Diablo 4 Berserking Barbarian Build Guide - VULKK.com (2024)

This guide for the Barbarian in Diablo 4 focuses on a post-campaign Endgame Berserking Leap build that functions without too many Aspects, but becomes much more potent with the completed build!

Barbarian is widely regarded as a slow starter with a lot of endgame potential. This Build takes Leap, a skill often used purely for mobility or utility, and turns it into a devastating AoE skill.

This build guide assumes you’re at least level 50 and have completed enough of your Renown to have gained the 10 additional Skill Points available.

If you want a great leveling build to reach this point with, try our Barbarian Leveling Build. At the end of this guide, we have a dedicated section for you to check out if you want to level up with the Leapquake build.

Build Overview

This build focuses on Leap and Ground Stomp, with multiple aspects creating devastating earthquakes that deal huge damage, with Leap being our primary damage. We’ll also be making use of both Bleed and Vulnerable for additional damage scaling for this.

We’ll still be using Frenzy and Double Swing for their unique bonuses during Beserking. Double Swing in particular will be used to maintain Berserking for longer, in addition to our Key Passive.

Defensively, we’ll have plenty of Stuns on top of Fortify and multiple sources of damage reduction all making us incredibly durable. We’ll also be making use of Berserking to generate Fury which will contribute to building Fortify as well as be used by the Melted Heart of Selig for another layer of defense.

Skill and Passive Breakdown

In this section, we’ll be talking about each skill we use. This is the whys and hows of how the build works, and then we’ll cover the skill point distribution.

Skills

These are the main skills for the build. We’ll explain what purpose each serves and how they fit the build.

Frenzy

Frenzy will not only help build the initial Fury for us, but it’ll also serve as additional damage to help apply Bleeding through the Aspect of Berserk Ripping.

We’ll be upgrading it to Battle Frenzy so we can also benefit from its Attack Speed bonus while Berserking.

Double Swing

Double Swing we hopefully won’t need to use too often, but as long as we’re hitting stunned enemies it’s entirely free. If we’re able to keep enemies stunned, we’ll be able to use it as our main filler between Leaps while maintaining Berserking almost indefinitely.

We’ll need to upgrade it to Furious Double Swing to be able to achieve these effects.

Ground Stomp

Ground Stomp will not only Stun everything around us for a considerable duration, it’ll also provide a quake effect similar to the one we’ll get for Leap, however, this one will also boost our damage. At the same time, thanks to one of our Aspects, it’ll reset Leap allowing further stacking of damage

We’ll be upgrading this to Tactical Ground Stomp for the extra Fury, as we’re not going to be able to reliably shorten the cooldown of our Ultimate enough with the other option.

Leap

We’re putting absolutely everything we can into making this our primary damage source. Between multiple Apsects and other bonuses, we’ll be able to use it often and with Double Swing being highly spammable more often than not, should be dealing huge damage.

We’ll be upgrading this to Mighty Leap, to help keep out targets in the quake created under them by Leap.

Steel Grasp

Steel Grasp is a great multi-tool for the build, providing Vulnerable and Berserking regularly, while also being able to pull enemies into our quakes. This helps us more easily deal with those pesky ranged enemies that like to sit on the edge of the arena.

We’ll upgrade it to Fighter’s Steel Grasp so we gain the Vulnerable and Berserking effects from it.

Call of the Ancients

Call of the Ancients is primarily used for its aspect, which will give us a high chance of having an Ancient use Leap for us, which inherits our bonuses. However, this Ultimate will still deal fantastic damage while providing a lot of utility with Supreme Call of the Ancients.

Passives

Here we’re only going to talk about the main passives we absolutely want as well as our Key passive. There are unfortunately a couple we will need to take to get access to these though.

Key Passive – Unconstrained

Since we’re focused on Leap, and using Berserking as one of our main offensive damage boosts, it only makes sense to use Unconstrained. Our skill choice doesn’t allow us to use any of the others very effectively. Having a higher duration cap and damage bonus will help with everything Berserking provides us.

Pressure Point

With Double Swing being free to use in many cases, it only makes sense to take Pressure Point to help with applying Vulnerable. Since Double Swing would be applying it, it’ll also immediately extend it if we’re Berserking.

Aggressive Resistance

Since we’re looking to have high uptime on Berserking, getting bonus damage reduction from Aggressive Resistance is a welcomed benefit.

Battle Fervor

Battle Fervor is here to make it so when we Leap in, we’re going to get Berserking immediately. Between this, Steel Grasp, and Double Swing we should be able to maintain it very easily.

Pit Fighter

Since we’re a melee build, Pit Fighter is a great choice for added offensive and defense. Everything will be in close range for us to deal additional damage, while the things that aren’t will deal less to us.

No Mercy

With access to multiple Stuns and Slows No Mercy becomes free Critical Strike Chance. There’s no reason we should be without this.

Slaying Strike

Slaying Strike gives us extra damage when enemies get low. For a build that’s Damage over Time based, this will help us defeat enemies that much easier.

Defensive Stance

Defensive Stance boosts Fortify, increasing our Damage Reduction while Fortified by a decent bit. Since we’ll be looking to have high uptime on this as well, it’ll put in some work.

Counteroffensive

Counteroffensive is a nice Damage boost that we’ll almost get passively, just by maintaining Fortify. As long as 50% of our life is Fortified, we’ll have this active.

Heavy Handed

We’ll be using Leap with a Two-handed Mac, so the added Critical Strike Damage offered by Heavy Handed is a great way to scale.

Wallop

Wallop increases our damage with Bludgeoning weapons (like our 2H Mace) if an enemy is Stunned or Vulnerable. Everything we fight we be at least one of these, so this is free damage.

Concussion

Concussion is going to enable all of our skills to Stun as we’ll primarily be using Maces for our main weapons. With all the benefits we get for hitting Stunned enemies, this is a natural choice to pick up.

Skill Point Distribution: Where to Assign Your Skill Points

This is an easy-to-reference table for where we’ll be placing all of our Skill points. These are listed in the order they appear on the skill tree.

Icon	Skill Name	Skill Tree	Points
	Frenzy	Basic	1
	Enhanced Fenzy	Basic	1
	Battle Frenzy	Basic	1
	Double Swing	Core	1
	Enhanced Double Swing	Core	1
	Furious Double Swing	Core	1
	Pressure Point	Core	3
	Ground Stomp	Defensive	1
	Enhanced Ground Stomp	Defensive	1
	Tactical Ground Stomp	Defensive	1
	Leap	Brawling	5
	Enhanced Leap	Brawling	1
	Mighty Leap	Brawling	1
	Aggressive Resistance	Brawling	3
	Battle Fervor	Brawling	3
	Steel Grasp	Weapon Mastery	1
	Enhanced Steel Grasp	Weapon Mastery	1
	Fighter’s Steel Grasp	Weapon Mastery	1
	Pit Fighter	Weapon Mastery	3
	No Mercy	Weapon Mastery	3
	Slaying Strike	Weapon Mastery	3
	Thick Skin	Weapon Mastery	1
	Defensive Stance	Weapon Mastery	3
	Counteroffensive	Weapon Mastery	3
	Call of the Ancients	Ultimate	1
	Prime Call of the Ancients	Ultimate	1
	Supreme Call of the Ancients	Ultimate	1
	Heavy Handed	Ultimate	3
	Wallop	Ultimate	3
	Concussion	Ultimate	3
	Unconstrained	Key Passive	1

Gearing and Stats

In this section, we’ll cover all the things you’d want to keep an eye out for to enhance the final build. This includes our Recommended Weapons, Arsenal, Aspects, and of course, Uniques.

Recommended Weapons

Our main Focus will be on our 2H Bludgeoning Weapon, this will be the weapon we’re going to use Leap with and needs to have a higher Item Level. Keep an eye out for upgrades that have relevant stats.

We’ll also want to make sure our 1H Bludgeoning weapons aren’t far behind, as Frenzy and Double Swing will still use them. Our 2H Slashing weapon is only used for stats so its item level doesn’t matter as much.

Ideal Stats

The table below details the ideal stats for our gear, be on the lookout for gear that matches at least three of the four rolls below.

Due to the width of the table, we highly recommend mobile users rotate their devices to view it properly.

Recommended Gems

This build uses Emeralds in our Weapon, Topaz in our Armor, and Diamonds in our Jewelry.

We use Emeralds in our Weapons as we’ll be applying Vulnerable often. This will increase our Critical Strike Damage against Vulnerable enemies.

We use Topaz in our Armor as we lack any reliable way to get Unstoppable, so Crowd Control can be a death sentence without this. This at least ensures that so long we’re not getting chain stunned, we’ll be more than okay.

As with most builds, we’ll use Diamonds in our Jewelry as REsistance are worth having. These can be replaced with gems that grant a specific resistance for more total Resistance.

Vampiric Powers

During the Season of Blood, we’ll have access to Vampiric Powers, which allow us to slot up to five unique powers into our Sanguine Circle to increase the power of the build. We’ll include more than the maximum in the selection below to offer alternatives, but they will be listed in order of their relative strength.

Arsenal System

The Arsenal System is the Barbarian’s Class mechanic, which allows them to assign their skills to different weapons and acquire different bonuses.

For our Skill Assignment, Leap will be on our 2H Bludgeoning Weapon, which our other skills are fixed to Dual-Wield already. Weapon assignments otherwise don’t matter.

The Technique slot itself allows us to choose the bonus of one weapon type to always have applied. For the sake of this guide, we’ll assume these are all maxed.

For our Technique Slot, we’ll want to use the 2H Axe Technique, for the increased Vulnerable damage. Since our main weapon is the 2H Mace, we don’t need to take that, and the Damage vs Stunned for 1H Mace isn’t ideal. 2H Axe is best since Vulnerable applies in all scenarios.

Aspects

We’ll cover the Aspects that are recommended for maximizing the potential of the build. We’ll also suggest which gear slot you should look to place them in.

Earthquake Aspect

The Earthquake Aspect is the Aspect of Bul-Kathos but for Ground Stomp. This will trigger an earthquake any time we use Ground Stomp. Additionally, it also increases our damage while inside either Earthquake effect.

The Earthquake Aspect should be placed in our Gloves, 1H Main-hand, or 1H Off-hand Weapon Slots. With Rings occupied by Resource Aspects and our 2H slots carrying our core aspects, these are the only place to fit this aspect.

Aspect of Giant Strides

The Aspect of Giant Strides is what will allow us to use Leap much more often for damage. This will actively reduce the cooldown when we hit enemies with Leap. With the Aspect of Bul-Kathos, we should be getting the full cooldown reduction leaving us with just a couple of seconds before we can use leap again.

The Aspect of Giant Strides will take one of our Ring slots, as it;s a Resource Aspect.

Veteran Brawler’s Aspect

The Veteran Brawler’s Aspect increases the damage of our Brawling Skills (Leap), each time we deal damage with a Core Skill. This is another reason we opt for Double Swing, as it can stack this bonus quickly, hitting multiple enemies multiple times.

The Veteran Brawler’s Aspect will be placed in one of our 2H Weapons for maximum effectiveness.

Aspect of Ancestral Echoes

The Aspect of Ancestral Echoes is part of why we take Call of the Ancients, as it allows us to double our uses of Leap by summoning an ancient that casts it again. It’s a good source of extra damage.

We’ll place the Aspect of Ancestral Echoes in our second 2H Weapon Slot, as it will increase the chance of this effect triggering.

Aspect of Berserk Ripping

The Aspect of Berserk Ripping is an Aspect we take to enable further scaling options, specifically towards Bleeding enemies. It contributes a fair amount of extra damage, and serves as another DoT to stack the Aspect of Disobedience.

The Aspect of Berserk Ripping should be placed in our Gloves, 1H Main-hand, or 1H Off-hand Weapon Slots. With Rings occupied by Resource Aspects and our 2H slots carrying our core aspects, these are the only place to fit this aspect.

Aspect of Burning Rage

The Aspect of Burning Rage deals additional Fire Damage around us while we’re Berserking. This Aspect is mostly filler, but the only other decent alternative would be the Skullbreaker’s Aspect, but it’s not as consistent as this one for our overall damage since bleed is only a minor part of our damage.

The Aspect of Burning should be placed in our Gloves, 1H Main-hand, or 1H Off-hand Weapon Slots. With Rings occupied by Resource Aspects and our 2H slots carrying our core aspects, these are the only place to fit this aspect.

Aspect of Perpetual Stomping

The Aspect of Perpetual Stomping is another means of reducing our Leap Cooldown, this time resetting it with each hit of Ground Stomp. This allows us to very quickly reset our Leap Cooldown on demand, either for extra damage or mobility, though it does require an enemy to hit.

Aspect of Berserk Fury

The Aspect of Berserk Fury generates Fury when we’re Berserking. This is a great passive recovery in addition to what we’ll get naturally by attacking things. It’s part of what enables the Aspect of Numbing Wrath as well as the Melted Heart of Seling to work well here.

The Aspect of Berserk Fury will take our second Ring slot, as it is also a Resource Aspect.

Aspect of Bul-Kathos

The Aspect of Bul-Kathos is what allows leap to create an earthquake. This also has the added bonus of boosting our Damage Reduction while standing in the quakes created by Leap or Ground Stomp.

The Aspect of Bul-Kathos will be placed in our Helm Slot. There’s no difference between placing it here or in our Chest or Pants, so place it wherever is open.

Aspect of Numbing Wrath

The Aspect of Numbing Wrath generates Fortify for every point of Fury that is generated beyond our maximum. This will be one of the main ways we build Fortify outside of passives.

The Aspect of Numbing Wrath will be placed in the Chest Slot. Chest and Pants also work here as well if desired, but we use all three slots for Defensive aspects and there’s no difference between them.

Aspect of Disobedience

The Aspect of Disobedience is a great defensive aspect, granting us a ton of bonus Armor. While it takes time to stack our Damage over Time effects will help stack it quickly in combination with our faster basic attacks.

We’ll place the Aspect of Disobedience in our Pants Slot. We use all three possible defensive slots, so fit what you can where you can.

Unique Items

We’re only going to talk about the few that offer the strongest effects on the build. While there are others that help, these are the ones you really want to slot into your build if you get the chance. These will drop starting in Tier 3 content, but decent upgrades for the build once you get them.

Melted Heart of Selig

The Melted Heart of Selig is a Unique Amulet available to all classes, though it is an exceptionally rare drop once reaching level 85. It grants a ton of bonus resources, but you lose resources based on damage taken. Additionally, it has very nice stats that synergize with our build.

It boosts the Resource Generation we get from our skills as well as the Aspect of Berserk Fury, which allows this to mitigate a ton of damage.

Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty

The Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty is a Unique Helmet that gives is a chance to increase our Berserking Damage, generate Fury, and reduce our Cooldown when we trigger Berserking while already Berserking. Additonally, its affixes boost our damage and defenses while Berserking.

X’Fal’s Corroded Signet

X’Fal’s Corroded Signet is a Unique Ring that grants a chance for our DoT Effects to explode and deal additional damage to nearby enemies. With Earthquake being DoT effects on top of our Bleed Damage we’ll see this trigger often enough to make a good impact on our damage.

Ancients’ Oath

Ancients’ Oath is a Unique 2H Axe that increases our damage to enemies when pulled by Steel Grasp while also increasing the AoE of the skill. While this gives up our ability to boost one of our Offensive Aspects, It can make up for it with the nice Multiplicative bonus it gives. Not only can we pull enemies into our Quakes, but they’ll take extra damage from this effect and the Vulnerable it applies.

Paragon Boards and Glyphs

These two endgame options are part of the Paragon System which is available starting at level 50.

Paragon Boards

Paragon Boards are a feature that becomes available at level 50. These boards allow us to spend the Paragon points we earn for leveling and Renown to strengthen our character. Each of these has a single Glyph Slot to place a glyph of our Choice.

Starter Board

Like with all starter boards, the Barbarian’s Starter Board just gives us generic damage and defense bonuses.

As usual, we’ll path up the right side until we get the glyph slot, then swap to the left side to grab both damage clusters. We’ll come back later to fill out the rest of the Rare nodes and place a Glyph here

Carnage

Carnage offers us a lot of what we want for the build. We’ll get lots of Berserking Damage, Damage to Elites and some added Bererking Duration. the Legendary Node itself grants us additional Attack Speed when we Critically Stike during Berserking.

For this board, we’ll path up through Berserker, make a short detour for Carnage, the head up to the Glyph Node picking up the cluster around Fierce as well as Brash. Finally, we’ll grab the cluster around Enrage and exit out of the right side.

Blood Rage

Blood Rage is our next Board, this board gives us a lot of Damage while Berserking as well as Damage vs Bleeding, with a little bit of Damage vs Elites. Blood Rage itself will help us sustain Berserking much easier, granting a low chance to active Berserking by Defeating Bleeding enemies.

We’ll rotate this board so that Enrage is closest to our starting point. We’ll path up to Enrage taking that cluster, before heading to the right to grab Blood Rage. From here we’ll continue downwards to Revel, then to our Glyph Slot, then up to Grit. Then we’ll head down and to the right to grab Craving before exiting out the right side.

Hemorrhage

Hemorrhage is our final board, being the last board we can get decent value from, but also the least of the four. Hemorrhage grants us a damage bonus to enemies that have been bleeding for at least 3 seconds. With the Aspect of Berserk Ripping, we’ll have this up in most cases.

We’re going to want to rotate this board so that Hemorrhage is near our entry point. From the gate we’ll head down to Lacerator, then path towards the upper right, taking both Hemorrhage and Flayer on the way to our Glyph Node. After our Glyph we’ll want to grab the Butcher as well as Grit.

Glyphs

Each of our Paragon Boards has a Glyph Slot, where we can socket one of our Glyphs. These Glyphs provide powerful bonuses that can be leveled up by completing Nightmare Dungeons to increase their power. Below are the Glyphs we recommend and what board to place them on.

Brawl

Brawl is a great Glyph that will boost nearby physical damage and Defense nodes. If we allocate 25 Willpower near it, it’ll also increase the damage of our Brawling skills, like Leap.

We’ll be placing it on our Starter Board, as it’s the only place we can directly benefit from the base effect of the Glyph, while still enabling the bonus effect.

Rumble

Rumble increases the damage of our Earthquakes for every 5 Strength allocated in range. With 40 Strength allocated in range, we deal additional damage for each active Earthquake.

We’ll place this in the Carnage, where we can support this with up to 75 Strength for a huge damage bonus. We’ll get all of it too, which can net us a whopping ~600% damage to our Earthquakes at max glyph Level!

Crusher

Since all of our damage will be dealt with Maces, this is a good damage bump all around. While we won’t consistently Overpower to make use of the added Overpower Damage from allocating 40 Strength, it’ll still help us out a bit when we do, as we’ll have plenty of Life and Fortify.

We’ll place this in Blood Rage, where we can support it with up to 70 Strength for another huge damage boost.

Bloodfeeder

Bloodfeeder increases our damage to bleeding targets for every 5 Dexterity in range. Since Dexterity is in short supply on our Paragon Boards, this bonus won’t be super high. However, getting 25 for the bonus Critical Strike Chance vs Bleeding Enemies is hard to pass up.

We’ll place this in Hemorrhage, which cna easily active the bonus between the Butcher cluster and the Dexterity nodes just above the Glyph Node.

Leveling Order

If you want to play this build from level 1, the next segment of this build guide are for you. Below you will see the exact leveling order in which you should acquire your skills and passives to maximize damage and overall performance.

We also have our “Flay and Pray” Barbarian Leveling Build, which focuses on Bleed if you want to try something different for your “young” barbarian character.

Levels	Icon	Skill	Purpose
2-3		Frenzy	Upgrade to Enhanced Frenzy for Additional Fury
4-6		Double Swing	Upgrade to Furious Double Swing for bonus effect while Berserking
7-9		Pressure Point	Allows Double Strike to apply Vulnerable
10-12		Ground Stomp	Upgrade to Tactical Ground Stomp for Great Crowd Control and Fury Generation
13-15		Leap	Upgrade to Power Leap for Extra Fury Generation, swap to Mighty variant with Aspect of Bul-Kathos.
16		Aggressive Resistance	Used to reach Battle Fervor, maxed later when Berserking is consistently active.
17-19		Battle Fervor	Allows Leap to enable Berserking.
20-22		Steel Grasp	Upgrade to Fighter’s Steel Grasp for Vulnerable and Berserking.
23		Battle Frenzy	With more consistent access to Berserking, we’ll take this to improve overall DPS
24-26		Pit Fighter	Great damage for Melee builds, while protecting us from ranged enemies.
27-29		Call of the Ancients	Upgrade to Supreme Call of the Ancients for great damage and utility.
30-32		No Mercy	With more Stuns and Slows available now, this becomes free Critical Strike Chance.
33-35		Slaying Strike	Good damage bonus for helping to finish off enemies.
36		Unconstrained	Key Passive, make Beserking a much stronger effect.
37-40		Leap	Maxing our main skill to reduce Cooldown
41-43		Heavy Handed	Our Main damage skill uses a 2H weapon, so this is free Critical Damage.
44-46		Wallop	With Sun and Vulnerable having many source in our kit, this is free damage with bludgeoning weapons which is all we use.
47-49		Concussion	Chance for skills with our Bludgeoning weapon to Stun, improving Wallop’s consistency.
50		Thick Skin	Taken to reach Defensvie Stance and Counteroffensive
Renown		Defensive Stance x3	Bonus damage Reduction from Fortify, which the full build aims to stack passively.
Renown		Counteroffensive x3	More damage while at least half of our Life is Fortified.
Renown		Aggressive Resistance x2	Finishing this passive off for more Damage Reduction while Berserking.
Renown		Ground Stomp	We have a spare point, so we lower Ground Stomp’s cooldown

To learnhow to maximize your damage in Diablo 4, check out our dedicated guide. It breaks down all of the ways to scale your Damage, including getting the biggest numbers possible, and what factors play into achieving that.

This concludes our guide to the optimal Berserking Barbarian Build for Diablo 4. Check out moreDiablo 4 Buildshere on VULKK.com