Hammer of the Ancients – Barbarian Build for Diablo 4

Build Introduction

Welcome to the comprehensive guide for the new and improved Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian at endgame, utilizing insane overpowers and powerful slams to annihilate anything in your way. Bosses? No problem. Nightmare Dungeons? Easy. The Pit? Trivial. With the new Runewords, new Paragon Glyph Levels, New Uniques, and the power of more skill points this Vessel of Hatred version of a beloved Barbarian build has little problem turning demons in front of them into paste. Let’s dive in!

This page covers the build’s introduction, requirements, skill tree points, and mercenary recommendations for the HotA Barbarian. To navigate to the other pages of this build, you can use the buttons below.

Strengths and Weaknesses

To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Ring of Red Furor

Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Aspect of Limitless Rage

Accelerating Aspect

Earthquake Aspect

Exploiter’s Aspect

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Skill Bar Setup for HotA Barbarian (order does not matter)

Hammer of the Ancients Rallying Cry Lunging Strike Rupture Bash Iron Skin

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

A Walking Arsenal

In this guide we’ll detail how Diablo 4’s first expansion delivers the power of gigantic Hammer of the Ancients casts to absolutely flatten everything in front of you. Previous versions relied on guaranteed Overpowers to generate massive damage that would one-shot or nearly one-shot almost anything in the game. This build was toned down in Seasons 4 and 5, but has once again come to prominence with the release of Vessel of Hatred.

We will be utilizing the Walking Arsenal key passive and several skills, Paragon Nodes, and Legendary Aspects to best utilize this bonus to deliver massive Hammer of the Ancients. While this build delivers the same satisfying crunch of the old versions, it requires a bit more finesse than the previous incarnations that you may be used to. We utilize things like Walking Arsenal, Combat Bash, and Warrior’s Rupture to swap around our weapons as fast as possible and smash out as manner Hammer of the Ancients casts as possible ensuring our success.

This type of playstyle has little problem with its resources at end-game, but does require a very specific rotation to achieve those mind blowing damage numbers to chew through the hordes of hell. If weapon swapping builds, less mobile more stationary builds, or builds with complex specific rotations to achieve their maximum damage numbers aren’t your cup of tea, this build might not be for you. If you don’t mind whatever hoops you may have to jump through to see those gargantuan hammers hit for billions, then follow me to the rest of this guide and we’ll walk through everything you’ll need step by step so you can bring this classic Barbarian back to life and take on Mephisto’s hordes!

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 Raheir, the Shieldbearer

• Core Skill: Ground Slam
• Core Skill Passive: Raheir’s Aegis
• Iconic Skill: Bastion
• Iconic Skill Passive: Inspiration

Our Reinforcement Mercenary will be Varyana, The Berserker Crone

• Opportunity Skill: War Cry
• Reinforcement Skill: Bloodthirst

Changelog

• October 22nd 2024: Updated talent setup, paragon images removed and paragon tool added, and gear recommendations shifted slightly
• October 3rd 2024: Guide updated for Season 6 and Vessel of Hatred
• August 2nd 2024: Guide updated for season 5 and patch 1.5.0
• May 6th 2024: Guide restructured, updated for season 4
• April 16th 2024: Ownership of page transferred, build Revamped, paragon adjusted, unique items added
• March 5th 2024: Updates for Patch 1.3.3.
• January 21st 2024: Season 3 speculative changes.
• October 13th 2023: Build Adjusted to prepare for Season 2 launch.
• August 7th, 2023: New Format and build Revamp.
• August 2nd, 2023: Patch 1.1.1 section added with build specific changes.
• July 18th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 1.