Season 3 Barbarian Leveling Build

This is a Season 3 leveling build for Barbarian that uses an easy-to-learn skill rotation for Hammer of the Ancients spam in Diablo 4 (D4). Read on to learn all the Gear, Skills, Aspects, and Stones that you will need, and how to play the build to level from 1 to 50 for Season 3 (Version 1.3.0).

HotA Leveling Build Summary

HotA Leveling Build Pros and Cons
Deals a Large Amount of Damage Easy-to-Learn Skill Rotations Very Beginner Friendly Takes a While to Come Online Damage is Dependent on Fury Level

The HotA Leveling Build is an easy-to-use leveling build for players new to the Barbarian playstyle. Simply put, we spam the Lunging Strike basic attacks until we have max Fury, then we unleash a cast of Hammer of the Ancients (HotA) to deal damage.

While leveling up during the Season, we'll also need to collect the Aspect of Ancestral Force for our Codex. This Aspect, when slotted into our Gloves slot, gives HotA a larger area-of-effect, increasing both its damage and effectiveness per cast.

Season 3 Leveling Guide

Seneschal Construct Setup

Governing Stone	Tuning Stone
Reconstruct	Tactical Support	Duration Support	Safeguard Support
Lightning Bolt	Swift Support	Resource Support	Efficiency Support

Since this is a leveling build, most of the suggested Governing and Tuning Stones will be early game rares. Reconstruct provides a decent stream of healing and, when paired with Safeguard Support (Rare), grants Damage Reduction as well.

Lightning Bolt with Resource and Efficiency Support will provide your Barbarian with an alternative means to getting Fury Regeneration as well as bonus Critical Strike Chance.

How to Level Governing and Tuning Stones

Skill Progression

Put simply, this build has you spam Lunging Strike until you hit max Fury. Once full, you use Hammer of the Ancients to deal a high-damage strike with your weapon. The utility of your other skills are as follows:

• Charge: Can be used as a gap closer and alternative source of DPS (especially if you have Aspect of Ancestral Charge).
• Leap: Great for generating Fury as well as getting around. Very useful when bypassing traps inside Vaults.
• Rallying Cry: Drives your Fury Generation and Movement Speed. Enhanced version grants Unstoppable to shake off enemy CC.

Since this is a leveling build, we'll be aiming to fill up the Active Skills bar as quickly as possible in order to get a feel for the build's general skill rotations. By Level 27, you should have everything needed to fill your Active Skills bar including a maxed out HotA.

Recommended Skill Progression
Lv.2	Lv.3	Lv.4	Lv.5
Lunging Strike	Enhanced Lunging Strike	Combat Lunging Strike	Hammer of the Ancients
Lv.6	Lv.7	Lv.8	Lv.9
Enhanced Hammer of the Ancients	Furious Hammer of the Ancients	Rallying Cry	Enhanced Rallying Cry
Lv.10	Lv.11	Lv.12	Lv.13
Tactical Rallying Cry	Hammer of the Ancients	Hammer of the Ancients	Charge
Lv.14	Lv.15	Lv.16	Lv.17
Enhanced Charge	Power Charge	Hammer of the Ancients	Hammer of the Ancients
Lv.18	Lv.19	Lv.20	Lv.21
Leap	Enhanced Leap	Power Leap	Endless Fury
Lv.22	Lv.23	Lv.24	Lv.25
Endless Fury	Endless Fury	Aggressive Resistance	Wrath of the Berserker
Lv.26	Lv.27	Lv.28	Lv.29
Prime Wrath of the Berserker	Supreme Wrath of the Berserker	Tempered Fury	Furious Impulse
Lv.30	Lv.31	Lv.32	Lv.33
Furious Impulse	Furious Impulse	Prolific Fury	Prolific Fury
Lv.34	Lv.35	Lv.36	Lv.37
Prolific Fury	Walking Arsenal	Battle Fervor	Battle Fervor
Lv.38	Lv.39	Lv.40	Lv.41
Battle Fervor	Lunging Strike	Lunging Strike	Lunging Strike
Lv.42	Lv.43	Lv.44	Lv.45
Lunging Strike	Swiftness	Swiftness	Swiftness
Lv.46	Lv.47	Lv.48	Lv.49
Pit Fighter	Pit Fighter	Pit Fighter	Imposing Presence
Renown Skill Points (+10)
R1	R2	R3	R4
Imposing Presence	Imposing Presence	Charge	Charge
R5	R6	R7	R8
Charge	Charge	Leap	Leap
R9		R10
Leap		Leap

Legendary Aspects

One of the best parts about using a HotA build for leveling is that its only required Aspect is a Codex Aspect. Once you have Aspect of Ancestral Force, imprint it into your Gloves since you won't replace them as often as your weapon.

To recap, Ancestral Force increases HotA damage and AoE, Unrelenting Fury helps with Fury regeneration, and Edgemaster syncs with your skill rotation, allowing HotA to deal more damage at max Fury.

Aspect	Effect and How to Get
Aspect of Ancestral Force (Offensive)	How to Get: Sunken Ruins (Dungeon Clear) Hammer of the Ancients quakes outward and its damage is increased by (5-15)%.
Aspect of Unrelenting Fury (Resource)	How to Get: Hallowed Ossuary (Dungeon Clear) Killing an enemy with a Core Skill refunds (10.0-20.0)% of its base Fury cost. Can only happen once per Skill cast.
Edgemaster's Aspect (Offensive)	How to Get: Oldstones (Dungeon Clear) Skills deal up to (10-20)% increased damage based on your available Primary Resource when cast, receiving the maximum benefit while you have full Primary Resource.

Aspect of Ancestral Charge is a Game Changer

Aspect	Effect and How to Get
Aspect of Ancestral Charge (Offensive)	Charge calls forth 4 Ancients who also Charge, dealing (20-30)% of normal damage.

Charge, a Barbarian Brawling skill, has been a popular addition to builds in Season 3 after it got multiple damage and cooldown buffs in Patch 1.3.0.

If you happen to get a Legendary equipped with the Aspect of Ancestral Charge, consider equipping it to transform Charge into a mob-clearing beast of a skill.

Stats and Affixes

Best Weapons

The only weapon that really requires specific stats will be your 2-Handed Bludgeoning weapon since this is what you use when casting HotA. All other weapons in your Arsenal will be stat sticks to power the build.

Best Armor

Since leveling will require to replace all of your armor constantly, we recommend only fixating on the stats and affixes of your Gloves slot during the 1-50 grind.

Once you find a decent pair of Gloves with + Ranks to Hammer of the Ancients, you can keep it and only replace it once you get a better rare or a legendary with Aspect of Ancestral Force. All other slots will focus on stacking defensive affixes.

Best Gems

Gem Type	Effect Explanation
Topaz (Weapon)	+15.0% Basic Skill Damage Provides additional damage to your Lunging Strike since you'll be spamming it during your Basic Attack and Core Skill rotations.
Ruby (Armor)	3.0% Maximum Life Increases your maximum Life. Since Barbarian is a melee class, you'll want all the HP you can get to avoid getting one-shot in close quarters.
Diamond (Jewelry)	3.0% Resistance to All Elements Very helpful since a lot of the traps inside the Season 3 Vault Dungeons do elemental damage.

Diablo 4 Related Guides

Build Guides and Tier List

All Season 3 Leveling Builds

All Class Builds

All Classes
Barbarian		Druid		Sorcerer
Rogue		Necromancer		Uber Lilith Builds

All Barbarian Builds

List of Builds
Barb Leveling (Leveling)	Double Swing (PVE)	HotA (PVE)
Rend Bleed (PVE)	Thorns (PVE)	Upheaval (PVE)
Walking Arsenal (PVE)	Whirlwind (PVE)