The Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian was the first build I used when I was trying out the Barbarian. It was a great build during the launch day of Diablo IV, and it was way more powerful than the Arch Lash Sorcerer. My Sorcerer was the first character I chose during Diablo IV’s inception. It was a fun class, but it was much inferior to the Barbarian. The survivability and damage from the Barbarian was massively better.
The Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian was similar to the Arch Lash Sorcerer. It was a melee-driven build that had excellent damage against both single and multiple targets.The build was the perfect Barbarian fantasy to experience. It was always gratifying to see your Barbarian just yelling and smashing demons into chunks of flesh. I’ve always been a big fan of melee builds since Diablo II, but they do tend to lack the efficiency against casters. But in Diablo IV, the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian is simply the the perfect melee build for Diablo fanatics.
During launch day, I can definitely recall it being the best build for the Barbarian class. However, it’s been awhile since I’ve kept up to the many balance changes of Diablo IV. During Season four, I was wondering how well this fan favorite build has held up. Come to my surprise, I was shocked by the changes.
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The Massive Loss of Damage!
I noticed while loading up my Eternal Barbarian, my damage was drastically weaker. It’s been a long time since I played my Eternal Barbarian before Season four started. I mostly remembered its damage output was generally in the millions and now it’s struggling to hit those numbers. It felt extremely awkward playing it during Season Four, and I absolutely hated it. However, I didn’t let the heavy nerfs completely ruin my appreciation to the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian. This is my favorite Diablo IV build, and I was in the mood of wanting to smash hordes of demons and feel powerful at the same time.
I opted to go for a Bleed set up to further enhance its overall damage. It definitely worked. My Paragon boards was using usual glyphs you would use for the classic Hammer of the Ancients set up. I also maxed out the Bloodfeeder glyph for the extra damage. I decided to go for the Hemorrhage node in my Paragon. My build is heavily centered on Vulnerable Damage because of the Pressure Point skills that you can add when you are tempering your weapons.
The Bleeding Hammer of the Ancients Set Up
After theorycrafting, I tried to see if I could possibly make my favorite Barbarian build to become decent again. I want to let the reader know that the word “tried” is extremely key to this article. I decided to give up Lunging Strike which was the basic attack skill you would use to generate Fury. I replaced it with Flay to fit the Bleeding theme I’m going for. On top of that, Flay is a good source of creating Vulnerable Damage to targets. Activating Vulnerable Damage is extremely important for my personal Hammer of the Ancients set up.
Here is the amount of Vulnerable Damage I currently have for my Hemorrhage bonus.
It definitely did feel a lot better, and I could say it was decent for doing Helltides. Going through hordes of trash mobs will generally feel very good with this set up. However, the Helltides bosses can take some time to finish them. This was where I started to have issues with my set up. It takes a long time to kill bosses and it’s very noticeable too when you are trying to climb up tiers within The Pit. So far I have only pushed up to Tier 31, and I was basically done with my Bleeding set up. The bosses can feel like a drag to take down, and the runs were getting fairly slower.
I do believe maybe if you go for an Overpower focused damage set up, the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian might start to shine a lot more than my Bleed set up. As I was climbing up within The Pit, I noticed the Overpower damage was certainly helping me taking out the tankier mobs. It’s also good to use both the Banished Lord’s Talisman and the Earthstriker’s Aspect for your Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian too. Those two effects will increase your overall damage respectively. However, I don’t know if it’s really worth trying to hunt down all the gear to optimize the Overpower set up. On top of that, I also need to level up the Dominate glyph for maximum efficiency.
It could definitely end up improving the build, but the question is, how much will it actually improve? I have no answer for that, but I don’t think it is going to be better than my Seasonal Barbarian.
Season Five: The Return of the Hammer of the Ancients?
I already have a powerful Double Swing Twisters Barbarian which is vastly superior to the Hammer of the Ancients build. This is the build that I used in the game’s current season, and it is also just as fun to play too. It’s certainly hard to find the motivation to be able to play my favorite Diablo IV build again because it’s just so much weaker now.
Some morning Helltides grind…
With the fifth season of Diablo IV is around the corner, I wonder if the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian will become decent again. I know there will be more Unique items and aspects in the next season. Hopefully, some of those can buff up the build. I do hope I can see the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian becoming an actual solid build again. It seems like if I want to do very challenging content, I have to use my Seasonal Barbarian for now.
I have no clue of what Blizzard has done to my beloved Barbarian build in terms of the mechanical changes. But it was disappointing to see how much this build has fallen off in Diablo IV‘s current state. I do hope this particular Barbarian build will make a triumphant return to its form. I do want to try to tackle the Tormented bosses or Uber Lilith if the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian was just as strong as my Seasonal Barbarian. Time will tell if this build will become great again in Season Five.
