Flay Endgame Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 5)

Build Introduction

Welcome to the comprehensive guide for the Flay Barbarian! A new generator build that emerged during Season 4 and has proven to be a powerful endgame and pit boss killer. If you like DoT based playstyles and ramping up massive bleeds, this build is for you. Patch 1.5.0 and Season 5 add a ton of power to this, making it even better. Without further delay, let’s dive right in!

Strengths

Powerful generator based gameplay
Fast attack speed
Extremely fast boss kill times

Weaknesses

Low AOE clearing power
Ramp up time for damage-over-time effects
Middle of the pack defensive power

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

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Follow the points allocated in the image above for the complete 58-point build. The additional 10 skills are completed using the Renown system.

Arsenal System and Weapon Selection

For this Flay build, we will be using Two-Handed Axe as our weapon technique for its bonus to Vulnerable damage. Even nerfed to 10% in patch 1.4, this is still our strongest option. For this build, we’ll be assigning our weapons to the following skills

Flay – We want to use our Two-Handed Slashing weapon, and ideally a Polearm for its damage bonus and to trigger our Executioner paragon glyph
Rupture – We want to use the same as our Flay. a Two-Handed Slashing weapon, ideally a Polearm.

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 21 version.

Starting Board

Warbringer

Rotate this board three times before attaching it.

Carnage

We attach this to the Eastern Gate of the Warbringer board. Rotate this board twice before attaching it.

Blood Rage

Connect this board to the Northern Gate of the Carnage Board. Do not rotate this board when attaching it.

Bone Breaker

Attach this board to the Southern Gate of the Carnage Board. Rotate this board twice before attaching it.

Hemorrhage

Attach this board to the Eastern Gate of the Bone Breaker board. Rotate this board once before attaching it.

Decimator

Attach this final board to the Eastern Gate of the Carnage Board. Rotate this board three times before attaching it.

To see the Paragon Board in its entirety, CLICK HERE

Gear, Gems, Elixirs, and Stats

Loot Reborn (Season 4) brought us an incredible shift in how gear and itemization are done. It is major and will affect the game beyond Season 4’s confines. For further details, make sure to read our Tempering and Masterworking section below.

Legendary Aspects

Below, you will find all of the BiS (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 once you salvage or extract the item. You can still find some aspects through dungeons as you could in previous seasons but you also have the option to upgrade these affixes if you find a higher roll of that affix. Let us go over what aspects you will need.

Gems

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

For your jewelry it may be necessary to change the Royal Diamond for another gem of a specific type such as Royal Amethyst to ensure all of your resistances are capped at 70%

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 as of Patch 1.4.0, and there are fewer specific flowers to harvest; instead, almost all herbs in the world drop as Bundled 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 Advantage for the increased attack speed so we can continue to spam Flay and rack up a ton of bleeding on our target for Rupture. Craft the highest-value Elixir you can so you get the most attack speed possible.

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. To masterwork, you will need rare materials that only drop from The Pit. Be sure to check our Tempering guide, our Masterworking guide, as well as our guide about The Pit for more details about these topics.

Rotation and Playstyle

This is a fairly straight forward DoT based playstyle. We want to be spamming Flay as often as we can. It has an innately high Lucky Hit chance, 50%! This will trigger our various sources of crowd control from our tempers. This will amplify the damage from the Aspect of Creeping Death. Once we’ve stacked Flay high enough, we can Rupture to rip it all out and cause huge damage. Let’s quickly go over how each skill is used:

Flay our main attacking skill. We want to attack with this at all times.
Rupture to be used against Elites and Bosses once we’ve stacked enough Bleed on them through Flay to finish them off.
War Cry for Berserking and give us a large damage increase.
Challenging Shout and Iron Skin for survival.
Steel Grasp to trigger Berserking and group enemies up to bleed them out easier.

Unique Items and Mythic 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 the Uniques and Mythic Uniques useful to this build

Rage of Harrogath – A powerful chest for Bleed based builds that was updated in patch 1.4 and maintains its potency in Season 5. Since we’re applying bleeds constantly through Flay we’ll be resetting our Shouts and defensive cooldowns all the time.
Fists of Fate – What used to be a meme item or one recognized as not particularly powerful has received a large buff in Season 5. Now boasting up to a massive 51.8% Lucky Hit chance, this item can get us to trigger our various effects on nearly every cast of our skills. The damage bonus might look bad at first, seeing 1% but on average the item results in a 50% damage increase if you’re attacking fast enough and we aim to strike fast and hard with Flay
Shard of Verathiel – A new unique in season 5. This turns basic skills in powerhouses that cost a bit of resource. As Flay is a Basic Skill, the damage will be buffed by this new item significantly. Flay geneates 15 Fury per swing and costing 25 means the net Fury loss is only 10, we can mitigate this through paragon nodes, rolls on our gear, and our tempers meaning this cost is largely negligible but the damage increase is massive. A must have for any Basic Skill build.

Mythic Uniques

Mythic Uniques are extremely rare items that only drop from very end-game bosses such as Duriel and Andariel as well as the Tormented versions of all bosses. Below, you will find a list of Mythic Uniques useful to this build. If a Mythic Unique isn’t listed, it isn’t useful to this setup.

Harlequin Crest – The infamous “Shako” helm is one of the most powerful items in the entire game. With a newly buffed 20% cooldown reduction and massive stats to resource generation, life, and +4 to all skills if you’re lucky enough to acquire one equip it right away
Ring of Starless Skies – A powerful unique that’s been the cornerstone of a few builds in the game’s lifespan but newly buffed midway through Season 4, it retains its killer potency for Season 5. If you’re lucky enough to acquire one, you drop the Bold Chieftain’s Aspect for it and it should provide you a nearly endless source of Fury from your Flay despite the Shard of Verathiel’s cost.

Season 5: Season of the Infernal Hordes

The biggest new activity in Season 5 is, of course, the titular Infernal Hordes. A new endgame activity where you can earn powerful rewards for surviving waves of enemies and defeating a new boss, The Fell Council, at the end of these waves. There will also be a reputation to be gained with the season which provides numerous rewards and even a Resplendent Spark at maximum reputation! Below, you will find the changes in Patch 1.5.0 that affect this build.

Enhanced Flay vulnerable duration increased from 3 to 5 seconds
Combat Flay damage reduction increased from 3% to 4%, maximum stacks increased from 4 to 5 and buff duration increased from 3 to 6 seconds
Enhanced Iron Skin barrier amount increased from 20% to 25% of maximum life
Imposing Presence health bonus reduced from 6/12/18% to 5/10/15%
Gushing Wounds changed – Now when causing an enemy to bleed, you have a chance equal to your Critical Strike Chance to increase the bleed amount by 70%[x] and then by 100%[+] of your Critical Strike Damage. Overpowering a bleeding enemy creates an explosion that inflicts 120% Bleeding damage over 5 seconds.
Wanton Rupture Aspect frequency increased from every 40-25 seconds to every 30-15 seconds.
Hemorrhage paragon node now caps at 45%
Executioner Damage bonus while wielding a Polearm increased from 10% to 15%
Flay Duration temper moved from Barbarian Innovation to Bleed Augments

Advanced Information

Below you will find every additional piece of information you need to know for a more in-depth look at this build

Build Mechanics

While very straight forward thanks to its generator based gameplay, the core of playing this build effectively is knowing when to Rupture. You should only pop this when your Wanton Rupture Aspect is active so you don’t lose all of your bleeding damage. With a max roll this can be as frequently as every 15 seconds.

Use your shouts War Cry and Steel Grasp to keep berserking up even on single targets to make sure your damage-over-time effects are as strong as they can be.

A note on Crowd Control – We use several tempers and high lucky hit chance to apply a lot of crowd control effects. Each once we apply gives us a large damage increase thanks to the Aspect of Creeping Death introduced in Season 5. This gives us powerful bleeds to finish off bosses quickly and really makes this build shine as a boss killer.

Paragon

Below you will find the paragon glyph and legendary nodes used by this build at maximum level. The table will be in the order these glyphs are placed with the legendary nodes below them.

Let’s break down each of these nodes and where our Paragon Points are positioned in each of the boards we use. This part of the build is presented in order of importance. if you do not have enough Paragon Points for use in your Paragon Tree, just slowly work your way towards each step.

Important Notes

Make sure you select the correct Legendary Boards and rotate them into the correct orientation to match the images shown below.
Attach the boards in the order shown as bonus requirements of Rare Nodes increase with their placement order
Additional bonuses on Rare Glyphs may not be obtainable until they gain the increased radius at level 15.

Starting Board

We begin by heading up and right through Brawn and making our way into the main board
Unlock the glyph socket and slot in Exploit
We pick up the needed Dexterity nodes nearby, and head south to grab Tenacity
Finally we had up on the right and through Iron Strength and out to the north to connect the Warbringer board

Warbringer

Start heading up and then swing right immediately and unlock the glyph socket
Slow in Ire and begin grabbing up the nearby magic nodes
Grab Conditioned and Raw Power nearby the radius for more Strength
Grab up the rest of the nearby Strength nodes in the radius to increase the glyph’s power and then head up and out
Lastly exit the board to the east and connect the Carnage board

Carnage

This is the most complex board for us, we will leave and come back here multiple times. Simply follow these steps. Start by heading in and to the lower right path towards the glyph socket.
Unlock it and slot in Might. grab the two nearby rare nodes Brash and Fierce
Head north and grab Enraged and then connect the Blood Rage board to the northern gate. Once the Blood Rage board is complete, come back here.
After finishing Blood Rage, head south from the glyph socket and take a right. make your way to the board’s namesake node, the legendary Carnage
March south and unlock the southern gate, connecting the Bone Breaker board. Once Bone Breaker and Hemorrhage are done. Return to this board.
After the Hemorrhage board is done, return here and from the legendary node, head right and grab Berserker and the nearby magic nodes. Finally connect to the Decimator board to the eastern gate and at long last we’re finished with this central barbarian board.

Blood Rage

Head straight up and take a small detour left to grab Revel
Next turn right and unlock the glyph socket, slot in Marshal and begin unlocking the nodes around it as you go up
After passing through Grit take a turn to the left
Head for the board’s namesake, the legendary Blood Rage node and then return to the Carnage board once we’ve completed this board.

Bone Breaker

Head south and make your way to the glyph socket first, slot in Wrath
Pick up the nearby rare node Vigor and its surrounding magic nodes
Head south from the socket and make your way to Tenacity
Lastly head east and connect the Hemorrhage board here.

Hemorrhage

A straight forward board, simply make your way north
Head right and unlock the board’s namesake legendary node Hemorrhage after this we are finished with this board, head back to the Carnage board

Decimator

Head east along the northern path to the glyph socket
Slot in Executioner and begin to pick up the strength nodes
Grab Arrogance and the surrounding magic nodes.
Head south and grab Demolish and then out to the right
Finish off this board and your paragon journey by grabbing the board’s legendary node Decimator and with that we complete our paragon journey!

Obol Gambling

A final point on acquiring gear in Season 5 and beyond 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. When a level 100 Character spends Obols, all gear from that vendor will be 925 item power, the highest in the game, allowing you to fill out gear with the affixes or Legendary Aspects you need.

Check out our Obol Gambling Tool H E RE

Changelog

August 5th, 2024: Guide created.

Slot	Gems	Legendary Aspect / Unique Item	Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Royal Ruby	Iron Blood Aspect	– Gain [2-5%] Damage Reduction for each nearby Bleeding enemy up to [10-25%] maximum
Chest	Royal 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	Fists of Fate	– Your attacks randomly deal 1% to [200-300%] of their normal damage
Pants	Royal Ruby	Aspect of the Iron Warrior	– Iron Skin grants Unstoppable and [25-35%] Damage Reduction
Boots	N/A	Hectic Aspect	– After casting 5 Basic Skills, one of your active cooldowns is reduced by [1-2] seconds.
Amulet	Royal Diamond	Aspect of Adaptability	– When cast below 50% Maximum Resource, Basic Skills generate 3 of your Primary Resource once per cast. When cast at or above 50% maximum resource, Basic Skills deal x [20-80%] increased damage
Ring 1	Royal Diamond	Bold Chieftain’s Aspect	– Whenever you cast a Shout Skill its cooldown is reduced by [1.0-2.0] seconds per nearby enemy up to a maximum of 6 seconds.
Ring 2	Royal Diamond	Conceited Aspect	– You deal x [10-25%] increased damage while you have an active barrier
Bludgeoning Weapon	Royal Sapphire	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 x [40-80%] basic skill damage and 15% movement speed for 10 seconds
Slashing Weapon	Royal Sapphire	Aspect of Creeping Death	– You deal [5-20%] increased damage over time to enemies for each crowd control effect they’re afflicted by. Unstoppable enemies and staggered bosses take [10-40%] increased damage over time from you instead.
Dual Wield Weapon 1	Royal Sapphire	Wanton Rupture Aspect	– Your Rupture does not remove the Bleeding damage from enemies. This can occur every [30-15] seconds.
Dual Wield Weapon 2	Royal Sapphire	Shard of Verathiel	– Basic Skills deal x [50-200%] increased damage but additionally cost 25 Primary Resource

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Royal Sapphire for increased vulnerable damage	Royal Ruby for increased maximum life	Royal Diamond for increased all resistances

Slot	Gems	Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	Royal Ruby	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Strength 3. Maximum Life	1. Iron Skin Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy 2. Lucky Hit: Chance to Immobilize for 2 Seconds Worldly Fortune
Chest	Royal Ruby	1. Strength 2. Armor 3. Maximum Life	1. Iron Skin Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy 2. Crowd Control Duration Natural Schemes
Gloves	N/A	1. Lucky Hit Chance 2. Strength 3. Critical Strike Damage	1. Damage While Berserking Berserking Finesse 2. Lucky Hit: Chance to Stun for 2 Seconds Worldly Fortune
Pants	Royal Ruby	1. Ranks to Flay 2. Strength 3. Needed Resistance	1. Iron Skin Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy 2. Crowd Control Duration Natural Schemes
Boots	N/A	1. Ranks to War Cry 2. Armor 3. Strength	1. Movement Speed Natural Motion 2. Crowd Control Duration Natural Schemes
Amulet	Royal Diamond	1. Ranks of Cut to the Bone 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Ranks to Heavy Handed	1. Critical Strike Damage – Worldly Finesse 2. Iron Skin Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy
Ring 1	Royal Diamond	1. Attack Speed 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Critical Strike Damage	1. Damage While Berserking Berserking Finesse 2. War Cry Cooldown Reduction Brawling Efficiency
Ring 2	Royal Diamond	1. Attack Speed 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Vulnerable Damage	1. Damage While Berserking Berserking Finesse 2. War Cry Cooldown Reduction Brawling Efficiency
Bludgeoning Weapon	Royal Sapphire	1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life	1. Flay Duration Bleed Augments 2. Critical Strike Damage – Worldly Finesse
Slashing Weapon	Royal Sapphire	1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life	1. Flay Duration Bleed Augments 2. Critical Strike Damage – Worldly Finesse
Dual-Wield Weapon 1	Royal Sapphire	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Vulnerable Damage	1. Flay Duration Bleed Augments 2. Critical Strike Damage – Worldly Finesse
Dual-Wield Weapon 2	Royal Sapphire	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Vulnerable Damage	1. Flay Duration Bleed Augments 2. Critical Strike Damage – Worldly Finesse

Rare Glyph / Legendary Node	Effect
Exploit	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal + [8%] increased damage to Vulnerable targets – Additional bonus once 25 Dexterity points are purchased within the glyph’s range: When an enemy is damaged by you, they become Vulnerable for 3 seconds. This cannot happen more than once evrey 20 seconds per enemy
Ire	– For every 5 Strength purchased within range, you deal + [5.3%] increased Damage While Berserking – Additional bonus once 40 Strength points are purchased within the glyph’s range: While Berserking, you take 10% reduced damage from elites
Might	– Grants + [125%] bonus to all Magic Nodes within range – Additional bonus once 40 Strength points are purchased within the glyph’s range: You deal x8% increased damage while wielding Two-Handed Weapons
Marshal	– Grants + [125%] bonus to all Magic Nodes within range – Additional bonus once 40 Strength points are purchased within the glyph’s range: After casting a Shout Skill, the active cooldown of every other non-shout skill is reduced by 2 seconds
Wrath	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, your deal + [15%] increased Critical Strike Damage – Additional bonus once 25 Dexterity points are purchased within the glyph’s range: Skills that Critically Strike generate 3 Fury
Executioner	– For every 5 Strength purchased within range, you deal + [5.3%] increased damage while wielding a Polearm – Additional bonus once 40 Strength points are purchased within the glyph’s range: While wielding a Polearm you deal x10% increased damage
Carnage	– While Berserking, Critical Strikes increase your attack speed by 2% up to 16% for 6 seconds
Blood Rage	– Killing a Bleeding enemy has a 10% chance to grant Berserking for 5 seconds. Your damage is increased by x10% of your Damage While Berserking bonus up to a maximum of x30%
Hemorrhage	– Your Bleeding damage is increased by x15% of you Vulnerable Damage Bonus up to a maximum of x45%
Decimator	– Each time you make an enemy Vulnerable, your damage is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. Overpowering a vulnerable enemy grants an additional x10% bonus for 5 seconds