Barbarians are easily one of the most iconic characters for the Diablo series. They were originated in the first Diablo’s expansion, Hellfire, and have made an appearance in every Diablo game. The Barbarian is for those who love close range combat, and having the ability to perform certain buffs for you or your party members.
In Diablo IV, they are also living up to that reputation. However, they are a class that does take some time to get things going. Expect to have some growing pains as you are leveling your Barbarian from start.
This guide will help you how to play the Barbarian efficiently as a starter build and that means this build is designed for those who just recently created a Barbarian and is trying to get to level 50 to do their first Capstone Dungeon.
As someone who started their first Diablo IV character as a Sorcerer, the Barbarian was certainly a different experience from starting at level 1 to 50. It’s more challenging and it can be rough around the edges at times, but with patience, the Barbarian will eventually shine through the later stages.
If you are interested in more Diablo IV content, check these out:
- Diablo IV – World Tier 3 Leveling Guide
- Diablo IV – 7 Nightmare Dungeon Affixes To Avoid
- Diablo 4 | Crackling Energy Sorcerer Build Guide (Endgame Lightning Sorcerer)
Play Campaign or Skip It?
If you made your Barbarian as your first character, then you are forced to play the campaign no matter what. I happened to make my Barbarian as a second character, so I was able to have the option to skip the campaign. I personally didn’t skip it because I enjoyed the campaign so much where I wanted to replay it for my own pleasure. It is certainly faster to level up and get higher World Tier difficulties if you skip the campaign.
Name a better duo: Barbarian and Travincal.
The Tree of Whispers bounties will certainly help you out in the leveling stage, and also repeatedly doing dungeons where you can bump into massive amount of monsters will also speed up the process while the campaign does have its moments where you’re not fighting many monsters.
World Tier 1 Is King
The World Tier difficulty selection is an important one to mention. For my Sorcerer, I started out on World Tier 2: Veteran, and it felt rather balanced for the Sorcerer. However, the Barbarian is simply too weak at this stage of the game, and I would not recommend it if you are starting out. The enemies hit noticeably harder and they’re also tougher to kill which can be a painful experience for a melee driven character like the Barbarian.
Also keep in mind, the scaling will make the enemies tougher throughout your journey. This is only going to make things rough on your Barbarian because your character is simply going to be weaker. No matter how much upgrade you invested in your gear, it’s not going to make your build visibly stronger at this stage of the game.
Throughout my leveling journey, I tried switching difficulties back and forth, and I always felt like World Tier 1: Adventurer is the best difficulty to play on. It is simply not worth it to fight harder mobs over for slightly more experience and gold because it does feel like a slog compared to World Tier 1. Always stick to World Tier 1, and I advise players to switch to World Tier 2 when you are at level 50 and you’re ready for the Capstone Dungeon.
Three Important Abilities
These are the most important abilities you want to use throughout your leveling experience:
Rend – This ability is going to be your best friend. It hits hard and it allows the Barbarian to do hit and run attacks if you have to. It’s also an excellent skill for bosses. Definitely put a lot of your skill points into Rend.
Death Blow – One of the best early game ability for raw and hard hitting damage. It’s also another great ability to synergize with Rend for boss killing. It’s easily a skill you have to have while leveling your Barbarian. You also have options of whether you want the Berserk enhancement or the Fury regeneration
Lunging Strike – I personally believe this is the most important ability out of the other two I mentioned. The Barbarian really needs mobility to hit their targets and this skill provides it. It also means you don’t have to waste your time trying to evade towards your enemy. It’s also mandatory to get the life steal upgrade, but the other upgrades are certainly optional.
The No Mercy passive upgrade is a consideration.
Those are the three important abilities the starter Barbarian is going to need. For the rest of the other three abilities, you certainly have choices. I decided to go with Call of the Ancients, Steel Grasp, and Upheaval.
Call of the Ancients is simply my favorite ultimate for the Barbarian, and it is certainly amazing for any large fights I feel I cannot handle. Steel Grasp is mostly used to get the enemies vulnerable for extra damage.
The vulnerability is very nice once you get to the higher levels because the enemies will become tougher to kill. It’s good to have that 20% extra more damage and I like to grab my enemies towards my character to synergize with my Death Blow ability. It works extremely well.
A Barbarian is hunting for Lilith.
For the final ability, I like to use Upheaval mostly just for some crowd control from a distance. The great thing about Upheaval is it’s one of the few abilities in the Barbarian’s skill tree that allows the character to do some damage outside of melee range. If you plan on using Upheaval, definitely make sure you take the Furious passive upgrade.
With that mentioned, these three abilities are certainly interchangeable at this stage of the game depending what you prefer. But I definitely do not recommend changing the other three abilities because they will be important at all stages of your leveling experience.
Items to Look For
The items are certainly going to be a factor to your damage and survivability. Since you are a Barbarian, you definitely want to be on a look out for anything that adds damage reduction because you are mostly going to be face tanking all sorts of damage.
I’m still using this helmet because it’s just that valuable.
Fortify generation is also a consideration too and it is part of the defensive value of the Barbarian. Try to have multiple items that have fortify generation. Rend is going to be an important damaging factor for this build, be on a look out for anything that adds bleeding or crowd control damage. Since Rend is important for this build, obviously look for any items that’s going to increase more skill points to that ability; enhancing its damage. You can also save up a couple of skill points and put it in something else.
Last but not least, cooldown reduction is also a desirable stat to have. It’s certainly amazing for the endgame and it still is good to have while you’re working your way towards the endgame. I would always be picky of giving up a piece of equipment that gives me cooldown reduction with some other nice stats mainly because cooldown reduction is easily the most valued affix to look for in Diablo IV.
The Dungeon and Legendary Aspects
This is the section where we go through over the aspects that you want to have. Without a doubt, anything that gives the Barbarian some sort of defensive value will certainly be amazing. I find both Aspect of Disobedience and Aspect of the Protector to be a must have for this build. Aspect of Might is also another excellent one to have and it’s probably extremely important one for surviving The Curator especially when he starts doing his scythe attacks on you.
Throughout your leveling journey, hopefully you can find yourself a Legendary aspect that can heal you based on the enemies near you. That one is also a nice one to have, and I also like using the bubble shield aspect for my amulet. If you play through the campaign, you will always be guaranteed to find this Legendary aspect by the time you kill Lilith’s Lament (Act 1 final boss).
Be on the look out for Aspect of Numbing Wrath throughout your journey. I would probably say this aspect is the one you should most likely pair it with your amulet because it will drastically improve your fortification for your Barbarian. Keep in mind, monsters will only hit harder as you play through Diablo IV, and this aspect will counter those issues for your Barbarian.
The First Capstone Dungeon
This is going to be the biggest challenge a Barbarian player will have to face at this stage of the game. It was certainly a challenge for my Sorcerer, but I thought soloing this dungeon was much more challenging for a Barbarian.
I recommend you to use whatever set up you’re comfortable with until you reach The Curator. I simply used the set up I already mentioned with a couple of slight adjustment because once I got close to level 50, I sacrificed my Upheaval and Steel Grasp for Hammer of the Ancients and War Cry.
Bubble shield is so amazing on a Barbarian.
I plan on transitioning my Barbarian into a Hammer of the Ancients oriented build once I get enough levels and find the right equipment during my time in World Tier 3: Nightmare. That is why I made some changes, but you don’t need to have the exact set up to beat most of the content on the first Capstone Dungeon. The only advice I can give to you is to respect the enemies and try not to get too cocky with them. At this point of the game, you are still somewhat vulnerable at certain attacks and the mobs in this dungeon do tend to have a lot of abilities that can stun lock you, so be caution of it as you heading your way towards the final boss of the dungeon.
Rend The Curator to Death
Now for The Curator. This guy will simply be a pain and I definitely changed some of my skill choices. You absolutely need to have both War Cry and Challenging Shout active. Make sure your shouting abilities have their two passive upgrades too. You also need to go either for Iron Maelstrom or Call of the Ancients for your ultimate ability. Do not change any of those three important abilities I previously mentioned.
With this set up, you should be able to do some reasonable damage to The Curator and still being able to tank the minions he spawns around you. Try your best to dodge his scythe attacks and if you have your Aspect of Might on any of your gear, make sure you use your basic skill to activate the 20% damage reduction. Rend will be your best friend towards The Curator. Keep abusing that ability on him and try to Death Blow him every time you see the cooldown is done.
If you have Paragon points available, try to take advantage of this glyph.
Challenging Shout should always be used if you notice there are a lot of enemies around you. Always use it for those situations and the War Cry is used when you feel like you need more damage to hurt The Curator.
Another thing to check is do not use the two handed sword expertise while fighting the boss. If you use your Lunging Strike on The Curator, it will replace the heavy bleeding damage from your Rend with a weaker one. You will simply make the boss fight much harder than it needs to be! I recommend the two handed mace set up.
Make sure you try to kill any nearby Ballistas. They have to die or else they will do severe damage to you. Try to ignore the skeletons or simply kite them away from you. As long you’re doing good enough damage to the Curator, he will eventually stagger and despawn all his minions around you.
I also managed to finish this boss without using any of my Paragon points I’ve found on my Sorcerer. It is definitely possible to beat this boss without needing all of your renown rewards, but they will certainly be helpful for sure. You also should acquire the renown rewards that increase your potion capacity too.
The Fun Is Getting Near…
To conclude this guide, the Barbarian leveling experience from 1 to 50 will certainly be fun and at times daunting. With that mentioned, the Barbarian will certainly show its true colors once you acquire the Exploit glyph and then you can see a massive difference in terms of the Barbarian’s performance. Once you acquire it while leveling your Barbarian, you will have more option to figure out how you want to evolve your starter build. I already mentioned that I plan on transitioning into a Hammer of the Ancients oriented build, so that will be my endgame goal for my Barbarian.
It’s a character that does require patience and discipline to see it shine and then you’ll be able to see how fun the build is when you can tackle on hordes of monsters without many issues. Hopefully, this guide will showcase the way you should play a Barbarian properly in the early game. Remember, once you get access to World Tier 3, that’s where the real fun begins for the Barbarian.
