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.

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.

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:

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

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.

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.

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:

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

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

Kondyss recommends these Aspects:

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

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

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

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

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 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.