Basic Cleave – Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 9)

Build Introduction

Welcome to the comprehensive guide for the Basic Cleave for the endgame of Diablo 4. This build, made possible by the new unique Hooves of the Mountain God, which allows your basic skills to cleave foes down, provides a powerful generator-based build, letting you choose your flavor of building to shred your foes.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Shard of Verathiel

Hooves of the Mountain God

Paingorger’s Gauntlets

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Aspect of the Moonrise

Aspect of Adaptability

Aspect of Earthquakes

Quick Navigation

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Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Lunging Strike Ground Stomp Rallying Cry War Cry Challenging Shout Wrath of the Berserker

Follow the points allocated in the image above for the complete 71-point build. The additional skill points are obtained using the Renown system.

Barbarian Class Mechanic – The Arsenal System

The Barbarian can wield four weapons simultaneously as well as choose a weapon expertise to use as their Technique allowing them to gain that weapon’s bonus even if they’re wielding another weapon type. Finally, the Barbarian can assign its skills to use different weapon types shuffling between Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapons, Two-Handed Slashing Weapons, and Dual-Wield Weapons.

For this build we’ll want to assign Lunging Strike to our Dual-Wield Weapons to benefit from Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus

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Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

The following sections will cover all systems that are critical if you want to improve the power of your character and move towards the highest difficulties in the endgame of Diablo 4.

Legendary Aspects

Below, you will find all of the best-in-slot Aspects found on Legendary Items that are important for this build. Remember that all Legendary powers can be added into your Codex of Power once you salvage or extract the item. You can still find some aspects through dungeons though they will always be at the minimum power level. To get the most out of this system, combine these Aspects with the right stats.

Slot	Gems	Legendary Aspect / Unique Item	Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Grand Ruby	Ugly Bastard Helm	– Casting Wrath of the Berserker causes you to explode dealing [X] Fire damage. While Wrath of the Berserker is active, your direct damage dealt is converted into Fire. You deal x[40-60%] increased Fire damage.
Chest	Grand Ruby	Rage of Harrogath	– Lucky Hit: Inflicting Bleeding on an enemy has up to a [20-60%] chance to reduce the Cooldowns of your skills by 1 second.
Gloves	N/A	Paingorger’s Gauntlets	– Damaging enemies with a Non-Basic Skill marks them for 3 seconds. when a Basic Skill first hits a marketed enemy, the Basic Skill’s damage is echoed to all marked enemies dealing x[75-125%] increased damage.
Pants	Grand Ruby	Tibault’s Will	– You deal [10-20%] increased damage while Unstoppable and for 5 seconds after. When you become Unstoppable you gain 50 of your Primary Resource
Boots	N/A	Hooves of the Mountain God	– When reaching Maximum Fury, your Fury will rapidly drain until you run out and all your Basic Skills now cleave and deal x[70-100%] increased damage
Amulet	Scornful Light	Aspect of Adaptability	– Basic Skills generate 5 additional primary resource, one per Skill. Basic Skills deal x[0.4-0.6%] increased damage for each point of Primary Resource you have
Ring 1	Elemental Brand	Vehement Brawler’s Aspect	– Casting an Ultimate Skill increases your damage by [10-30%] for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill ranks
Ring 2	Idol From Below	Bold Chieftain’s Aspect	– Whenever you cast a Shout Skill, its active Cooldown is reduced by [10-30%] per nearby enemy up to a maximum of 50%
2H Bludgeoning Weapon	Moni and Xan OR Grand Emerald	Aspect of Earthquakes	– Ground Stomp creates an Earthquake that deals [X] Physical damage over 4 seconds. While standing in Earthquakes and for 4 seconds afterwards you deal x[25-60%] increased damage. Your Earthquakes deal x[20-60%] increased damage.
2H Slashing Weapon	Ahu and Qax OR Grand Emerald	Aspect of the Moonrise	– Damaging an enemy with a Basic Skill grants you 4% Attack Speed for 10 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Upon reaching maximum stacks you enter a Vampiric Bloodrage gaining [40-80%] Basic Skill damage and 15% Movement Speed for 10 seconds.
Dual Wield Weapon 1	Grand Emerald	Shard of Verathiel	– Basic Skills deal [50-150%] increased damage but additionally cost 25 Primary Resource.
Dual Wield Weapon 2	Grand Emerald	Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus	– Skills using this weapon deal [0.2-0.5%] increased damage per point of Fury you have, but 10 Fury drains per second

To see how this build compares to others on our site, you can check out our Endgame Build Tier List.

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Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

Below are the affixes to prioritize on gear. Each line of affixes is listed in order of importance. Tempering Manuals and their recommended affixes are provided in the second column, and the bolded yellow affixes are the most important targets for Masterworking upgrades. Be sure to check our Tempering and Masterworking guides for more details about these topics.

Slot	Gems	Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	Grand Ruby	1. Maximum Life 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Strength	1. Lunging Strike Healing Barbarian Recovery 2. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Chest	Grand Ruby	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Needed Resistance	1. Lunging Strike Healing Barbarian Recovery 2. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Gloves	N/A	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Attack Speed 3. Strength	1. Damage While Wrath of the Berserker is Active Berserking Finesse 2. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Pants	Grand Ruby	1. Ranks to Bash 2. Maximum Life 3. Needed Resistance	1. Lunging Strike Healing Barbarian Recovery 2. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Boots	N/A	1. Armor 2. Movement Speed 3. Ranks to War Cry	1. Movement Speed Natural Motion 2. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Amulet	Grand Skull	1. Strength % 2. Ranks to Counteroffensive 3. Ranks to Pit Fighter	1. Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction Ultimate Efficiency — Barbarian 2. Lunging Strike Range Barbarian Motion
Rings	Grand Skull	1. Attack Speed 2. Crititcal Strike Chance 3. Resistance to All Elements (If needed) 4. Strength (If resistances are fine)	1. Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction Ultimate Efficiency — Barbarian 2. Damage While Wrath of the Berserker Is Active Berserking Finesse
2H Bludgeoning Weapon	Grand Emerald	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Vulnerable Damage	1. Change for Lunging Strike to Deal Double Damage Furious Augments 2. Damage While Wrath of the Berserker Is Active Berserking Finesse
2H Slashing Weapon	Grand Emerald	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Vulnerable Damage	1. Ranks to Belligerence Vehement Augments 2. Damage While Wrath of the Berserker Is Active Berserking Finesse
Dual-Wield Weapons	Grand Emerald	1. Strength. 2. Maximum Life 3. Critical Strike Damage	1. Ranks to Belligerence Vehement Augments 2. Damage While Wrath of the Berserker Is Active Berserking Finesse

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Uniques and Mythic Uniques

Uniques

Uniques received a large rework in Season 5. They can now roll much higher ranges and break all the traditional itemization rules for what stats can appear on which slots. Below, you will find Uniques and Mythic Uniques useful to this build.

• Hooves of the Mountain God – This new unique enables Barbarians to finally have a basic skill and generator playstyle by taking the beloved bash cleave archetype and making the cleave available to all basic skills while providing another big damage amp. This unique is a MUST HAVE to get this build online.
• Shard of Verathiel – A new build enabling sword. This gives us a huge modifier to all generators such as Bash but makes them cost 25 Primary Resource in addition to their normal effects. Bash generates 15 Fury each time it is cast, so the reality is that this will only cost 10 but thanks to other uniques in the build, it will be even less and can reach a point with proper rolls on our gear that we’re generating more fury than we’re spending allowing us to benefit entirely from this item’s damage bonus without suffering any downside Another MUST HAVE to get things rolling
• Ugly Bastard Helm – While changed in the most recent update to only give its massive 100% damage multiplier while Wrath of the Berserker is active instead of generic berserking, we still benefit from this powerful helm
• Rage of Harrogath – Since Battle Lunging Strike causes a minor bleed, this means we can benefit from the cooldown reduction from this chest as well as its various bonuses which should keep us up and running to power through even the toughest bosses
• Tibault’s Will – A staple item ever since its introduction, these pants provide much more power for many builds at the cost of some defense as they lack resistances and armor. You can forgo these pants for more traditional pant options but you’ll be dealing less damage without their multiplier.
• Paingorger’s Gauntlets – A former favorite of Bash Cleave Barbarian, this unique has been updated and had many of its previous bugs fixed and is now coming to the forefront again providing this Lunging Strike Basic Cleave setup with even more damage and clear speed.

Mythic Uniques

• Ring of Starless Skies – Our Mythic Unique of choice. Thanks to Shard of Verathiel turning basic skills into fury spenders, this item will grant us its stacking buff providing another huge multiplier and more resource cost reduction to ensure we can keep bashing to our heart’s content. This will basically solve resources for you as our basic skills will generate more than they cost from Shard of Verathiel meaning we’re always fury positive on every cast. An extremely powerful mythic. If you acquire this ring, drop Bold Chieftain’s Aspect from your rings.
• The Grandfather – The most powerful 2-Handed Sword in the game. If you’re lucky enough to acquire one of these, it provides even more damage than you might think since one of its affixes is an increase to maximum resources which lets it scale with both the new Aspect of Adaptability and Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus even better than before. If you acquire this item, drop Bold Chieftain’s Aspect from your ring and move Aspect of the Moonrise to it. If you have BOTH this item AND Ring of Starless Skies together, drop Vehement Brawler’s Aspect and Bold Chieftain’s Aspect entirely, and move Aspect of the Moonrise to your remaining Ring to enjoy the power of both mythics at once.
• Heir of Perdition – An extremely powerful helm that grants a 60% damage multiplier to all damage. Unlike Ugly Bastard Helm this item isn’t reliant on you being under the effects of Wrath of the Berserker and so it’s a free replacement since it’s always at 60% and always on when playing solo. Simply swap out your Ugly Bastard Helm and slap this helm on instead if you manage to acquire one.

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Gems and Runewords

Listed below are the best gems to socket into your items for each slot type.

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Grand Emerald for Critical Strike Damage	Grand Ruby for increased Strength	Horadric Jewels ORGrand Skull for increased Armor

For your jewelry, it may be necessary to change the Royal Diamond for another gem of a specific type such as Royal Sapphire to ensure all of your resistances are capped at 70% and your Armor is 1000. For more information about the Horadric Jewels check out our section below on the new seasonal content.

Runes

Runewords return from Diablo 2 in Vessel of Hatred! You are limited to two Runewords across your gear and it requires two sockets in the same item. So this limits creating Runewords by combining two Runes to either Helm, Chest, Pants, or Two-Handed Weapons. We generally recommend them in both of your Two-Handed Weapons for Barbarian. Let’s jump in.

Rune Name	Rune Effects
Moni	Gain 100 Offering: Cast 2 Mobility or Macabre Skills
Xan	Requires 300 Offering: Cooldown 1 second, Your next attack will cause your hits to be a guaranteed Critical Strike and Overpower for 0.35 seconds.
Ahu	Gain 15 Offering: Lucky Hit – Up to a 100% chance against Non-Healthy Enemies
Qax	Requires 400 Offering: Cooldown 1 second, Casting a Skill other than a Basic or Defensive Skill spends all your Primary Resource to increase your damage up to 100% for 1 second.

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Paragon Board

We recommend using the following Legendary nodes and Rare Glyphs to truly take this build into the endgame. Note that each Rare Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the Level 100 version. As a reminder, Glyph’s unlock their final radius at level 46 and their legendary bonuses at Level 45. Let’s take a look!

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Horadric Spell (Season 9)

Season 9 brings a new complex mechanic that modifies your skills by attaching an ancient Horadric Catalyst to one of them, which you can then modify further with spells and infusions, causing some very potent combos. For this build, we recommend the following setup:

Type	Power	Description
Catalyst	Disintegrate	Form an Arcane Conductor that emits a persistent beam between itself and you dealing a steady blitz of 18,130% damage over 8 seconds. At Rank 10+: Enemies within the beam are slowed by 50%
Infusion	Smoldering Ember	Your Catalyst now deals Fire and/or Burning damage. It destroys enemy structures and has a 10% chance to ignite the ground beneath enemies dealing 1,215% Burning damage over 5 seconds. While equipped, your Fire Damage Bonus is equal to that of your highest Damage Type Bonus Rank 5+: Deactivates monster Chilling Winds effects for 5 seconds
Arcana	Fractured Core	Your Catalyst deactivates monster Damage Resistance Aura effects for 5 seconds, but you take 15% more stacking damage for the same duration.
Arcana	Bottled Wind	Invoking your Catalyst grants a Barrier equal to 50% of your maximum life for 4 seconds. After it dissipates its essence is bottled back up
Arcana	Bloody Charm	Your Catalyst gains a specialized Execute effect for Non-Boss Enemies with 20% or less life. Bloody Charm creates the following effects for each Catalyst – Celestial Surge: The moon’s impact Executes non-boss enemies with 20% or less health. Successful Executions reduce your Cooldowns by 2 seconds.

Assign your Catalyst to Lunging Strike

Horadric Jewels

Additionally, Season 9 brings back new special gems for your Amulets and Rings called Horadric Jewels. We recommend the following gems for this build:

• Scornful Light – You deal x20% increased and take x10% more Elemental Damage
• Elemental Brand – Your Catalytic Skill deals 33% of your Infusion’s element over 3 seconds. Lucky Hit: Dealing damage of your infusion’s element has up to a 33% chance to trigger its secondary effect
• Idol From Below – You gain x6% primary stat, x6% maximum life and you are always Unhindered. However, you will be hunted in Sanctuary’s darkest places by jewel guardians who were entombed to protect this relic

An Alternate Setup once you have Heir of Perdition since you are no longer converting Lunging Strike into fire damage through Ugly Bastard Helm is as follows

• Idol From Below – You gain x6% primary stat, x6% maximum life and you are always Unhindered. However, you will be hunted in Sanctuary’s darkest places by jewel guardians who were entombed to protect this relic
• Willbreaker – Physical Damage you deal shatters enemies spirits causing them to take x40% more physical damage for 6 seconds. This effect applies when first damaging a Boss or Elite or when they are affected by Crowd Control
• The Starflux – Your Catalysts deal x100% more damage, however you lose control over your Horadric Spellcraft causing your Catalysts to inherit infusions randomly

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Mercenaries

As you play through the campaign in Vessel of Hatred, you will unlock various NPC Mercenaries who can join you on your quest to slay demons. Each Mercenary has their own small talent tree that will give them bonuses and skills to help you. Additionally, you can assign a Mercenary that you don’t take with you as a reinforcement to jump in when you activate certain skills. Let’s take a look at how we want to set this up for this build

We hire Varyana, the Berserker Crone

• Core Skill: Cleave
• Core Skill Passive: Hysteria
• Iconic Skill: Bloodthirst
• Iconic Skill Passive: Bloodlust

Our Reinforcement Mercenary will be Raheir, the Shieldbearer

• Opportunity Skill: War Cry
• Reinforcement Skill: Crater

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

This build uses a very straightforward generator playstyle. We have no Fury spender beyond one button and we only use that for a buff, as explained below in the Advanced Information section, but let’s quickly go over our skills:

• Lunging Strike our main damage source and mobility all in one button. We should pressing this non-stop to zip around to monsters and blow them up.
• Rallying Cry and War Cry are our buffs. Rallying Cry gets us some resources to get rolling and increases our generation helping smooth out the Fury Drain from Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus and Hooves of the Mountain God. War Cry is our damage amp which we should be mashing as often as possible but especially against tough elites and bosses.
• Challenging Shout – Our main defensive skill should be pressed any time we’re in a tight spot or against bosses and elites
• Ground Stomp has three uses in our rotation. We press it to stun enemies yes, but also it spawns an Earthquake through Aspect of Earthquakes which provides a damage amplification while we stand in it, and it reduces our Wrath of the Berserker cooldown thanks to Strategic Ground Stomp. We want to keep this button on cooldown to maintain wrath uptime and keep the buff from the quakes it spawns as we move from pack to pack
• Wrath of the Berserker our ultimate skill of choice and now required to gain the massive damage bonus from Ugly Bastard Helm, we want to aim with our setup to achieve near 100% uptime on this skill so we’re constantly gaining all of its benefits from being Unstoppable and gaining the buffs from Tibault’s Will, to the aforementioned helm, to being Berserk which is a core Barbarian class feature. Long story short, this cooldown does everything you want from a major cooldown. Press it all the time.

Runeword Synergy

Let’s take a moment to review our runes and how they interact with this build.

• Moni is our first rune and it may seem strange until you realize that Lunging Strike has the Mobility tag and counts for this rule. Every 2 casts of our main attacking skill will trigger this rune, a great deal for a lot of offering.
• Xan takes all that offering and lets us net guaranteed critical strikes and overpowers. While Overpower was changed in Season 9 to be less potent, it’s still a big damage bonus that we want to capitalize on when we can. This makes that happen for us with alarming reliability
• Ahu gives us 15 Offering every time we lucky hit a Non-Healthy monster. Non-Healthy meaning below 80% which should be all the time as we kill things unless we one shot them.
• Qax takes all that offering and lets us control when to burst. It only triggers when a Non-Basic Non-Defensive skill is cast. For us this means when we cast anything other than Lunging Strike or Challenging Shout this rune will pop once we have the offering. This means we can then choose to pop it, have it eat our resources (which we’ll gain back very quickly thanks to the Fury Per Second on Hooves of the Mountain God and Lunging Strike being a generator) to do a massive amount of damage to our targets.

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

When in town you can visit the Alchemist to craft helpful elixirs which will provide a special effect and increase your experience gain. Crafting has been simplified back in Patch 1.4.0, and there are fewer specific flowers to harvest; instead, almost all herbs in the world drop as Bundles of Dried Herbs, allowing you to craft the elixirs you want. Some elixirs cannot be crafted and can only drop from things like Helltide or Nightmare Dungeons.

For this build, we recommend Elixir of Resourcefulness for the increased maximum resources to scale both Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus and Aspect of Adaptability. Craft the highest-value Elixir you can so you can get the most attack speed possible.

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Season 9 Updates

For a comprehensive look at what’s new in Season 9, please check out our Season Hub.

Here is a quick list of the changes this season that are relevant to this build.

• Lunging Strike damage increased from 33% to 90%
• Shard of Verathiel damage reduced from 50-200% to 50-150%
• Aspect of the Moonrise damage reduced from 40-100% to 40-60% but Legendary Ranks increased from 16 to 21.
• Aspect of Adaptability changed, basic skills now generate 5 additional resource once per skill cast. Basic skills now deal 0.4-0.6% increased damage for each point of Primary Resource you have
• Paingorger’s Gauntlets deals between 75-125% instead of 150-200%, however if the hit that triggers the damage on marked targets is a Critical Strike or Overpower, the echoed hits from this item are also Critical Strikes and/or Overpowers

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Obol Gambling

A final point on acquiring gear is using your Obols to target farm specific slots instead of randomly spending them on random drops. Similar to Kadala in Diablo 3, you can use Obol vendors in town to try and get what you’re missing. With Patch 2.0 when a level 60 Character spends Obols, all gear from that vendor will be 750 item power, the highest non-Ancestral in the game, allowing you to fill out gear with the affixes or Legendary Aspects you need.

Check out our Obol Gambling Tool Guide HERE.

Changelog

• July 10th 2025: Build updated with bugfixes and shift to Paingorgers in lieu of said fixes
• June 28th 2025: Build changed and update for Season 9 as Basic Cleave
• April 25th 2025: Reformatted and updated for Season 8
• March 31st 2025: Skill tree recommendations updated
• January 29th 2025: Clarified rotational skills
• January 19th 2025: Tooltips and Seasonal section updated for Season 7
• January 14th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 7
• October 4th 2024: Guide updated for Season 6 and Vessel of Hatred
• August 2nd, 2024: Guide updated for season 5
• June 24th, 2024: Guide updated with new optimizations and patch updates.
• May 22nd, 2024: Weapon selection updated and stats clarified
• May 4th, 2024: Guide format updated, season 4 information added.
• May 2nd, 2024: Paragon links updated and readability improved
• May 1st, 2024: Guide created