Hammer of the Ancients - Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 7)

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.

Rotation and Gameplay BiS Gear Paragon Board

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Strong AoE damage style
Huge damage numbers
Easily stuns enemies
Tons of Unstoppable uptime for escaping crowd control

Weaknesses

Requires managing weapon swaps
Requires cooldown management
Stationary and little mobility
Getting the biggest numbers requires some endgame uniques

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 71 point build. The additional skill points are completed using the Renown system.

Shatter the Earth

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 Season 7 and the new unique chest now relying on Earthquakes and shattering them for huge damage.

We will be utilizing the new unique Mantle of Mountain’s Fury and several skills, Paragon Nodes, and Legendary Aspects to best utilize this bonus to deliver massive Hammer of the Ancients and ground shattering quakes. 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. The majority of the damage now comes from Earthquakes and breaking them with Hammer of the Ancients for some world shattering damage.

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 wielding the power of earth and flame and delivering massive satisfying crunches to your enemies sounds like a good time, then this in the build for you! Let’s dive in!

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

Season 7: Season of Witchcraft

Season 7 brings a selection of powers to equip similar to Season 2’s Vampiric Powers but with a few new twists. You can equip a total of 6 powers. 5 in the regular purple slots and 1 in a red slot called a “Unique” power. For this build we recommend the following powers

Slot 1: Soul Harvest
Slot 2: Aura of Lament
Slot 3: Hex Specialization
Slot 4: Poison Frog Servant
Slot 5: Hex of Whispers
Unique Power (Red Slot): Vengeful Spirit

Beyond these Witchcraft Powers, Season 7 brings another new item to further enhance your character. Occult Gems! You may equip a total of 3 of these. One in your Amulet, and one in each Ring. Each Occult Gem provides 160 Armor and 8% to All Resistances in addition to its unique effects. For this build we recommend the following three gems.

Navigation to Other Pages:

HotA Barbarian – Build Introduction	Rotation and Gameplay
BiS Gear	Paragon Board

Changelog

January 19th 2025: Tooltips and Seasonal section updated for Season 7
January 17th 2025: Build updated for Season 7.
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.

Hammer of the Ancients – Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 7)