Rend Barbarian Leveling Guide

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.

Leveling/Best-in-Slot Boss Powers

Alternate Boss Powers

• Allek's Talons - [Main] - Good replacement before you get your hands on Ashava's Poison Breath.
• Hatred's Embrace's Haste - [Modifier] - Additional Critical Strike Chance makes a huge difference at early levels so keep an eye on this Boss Power if you find yourself needing more damage. Temper Shadow Resistance on your Defensive slot to fully benefit from this bonus.
• Flesh Reaper's Disruption - [Modifier] - Tactical Ground Stomp allows you to apply Vulnerable before your huge hit from one of the other abilities, so this Boss Power is a good substitute for other Modifiers. If you ever feel like needing more damage instead of Quality of Life bonuses, change Allek's Talons to this one. Temper Crowd Control Duration in Utility slots and watch your damage skyrocket!
• Allek's Talons - [Modifier] Grants a little boost to Movement Speed that is invaluable early on. It may not look like much, but will definitely help you slay demons faster!

Wrath of the Berserker

Our Ultimate skill of choice is Wrath of the Berserker. It is one of the best sources of Berserking. Don't forget to use Lunging Strike while it's active as it will refresh the buff duration to last up to 15 seconds. It also makes us Unstoppable, quite literally! Spamming Rend while the buff is active will grant us even more damage. Fighting this way makes us feel like the mightiest warrior that ever stepped through Sanctuary!

Key Passive

We finally pick up our Key Passive skill Unconstrained, which has great synergy with Prolific Fury and Aggressive Resistance. All of these things combined drastically speed up our leveling process and help alleviate any resource issues that may be present early on.

Final Journey to Level 60

At this point, most of the key synergies are unlocked and the gameplay loop is almost complete. As you level up, you unlock a lot of extra points that go into various offensive and defensive passives or max out certain skills. Check out the skills progression above to see where to put your points as you go, but feel free to deviate from the order displayed as necessary. For example, if you need extra mobility, you may pick up Charge instead of Wrath of the Berserker.

Barbarian Arsenal System

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. It's important to remember that 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.

Unlocking the Arsenal System

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!

How the Arsenal System Impacts Leveling

Our choice is simple while leveling as the Rend Barbarian. We automatically get a power from the Two-Handed Slashing Weapon we use, and always apply Bleed. Remember that you must have a weapon leveled up to at least 1 before it can be equipped in the Technique Slot!

Weapon Type - Polearms are the best weapons for leveling as a Rend Barbarian. It is very easy to benefit from the bonuses against Vulnerable enemies that this weapon type provides.

We assign our Two-Handed Slashing weapon to Rend. This way our base Bleed will reach as high as it can.

As usual, we assign Lunging Strike to One-Handed weapons. Faster attacks will result in generating Fury faster.

We leave Leap with Auto-Select.

Weapon Technique - Enhanced Rend makes it very easy for this build to take full advantage of Two-Handed Axe Expertise from a very low level.

To get started as a Rend Barbarian, always use your highest DPS Two-Handed Slashing Weapon. Your other weapons are simply stat sticks, so their DPS is secondary. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you acquire the right ones. For example, % Damage, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful!

Tip: For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage, especially if you are twinking. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easy time.

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 or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.

For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.

Must-have Dungeon unlocks

1. Slaking (Maulwood - Fractured Peaks)

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

1. Numbing Wrath (Heathen's Keep - Hawezar)
2. Bul-Kathos (Light's Refuge - Hawezar)
3. Vocalized Empowerment (Sirocco Caverns - Kehjistan)

Great Uniques for this build

1. Ring of the Ravenous
2. Rage of Harrogath
3. Fields of Crimson (Add Rupture instead of Wrath of the Berserker)

Jackpot Drops

As you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can massively amplify your power and speed up the leveling by switching to another build. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:

Build-defining Combinations

1. Executioner's + Incendiary Fissures + Tec (enables the Endgame Earthquake Barbarian and Endgame Whirlwind Barbarian)
2. Moonrise + Adaptability + Shard of Verathiel (enables the Endgame Bash Barbarian)
3. Rage of Harrogath + Ring of the Ravenous (enables the Endgame Rend Barbarian)
4. The Third Blade (enables the Endgame Mighty Throw Barbarian)

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 Whirlwind Barbarian focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Moni + Tec - Potent mixture to add even more damage to our setup. Jump into the heat of the battle with Lunging Strike to spawn Earthquake.
• Cir + Ceh - After casting 5 Skills you will spawn an army of ethereal wolves that will aid you in battle. This easy to find Runeword will help you constantly apply Vulnerable on your enemies, boosting your damage tremendously.

Alternative choices

As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Lith - Generates offering while standing still. Use as a replacement for Moni if it suits your gameplay more.
• Mot - Generates Dark Shroud.
• Lum - Good replacement for Ceh if you feel like you run out of Fury too much.
• Vex - Grants more Skill Ranks. If you manage to time your cooldowns with this rune, you will deal significantly more damage.

In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.

Paragon & Glyphs

Use the slider to see 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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

Coming Soon!

The Rend Barbarian is a fun to play leveling build that scales very well into the lategame.

• Slash and Dice your enemies with Rend!
• Focus on scaling generic damage modifiers instead of skill-specific effects to boost your damage.
• Stun enemies with Ground Stomp to stay safe and increase your damage!
• Gather Fury per Second, Armor & Resistances on your armor pieces.
• Try to keep your enemies Vulnerable at all times.

Written by Kondyss