The best Barbarian builds for leveling in Diablo 4 season 5 (2024)

Barbarians are a relatively simple class in Diablo 4: They smash stuff. However, Diablo 4 is underscored by math that’s so complex that even the simple act of smashing stuff becomes a dizzying equation. That’s where we come in, with our suggestions of the best Barbarian builds for Diablo 4 season 5.

Barbarians are big, muscular, and powerful. They excel at using Bleed to kill their enemies over time. And their unique weapon-swapping system means they get to have more Legendary powers at their disposal than any other class. Not to your taste? We also have builds for the Sorcerer, Rogue, Druid, and Necromancer classes.

In this Diablo 4 guide, we’ve gathered and simplified the best Diablo 4 Barbarian builds for season 5. If you need even more information on item affixes or other more complex ideas, we’ve been sure to link out to the more detailed versions of these builds, as well as where to find their original creators.

Best Barbarian leveling build in Diablo 4 season 5

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

This build is based off Slothmaster’s Barbarian leveling guide at Maxroll.gg, and is purely for leveling: i.e., allocating your 58 skill points between levels 1 and 50. If you want more detailed information about the item affixes you want to look for on your gear, or which other Legendary powers are great for your build, check out the original Maxroll.gg guide.

Best skills for leveling

In this build, you’ll use Upheaval as your Core skill of choice. You’ll also use Bash, Charge, Rallying Cry, Leap, and Iron Maelstrom.

Here are the best skills for a Barbarian leveling build, organized by the exact order you should purchase them in — bearing in mind that some skills require you to allocate a number of skill points in the tree in order to unlock them. As such, you’ll need to unlock new skills before enhancing existing ones:

1. Bash / Enhanced Bash
2. Upheaval / Enhanced Upheaval / Violent Upheaval / Upheaval (rank 2-5)
3. Endless Fury (rank 1-3)
4. Rallying Cry
5. Charge
6. Leap / Enhanced Leap
7. Swiftness (rank 1-3)
8. Aggressive Resistance
9. Prolific Fury (rank 1-3)
10. Iron Maelstrom / Prime Iron Maelstrom / Supreme Iron Maelstrom
11. Tempered Fury
12. Furious Impulse (rank 1-3)
13. Enhanced Charge / Power Charge
14. Power Leap
15. Walking Arsenal
16. Charge (rank 2-5)
17. Leap (rank 2-5)
18. Enhanced Rallying Cry / Tactical Rallying Cry
19. Imposing Presence (rank 1-3)
20. Martial Vigor (rank 1-2)
21. Aggressive Resistance (rank 2-3)
22. Pit Fighter (rank 1-3)
23. Thick Skin
24. Counteroffensive (rank 1-3)

Best Weapon Expertise setup for leveling

Once you unlock the Weapon Expertise system for your Barbarian, you’ll want to place the one-handed mace in your Technique slot.

Best Legendary Aspects for Barbarian leveling build

When you first start your new character, complete these three dungeons first in order to collect their Aspects. Then place them on a piece of gear (ideally jewelry and never weapons). The random drop Aspects are all nice to add to your Codex and your gear if you’re lucky enough to find them on your leveling journey.

• Aspect of the Relentless Armsmaster (Calibel’s Mine, Scosglen)
• Aspect of Fierce Winds (random drop)
• Devilish Aspect (random drop)
• Aspect of Ancestral Charge (random drop)
• Brawler’s Aspect (random drop)
• Veteran Brawler (random drop)
• Bear Clan Berserker’s Aspect (random drop)

Best Barbarian endgame build for season 5 — Flay

This build is based off of Kondyss’ Flay Barbarian endgame guide at MaxRoll.gg, and is a general endgame guide capable of finding success in all activities. This guide assumes that you’re over level 50, have access to all 58 skill points, and are making progress on your Paragon Boards. If you want more detailed information about the item affixes you want to look for on your gear, or why these Legendary powers are great for your build, check out the original MaxRoll guide.

Best skill points for the Flay Barbarian build for endgame

This build utilizes Flay as its core skill. It also uses Leap, Double Swing, Ground Stomp, Rupture, and Wrath of the Berserker.

Since you need all 58 points for this build, the order you select these skills in doesn’t matter as long as you have the pre-requisite points in the earlier skill tree tiers. Here is how you should spend your skill points for this build:

• Flay (rank 1-5) / Enhanced Flay / Battle Flay
• Double Swing / Enhanced Double Swing / Furious Double Swing
• Endless Fury (rank 1-3)
• Ground Stomp / Enhanced Ground Stomp / Strategic Ground Stomp
• Imposing Presence (rank 1-3)
• Outburst
• Leap (rank 1-5) / Enhanced Leap / Power Leap
• Aggressive Resistance
• Prolific Fury (rank 1-3)
• Battle Fervor (rank 1-3)
• Rupture / Enhanced Rupture / Warrior’s Rupture
• Pit Fighter (rank 1-3)
• Hamstring
• Cut to the Bone (rank 1-3)
• Thick Skin
• Counteroffensive (rank 1-3)
• Defensive Stance (rank 1-3)
• Wrath of the Berserker / Prime Wrath of the Berserker / Supreme Wrath of the Berserker
• Tempered Fury
• Invigorating Fury (rank 1-2)
• Walking Arsenal

Arsenal System for the Flay Barbarian build

For this build, you’ll want to take Two-Handed Axe Expertise as your Technique.

Legendary Powers and Uniques for the Flay Barbarian build

To make this build work, you’re going to need powerful Legendary Powers and Unique items to augment your build.

Kondyss recommends these Aspects:

• Helm: Crown of Lucion (Unique)
• Chest: Rage of Harrogath (Unique)
• Gloves: Weapon Master’s Aspect
• Pants: Aspect of Might (dungeon drop)
• Boots: Aspect of Metamorphosis
• Two-handed Bludgeoning: Aspect of the Moonrise
• Two-handed Slashing: Fields of Crimson (Unique)
• Sword: Edgemaster’s Aspect (dungeon drop)
• Off-hand: Shard of Verathiel (Unique)
• Amulet: Aspect of Adaptability
• Ring 1: Aspect of Giant Strides
• Ring 2: Aspect of the Relentless Armsmaster (dungeon drop)

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of stat priorities, refer to Kondyss’ original guide.

Paragon Boards for the Flay Barbarian build

The Paragon Board system is very complex, and you’ll want to carefully pair your Glyphs with specific boards for your class:

1. Starter Board / Ire Glyph
2. Warbringer / Exploit Glyph
3. Bone Breaker / Might Glyph
4. Hemorrhage
5. Decimator / Revenge Glyph
6. Blood Rage / Disembowel Glyph

You should level your Glyphs to 15 in this specific order:

1. Ire
2. Exploit
3. Might
4. Revenge
5. Disembowel

You can path your own way through the Paragon Boards following these basic guidelines. However, for the best results, follow Kondyss’ path exactly.

How to make a great Barbarian build

Image: Blizzard/Activision via Polygon

Barbarians are Diablo 4’s only pure melee class, with the other classes having hybrid builds for multiple ranges. There are four main ideas that all Barbarian builds stem from:

• Fury dumping
• Weapon swapping
• Bleed
• Berserk

Fury dump builds make use of the Unbridled Rage Key Passive, which causes your Fury spenders to cost double the Fury but deal more than double the damage. These kinds of builds obviously require very steady Fury generation, as it’s easy to starve yourself. Berserk builds that use the Unconstrained Key Passive are all about keeping your Barbarian in the Berserk stage at all times, which nets you a hefty bonus. All Barbarian builds will likely use some skills that make them go Berserk, the Unconstrained Key Passive just enhances the effect.

Bleed builds use the Gushing Wounds Key Passive to create a critical strike heavy build that’s great for whittling down groups of enemies with damage over time and explosions. Weapon swapping builds offer what is almost certainly the most unique playstyle for Barbarians and takes advantage of the Walking Arsenal Key Passive. The idea here is that you’re constantly swapping between your skills and weapons to give yourself massive damage buffs.

When making a build, you want to have one of these Key Passives in mind and choose your skills accordingly. Thankfully skills that share certain aspects (like Bleed) are color-coded on the skill tree, and you can even use the in-game search function to find them all. Other Barbarian builds let you take advantage of mechanics like Thorns or Shouts. But they still typically end with one of these Key Passives.

Looking for other Diablo 4 builds? We have explainers on the Sorcerer, Rogue, Druid, and Necromancer classes.