Diablo 4’s Barbarian can be tricky to level, with most builds requiring endgame talents and skills to become fully optimal. The Whirlwind build is not only the strongest choice once maxed out, but it also gives Barbarian the best chance at quickly leveling up to max.
RELATED: Diablo 4: Which Class Should You Play?
Focusing on dishing out constant AoE damage while maintaining a variety of powerful buffs, Whirlwind Barbarian is easy to play and fun to progress with. This guide will teach you how to effectively level as a Whirlwind Barbarian. It will cover Active and Passive skill priority alongside your best Expertise, Stats, and Aspects.
THEGAMER VIDEO OF THE DAYSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Active Skill Priority
Whirlwind Barb’s active leveling skills will differ slightly from the full endgame setup, but you shouldn’t worry about needing to relearn the build, as the majority of skills are easy to make full use of. Bearing that in mind, here are the six actives you want to talent into for your leveling journey.
Lunging Strike Basic Skill
Your first ability point should be spent on Lunging Strike. This basic ability will allow you to constantly jump between enemies, providing you with some excellent mobility and Fury Generation. The damage is nothing to write home about, but for a low-point investment, Lunging Strike does everything you need a basic skill to do.
- Lunging Strike x1 > Enhanced Lunging Strike > Battle Lunging Strike.
Upgrading your Lunging Strike will allow it to heal you for a small amount upon hitting a Healthy enemy and adds on a small Bleed effect, both synergising nicely with your build.
At max level, you can start offloading Lunging Strike in favor of a defensive ability such as Iron Skin. However, you will most likely only make the switch when you can infinitely sustain Whirlwinding.
Whirlwind
This is your Core Skill, and the entirety of this build is focused around maximising the utility and damage output of this ability. A spinning attack that constantly drains Fury, Whirlwind excels at cleaving down multiple targets while allowing you to constantly stay on the move.
- Whirlwind x5 > Enhanced Whirlwind > Furious Whirlwind.
Upgrading your Whirlwind will allow it to refund a portion of Fury spent when hitting enemies, alongside applying a Bleed effect when using a Slashing Weapon. Due to this augment, you will want to select a Two-Handed Slashing Weapon as this skill’s active weapon.
As your best skill, you will want to quickly level up Whirlwind to its maximum level of five. Other skills only serve to supplement this ability, and your priority is to optimise your uptime.
Rallying Cry
To supplement your two primary abilities, you will start to pick up several Shout skills. These are an essential part of a Whirlwind Barbarian’s toolkit, and your eventual goal will be to keep them up permanently.
Rallying Cry is one of the best shouts, granting you and nearby allies increased Movement Speed and Resource Generation. As a resource-hungry class, high Rallying Cry uptime is pivotal in allowing you to constantly Whirlwind.
- Rallying Cry x5 > Enhanced Rallying Cry > Tactical Rallying Cry.
Upgrading your Rallying Cry will increase Resource Generation and make you Unstoppable while active.
You can use shouts during your Whirlwind without canceling its effect, so don’t be afraid to spam them on cooldown.
War Cry
Another core shout skill you will want to pick up is War Cry. A simple yet effective ability, War Cry will grant you and nearby allies a damage increase while active.
- War Cry x1 > Enhanced War Cry > Power War Cry.
Your War Cry will eventually grant you Berserking for a few seconds on use, further adding to your Fury gain, and can increase the damage buff depending on if there are at least six enemies nearby.
As your shout skills affect both you and your allies, Whirlwind Barbarian is a great addition to groups, bringing some excellent buffs and utility to the team.
Leap Into Challenging Shout
While the end game build sees you taking yet another shout in the form of Challenging Shout, for leveling you will find more use out of taking Leap. A basic jumping attack that generates Fury, Leap adds to your mobility and resources, both vital components of a quick level.
- Leap x1 > Enhanced Leap > Power Leap.
With both upgrades, Leap can either be used for pure mobility, with a reduced cooldown if it does not hit an enemy, or to generate 40 Fury upon initiating combat with one.
When you are nearing maximum level and have access to better Fury generation, you will typically want to switch out Leap for Challenging Shout. This shout skill taunts all enemies in a large radius and grants you a large damage reduction.
- Challenging Shout x5 > Enhanced Challenging Shout > Tactical Challenging Shout.
With both augments, Challenging Shout will grant you temporary maximum life and Fury generation when hit. Both of these synergise perfectly with how Barbarian plays, so be sure to use this skill as often as possible.
In group content Challenging Shout will allow you to take on the role of a Tank, drawing aggro away from your friends and focusing their enmity onto you. Be sure to try and stack them together, both for your Whirlwind and the group’s abilities.
Call Of The Ancients Into Wrath Of The Berserker
While Whirlwind is one of the best end-game specs, it can have a down period during leveling. You can often find that you don’t have the Fury to Whirlwind all the time, leaving your damage somewhat to be desired.
Thankfully your first choice of Ultimate is here to help. Call of the Ancients summons three immortal warriors to aid you in combat and will effectively carry you throughout the leveling process. The spirits do monstrous damage, and with the augments, CotA will be your go-to cooldown for large groups of enemies.
- Call of the Ancients > Prime Call of the Ancients > Supreme Call of the Ancients.
While CotA is active, you will receive a variety of benefits, including increased Fury Generation, damage, and Movement Speed.
When your Whirlwind starts to come online, you can start thinking about swapping out CotA for Wrath of the Berserker. Essentially an extremely powerful shout, this skill will give you everything a Barbarian could ever want. Damage, Movement Speed, Fury Generation, Berserking, Unstoppable, and buffs to Berserk all combine to make this ability a great cooldown.
- Wrath of the Berserker > Prime Wrath of the Berserker > Supreme Wrath of the Berserker.
Call of the Ancients is your key ability while leveling, so make sure to use it often to give you a burst window of Whirlwinding.
Passive Skill Priority
After picking up the majority of your active skills and improvements, you should look to round out your Whirlwind build with some key passives.
These not only help you to further empower your active abilities but also serve to help keep you alive.
|
Passive Name
|
Ranks Leveled
|
Effect
|
|
Pressure Point
|
|
- Your skills have a chance to apply Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
|
|
Booming Voice
|
|
- Increases your Shout skill duration.
|
|
Guttural Yell
|
|
- Your Shout skills cause enemies to deal less damage for 5 seconds.
|
|
Raid Leader
|
|
- Your Shouts heal allies for a percentage of their maximum health.
|
|
Aggressive Resistance
|
|
- Damage reduction while Berserking.
|
|
Prolific Fury
|
|
- Increased Fury Generation while Berserking.
|
|
Pit Fighter
|
|
- Increased Damage to close enemies and reduced damage taken from distant ones.
|
|
Hamstring
|
|
- Applies a Slow effect to enemies afflicted by your Bleeds.
|
|
Heavy Handed
|
|
- Increased Critical Strike Damage when using a Two-Handed weapon.
|
|
Tempered Fury
|
|
|
|
Invigorating Fury
|
|
- Heal for a portion of your maximum health after spending 100 Fury.
|
|
Unbridled Rage
|
|
- Massively increases the damage of your Core Skills, but also doubles their Fury cost.
|
Your Specialisation passive in Unbridled Rage. An extremely important talent, this will amp up your Whirlwind damage but make it noticeably more difficult to keep using the spell.
Without specific Legendary powers or Fury Cost reduction stats, you will find yourself running out of Fury a lot, making you even more reliant on Call of the Ancients.
Expertise Priority
Barbarian is a pretty simple class when it comes to its unique specialisation. The Expertise mechanic grants you different passives depending on what weapon type you are currently using.
Using a specific weapon will level up your experience with it, strengthening this bonus. At level ten, you will unlock a new passive for each weapon.
- Once you have completed your Masters of Battle class quest in the Dry Steppes, you will unlock access to the Technique slot, which will grant you the passive bonus of a weapon even if you are not actively using it.
The choice for Whirlwind Barb is between Two-Handed Sword and Two-Handed Axe.
The Two-Handed Sword will give all your attacks a Bleed effect, making every tick of Whirlwind even more valuable.
While this is an amazingly strong choice, your perfect build will see you using a Two-Handed Sword as your primary weapon. This frees up the Technique slot for the Two-Handed Axe, which increases damage dealt to Vulnerable targets, another amazing passive.
Due to how the gear works during leveling, try to prioritise whatever weapon gives you the highest DPS and stats. You can then switch your Technique accordingly, using the Two-Handed Sword passive if you are not currently wielding one to keep applying Bleeds, but otherwise sticking with the Two-Handed Axe.
Stat Priority
The Whirlwind build is relatively simple to gear for while leveling, requiring some stacking of easily accessible bonuses.
Your primary stat will be Strength, so try to always prioritise items with big main stat increases, as the higher Armor will also provide a large defensive benefit.
Your major stats to look out for are:
- Vulnerable Damage
- Critical Strike Chance
- Critical Strike Damage
- Cooldown Reduction
- Fury Cost Reduction
- Maximum Fury
These skills will provide the core of your Whirlwind build, but while leveling, you will tend to take whatever you find, so don’t worry about holding onto lower-level gear just to try and min-max every stat.
Often the higher the item level, the stronger the item, and you will have plenty of time in the endgame to fully optimise your stats.
It can be worth using certain Legendaries over better-statted items if the passive effect is strong enough. Aspects such as Grasping Whirlwind can be extremely effective in speeding up your AoE clearing, and you should make sure to extract these powers at the Occultist so you can upgrade later pieces.
For your gems, you will want to search for three specific types:
- Socket Sapphires into your Armor pieces, as your high uptime on Fortified will provide a lot of extra defensive benefits.
- Place Skulls into your Jewelry, as Armor scales extremely well throughout the game.
- For your Weapon try to use Emeralds, as it will grant you a large Critical Damage boost against Vulnerable targets, especially strong if you are playing in a group.
Best Aspects
While obtaining all of your best Aspects while leveling can be tricky, certain ones can be farmed from specific dungeons and added to your Codex of Power.
|
Aspect Name
|
Power
|
Dungeon Name
|
Zone
|
|
Protector
|
- Barrier when damaging Elite enemies.
|
Lost Archives
|
Fractured Peaks
|
|
Dire Whirlwind
|
- Stacking Crit Chance on Whirlwind.
|
Garan Hold
|
Scosglen
|
|
Ghostwalker
|
- Increased Movement Speed while Unstoppable.
|
Broken Bulwark
|
Scosglen
|
|
Edgemaster’s
|
- Increased Skill damage depending on your current Primary Resource level.
|
Oldstones
|
Scosglen
|
|
Echoing Fury
|
- Your Shouts generate Fury every second while active.
|
Siroccos Caverns
|
Kehjistan
|
|
Disobedience
|
- Stacking Armor upon dealing damage.
|
Halls of the Damned
|
Kehjistan
|
|
Berserk Ripping
|
- Deal Additional Bleed damage while Berserking.
|
Mournfield
|
Dry Steppes
|
|
Numbing Wrath
|
- Fury generated while at maximum Fury grants Fortify.
|
Heathen’s Keep
|
Hawezar
|
Other randomly acquired Aspects that will benefit you are:
- Bold Chieftain’s
- Grasping Whirlwind
- Limitless Rage
- Conceited
There is no guarantee of acquiring all of your best powers while leveling, so just try to grab whatever you can, as even a few of them will provide an excellent power increase and greatly speed up your pace.
NEXT: Diablo 4: How To Unlock Mounts
