Diablo 4: Season 7 - Barbarian Leveling Guide

Diablo 4 has officially started Season 7, and because of how the seasonal system works, you need to start your character from Level 1 again, work your way back to max level, and earn Paragon levels after that. Naturally, this can be time-consuming, and leveling a character in a game can feel tedious if you've already hit the max level one or more times. Luckily, Diablo 4 makes it a smooth process with seasonal characters, and Witchcraft Powers help boost your strength.

Barbarian is one of several classes you can pick to play in Diablo 4, which can receive seasonal changes. It's perfect if you like to be in the middle of the action since you're primarily a melee fighter. Then, you have a fair amount of durability alongside your attacks, which helps you stay alive through combat, as battles can be brutal when you play on higher difficulties and encounter elites and bosses. This means you want a balance between your attack power and your durability for the quickest leveling experience, and Barbarians have plenty of abilities and passives that help.

Best Barbarian Build For Season 7

Leveling With An AoE Focus

You can focus your build around a few abilities for a barbarian in Diablo 4 when you're leveling. For your basic ability, you want to go with Lunging Strike. Since Barbarians use Fury instead of a resource like Mana, which starts full and depletes as you cast, you need your basic ability to build up Fury for other skills. With the current state of Diablo 4, Lunging Strike is a key part of the best Barbarian build, which is excellent for both leveling and endgame content since it gives you mobility and Fury generation.

Using Lunging Strike in both offensive and defensive ways makes it an excellent tool for leveling a Barbarian, and you can easily stick on any Treasure Goblins you come across. Staying on enemies and continuously using your Lunging Strike against them also means you can use your core ability more.

Next, you have the star of this Barbarian build: Upheaval. Upheaval is an ability that consumes Fury and deals damage in a cone in front of you. Your goal is to use gear and passives to generate as much Fury as possible so that you can use Upheaval as often as possible. This makes you an AoE powerhouse that can face challenges from the beginning to the end of the game. Then, you want to use your Shouts to help with both damage and Fury generation.

After you have Upheaval, you get to pick your Shouts. First, you take Rallying Cry and War Cry. Rallying Cry boosts your movement speed and Fury generation, which makes it good to use first among your Shout options. War Cry increases your damage dealt, so this is an ability you want to save for when you have a good amount of Fury ready and use it when you're against elites and bosses. The nice part is that cooldowns for your Shout abilities aren't too long, so you can usually use them multiple times during each big encounter.

Aside from Rallying Cry and War Cry, you want to consider rounding up your abilities with Challenging Shout, but you don't have to go this route to make the build work. The bonus is that Challenging Shout gives you damage reduction while it's active, but you also draw the enemies towards you since it's a taunt. If you prefer more movement options than another Shout, you could use an ability like Leap here instead. However, Challenging Shout is generally considered the better choice since you get the extra durability, and having a Lunging Strike with Swiftness is already enough mobility.

Finally, take Wrath of the Berserker as your ultimate ability. When you use it, you gain increased damage and movement speed from Berserking, and you get Unstoppable, which removes and prevents you from being affected by movement-impairing abilities. After that, you have options to improve your abilities and passives that you can add to your build. For these, you might feel like you need more durability and take options like Pit Fighter, or you might want Swiftness for movement speed.

Best Gear & Aspects For Barbarians In Season 7

Bringing It All Together

For your weapon, you want to focus on two-handed weapons, which is where you'll do the most damage with the Upheaval build. But with your gear, you want to look for Diablo 4 items that increase Fury generation, max health, movement speed, and Upheaval damage. Items great for this build include options like Hellhammer for its Upheaval buffs, Banished Lord's Talisman for Overpower buffs, and Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty for Berserking buffs.

Additionally, you want to pick up specific aspects that are better than others. While you have some freedom with which aspects you can mix and match for your gear, you want the Bold Chieftain's Aspect for an Upheaval build since it helps you use Shouts more often. The other aspect that you need for this build is the Aspect of Sundered Ground, as it guarantees that your next Upheaval will Overpower enemies with a 20-second cooldown. For temporary boosts, the Elixir of Advantage is a great option, as it increases your attack speed.

Compared to the rest of the build, gems are the most straightforward. Use emeralds in your weapons for critical strikes, rubies in your armor for increased strength, and skulls in your jewelry for an armor buff. When you're leveling, you'll go through gear pieces fast enough that you can use lesser gems if you don't have better ones instead of returning to town, but then you'll use Grand Emeralds, Grand Rubies, and Grand Skulls when you're at the max level. With that, you'll be ready to dominate demons as a Barbarian in Diablo 4's Season Of Witchcraft.

If you need any tips on itemization, like optimizing your gear and items for max Fury generation Upheaval damage how to quickly get Diablo 4 gold, or perhaps enhancing your durability for harder encounters, I can dive into that as well. How's your build coming along?