This is an overview of the Barbarian class in Diablo 4 to help get you started. We outline the strengths, weaknesses, equipment, stats, and some skill build ideas for the beginning of the game.
Introduction
Strengths
- Team Buffer/Utility: Barbarians skill tree can branch out into being a team player at the expense of their personal damage output. Their team utility includes applying and extending vulnerability, extra main resource generation (Mana,Energy, Fury currently),drawing aggro , damage and movement speed buffs for the whole team.
- Tank: Barbarian can become the tank and pillar of the team, as their skill tree includes massive damage reduction, the ability to make barriers, Max hp increase,drawing aggro and slight personal/team healing. When combining this with thorns and certain affixes, the Barbarian becomes deadly a cactus.
- Aspect Options: The barbarians is very flexible with their aspect options as the user has two 2 handed weapons (100% aspect value bonus) and two 1 handed weapons.
- Close N’ Personal: Barbarians have solid CC options such as pulling the enemy towards the barbarian coupled with stunning options, they also have strong concentrated AoE attacks.
- Constant Berserking: With the right build, the Barbarian can have very high uptime on their strong self-buff called berserk, which increases damage by 25% and movement speed by 30%
Weakness
- Main resource management: at the start of encounters Fury starts at 0, and starts to decays at the end of encounters/out of battles. This can hinder the damage of the barbarian at the start of enemy encounters.
- Long Downtimes: Barbarians have good CD reductions built on their kit, however the downtimes become rather long if those conditions are not met, especially when using team utility skills such as shouts and etc when not using aspects that reduce their CD.
- Melee Orientated: Barbarians are most likely gonna take the grunt of the enemy attacks as they need to be up close and personal to do damage. Which can take out Barbarians who are unprepared for certain enemy attacks.
- Early game: Barbarians early game are rather weak due to lack of consistent damage options as Fury generation is still rather slow, with long CD’s as mentioned above.
Equipment
- Helm
- Chest
- Gloves
- Pants
- Boots
- Amulet
- Ring x2
- 2 Handed Weapon (Bludgeoning)
- 2 Handed Weapon (Slashing)
- 1 Handed Weapon
- 1 Handed Weapon
The barbarian is rather unique, including the basic inventory of having gloves, pants, chest, helm, etc etc. Barbarians have the ability to equip 4 weapons. With an exclusive ability to “Swap” between weapons on certain skills which the user can set which can be accessed in the skill assignment menu. The big benefit to having extra weapons is having the ability to have more Aspects and stats as more equipment equals to more stats via subrolls.
Stats
Strength is the primary choice of a core stat for the Barbarian as it provides a boost to skill damage multiplier and Armor. Both Willpower and Dexterity are a good secondary core stat to focus on as Willpower increases resource generations (Fury), improves healing received and overpower damage, while Dexterity increases critical strike chance and dodge chance. We do not recommend investing any affixes/stat lines into Willpower as it only provides a minor boost to Resistance to all elements.
Core stats summary and priority:
- Strength (High Priority): Skill damage, Armor
- Intelligence (Low Priority): Resistance to All Element
- Willpower (Medium Priority): Resource Generation, Healing Received, Overpower Damage
- Dexterity (Medium Priority): Critical Strike Chance, Dodge Chance
