Double Swing Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Diablo 4 Double Swing Barbarian Endgame Build Guide! This a hard-hitting, fast-paced melee build that excels at all content the game has to offer. Its small hit zone may seem underwhelming at first... but once the attack speed buffs start stacking and the Twisters start swirling, Double Swing quickly becomes a deadly force - laying waste to screens of enemies with its hit-and-run style of play, while also making short work of any Bosses that try to stand in the way.
For skills, we focus on abilities that enable us to keep our damage, defense, mobility and Fury levels high. Rallying Cry and War Cry are great choices for this style of gameplay; they passively provide strong buffs to us and have reliable uptime. Additionally, Wrath of the Berserker gives us a massive damage boost and resource regeneration, with some healthy Movement Speed to go along with them. Ground Stomp helps keep our Ultimate off cooldown, and also provides us with additional damage from the Earthquake aftershocks it creates. Lastly, Rupture showers us in blood and gives us an extremely potent Attack Speed injection.
With that said, let's not let this introduction slow us down any longer as we slice and dice our way through this Double Swing Endgame Guide!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Barbarian Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Lunging Strike is required to advance the skill tree. Aside from that, there are benefits to using it in combat - primarily as a Fury generator when needed during early progression. It is not used in the final version of the build.
- Double Swing is our main Core ability. It comes packed with some great utility by providing us a way to constantly refresh our Berserking status any time it is used. Against Stunned enemies, it even becomes spammable because of Enhanced Double Swing. Probably most importantly, it's one of our main ways of spawning Dust Devils.
- Rallying Cry gives us a substantial Movement Speed boost, Unstoppable, Fortify, and increases our Fury generation while active.
- Ground Stomp does several things. Its primary uses are helping reset our Ultimate, and most importantly, spawning Earthquakes. Additionally, it's great for taking advantage of Enhanced Double Swing since it always inflicts Stun on normal enemies.
- War Cry is typically our primary way of initiating the Berserking status, and aside from that, it functions as a generic damage multiplier while we are under its effect.
- Rupture is used for an attack speed boost and as a source of guaranteed Overpower, which activates the Decimator paragon node and Warpath passive skill.
- Wrath of the Berserker is just a great skill to fall back on when more damage is needed, especially against Bosses.
Skill Rotation
- Generally, always try to initiate encounters while under the effects of Berserking and Shout buffs.
- Ground Stomp groups of enemies to Stun them and create Earthquakes.
- Earthquakes are one of our main damage sources; they trigger the Earthquake Aspect and also spawn Dust Devils via Force of Nature.
- Proceed to shred enemies with Double Swing and fill most of the screen with Dust Devils that annihilate everything in their wake. Each cast of this skill also extends the Berserking status, even if it does not hit a target. Keep this in mind if it is ever about to fall off.
- Use Rupture for an Attack Speed injection and activation of Decimator and Warpath. This should be used situationally, and is especially useful in longer fights for maximizing damage.
- Wrath of the Berserker is always in your pocket for when it's needed - always try to make sure it's back up in time for Boss fights. Strategic Ground Stomp helps keep it off cooldown.
- Cast Shouts whenever they are off cooldown to refresh their buffs and to spawn more Dust Devils from Fierce Winds.
- Earthquakes from the Tec Rune passively generate additional Dust Devils automatically thanks to Force of Nature.
- Against Bosses: The gameplay is mostly the same, except some attention must be paid to keeping Wrath of the Berserker up. This means you typically want to save Ground Stomp and cast it once immediately after casting Wrath of the Berserker, and then once again while it's still active. This reduces its cooldown by 8 seconds; with additional Cooldown Reduction rolls on gear, it should have permanent uptime.
Arsenal System
The Arsenal System allows us to use a specific weapon for every attack skill, with each weapon granting different bonuses. We also have what is called the Technique Slot. With this, we can use any weapon of our choosing to always reap the benefit from, regardless of which weapon we have equipped.
For this purpose of this guide, the One-Handed Sword Expertise and One-Handed Mace Expertise are our main weapon choices since we are dual-wielding. The first offers us a way to help offset our Fury consumption, and to better utilize Ramaladni's Magnum Opus when it is acquired in the endgame. Our second choice has great utility when used against Stunned enemies, offering us a generic damage multiplier as well synergy with other damage sources such as the Wallop passive.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build has high Vulnerable uptime when using the gear affix "Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable." Unfortunately, its secondary effect does not apply here - the limitation of the Technique Slot is that it does not allow us to benefit from the second bonus that is normally gained from reaching rank 10 with any weapon expertise.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Arsenal System Guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.
Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.
Double Swing Barbarian Endgame Paragon
Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.
Placeholder Glyphs
- Ire
- Replaced by Challenger once our Damage while Berserking reaches 450%.
- Ambidextrous
- Used in Pit Pushing variant.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Twister
- Ire
- Rumble
- Territorial
- Challenger
Level 21
- Twister
- Rumble
- Territorial
- Challenger
- Wrath
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Double Swing Barbarian focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Lith + Tec - While in combat, this Runeword constantly spawns Earthquakes. Thanks to Force of Nature, this is where a large amount of our damage comes from.
- Tam + Zec - This combination helps keep our Wrath of the Berserker off cooldown. Having 100% uptime on this skill is important to maintain the large multiplicative damage boost it provides.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Bac / Cir- Alternatives for Tam.
- Gar - Helps cover gear options when trying to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- Ohm - Gives us a way to cast War Cry without having it on our skill bar. For Barbarians, this Rune scales with any additional ranks we have in the skill tree or on gear.
- Lum - Helps with Fury sustain.
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.
Hired: Raheir
He has a lot to offer us from a defensive standpoint. Skills like Valiance and Bastion help protect us from heavy hits and grant Unstoppable. Bastion also works in tandem with Ground Slam to provide some very strong offensive buffs with Inspiration. Lastly, he provides a pretty decent boost to all of our Resistances, which can help compensate for low rolls on gear.
Reinforcement: Aldkin
He serves as a nice panic button for dangerous encounters by casting Field of Languish, which slows enemies and reduces their damage.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Double Swing Barbarian to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.
Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds
- 80%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 70%+ Chance for Dust Devils to Cast Twice
- 90%+ Dust Devil Size
- 70%+ Chance for Earthquakes to Cast Twice
- 80%+ Earthquake Duration
- 50%+ Attack Speed
- 450%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 500%+ Damage to Close Enemies (Force of Nature)
- 2500+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 10,000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
- 200+ Maximum Fury
- 60%+ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Double Swing Barbarian, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Double Swing Barbarian from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional Aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- Note: If arriving here after following the Double Swing Barbarian Leveling Guide, it's perfectly fine to continue using the Starter variant described in that guide if there are no issues. There is often more than one way to play a build successfully; feel free to choose or even combine ideas from both to customize the experience!
- During early progression, Armor & Resistances should be prioritized in order to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% to all Resistances and it's recommended to keep both capped at all times; this means having a value of 1,000 for Armor and 70% for each Resistance. As masterworking levels and Paragon points are unlocked, character power naturally scales into the higher difficulties. As this happens, most of these stats can start being replaced with utility or offensive-oriented ones.
- Focus on acquiring and improving the Earthquake and Dust Devil themed Aspects, as these contribute the most to our damage output:
- Fierce Winds
- Devilish
- Windlasher
- Earthquake
- Bul-Kathos
- Juggernaut's and Steadfast Berserker's are both extremely important, especially at this progression point. The former is very helpful for reaching Armor cap, while the latter is a worry-free way of keeping Fortify.
- Bold Chieftain's helps keep our Shouts off cooldown so we can benefit from them as much as possible.
- Inner Calm is a great generic multiplier that increases our damage, and Accelerating gives us some Attack Speed early on when we're feeling a little slow.
- Giant Strides helps keep our Leap off cooldown, which improves our mobility and lets us create more Earthquakes via Bul-Kathos.
- Ghostwalker is used in tandem with Rallying Cry and Charge for a large Movement Speed increase.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As gear is upgraded to Ancestral and more masterworking levels and Paragon points are unlocked, we can focus on replacing Armor and Resistance rolls with more desirable stats; however, staying capped at 1,000 Armor and 70% for all Resistances should always remain a priority for the current difficulty level.
- Ugly Bastard Helm is an incredibly strong item that gives some damage reduction from ranks of Aggressive Resistance, as well as a hefty damage multiplier via its Unique effect. The Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction is extremely helpful for improving uptime on our Ultimate.
- Tibault's Will works in combination with Rallying Cry to provide a decent damage boost, as well as a fairly high amount of damage reduction while Unstoppable.
- Rakanoth's Wake is a solid choice for patching up Resistances, but its main draw is the large amount of Cooldown Reduction it gives. This stat should be the priority, since we have a number of skills that we want to stay off cooldown as much as possible.
- Ramaladni's Magnum Opus is an item that gives us a huge damage multiplier that is based on our Maximum Fury. For this reason, we prioritize this stat on gear and through other means, such as the Core Reserve and Hungering Fury paragon nodes.
- Fists of Fate, when rolled well, is a 50% damage multiplier on average and provides a lot of good stats along with it. The Lucky Hit-based Crowd Controls are great for locking down enemies and staggering Bosses. The high amount of Lucky Hit Chance this item provides also ensures we have good Vulnerable uptime from Pressure Point and the "Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable" roll on our Jewelry.
- We take Rupture at this point for its Attack Speed boost as well as Warpath and Decimator activation.
- Wrath of the Berserker is also taken at this point, since our gear choices allow it to have significant uptime.
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- Shroud of False Death is great here because it gives us a sizeable amount of damage and defense just from its +1 to All Passives implicit modifier. It even buffs Unconstrained by turning it into a 1.95x damage multiplier instead of 1.6x.
- Ring of Starless Skies is a rather obvious choice; it gives a bunch of Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, and a large damage multiplier that is very simple to keep active.
- We don't really have room for Leap-themed Aspects while using Mythics, so we drop it in favor of War Cry for a 21% damage multiplier.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
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Gear & Skills
- For a setup that is focused purely on speed, Harlequin Crest is a great choice for the sheer amount of Cooldown Reduction it gives to all of our skills, especially ones that keep us mobile like Charge and Leap.
- Tyrael's Might is good here since it solves Resistances and damage reduction mostly on its own, and its divine barrage is great for picking off weaker enemies that are out of range.
- Yen's Blessing gives us essentially permanent uptime on a Shout of our choosing, since it will auto-cast it periodically when it is on cooldown. It can occasionally conflict with Rupture, but we have enough Cooldown Reduction to make this generally a non-issue.
This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
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Gear & Skills
- The Grandfather is used in this setup to help maximize damage. The increase to Maximum Fury helps us scale Ramaladni's Magnum Opus, and its Unique effect serves as a permanent 2x damage multiplier since we have 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- Challenging Shout is taken here for some extra damage reduction.
- We don't prioritize Damage to Close Enemies in this setup because Tec is our only source of Earthquakes, and these are not affected by the damage bonus given by Force of Nature.
- Elixirs and Incenses:
- Elixir of Resourcefulness II.
- Chorus of War.
- Soothing Spices.
- Ancient Times.
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Why am I running out of Fury?
How do I assign skills to the correct weapon?
Mechanics
Learn about the mechanical details which makes the build tick.
Coming Soon
Summary
The Double Swing Barbarian is a fast-paced powerhouse that excels in most content. Here's why it's a great build:
- Permanent Berserking uptime thanks to Furious Double Swing.
- Self-sufficient Fury costs from Stuns thanks to Enhanced Double Swing.
- Permanent Wrath of the Berserker uptime with Cooldown Reduction-focused gear.
- High mobility when using Leap and Charge.
- High Attack Speed with help from Warrior's Rupture.
- Great area of effect and damage via Dust Devils and Earthquakes, with multiple ways to generate them.
Credits
Written by snail