Diablo 4 Barbarian Build - Rend Barbarian (Bleed Build)- In this Diablo 4Barbarian ClassBuild I’ll show you how to play a Rend Barbarian, which is a melee Diablo 4 Barbarian Build that focuses on setting the Bleeding status, and finishing off enemies withDeath Blow. If you’ve been struggling to find a good Barbarian Build in Diablo IV, then this guide is for you!
Diablo 4 Barbarian Build - Rend Barbarian (Bleed Build)
The general strategy for this Build is to useRendto soften up enemies with a good amount of Bleeding damage, before finishing them off with Death Blow. Both of these attacks hit in an AoE cone in front of you, allowing you to strike many enemies at once, which is what makes this Diablo 4 Barbarian Build so good. you may wipe out many enemies at once, often in a single attack.
Fury is not a problem for this Build because of theFighter’s Death BlowandFurious Rendpassive skills which both generateFury. This allows you to focus on mainly using these 2 damaging skills, and not having to worry about using a Basic Skill like Frenzy to generate Fury all that often (unless you muff up Death Blow).
Beyond this we also use skills to help keep us alive likeChallenging ShoutandIron Skin, which come in handy when surrounded by many enemies at once, or when fighting a tough boss. AndLeapis here to be able to get back to Bosses quickly or get out of sticky situations.
Diablo 4 Barbarian Build - Rend Barbarian Skill Distribution
Each Diablo 4 Barbarian Build is made up of the 6 Active Skills they have equipped and changing theseSkillscan drastically change the way the Barbarian Class in Diablo IV plays. In this section we’ll take a look at what Skills you should slot for the Rend Barbarian Diablo 4 Build. Your Skill distribution should look something like this:
LEVEL 25 BARBARIAN SKILLS
Points Spent
Enhanced Frenzy
Combat Frenzy
Enhanced Rend
Furious Rend
Pressure Point
Challenging Shout
Enhanced Challenging Shout
Strategic Challenging Shout
Enhanced Iron Skin
Tactical Iron Skin
Death Blow
Enhanced Death Blow
Fighter’s Death Blow
The above list gives you the general order to invest in Skills, but keep in mind that you should prioritize picking up new Skills over investing in passives, so pick up passives later if you can get new Skills when you level up.
How to Handle Packs of Enemies
So there are really two different strategies to employ with this Diablo 4 Barbarian Build, and these change depending on whether or not you’re facing a large group of enemies or a Boss. Let’s start with a group of enemies first, and we’ll cover how to handle Bosses in the next section.
When facing a bunch of enemies in Diablo 4, you’ll want to lead off with Death Blow first if possible to wipe out the weakest target you can see. It’s imperative that you aim for the weakest target, because if you don’t kill it then Death Blow will have a 15 second cooldown, and you don’t want that. So aim for the easiest to kill enemy and kill it, ideally hitting other enemies at the same time if you can. Remember Death Blow hit in a small cone in front of you, so aiming is important. You can gain a lot of extra damage by clipping enemies you cannot kill with Death Blow while killing an enemy you can.
The Fighter’s Death Blow passive will net you a bunch of Fury from this and you should soon be able to begin using Rend to strike enemies. However, if you cannot kill any enemy easily with Death Blow then you should attack with Frenzy until you’re able to. This will generate Fury and soften targets simultaneously.
Once you have enough Fury to use Rend you should. Aim for the most enemies possible, since just like Death Blow, it hits in an area in front of you, so you’re able to clip many enemies with it at once. Once done follow up with Death Blow if you can kill an enemy easily, again trying to position yourself to hit other enemies as well, not just the one you want to kill . The priority is killing an enemy to make sure Death Blow’s cooldown refreshes, so focus on that, but learn to position to hit other enemies too.
Death Blow should net you more Fury, and you should have gotten some from the Furious Rend passive as well, so you should now be able to Rend another group and repeat this process. Keep repeating this process until all enemies are dead. If you mess up with Death Blow, useFrenzyuntil it’s off cooldown.
Remember to pick up theHamstringpassive skill to make Bleeding enemies Slow. This helps them from getting to you, and also allows you to make use of the Damage to Slowed Enemies gear bonus.
Challenging Shout&Iron Skin
When there are lots of enemies on you use Challenging Shout to gain a lot of Damage Reduction helping to shrug off damage. But unlikeWhirlwind Builds, you don’t need to stand in the middle of enemies after striking with Rend, since the Bleeding will need time to do its work, so you may dip in and out of combat, hit and run style.
This Diablo 4 Barbarian Build also allows you to use Iron Skin when your Health gets low, but only use it when this is the case because the Barrier you gain from it is 50% of your missing HP. So the more HP that is missing, the more Barrier you will gain. This skill is great because there are severalLegendary Aspectsthat work well with Barriers.
Boss Fights
Boss fights are handled a bit differently with this Diablo 4 Barbarian Build because you usually cannot kill something easily with Death Blow over and over. For this reason we have to change up our tactics a bit.
The key to Boss fights with this Diablo 4 Barbarian Build is using Frenzy and its passive skillCombat Frenzyfor the 8% Damage Reduction per stack, which translates to 24% at 3 stacks. That’s a good amount of reduction, and when you combine this with Iron Skin and Challenging Shout you are really hard to kill in boss fights, even if your DPS is not insane.
You generally sit there face tanking the boss, only moving to dodge particularly deadly attacks or when you have your Dodge off cooldown, but you want to keep attacking to keep your damage reduction up and Frenzy pumping. Use Challenging Shout every time it’s off cooldown and use Iron Skin when your HP gets low. If you have theTactical Iron Skinpassive then this will also heal you some, which is nice.
Hit with Rend any time you have the Fury for it, even if you just used it, and keep stacking Bleed on the boss while using Death Blow any time it’s off cooldown. You won’t instantly refresh it, but it hits hard and it doesn’t cost Fury so you might as well use it every chance you can get.
Leap is here to help with mobility to get out of bad situations in these fights, or to get back to the Boss before your Frenzy buff wears off. Some times bosses teleport or knock you back, and this can get you back into melee range quickly. Additionally, sometimes they might drop a gnarly AoE that you need to get out of in a hurry, and this skill can do that for you.
Final Tips
For this Diablo 4 Barbarian Build be on the look out forDamage to Slowed Enemies, +1 to Rend, +1 to Death Blow,Damage to Close Enemies,Basic Skill Damage,Strength, andCritical Strike Chance. All of these bonuses will benefit this Build, so definitely prioritize them.Damage Over Timeis also not bad.
Legendary Aspects that can really help with Bosses areRapid Aspectto increase your Frenzy attack speed by even more,Aspect of Inner Calmthat increases your damage for each second you don’t move, andAspect of Mightwhich gives you damage reduction when using Basic Skills. So you should be on the look out for these if you can find them, and remember that Aspects located on Two-Handed Weapons gain double the benefit, and Barbarians can wield 2 Two-Handed Weapons at a time. Amulets give you an extra 50% Aspect as well, so put your best Aspects on these items.
Aspect of the Protectorgives you a Barrier from time to time, andConceited Aspectgives you increased damage while you have a Barrier active. These work well with Iron Skin, andAspect of the Iron Warrioralso makes you Unstoppable when you use Iron Skin, giving you CC immunity for its duration.
Be sure to check out ourDiablo 4 Wikifor any other questions you have about the game and theBuildspage if you are looking for more Diablo IV Builds, as well as ourGetting Started GuideandBest Class to Play in the Beta Guideif you are looking for more Diablo 4 content!
