently considered one of the strongest in Diablo 4, which is mostly due to the great tanking innate abilities. In the late game it can also dish out a lot of single-target damage as well as decent AOE. But now we’re going to take a look at a very efficient Barbarian build for leveling that should help you get to level 50 as easily as possible.
Main Skills
Flay
This will be your basic skill throughout this build. You should add a single point to it as well as two more to unlock the Enhanced and Combat upgrades. Even though it might look like Flay deals very little damage, it does stack a decent amount of bleeding damage that is a core part of this build.
Rend
You should definitely be adding five skill points to this Core skill, since it will be your main skill. The Enhanced and Furious upgrades are the path that you should take. Rend does AOE damage in a decent arc in front of you as well as inflicting huge amounts of bleeding that are integral to this build.
Rallying Cry
One of our main defensive skills that requires five skill points as well as two more for the Enhanced and Tactical upgrades. It will increase your movement speed and your resource generation for six seconds. This will also buff your allies with the same buffs for three seconds. Another great boon is the fact that throughout its duration you will be Unstoppable, making you immune to any Crowd Control effects.
Challenging Shout
Your basic taunt skill, Challenging Shout forces enemies to target you while also giving you 40% damage reduction for six seconds. This skill will require a total of three skill points, with two of them relegated to the Enhanced and Tactical upgrades. The Tactical upgrade will also allow you to gain a lot of Rage everytime you get hit, allowing you to follow it up with damage skills.
War Cry
Another damage buff that will work for six seconds for you and three for your allies. The buff itself gives a 15% damage increase and you should only add a single skill point to it, with an additional two for the Enhanced and Power upgrades.
Steel Grasp
Last but not least we have a weapon mastery skill that will pull surrounding enemies to your location while also dealing a small amount of damage. Three points will go here, with two for the Enhanced and Fighter upgrades.
Passive Skills
Key Passive – Gushing Wounds
A rather difficult passive to understand, it does work great with our bleed build. When you inflict Bleed on a target, you have the chance to increase the Bleed duration by an amount equal to your Critical Strike Damage bonus. The chance to inflict it is equal to your Critical Strike Chance.
Booming Voice
Since our build uses three different Shout skills, Booming Voice works great since it increases their duration. Definitely add three skill points to this passive.
Raid Leader
While this passive can be completely ignored if you don’t usually play in a party, if you do your friends will love you for it. After adding three skill points to it, Raid Leader will heal allies for 3% of their Max Life per second.
Aggressive Resistance
Three points into this passive will net you a total of 9% Damage Reduction while Berserking, which can be activated with your other skills.
Prolific Fury
Just like the passive above, three points placed here will increase your Fury generation by 18% when you’re in a Berserking state.
Swiftness
Since we are a melee class movement speed is very important, so three skill points are a must here to get the 12% movement speed boost.
Pit Fighter/No Mercy/Slaying Strike
All three of these passives require three skill points each since they give great boosts to your damage output. Pit Fighter deals 9% more damage to Close enemies while giving you 6% Damage Reduction from ranged attacks. No Mercy will increase your Crit Chance by 9% when attacking an Immobilized, Stunned or Slowed enemy. When attacking an Injured enemy Slaying Strike will give you 24% more damage.
Hamstring
Since most of your skills add Bleed stacks, Hamstring will lower your target’s movement speed by 10%. Adding more than one point to this isn’t mandatory.
Cut to the Bone
Vulnerable enemies will be dealt 18% more damage from any of your bleeding effects.
Heavy Handed
This build will mostly use Two-Handed weapons, which makes this passive great since it increases your Critical Strike Damage by 15% after you put three skill points into it.
Playstyle
You should always try to initiate with Flay in order to generate some Fury for your other skills. Follow it up with Steel Grasp to gather enemies and then use all your shouts. The order that you cast these will differ depending on what you’re engaging, but you should usually cast Rallying Cry, then War Cry, and Challenging Shout last. Then spam Rend to inflict a lot of bleeding on all your targets until you run out of Fury. Then simply rinse and repeat until everything around you is dead.
Once we get our hands on Gushing Wounds the build will really start taking shape, since now our Bleed effects can basically crit. In order to make the most out of this key passive you should focus on stacking as much Critical Strike and Critical Damage on your gear. If you find yourself dying a lot, you should add Skull to every Jewelry socket you have for that bonus Armor. And don’t forget to upgrade every piece of Armor you have on, since every point of Armor counts when playing a melee character.
