Welcome to the Double Swing Barbarian Leveling Guide! Ever since the first Barbarians ventured into Nightmare Dungeons, Double Swing has been recognized as a solid contender for the honor of fastest speed farming and boss killing. What allows it to keep up with the likes of Whirlwind and Hammer of the Ancients is its unmatched Fury efficiency and raw power. But that's not all - it also boasts invaluable ability to passively keep enemies Vulnerable or keep the Barbarian Berserking. Its flexible utility and unmatched efficiency make Double Swing a strong choice in both the early game and the endgame.
Double Swing Barbarians cruise through Capstone Dungeons and Nightmare Dungeons alike, effortlessly slicing through fields of demons like a ninja in a piñata shop.
Where this build really shines, however, is fighting staggered bosses and stunned elites. When Double Swing hits a stunned or staggered enemy, the entire base cost of Double Swing is refunded. If the Barbarian pops all his cooldowns and stacks all his buffs in that moment, he becomes a gasoline-powered meat-grinder that will not rest until there's nothing left of his enemies.
If this sounds like the right build for you, then sit down and buckle up - or better yet, put on some safety goggles - because it's going to get messy.
This build guide takes you through the Campaign and Early Game up to Level 50. Check out Endgame Guides in our Barbarian Guides section!
- Fury Efficiency
- High DPS
- 100% Berserking Uptime
- Fast Attack
- Small AOE
- Must Use One-Handers
- Codex Aspect
- Burns Fury Quickly
Season 4 - Loot Reborn
In Season 4, the Season Theme revolves around helping out the Iron Wolves. Compared to past themes, this one does not offer any borrowed power as the entire game has been redesigned with new itemization and crafting options, increasing player power substantially across the board. Instead, you can gather reputation similar to the Vampire Bounty Board from Season 2 to unlock rewards that supercharge your leveling journey to 100 with extra items, crafting materials and eventually even a Resplendent Spark to craft an uber unique.
We recommend to follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 4 guide for more information.
Skill Showcase
Double Swing
Double Swing is our main damage dealer that delivers the highest single-target DPS in the early game. When hitting Stunned enemies, it refunds 100% of its Fury cost, making it the most Fury-efficient skill in our arsenal. Best of all, it enables us to achieve 100% uptime on our Berserking bonus, which is both very valuable in the early game and very difficult to achieve with other means until the endgame.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Generators
To start off we have to put 2 points into Basic Skills to unlock the Core Skill section. Bash is a great choice because of its high base damage and added abilty to Stun and Fortify. It's primary purpose, however, is to generate Fury to fuel our main skill.
Double Swing
Double Swing is the centerpiece of this build. It features great synergy with Stuns and Berserking, so we will focus our build on those mechanics. The only drawback of Double Swing is a short range. Fortunately we can alleviate that problem by picking supporting skills that stack up enemies in front of us while also Stunning the enemies and giving us Berserking.
Rallying Cry
Rallying Cry is a Shout skill that is incredibly useful at almost any point in the game. At base level, it gives us a burst of Movement Speed and a large increase to our Fury generation. With additional investment, it provides even more Fury sustain, as well as the Unstoppable buff. While under this effect, we are immune to all forms of Crowd Control.
Charge and Leap
To complement Double Swing, we will use Leap and Charge. In a basic sense, these abilities help us get close to enemies and sometimes help stack them up for us, which makes Double Swing feel very satisfying. To make things even better, we can make these skills Stun the enemy and give us Berserking. Lastly, we use them as a means of swapping weapons to activate our Key Passive.
Use the slider on the bottom to see the Skill progression
Key Passive and Ultimate
We finally pick up our Key Passive skill Walking Arsenal, which has great synergy with Relentless Armsmaster. We activate this ability by assigning each of our skills different weapon types and using them in combat. While all parts of this passive are active, we get a substantial boost to our damage and attack speed, as well as a ton of Fury generation. Iron Maelstrom gives us some huge burst damage that covers a large area, and should be used during tougher encounters to quickly dispatch enemies. All of these things combined drastically speed up our leveling process and help alleviate any resource issues that may be present early on.
Check out our Renown Guide to unlock all your additional rewards efficiently.
Barbarian Arsenal System
The Arsenal System allows Barbarians to use a specific weapon for every attack skill, each granting different Bonuses. The Technique Slot grants us 1 additional Arsenal Power of our choosing for every attack. The Weapon Expertise bonus we get from our currently equipped weapon and the Weapon Expertise bonus we get from the Weapon Technique slot stack with each other.
Unlocking the Arsenal System
The Arsenal System automatically unlocks when you reach Level 5. Opening the Expertise tab (Shift + C) shows all the different weapon types and their bonuses when using them. The Technique Slot unlocks at Level 15 via the Masters of Battle quest in the Dry Steppes which is very easy to complete. Simply walk northeast of town, kill some enemies, then walk west to a cave to slay the beast. After returning to town the Technique Slot will be yours!
How the Arsenal System Impacts Leveling
Weapon Type - Two One-Handed Maces are the best weapons for leveling as a Double Swing Barbarian. One-Handed Mace Expertise gives us a large bonus to our damage against Stunned enemies, and we will frequently Stun enemies with this build. In addition, once we learn Concussion, we should almost always use at least one Mace.
We assign Bash our Two-Handed Bludgeoning weapon to increases its innate effects and to generate more Fury with Endless Fury.
We assign our Two-Handed Slashing weapon to Leap and Charge to inflict Bleed, and to also meet the requirements to fully benefit from Walking Arsenal.
Weapon Technique - Assign the One-Handed Mace Expertise to your Weapon Technique slot because this makes every attack deal up to 20%[x] extra damage to Stunned enemies.
Learn more details in our full Barbarian Arsenal System Guide.
Gear Progression & Stat Priorities
Leveling up in Diablo 4 is similar to most other ARPGs and MMOs - we're at the mercy of what drops. For the most part this means replacing Rares with better Rares all the way up to 50. If you're lucky enough to find some Legendaries or Uniques they can provide a significant power boost (discussed in the next sections). Assuming you don't find any of those, let's look at some key stats to look for along the way:
Hint: Press SHIFT over an item to compare it to what you're wearing!
Weapons
Since Double Swing can only use One-Handed Weapons, that's the only slot where DPS matters. Prioritize high weapon DPS above everything else on your One-Handed Weapons, but make sure you always have at least one Mace equipped.
If you have multiple weapons with the same DPS prioritize the one with the best combination of the following affixes: Strength, Damage, Maximum Life. On Two-Handed Weapons, try to prioritize Strength, Resource Cost Reduction and Fury on Kill.
Only upgrade the weapons you're using for Double Swing at the at the Blacksmith and socket them with Chipped Sapphire.
Armor
Armor typically grants us Defense and Utility stats, except the Gloves, which offer a multitude of Offensive options. Here are the important stats to look for:
- Helm: Strength, Maximum Life, Fury per Second, Cooldown Reduction
- Chest Armor: Strength, Maximum Life, Fury per Second, Armor
- Gloves: Ranks to Double Swing, Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance, Strength
- Pants: Ranks to Bash, Strength, Maximum Life, Armor
- Boots: Ranks to Charge, Movement Speed, Fury per Second, Strength, Maximum Life
Jewelry
Jewelry provides powerful Offensive and Defensive stats that help us on our leveling journey. Pay close attention to the rolls as higher leveled pieces aren't always better:
- Amulet: Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, Movement Speed, Cooldown Reduction, Fury on Kill
- Rings: Critical Strike Chance, Fury on Kill, Attack Speed, Strength
Read more about itemization in our Damage Explained, Defense Explained, and Stats Explained articles.
Legendary Aspects
The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary. For leveling, there are a few Aspects that are particularly impactful on this build and should be obtained as soon as possible:
Top Codex Legendary Aspects
| Aspect | Dungeon |
| 1. Relentless Armsmaster | Calibel's Mine - Scosglen |
Learn everything about the Codex of Power here.
Helpful Legendary Aspects
If you're lucky enough to find a Legendary while leveling, chances are it'll be an upgrade for you and you should equip it immediately. However, they are not all created equal, and some of them can accelerate your journey tremendously. Let's look at the top powers you could find and how to take advantage of them.
- Windlasher is designed specifically for Dust Devil builds that use Double Swing.
- Fierce Winds is one of the best aspects for any Dust Devil build in endgame.
- Devilish is another good aspect for Dust Devil builds.
- Ancestral Charge turns Charge into one of the best abilities in the game. With this Legendary Aspect equipped, if we have both Iron Maelstrom and Charge on our skill bar, we use Charge. Sometimes it takes longer than the cooldown just to find a monster that survived.
- Brawler - in case you are worried that having our strongest ability hit the entire screen every five seconds won't be enough power, this Legendary Aspect is for you. If even a single enemy dies to Charge, it sets off a chain reaction and every enemy we touch turns to dust.
- Veteran Brawler, while not as powerful as the previous two aspects, is also very useful. The only down-side is that you have to hit things with a Core Skill to benefit from it, which can be difficult when Charge leaves nothing but ashes in its wake.
- Bear Clan Berserker helps to solve Charge's only weakness: it has a cooldown.
How To Level
In Diablo 4 you level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, or interacting with the Seasonal mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are made equal.
Campaign Leveling
- For your first character in Diablo 4, completing the Campaign provides the best gameplay experience and gives you access to key unlocks like your Mount.
- If you don't have your Mount, you MUST progress the Campaign until you complete the quest Donan's Favor at the start of Act 4.
- After obtaining your Mount you can skip the remainder of the campaign at any time.
- The Campaign is the slowest way to level, but it's worth experiencing the Campaign and Diablo 4's storyline at least once.
- To play Seasonal Content you need to have completed or skipped the Campaign.
Seasonal / Alt Leveling
- Complete the Seasonal questline, progress your Seasonal Journey to unlock Legendary Aspects and work on your Seasonal powers.
- If your account is below Rank 5 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
- This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
- Complete the Dungeons needed for any Legendary Aspects from your Codex of Power.
- From level 1-50 you should focus on getting experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or complete Gathering Legion Events.
- After level 50 you need to balance leveling up, Glyph Experience and participating in Endgame activities like Helltide, Tree of Whispers and Bosses. The fastest experience possible after reaching World Tier 3 is completing Nightmare dungeons with monsters exactly 10 levels above your current level. Check out our Nightmare Dungeon Tier List for the best Nightmare Dungeon layouts!
- Around level 30-45 you should move to World Tier 3.
- Around level 50-65 you should move to World Tier 4.
- Alternatively: Get boosted by a friend to World Tier 4 then leech experience/loot and Glyph exp (post 50), in Nightmare dungeons.
- Find the most efficient way of leveling your character in detail in our Speed Leveling Guide.
Leveling Tips and Tricks
Let's look at some tips and tricks to remember when leveling up!
- Level Up Your Potion. You need to farm materials to upgrade your character's potion.
- Make sure you collect all materials as you explore Sanctuary, especially Gallowvine which is used in many Elixir recipes!
- Compare your Items... Literally. Press Shift over an item in your inventory to compare it to what you're wearing.
- This makes it easy to determine what is and isn't an upgrade.
- Don't Imprint Your Best Aspect Onto Your Weapon. The most critical piece of gear while leveling up is your weapon, which gets replaced constantly.
- It is a better idea to put your best Offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which can be used for a long time.
- Sacred is just better. Between level 30 and 50 you're able to beat the Capstone Dungeon and enter World Tier 3, you gain access to powerful Sacred items which have higher item power and better stats. Getting a Sacred weapon significantly improves your farming speed.
- The same happens with World Tier 4 and Ancestral gear.
Summary
- The Double Swing Barbarian build is one of the smoothest leveling builds. It deals the highest single-target DPS, has the highest Fury-efficiency, and can give us 100% uptime on Berserking or Vulnerable.
- Its only weakness is a short range and small area of effect, which we will solve with supporting abilies like Charge and Iron Maelstrom, as well as Dust Devils from various Aspects.
- Double Swing is uniquely positioned to benefit the most from recent buffs to both Berserking and Charge.
- No Barbarian build is better at early-game boss fights. Double Swing is an excellent choice if you are trying to tackle a Capstone Dungeon at low level.
Credits
Written by Slothmaster
Contributions by Snail