Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian Leveling Guide

In Season 3, you obtain the Seneschal Construct through the Season Questline, then collect Governing Stones or Tuning Stones to add attacks and augment them to support your build. Only certain Tuning Stones work with a particular Governing Stone. Look at the bottom of any Tuning Stone tooltip to see if it is compatible with your Construct's currently equipped Stones. Lastly, they can be leveled up by getting duplicates to max out their power. Check out our full Season 3 guide for more information.

Flash of Adrenaline is a great Utility type Governing Stone that boosts our damage. However, like Tactical and Duration, it can be very difficult or impossible to obtain in the early game. Once we obtain it, we can use it to increase our damage, but that seems unnecessary. Still, you may want to try using this stone instead of Reconstruct.

Tempest - This offensive AOE Governing Stones is the best option because it persists after the target's death and grows over time, meaning its maximum damage is potentially unlimited. In addition, it is the fastest stone of all, so replace Lightning Bolt with this once you obtain it.

Registered Damage Support - When this Tuning Stone supports AOE attacks, the resulting damage scaling is overpowered in groups of many enemies. When used with Bleeding Support and Tempest, this combination has potential for exponentially scaling damage over time.

Evernight and Genesis are extremely powerful, but they are extremely rare drops from Echo of Malphas, an endgame boss.

At this point we take Wrath of the Berserker and its passive skills. This gives us another cooldown like Rallying Cry that we can pop when we need to smash a few elites. We also take Furious Impulse, which enables us to maintain a 1:1 Lunge to HotA rotation all the time. With either Wrath of the Berserker or Rallying Cry up, we can over-generate Fury in our 1:1 rotation, which will help us to quickly go from empty to full Fury without deviating from our standard 1:1 rotation.

We also take Walking Arsenal and add Relentless Armsmaster to our codex and imprint it on our second ring. With Hammer of the Ancients using our Two-Handed Hammer, make sure Lunging Strike uses our Two-Handed Slashing weapon, and assign our One-Handed weapons to Leap and Charge. We should be able to easily keep all of the Walking Arsenal bonuses up all the time for a large boost to our DPS and Fury generation.

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.

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!

Our choices are simple to make while leveling as Hammer of the Ancients. Remember that you must have a weapon leveled up to at least 1 before it can be equipped in the Technique Slot!

Weapon type - Hammer of the Ancients can only be cast with a Two-Handed Hammer.

Weapon Technique - The Two-Handed Sword technique is a good choice while leveling because it will apply bonus Bleeding damage to all attacks. Most other Weapon Expertise options are only applicable under conditions that can be difficult to satisfy while leveling. We will eventually change to Two-Handed Axe technique when we have a reliable way of applying Vulnerable to our enemies.

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!

Since Hammer of the Ancients requires a Two-Handed Bludgeoning weapon, that's the only slot where the DPS matters. All other weapons become stat sticks to fuel its power. The stats to look on these for are:

Only upgrade the weapon you're using for Hammer of the Ancients at the Blacksmith and socket your weapons with Chipped Topaz.

Do not upgrade Armor or Jewelry while leveling. Socket Armor with Rubies.

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 powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them:

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.

You level in Diablo 4 by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, grinding Dungeons, or interacting with Seasonal mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are made equal.

Let's look at some tips and tricks to remember when leveling up!

The HotA Barbarian Endgame Guide guides us through the final 50 levels of our character's progress toward an endgame Hammer of the Ancients build. The endgame build prioritizes defenses more than the leveling build does - this is essential in higher World Tiers and in the most challenging endgame content. Instead of taking Leap and Charge like the leveling build, the endgame build takes Challenging Shout and War Cry, and pivots to the popular 3-shout Barbarian meta. If you have been enjoying the speed and pace of the leveling build's skillset, you can continue running Leap and Charge. The endgame guide contains optimal stat priorities and an optimized Paragon board that will work for either HotA build. If you start dying in Nightmare Dungeons and wish you had better defenses, you should try swapping to the endgame guide's skillset at that time.

Written by Slothmaster
Reviewed by Snail