Best Barbarian builds in Diablo 4 Season 3 for levelling & endgame

If your ideal journey through Diablo 4 Season 3 involves swinging large weapons as hard as you can, then these Barbarian levelling and endgame builds are for you. Diablo 4 has refreshed itself again with the launch of the Season of the Construct, bringing many changes to the game alongside new additions.

The best Barbarian builds for levelling and endgame content will get you through the early levels and then set you spinning to win in Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, and against World Bosses.

Best Barbarian levelling build in Diablo 4

According to Maxroll.gg, one of the best levelling builds for Barbarians is the Upheaval Barbarian build. It's a pretty straightforward build that relies on Upheaval, one of the Barbarian's few ranged attacks, to clear out groups of enemies. 

Click to enlarge

The general plan of this build is to rush past a group of enemies, buff yourself with some shouts, turn around, and delete the group charging at you with a single blast of Upheaval. At least, that's the plan. This method should be really strong in early-to-mid-game content, and easily clear out the mobs in dungeons.

The only thing it lacks is single-target damage for bosses, but by incorporating Lunging Strike for its damage, Fury generation, and movement, you can adjust the build to take on bosses quite well. If you are playing through the campaign or just levelling up a Barb for Season 3, this build will easily carry you through World Tier 1 and into World Tier 2.

Upheaval skills

Here are the skills we recommend for this build:

Half of these skills are buffs and debuffs, with good reason. It might seem like busy work, but activating these buffs before diving in and using Upheaval can be the difference between wiping out a group of enemies in one swoop, and being left with a bunch of half-dead monsters still charging at you.

Upheaval Barbarian gear stats

Here are the stats you want to prioritise throughout your gear. The most important thing you need is to keep a two-handed weapon in your hands, as Upheaval requires one.

Weapons

• Strength
• Damage to Close Enemies
• Core Skill Damage
• Sockets

Armour

• Cooldown Reduction
• Life
• Strength
• Movement Speed
• Fury Cost Reduction
• Physical Damage

Jewellery

• Defensive Skill Ranks
• Fury Cost Reduction
• Damage
• Movement Speed
• Critical Strike Chance
• Critical Strike Damage
• Physical Damage
• Damage to Close Enemies

There are plenty of factors that play into making this build stronger, which also means there are plenty of items you can equip that will be beneficial. So long as you focus on the stats above, you should have a build that wipes hordes of monsters off the map.

Best Barbarian endgame build in Diablo 4

One of the best builds to currently work towards in Season 3 is the ‘Whirlwind Barbarian’. This sees the return of the classic ‘spin to win’ move that lets Barbarian players enter fights with the Whirlwind ability, spinning round and tearing up anything in their path.

This is a returning playstyle from previous Diablo games, so long-term fans will be pleased to see the build make a reappearance. 

Click to enlarge

However, the only downside to the Whirlwind Barbarian build in Diablo 4 is that it can take a good long while for the abilities to start seeing meaningful returns. This means that players on more difficult world tiers might experience some fights that are more challenging than normal.

For that reason, we recommend building towards this class on a lower world tier. This will let you reach the end of the story if you don't skip it and complete the capstone dungeon with ease, letting you properly develop the build after level 50 on a higher world tier.

Whirlwind Barbarian skills

These are the skills you will want to use for the Whirlwind build:

This class is fantastic at dealing massive amounts of damage to big crowds, while also bolstering the Barbarian’s manoeuvrability to get in and out of fights quickly.

Whirlwind Barbarian item stats list

There haven't been too many items added that the Barbarian directly benefits from in this build, meaning you can keep things relatively simple as far as gear goes.

The most important item slot to keep an eye on is the weapon slot. You can only use the Whirlwind ability with a Slashing weapon, so be sure to keep this slot occupied with a high DPS weapon.

Here are some other important stats to keep an eye out for when equipping either weapons, armour, or jewellery:

Weapons

• Critical Strike Damage
• Damage to Close
• Damage to Slowed
• Slashing DPS
• Core Skill Damage

Armour

• Cooldown Reduction
• Skill Ranks
• Strength
• Life
• Armour
• + to Whirlwind
• Critical Strike Chance
• Movement Speed

Jewellery

• Defensive Skill Ranks
• Fury Cost Reduction
• Damage
• Movement Speed
• Critical Strike Chance
• Critical Strike Damage
• Physical Damage
• Damage to Slowed Enemies

If you keep an eye out for items that include those attributes, you’ll be well on your way to a Whirlwind Barbarian class that’s a force to be reckoned with.

Best Governing and Tuning Stones for Barbarian in Diablo 4

Since the introduction of Season 3, players have been able to access the Seneschal Companion as they complete the main journey during the Season of the Construct. This also gives you access to Tuning and Governing Stones which can enhance and complement the abilities of your respective class.

We recommend the following stones for your builds:

Alternately, if you can't get your hands on those stones just yet, we recommend you give the Poison or Initiative Supports a whirl to see how they do in bolstering your attacks.

We used a variety of resources including Maxroll, as well as our own experience with the game, when putting this build together.

How good is the Barbarian in Diablo 4?

We currently don’t rate the Barbarian class that highly in Diablo 4. On our Diablo 4 class tier list, we ranked it rather low in the C Tier for solo play. This is because Barbarians are huge, hulking characters that can hit very hard, but are also very slow in return.

Click to enlarge

That said, if you enjoy whacking demons with big hammers, then you can’t go wrong with the Barbarian class, and there aren't any 'bad' classes in Diablo 4 - they all shine in different ways.

It certainly has a target niche, and while you can get better performance out of other classes like the Necromancer or Sorcerer, the Barbarian is still a fine option.

That’s everything you need to know about the best Barbarian class build in Diablo 4. For more, check out our Diablo 4 homepage for guides like the Diablo 4 player count.