Mighty Throw Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Last Updated:October 7, 2024|Change Log|FAQ
Welcome to the Diablo 4 Mighty Throw Barbarian Endgame Build Guide! This is a new skill introduced in Season 6 with the Vessel of Hated expansion and it's... well, MIGHTY, to say the least; it's also likely to be one of the best choices when it comes to slaying demons in all areas of the game.
Mighty Throw does start off with some downsides, the first one being its inherent cooldown. The solution? The Third Blade. Equipping this item removes its cooldown, gives it a Fury cost, and makes it a spammable pseudo-Core skill.
The second downside? It has a relatively small area of effect. We have a solution for that though too - the Herculean Spectacle Aspect. Instead of throwing one weapon, we can now throw three! Combine this with tempered Mighty Throw Pulse Size and this skill very quickly becomes a screen-wide weapon of mass destruction.
To support Mighty Throw, we have a number of other tools at our disposal. Bash allows us to guarantee Overpower hits for absurd amounts of damage. Steel Grasp allows us to group enemies before we blow 'em up. Charge gives us mobility and allows us to become Unstoppable. And for defense, we have Challenging Shout, which is a nearly permanent damage reduction buff with our main endgame setup.
Sound good? Spoiler: it's very good. So without further ado, let's get to throwin'. But first, take note of the...
Requirement for this build
- The Third Blade
(yes, don't play it without acquiring this first).
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
- Combat Bash is a core part of our skill rotation when it is combined with the "Bash Cleaves" tempered affix. With high Critical Strike Chance and while fighting in groups of enemies, this guarantees that the initial Mighty Throw hit, as well as its subsequent pulses, Overpower for massive amounts of damage.
- Mighty Throw is our main skill and primary damage dealer. At base, it has a major downside in being a cooldown-based ability, but we solve this completely by equipping The Third Blade, which turns it into a spammable pseudo-Core Skill. We further bolster its power by incorporating theHerculean Spectacle Aspect, which gives it two additional projectiles.
- Challenging Shout is a buff that grants us an enormous amount of damage mitigation while active. With Yen's Blessing and Booming Voice, we can benefit from its effects essentially all the time. Because this is an Overpower build, the enhanced version of this Shout also makes it a passive damage source, since Maximum Life is factored into the equation for Overpower damage output.
- Charge is used mainly as our source of Unstoppable, but is also a great mobility tool. It has the added benefit of being able to pack smaller groups against walls and terrain while also Stunning them.
- Steel Grasp, however, is the main skill we use to group up enemies. It can be cast at will as long as its Fury cost is met, thanks to The Third Blade. Having tightly packed groups is important for this build since Bash on its own has very poor coverage, and relies on hitting multiple enemies at once to activate its guaranteed Overpower.
- Call of the Ancients is a damage multiplier, an attack speed injection, and a Fury generator all-in-one while it is active. With Arreat's Bearing, it becomes relatively easy to reduce its cooldown enough to the point where it caps out at around 10 seconds, which means it only has about 4 seconds of downtime.
Skill Rotation
- Ensure Challenging Shout is up at all times. With Yen's Blessing it automatically refreshes itself, so it only needs to be cast whenever it is off cooldown.
- Use Steel Grasp to pull in surrounding enemies and make a nice pile.
- Starting with Bash, alternate between casting Bash and Mighty Throw with a 1:1 ratio. As long as Bash Critically Strikes 4 enemies, the following Mighty Throw (and its pulses) are guaranteed Overpowers.
- Note that this is only possible if the "Bash Cleaves" affix is tempered on a weapon, as this allows Combat Bash to activate per enemy hit, instead of per cast.
- Use Call of the Ancients pretty much whenever it is off cooldown for more damage and Fury generation.
- Charge should be used to escape Crowd Control effects and to move between packs of monsters.
- Against Bosses: Since these are typically single-target fights, Bash needs to score 4 Critical Strikes before it grants its guaranteed Overpower. In most cases, this means the ratio of Bash to Mighty Throw casts becomes 4:1.
- Video is to showcase gameplay and may not reflect the build's actual power in 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.
The Two-Handed Mace is our main weapon of choice, since we can make use of several sources of extra damage such as the Wallop passive and Crusher Glyph while wielding one. It also inherently gives a 15% Critical Strike Damage multiplier on its own, which helps it solidify itself even more as one of the best options.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build naturally has high Vulnerable uptime thanks to Expose Vulnerability, so this is a no-brainer. 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.
Mighty Throw 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
- Territorial
- Changes to Wrath later in progression.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Territorial
- Ire
- Challenger
- Dominate
- Crusher
To Level 46
- Ire
- Dominate
- Challenger
- Wrath
- Crusher
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 Mighty Throw Barbarian focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Lith + Wat - While in combat, this Runeword constantly casts Horrid Decrepify, which causes all surrounding enemies to deal 20% less damage and be Executed when they drop below 10% health.
- Xol + Xal - This combination gives us 20% more Maximum Life when triggered by Lith + Wat. On top of it being a nice defensive boost, Maximum Life is also factored in when calculating damage for Overpower hits.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Bac - A good alternative/substitution for Lith.
- 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.
- Tec - Useful early on for some extra damage. Also allows temporary use of the Earthquake and Bul-Kathos Aspects.
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, which is very handy in situations where Charge might be on cooldown. 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 Mighty Throw 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
- 90%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 30%+ Mighty Throw Pulse Size
- 60%+ Attack Speed
- 300%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 5000%+ Overpower Damage
- 3000+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 25,000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
- 70%+ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Mighty Throw 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 Mighty Throw 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
- 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.
- Obtaining the The Third Blade is basically required before attempting to run this build. Without it, Mighty Throw has a fairly long cooldown that drastically hinders any kind of progression. It is not recommended to play this build without it.
- Likewise, the Herculean Spectacle Aspect is the main supporting Aspect for Mighty Throw, and substantially increases its damage and area of effect.
- Juggernaut's and Anger Management are extremely important, especially at this progression point. The former is very helpful for reaching Armor cap, while the latter enables worry-free Berserking uptime.
- Bold Chieftain's helps keep our Shouts off cooldown. Since its reduction is percentage-based, we get fairly good value out of it despite not running any Cooldown Reduction on gear.
- Relentless Armsmaster is great for offsetting the costs of Rupture and Mighty Throw. Cycling through these skills, along with Bash, happens naturally and Walking Arsenal uptime is pretty comfortable.
- Might and Fortress are here for some always-welcome extra damage reduction. For life sustain, Undying is also an option.
- Edgemaster's, Limitless Rage, and Inner Calm are all generic multipliers that increase our damage.
- Metamorphosis is used primarily as a source of Unstoppable. If more Movement Speed is desired, Wind Striker can be played instead.
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 a ton of 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 can be completely ignored; even though this is a wasted stat, everything else is too good to pass up.
- The Unique effect of Rage of Harrogath is utilized by casting Rupture. This can help give our Call of the Ancients near permanent uptime and also keep our Charge off cooldown. Perhaps the biggest upside of this item is the substantial Critical Strike Chance it gives. This stat is extremely important to cap out as early as possible since our guaranteed Overpowers from Bash rely on landing Critical Strikes.
- Arreat's Bearing gives an absurd amount of Cooldown Reduction to Call of the Ancients and helps us easily cap our Resistances.
- Likewise, Yen's Blessing gives another decent chunk of Resistances. The main draw of this item is its ability to give us essentially a permanent Shout of our choosing. Challenging Shout is always a great choice for it's massive amount of damage reduction, but it can be replaced with Rallying Cry or War Cry depending on the player's preference.
- The Earthquake Aspect can be taken as a very solid generic damage multiplier once a Tec Rune is acquired. Until then, Accelerating or Edgemaster's should be used.
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
- Heir of Perdition is loaded with great stats for this build and is pretty much a no-brainer. It easily lets us hit Critical Strike Chance cap, gives a ton of ranks to Mighty Throw, and comes with a built-in 60% damage multiplier.
- While the stats on Shroud of False Death are "okay" at best, its real power comes from its +1 to All Passives implicit modifier. To put that into perspective, we get an additional rank of the following important passives:
- Warpath
- Belligerence
- Imposing Presence
- Martial Vigor
- Aggressive Resistance
- Raid Leader
- Guttural Yell
- Pit Fighter
- Slaying Strike
- Counteroffensive
- Heavy Handed
- Wallop
- Brute Force
- Doombringer is amazing for Overpower builds since Maximum Life naturally scales Overpower damage. Aside from that, it gives an incredible amount of extra damage mitigation and helps us face-tank.
- Ring of Starless Skies is another no-brainer; it gives a bunch of Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, Mighty Throw ranks, and a large damage multiplier that is very simple to keep active.
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
- In this setup we're ignoring the Overpower playstyle and going for pure speed.
- Ugly Bastard Helm gives us a huge damage multiplier, some Fury regeneration, and a good amount of Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction.
- 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.
- We're dual-wielding with Ramaladni's Magnum Opus (make sure to assign Mighty Throw to this weapon), so we're helping scale its Unique power by also equipping Tibault's Will and The Grandfather. These items are already great on their own, but focusing on Fury scaling makes them even better.
- Vocalized Empowerment is taken to help offset our Fury costs.
- Giant Strides helps Leap stay off cooldown and keep us mobile.
- Rupture can be used at will since its cooldown is removed when wielding The Third Blade.
- Wrath of the Berserker has high uptime with Cooldown Reduction rolls on Jewelry and help from the Zec Rune.
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
- For now, this setup is the same as the standard Mythic version! There will be updates here as the meta develops.
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.
Coming soon™
Mechanics
Coming soon™
Summary
The Mighty Throw Barbarian is an absolute beast in pretty much all content. Here's why it is a great build:
- High damage output from its guaranteed Overpowers provided by Bash.
- High defense from its permanent Challenging Shout, Doombringer, and the Wat Rune.
- High mobility with Shroud of False Death and Charge.
- High utility in being able to group enemies via Steel Grasp with no cooldown.
- High Ultimate uptime with Arreat's Bearing.
- Low Fury maintenance; both Bash and Call of the Ancients keep it maxed out at pretty much all times.
Credits
Written by snail