Mighty Throw Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Diablo 4 Mighty Throw Barbarian Endgame Build Guide! This is an updated guide covering our newest skill Mighty Throw; especially its latest changes in Season 7. Despite the upcoming snapshot changes, we're still confident this build with its many weapon-swap variants can benefit enough from the Seasonal Powers to remain 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. Rallying Cry will ensure our a solid increase to our mobility, Fury generation and allow us to become Unstoppable. Lastly, the upgraded versions of our Ultimate Skills Call of the Ancients or Wrath of the Berserker will provide us a damage and utility boost at a relatively low cooldown with proper gear.
Sound good? Spoiler: it's very good. So without further ado, let's get to throwin' and swappin'. 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.
Witchcraft Powers
Season 7 is the Season of Witchcraft. It features two separate borrowed power mechanics in the forms of Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems. Both Seasonal mechanics are unlocked and improved by new NPCs found at the Tree of Whispers after collecting resources from Headhunt Zones, Seasonal areas similar to Helltide that appear across Sanctuary.
There are 25 Witchcraft Powers, 6 of which can be equipped at a time. Each Power belongs to one of four Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, Psyche, and Lost), tags that promote synergies within themselves and with Occult Gems. Each School has a single Unique Witchcraft Power, only one of which can be equipped at a time. These Unique Powers max out and gain an additional effect at rank 5, while the other Powers max at rank 21 and gain their bonus effects at various levels. To unlock and improve Witchcraft Powers, defeat Headrotten or complete Whispers within the Headhunt Zones to collect Restless Rot. Lost Powers are an exception, requiring you to randomly encounter a Forgotten Altar in Dungeons to unlock them.
Best-in-Slot Witchcraft Powers
- Doom Orb - This is a damage oriented Unique Witchcraft Power, its main use? Being our first power of the Eldritch School.
- Purging Touch - Our second Eldritch power, we choose this power as it buffs all Eldritch powers, including our Mighty Throw casts turned Eldritch thanks to Witching Hour.
- Hex of Flames - Our third and last Eldritch power, outside of its decent damage output it will also be our way of applying the Hex debuff to our targets in order to activate Elder Sigil and Phantom String bonuses.
- Soul Harvest - This Power dramatically increases Core Stats based on monster density and is a reliably strong choice, especially since we are fairly often casting a skill that has a cooldown.
- Aura Specialization - The extra area of effect that it grants our Aura is nice, but the Critical Strike Damage multiplier that comes with leveling it makes this an even better choice.
- Aura of Lament - This is our Aura of choice, applying Slow in a wide radius and generating some Fury passively.
Alternate Witchcraft Powers
- None at the moment
Occult Gems
Rarely, Headrotten Bosses appear with a still-attached Fugitive Head stolen from the Tree of Whispers. Slay these enemies and return the Heads to Gelena to unlock and upgrade Occult Gems. These Gems are socketable in Jewelry and each provide +160 Armor and +8% Resistance to All Elements. More importantly, each Occult Gem grants a unique effect that synergizes with your equipped Witchcraft Powers to provide a variety of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility-based bonuses.
Best-in-Slot Occult Gems
- Elder Sigil - This Gem is a set-and-forget damage multiplier for Weapon Mastery skills; it is enabled by Hex of Flames.
- Phantom String - Our build focuses on Overpower damage, so this Gem is a solid choice when paired with Hex of Flames.
- Witching Hour - Giving us the option to turn our Core-converted Mighty Throw casts into Eldritch every 1 second, and buffing them further with Purging Touch? That's a staple.
Alternate Occult Gems
- Hungering Void - Another way to pull mobs together. Can be used as a replacement for Phantom String for an extra source of grouping.
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. This skill should always be used with a Two-Handed Mace.
- 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. Since we benefit from the weapon-swap induced extra Pulses of Fighter's Mighty Throw, this skill should always be used with your Two-Handed Slashing weapon.
- Hammer of the Ancients is used every 4 seconds as part of our buff rotation in order to trigger Violent Hammer of the Ancients damage multiplier.
- Rallying Cry gives us Unstoppable, Movement Speed and massive Resource generation bonuses. With Yen's Blessing and Booming Voice, we can benefit from its effects essentially all the time.
- Challenging Shout is a buff that grants us an enormous amount of damage mitigation while active. Even though this isn't on our active skill bar, we can activate it with the Lac Rune.
- War Cry is a buff that grants us Berserking and acts as a generic damage multiplier. Even though this isn't on our active skill bar, we can activate it frequently with the Ohm Rune.
- Steel Grasp is the main skill we use to group up enemies. It benefits from The Third Blade with + Core Skill affixes, so we can use it without investing any points.
- 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 has a relatively low cooldown and can be cast quite often.
Skill Rotation
- Ensure Rallying Cry 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 or Wrath of the Berserker pretty much whenever it is off cooldown for more damage and Fury generation.
- 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. Alternatively, for maximizing pulses from Fighter's Mighty Throw, a 1:1 ratio may also be used.
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 Polearm Expertise is our main weapon of choice; it gives a solid 15% damage multiplier and has one of the best weapon-based offensive Glyphs available to us, Executioner. For the purpose of this guide, Mighty Throw should be set to this weapon.
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.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Wrath
- Executioner
- Challenger
- Dominate
- Revenge
To Level 46
- Challenger
- Wrath
- Executioner
- Dominate
- Revenge
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 + Lac - While in combat, this Runeword casts Enhanced Challenging Shout for us, which removes the need for us to have it on our skill bar. This is important because it no longer conflicts with Rallying Cry when wearing Yen's Blessing.
- Poc + Ohm - This combination 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.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Yax and Cir are good early game alternatives to generate offerings.
- Gar - Helps cover gear options when trying to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- Xal - A good substitute for Lac as the Maximum life can be used for its defensive and Overpower benefits.
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.
Reinforcement: Raheir
He uses the Crater skill, which helps keep enemies grouped up. This can act as an extra defensive layer as well since it has the ability to inflict Stun.
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
- 95%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 60%+ Mighty Throw Pulse Size
- 50%+ Attack Speed
- 450%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 3000%+ Overpower Damage
- 4500+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 35,000+ Life
- 170%+ Movement Speed
- 60%+ 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.
- Battle-Mad will ensure that our Berserking uptime stays high all the while providing a decent damage multiplier.
- Weapon Master's will help us keep our Mighty Throw cost low by providing it a -5 Fury cost.
- Hectic and Bold Chieftain's help keep our Shouts off cooldown. The latter especially, as its reduction is percentage-based, giving us fairly good value out of it without much Cooldown Reduction on gear.
- Might is here for some always-welcome extra damage reduction. For life sustain, Undying is also an option.
- Edgemaster's, Limitless Rage and Conceited are all generic multipliers that increase our damage.
- Ghostwalker is used for some extra Movement Speed when we cast Rallying Cry. Wind Striker is also an option here.
- Unconstrained is used as our Key passive, as keeping our Mighty Throw cost low is our primary focus.
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 useful for other variants of this build (and many others); even though this is a wasted stat here, everything else is too good to pass up.
- Tibault's Will will provide us with both damage and damage reduction multiplier, as we'll always be Unstoppable thanks to Rallying Cry.
- Yen's Blessing gives a very decent chunk of Resistances. The main draw of this item is its ability to give us essentially a permanent Shout of our choosing, Rallying Cry in this case.
- Before swapping to a Legendary Amulet, the best options to use are Banished Lord's Talisman or Locran's Talisman, giving us desirable early game stats without investing too much effort elsewhere.
- We will swap our Key Passive to Unbridled Rage as the Fury Generation bonuses from our newly acquired Uniques allow us to afford the Mighty Throw cost increase.
- Before acquiring Gloves with + Core Skills, a single point in Steel Grasp is required to use 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
- 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 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
- Pit Pushing setups revolve around snapshotting Encroaching Wrath, Limitless Rage, Combat Bash, the Qax Rune, on top of Witching Hour for huge damage buffs that persist as long as one instance of Mighty Throw is active.
- The first variant is the standard version recommended for most players; this uses Heir of Perdition and Call of the Ancients which provide a solid damage buff, smoother Resource generation on top of an easier access to 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- The second variant is recommended for dedicated pushers; this uses Ugly Bastard Helm and Wrath of the Berserker as your main Unstoppable source, dismissing Rallying Cry for Challenging Shout for an additional damage multiplier thanks to Enhanced Challenging Shout life bonuses.
- Rotation (both variants)
- Cast you main Shout and stand still while using Bash until Fury is full and the Qax buff is up with an additional 50% to it's next proc (ie: one Qax and a half).
- Use Hammer of the Ancients (powered by Qax) to spend 100 Fury and activate Encroaching Wrath.
- Use Bash until Fury overcaps enough to activate Limitless Rage and Combat Bash count is 4 and your next Qax buff is up.
- Use Mighty Throw.
- Continue alternating Bash and Mighty Throw as normal. For Elite packs, you can also use throw in an Hammer of the Ancients every 5 seconds to receive an extra 40% damage multiplier.
- To avoid losing snapshots, make sure Mighty Throw is cast at least once every 4 seconds to prevent having it become inactive and start over.
- Elixirs and Incenses:
- Elixir of Fortitude II.
- Chorus of War.
- Reddamine Buzz.
- 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.
How do I assign skills to the correct weapon?
Snapshotting?
Mechanics
Much of the information in this section has been carefully and thoroughly tested by Icytroll and is extracted directly from the Barbarian Compendium. This should be your main source for the most accurate and up-to-date explanations on all mechanics that pertain to the Barbarian class.
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 multiple Damage Reduction, Maximum Life sources (Doombringer), as well as permanent Fortify and Barrier.
- High mobility with Rallying Cry and Shroud of False Death.
- High utility in being able to group enemies via Steel Grasp with no cooldown.
- High Ultimate and Vulnerable uptime.
- Throwing Witchcraft powered Weapons (Broomsticks?) thanks to the new Witching Hour Occult gem.
Credits
Originally Written by snail
Currently Updated by Beatdropper