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 pile on some Attack Speed and a way to group enemies and Double Swing can make quick work of any surrounding opposition.
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. Using Rupture boosts our Attack Speed to extreme levels, while Call of the Ancients gives us a great damage boost and serves as our main source of Fury sustain; with the Zec socketed, we essentially have an infinite Fury pool that allows us to relentlessly rip our foes to shreds!
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.
Boss Powers
Season 8 is the Season of Belial's Return. It allows you to tap into Boss Powers obtained from World, Event, and Lair Bosses throughout Sanctuary. The new seasonal mechanic, Apparition Incursions, is available at any difficulty level and gives you the opportunity to unlock a subset of these powers very early on. Various Apparition Monsters appear in these special timed events throughout Sanctuary. Defeating these monsters spawns 1 of 10 Apparition Bosses to hunt you down and defeating them grants you their Boss Power. After defeating the first Boss, continue the event for a chance to fight a second Apparition Boss, after which Belial himself joins the fray.
There are 24 Boss Powers available and the first time you defeat one of these Bosses, you claim their power for yourself. Boss Powers each have Main and Modifier effects to boost your build. 13 are available in all difficulties (from Apparition Incursions and World Bosses), while 11 can only be acquired in Torment 1 difficulty or higher from Lair Bosses and Lilith. You can equip 1 Main Power and 3 Modifiers, and all powers can be upgraded up to Rank 20, increasing the potency of both the Main and Modifier effect. You use Spectral Ash to upgrade these powers, dropped from Apparition Incursions and by defeating any Bosses. Boss Powers also scale with your Paragon Level, growing stronger as you progress.
Best-in-Slot Boss Powers
Main Power
- Grigoire's Lightning Square - A Lightning-themed Power; it's only really needed as a way to activate our other supporting Powers, which is easily accomplished by just spamming Double Swing.
Modifiers
- Blackmailer's Sabotage - Great defensive option that also enables us to effectively use the Neo + Zec combo, which keeps our Call of the Ancients up permanently.
- Belial's Eye Beams - This is the Overpower... power... so it's naturally a great fit for the build, as that is the type of damage that we prioritize.
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - One of the best sources of multiplicative damage when it comes to Boss Powers. Works decently well with this build due to having reliable Vulnerable uptime from Enhanced Double Swing.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - A good damage multiplier that relies on Crowd Control Duration to function. Decent option in the early game before the build is fully geared.
- Torusk's Rage - Gives a decent Attack Speed boost. The build naturally caps this breakpoint with good gear, so it's only useful until fully geared. Requires a single Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies roll on gear.
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 or 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 Vulnerable and Berserking any time it is used.
- Rallying Cry provides us multiple buffs, with the most important ones being Resource Generation, Movement Speed, and the invaluable Unstoppable effect.
- Challenging Shout boosts our defenses even higher with its massive damage reduction and health increase (which increases our Overpower damage), while also Taunting any monsters in range.
- 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.
- Call of the Ancients is our Fury battery; that is to say, it's the primary reason why we are able to constantly spam Double Swing. Keeping this active is a top priority when playing the build.
Skill Rotation
- Generally, always try to initiate encounters while under the effects of Berserking and Shout buffs.
- Proceed to shred enemies with Double Swing!
- In order to never run out of Fury, Call of the Ancients must be active at all times. The bulk of its Cooldown Reduction comes from simply equipping Arreat's Bearing. The rest comes from the Zec Rune, which constantly resets cooldowns while we have a Barrier from Blackmailer's Sabotage.
- Use Rupture as an Attack Speed injection as needed, and to benefit from Bleed-related damage bonuses.
- Vortex triggers naturally from the Kry Rune just by being in combat and helps group up enemies - a huge boon that really helps out with our mediocre area of effect.
(Mythic)
Note: Footage is from Season 8 PTR and intended for demonstration purposes only. Does not necessarily indicate the strength of the build in the current patch.
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 Mace Expertise is one of our main weapon choices since we are dual-wielding - it gives us a 10% damage multiplier against Stunned enemies and access to other Mace-related buffs, like the Wallop passive and Crusher Glyph. The One-Handed Sword Expertise is our other weapon choice since we're using Doombringer, a very powerful item for Overpower builds.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build has high Vulnerable uptime thanks to Enhanced Double Swing. 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 system in our full Barbarian Class Overview.
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
- Rumble and Twister
- These are only used in the early stages of the build, and are replaced by Wrath and Crusher when swapping out of the Starter setup.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Rumble
- Ire
- Twister
- Challenger
- Ambidextrous
Level 21
- Challenger
- Ire
- Wrath
- Ambidextrous
- Crusher
Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.
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
- Igni + Kry - While in combat, this Runeword periodically casts Vortex to group up enemies for us.
- Neo + Zec - This Runeword helps reset Call of the Ancients while we have a Barrier from Blackmailer's Sabotage.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Lith / Poc - Alternative Ritual Runes; can be used in place of either of the above (though they are slightly inferior in most cases).
- Qax - A great damage option, but grouping utility is list since it has to replace Kry.
- Lum - Helps with Fury sustain early on.
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: Subo
He's mainly used for his Seeker ability, which is just incredibly useful in all content since it reveals enemies on the mini-map; the value this has can not be understated. Aside from that, he just kinda shoots stuff and occasionally applies Stuns. His Iconic Skill, Cover Fire, gives us a pretty decent 25% damage multiplier as well when linked with Opening Fire.
Alternatively, Raheir and hisAegis can be used if Resistances need a touch-up at any point.
Reinforcement: Varyana
She uses Bloodthirst to increase our Attack Speed, which helps us reach the Attack Speed cap. She's a Barbarian too, so she gets cool points.
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. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does not indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. 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
- 90%+ Chance for Double Swing to Cast Twice
- 25%+ Double Swing Size
- 70%+ Attack Speed
- 4000%+ Overpower Damage
- 450%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 2500+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 60,000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
- 70%+ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
- Call of the Ancients needs permanent uptime.
- Use Zec at all times to help with this.
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.
- Important: At this progression point, the level experience is much smoother with Double Swing if it is used as a support tool, rather than a damage dealer! As such, this early setup uses Earthquakes and Dust Devils as its main damage source.
With that said, focus on acquiring and improving the Earthquake and Dust Devil-themed Aspects, as these contribute the most to our damage output:
- Earthquakes
- Executioner's
- Incendiary Fissures
- Windlasher
- Fierce Winds
As for the rest of the setup:
- 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.
- Conceited is used in combination with Blackmailer's Sabotage for a pretty good damage increase.
- Vehement Brawler's is another multiplicative damage increase, and also gives us additional Ultimate ranks.
- Ghostwalker is used in tandem with Rallying Cry 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.
- Important: At this progression point, the goal is to transition from Earthquake and Dust Devil damage and start focusing on Double Swing. It's not recommended to swap until all essential pieces are in place! Continue playing the Starter setup until the following is acquired:
- Banished Lord's Talisman is the first core piece of the build, as it gives us the ability to Overpower by spending Fury. Every stat on this item is useful, but the most important ones are Maximum Life and + Ranks to Core Skills.
- Crown of Lucion gives us a great damage multiplier while making Double Swing cost more Fury. This is not a downside however - we want to spend large amounts of Fury quickly in order to activate Banished Lord's Talisman as often as possible. The goal is to reach 100 Fury cost, which works out perfectly when using Unbridled Rage.
- Twin Strikes is Double Swing's dedicated Unique item, and it comes packed with great stats. Whenever we trigger an Overpower, the additional hits from this item also Overpower - which means we can dish out a ton of damage when the Chance for Double Swing to Hit Twice temper also kicks in.
- Arreat's Bearing is extremely important for this setup. It easily caps our Resistance, but most importantly, it keeps our Call of the Ancients off cooldown. This build relies heavily on this skill in order to function, which is why we also equip the Zec Rune to ensure there is no downtime.
- Ramaladni's Magnum Opus is a pure damage item that scales based on our Maximum Fury. Because of this, we prioritize this stat on gear and with paragon points.
- Ring of Red Furor has excellent synergy with this setup, since we are always spending 100 Fury when we attack. This guarantees that every hit is a Critical Strike with a massive damage multiplier on top of it.
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 an extremely strong item, despite its stats not being terribly interesting. Its main draw is its +1 to All Passives implicit - this alone gives us a ton of damage and utility and is basically unmatched in terms of power when it comes to this gear slot.
- Doombringer is great for Overpower builds, since Maximum Life is factored into its damage equation. It also just makes us extremely tanky, to the point where we can pretty much shrug off incoming damage in most situations.
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.
- Bring up your active skills (default keybind: [s]).
- Hover over the skill you wish to assign a weapon to.
- Cycle through the available weapons to choose which to assign to the skill (default keybind: MOUSE3).
To see which weapons for each skill are used in this build, hover over the skill bar in the introduction of this guide.
Mechanics
Learn about the mechanical details which makes the build tick.
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.
- Permanent Call of the Ancients uptime with Cooldown Reduction-focused gear.
- High Attack Speed with help from Warrior's Rupture.
- Lots of Orange numbers! Whenever a single Overpower happens, many additional instances trigger at the same time.
- Extremely tanky! Endgame setups can reach over 100,000 Maximum Life with good gear.
Credits
Written by snail