Barbarian Leveling Guide for Diablo: Immortal

The variety and breadth of quests and miscellaneous objectives makes the leveling in Diablo: Immortal a relatively straightforward and pain-free task. Still, you can employ different strategies during this process; most notably, hyper-focusing on efficiency by spamming Story Quests and Dungeons when you hit level requirement story gaps, or taking your time during leveling with additional Zone Events, Lairs and Tasks — a more casual, but far less taxing approach.

Skills unlock gradually as you level your character. Skills are your primary means to defeating enemies, and their interaction with skill-enhancing or skill-altering Legendary Items are what forms the synergies that define the success of your character. The power of Skills is enhanced by Charms, and the power of Legendary Items can be increased when they are Awakened. The game limits you to the use of five Skills — a Primary Attack and four Active Abilities that have some form of limitation to their use (charges, cooldowns). Primary Attacks are not limited in their use, and charge up an Ultimate bar as they are used. When it is fully charged, you are able to use the Ultimate version of that Primary Attack.

Level 1: Barbarians obtain their first Primary attack, Lacerate, as well as two excellent cooldowns — the charge-based Cleave and the nuke Hammer of the Ancients — right from the get-go, at Level 1. Use Cleave indiscriminately whenever you have charges available and a fight going. Try to time the use of Hammer of the Ancients when you have a good pull going, and will affect at least several monsters. The skill's relatively high cooldown will be wasted otherwise.

• As part of the Battle Pass you can also claim The Remembered while leveling, and it is highly recommended that you do so; this legendary axe will spawn a powerful Ancient summon upon the use of HotA, making for an extremely potent companion throughout the leveling process.

Level 3: You gain Chained Spear, a moderately useful crowd control tool on a decent, 10-second base cooldown. When properly aimed, this skill will allow you to build up fights for the convenience of your Cleave and Hammer of the Ancients cooldowns. Still, due to the way monsters naturally aggro and build density on their own, you will replace Chained Spear down the line with a more useful ability.

Level 8: You unlock Whirlwind, a staple for the farming builds of Barbarians. Note that this channeled skill lowers your movement speed while it is used, and build your playstyle around this limitation accordingly. The base rotation should be to:

• Pull monsters — either naturally, by running close by, or drawing them in with Chained Spear — and build up density;
• Use up your heavy-hitting cooldowns like Cleave and Hammer of the Ancients;
• Finish off the fight with a full duration channeling of Whirlwind, which mops up any remaining stragglers.

Level 15: You attain Sprint — a tremendously useful mobility tool that should be used whenever it is available, to get you from one objective to the next faster. Since your skill slots will be full by now, you will have to replace the ability with the lowest value to your overall build. It is suggested that you drop Chained Spear, since you can form monster pulls while leveling just fine by simply running in the vicinity of enemies and getting their attention.

Level 20: At this point, you can consider replacing Cleave with Furious Charge, if you feel like you are overkilling on DPS cooldowns and would prefer more mobility in your leveling build. Furious Charge is a decent combination of a movement and damage-dealing skill, and can serve as an excellent opener in battles. Coupled with its triple charges by default, it can cover a decent distance while your Sprint is on cooldown, or to fill in some extra damage in the thick of a fight.

Level 50: The final piece of the farming build puzzle falls into place with the acquisition of Wrath of the Berserker, a powerful self-buff that is signature to Barbarians. Its innate Attack Speed bonuses are synergistic with Whirlwind by increasing its attack rate, while the other half of WotB's bonus — Movement Speed — is universally useful during farming. In order to get Wrath of the Berserker, you will have to drop one more skill from your rotation; Cleave is the most likely candidate, due to the guaranteed supporting legendary for HotA.

Early on, you should focus on trying out the skills that get added to your arsenal, and equipping better gear as it drops (the in-game cue comes from the flashing bag, indicating an upgrade piece). Your gear can be improved at the Blacksmith at a material cost — and while it starts out small, it quickly scales to a hefty amount. Make sure you pick up all items you come across (the auto-pickup option in Settings helps), and salvage them in town.

Upgrading your equipment is a central part of power acquisition in Diablo Immortal; never hesitate to upgrade a piece, regardless of its stats, since its upgrades will carry over to its eventual replacement for free. Upgrading all Primary gear pieces to level 6 before moving forward to level 7 on any of them is advised, since you gain an additional attribute at that level.

During leveling, you will occasionally hit experience walls (accompanied by the message "You must reach level X before continuing.") as you do the Main Story. To quickly get over the Experience hurdle, your most efficient route is to complete Battle Pass activities — namely, repeatedly grinding out Dungeons, with Bestiary turn-ins and Tasks mixed in. To mitigate the amount of time spent grinding, as well as to (likely) enjoy the game more, you can purposefully seek out Hidden Lairs and complete Tasks as they open up during the storyline completion. While this will slow down your questing, it will pay off later down the line as it diminishes some of the grind walls.

Pay extra heed to the Battle Pass tracker, as it unlocks consumable bonuses along the way, as well as a Legendary Item early on in the leveling process. Legendary items are potential gamechangers for every character, so you ensure you pick the one that will benefit you the most.

Legendary items are exceedingly rare gear pieces that provide unique bonuses — enhancing or altering an ability's powers altogether. When you come across one, especially for a slot where you still have Rare or lower tier items equipped, replace it immediately. Legendaries innately roll superior stats to lower tier items. Feel free to experiment with your newfound Legendary and the skill it enhances; once you no longer need it, extract its power at the Essence Transfer NPC in Westmarch. This allows you to overwrite subsequent Legendary items (likely with better stats) in the same slot with the extracted power, retaining the legendary bonus. Extract as many Legendary powers as you can, so you can easily adapt from one build to another whenever you need. Of course, feel free to salvage duplicate Legendary items that you have already extracted.

Some of the best Legendary items to stumble upon while leveling as a Barbarian are: The Tempest, Stonefall, Davin's Legacy, The Gathering, Second Breath, Battlemaster's Helm, The Coming Storm, Ydama's Cyclone, Swiftwing, and Screaming Fury. The best Legendary item to choose from the Battle Pass legendaries is The Remembered, since its Ancient summon is one of the best unique effects for the class overall — granting you an independent source of DPS, tanking, and Massacre bonus upkeep for additional experience.

Similarly to all Diablo games, gems will make a huge difference to your character in Diablo Immortal — so make a point to hunt down Normal Gems in Hidden Lairs, and Legendary Gems in Elder Rifts (they get a chance to drop if you use a Crest consumable). Additionally, you should follow the quest line to unlock the Helliquary activity as soon as it becomes available at Level 41. This is done in order to receive the Scoria currency while doing Bounties.

When you turn in Bestiary pages, you will receive a class-specific consumable. For Barbarians, this item is the Horn of Arreat, which increases all damage done by yourself and your nearby allies by 10% for 20 minutes. Be generous with its use, especially in party content; buffs like these are what make the Barbarian an invaluable member of the group.

Improving your attributes in Diablo Immortal generally revolves around increasing the total amount of Combat Rating, or CR. Every primary attribute point (Strength, Fortitude, Vitality, Willpower, and Intelligence) grants you 1 point of CR.

The priority attribute for Barbarians is Strength, which gives +0.3 Damage per point; given otherwise identical options, use the one with higher Strength to increase your DPS. Second in the priority order is Fortitude, which adds to your Armor Penetration — indirectly increasing damage dealt by also improving your crit chance. This attribute suffers from diminishing returns due to crit caps, but is still quite valuable. Third in the priority order is Vitality, which simply increases your Life total; the longer you can stave off death, the better.

Stat priority order and stat benefits for Barbarians are as follows:

1. Strength — Grants +0.3 Damage to Barbarians, and +1 to your total CR.
2. Fortitude — Grants +0.1 Armor Penetration, which affects your crit chance. It also grants +0.1 Armor; Armor increases your Block chance, and blocking attacks mitigates 20% of the damage dealt. More mitigation is never amiss, and even more so when dealing with riskier content like the Helliquary. It also adds +1 to your total CR.
3. Vitality — Grants +3 Life; the more you can add to your total health pool, the better. This is especially true for melee classes like the Barbarian, and Barbs specifically thrive on percentage-based healing skills. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
4. Willpower — Grants +0.1 Potency and 0.1 Resistance. Potency increases the duration of harmful effects that you inflict on your foes. Resistance lowers the duration of harmful effects inflicted by your enemies on you. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
5. Intelligence — Grants +1 CR. This attribute does nothing else for Barbarians, and should be avoided as much as possible.

You should not put an emphasis on Special Attributes when considering between gear pieces. This is due to the overpowering importance of Primary Attributes and your CR total. That being said, the better Special Attributes are the two Crit Stats (Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage), Cooldown Reduction, Beneficiary Effect Duration, and Movement Speed. You can also consider Increased Damage to Players for PvP gear.

As per tradition for Diablo games, socketed gear allows you to insert beneficial gems according to your needs. In Diablo Immortal, gems are divided between Normal Gems (socketable in Secondary Gear) and Legendary Gems (socketable in Primary Gear).

Normal Gems can only be socketed in Secondary Gear. Normal gems are divided into Red, Blue and Yellow sockets, and their priority is listed below. Priority-wise, gems are decent power increases to your character, but should never come at the cost of Primary Attributes and your CR score. Go for Red and Blue gems over Yellow if possible, as they provide a stronger bonus overall.

• Red Sockets: Prioritize Tourmaline as it provides a straight Damage increase. Ruby is also decent for the Life increase, but only if you lack Tourmalines.
• Blue Sockets: Prioritize Sapphire, which increases your Armor Penetration, and your Critical Hit Chance stat as a result. Note that Crit Chance provided from Sapphires has diminishing returns, capping out at 33%; when benefits from ArPen get too insignificant, swap to Aquamarine. Aquamarine provides Armor, which is a decent source of damage mitigation.
• Yellow Sockets: Prioritize Citrine for the Potency gains, increasing the duration of harmful effects you inflict on enemies; however small its benefits, they trump the Resistance effects provided from Topaz.

Legendary Gems can only be socketed in Primary Gear. They provide unique and very powerful bonuses on top of a robust stack of stat increases. Legendary Gems are found in Elder Rifts enhanced by the Crest consumables, as well as through crafting at the Jeweler in Westmarch. You acquire Legendary Crests from the Battle Pass, and you should use them ASAP to get some Legendary Gems that greatly empower your build while leveling.

Early on in Barbarian character progression, you should use common, 1- and 2-Star Legendary Gems like:

• Fervent Fang — Can be obtained from the Battle Pass, saving you some Crests. Provides a stacking damage increase against a target with successive attacks; great for single target damage.
• Trickshot Gem — Provides damage mitigation and reduces the energy consumption while channeling; fits into a lot of Whirlwind-based Barbarian builds.
• Everlasting Torment — For the mere cost of a critical hit, this gem inflicts a considerable DoT and an Attack Speed increase to boot. Even at a low quality, this gem starts off with incredible stats and fits nicely from the get-go.
• Chained Death — This is a great early game gem, especially during farming where you usually pull hordes of enemies to maximize your AoE skills. It amplifies your damage the more enemies you fight, encouraging chaining fights together.
• Lightning Core — Despite its low proc chance, this damage-dealing gem can wipe out entire packs when activated, or focus down a larger foe, making it a decent addition to you legendary gem lineup.
• Berserker's Eye — This gem increases damage dealt at the cost of an increase in damage taken. For most of the farming PvE content, this is a reasonable trade-off that you can feasibly mitigate with the Barbarian's strong sources of self-healing.

In summation, efficient leveling is equated to a well-rounded build and knowing which tasks to prioritize at any given time — usually dictated by the storyline quests and the current state of your Battle Pass tracker.

Your most efficient damage-dealing skills will come in the form of Hammer of the Ancients and Cleave, and you should finish fights with the ubiquitous mop-up tool of Whirlwind. Move quickly between fights with the power of Sprint, Furious Charge, and — eventually — Wrath of the Berserker.

Swap into improved gear on the fly as upgrades come left and right during leveling; the helpful green arrows that indicate increased stats are your best friends. Ensure that your worn pieces are always upgraded at the Blacksmith to the highest level you can afford at the time. Currency spent on upgrading is never wasted.

Don't neglect transferring the essence of Legendaries that you do not need anymore, and only salvage duplicate Legendaries, once you have that particular power extracted.

At level cap, take a good look at your available legendary items, give the Barbarian Overview guide a thorough read, and make a choice which of our endgame builds you will strive to complete first:

• Barbarian Whirlwind Bounties Build
• Barbarian Whirlwind Dungeon Build
• Barbarian Cleave Challenge Rift Build
• Barbarian Frenzy Boss Killer Build for Raids
• Barbarian Chained Spear PvP Build