Dust Devil Double Swing – Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 8)

Updated for Season 8

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Introduction

Welcome to the comprehensive endgame guide for the Dust Devil Double Swing Barbarian. This build utilizes high mobility, fast attacks, and screen-filling tornadoes to chop your way through The Pit, Uber Bosses, Nightmare Dungeons, and all other open-world content. We will walk you through everything you will need to cleave demons to bits and conjure powerful storms to clean up everything around you. With that in mind, let’s get rolling.

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus

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Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Double Swing Wrath of the Berserker War Cry Rallying Cry Challenging Shout Iron Skin

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 Double Swing build, we will be using 2-Handed Axe expertise for its bonus to Vulnerable damage.

For this build, we do not have to worry about weapon selection assignment. Double Swing must use your Dual-Wield weapons. Our other skills, Wrath of the Berserker, Rallying Cry, Challenging Shout, and War Cry do not have weapon assignments. As such you can largely ignore this mechanic with one notable exception. You want the weapon that is not Ramaladni’s to be a One-Handed Mace to benefit from Wallop and other effects so we can make the best use of Enhanced Double Swing for resource stability.

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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 Aspects / Uniques	Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Grand Ruby	Aspect of Numbing Wrath	– Each point of Fury generated while at Maximum Fury grants [X] Fortify
Chest	Grand Ruby	Aspect of the Iron Warrior	– Iron Skin grants Unstoppable and [25-35%] Damage Reduction
Gloves	N/A	Accelerating Aspect	– Critical Strikes with Core Skills increase your Attack Sped by [10-25%] for 5 seconds
Pants	Grand Ruby	Tibault’s Will	– You deal [10-20%] increased damage while Unstoppable and for 5 seconds after. When you become Unstoppable, gain 50 of your Primary Resource.
Boots	N/A	Relentless Berserker’s Aspect	– Lucky Hit: Damaging an Enemy with a Core Skill has up to a [22-40%] chance to extend the duration of Berserking by 2 seconds. Double this duration if it was a Critical Strike
Amulet	Grand Skull	Windlasher Aspect	– Casting Double Swing creates a Dust Devil that deals [X] damage to enemies in its path
Ring 1	Grand Skull	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	Grand Skull	Aspect of Vocalized Empowerment	– Your Shout skills generate [5-10] Primary Resource per second while active
2H Bludgeoning Weapon	Xol and Yom Runes OR Grand Emerald	Aspect of Fierce Winds	– Your Shout Skills create 3 Dust Devils that deal damage to enemies along their path. Your Dust Devils are [5-20%] bigger and deal 1% increased damage for each 1% their size is increased
2H Slashing Weapon	Tam and Wat Runes OR Grand Emerald	Devilish Aspect	– After generating 100 Fury, your next direct damage creates 3 Dust Devils that deal [X] damage to enemies in their path
Dual Wield 1	Grand Emerald	Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus	– Skills using this weapon deal [0.2-0.5%] increased damage per point of Fury you have, but you lose 10 Fury every second
Dual Wield 2	Grand Emerald	Aspect of Inner Calm	– You deal [5-20%] increased damage. Triple this bonus after standing still for 3 seconds.

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

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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	Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Maximum Life 3. Maximum Resource	1. Maximum Life Worldly Endurance 2. Dust Devil Size Wasteland Innovation
Chest	1. Maximum Life 2. Strength 3. Armor	1. Maximum Life Worldly Endurance 2. Dust Devil Size Wasteland Innovation
Pants	1. Maximum Life 2. Strength 3. Needed Resistance	1. Maximum Life Worldly Endurance 2. Stun Duration Barbarian Innovation
Glove	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Attack Speed 3. Strength	1. Dust Devil Damage Berserking Finesse 2. Stun Duration Barbarian Innovation
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Armor 3. Ranks to War Cry	1. Movement Speed Natural Motion 2. Stun Duration Barbarian Innovation
Amulet	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Maximum Resource	1. Damage While Berserking Berserking Finesse 2. War Cry Cooldown Reduction Brawling Efficiency
Rings	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Fury on Kill 4. Needed Resistance bonus on ring implicit	1. Damage while Berserking Berserking Finesse 2. War Cry Cooldown Reduction Brawling Efficiency
2H Bludgeoning Weapon	1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Fury on Kill	1. Chance for Dust Devils to Cast Twice Wasteland Augments 2. Critical Strike Damage Worldly Finesse
2H Slashing Weapon	1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Fury on Kill	1. Chance for Dust Devils to Cast Twice Wasteland Augments 2. Critical Strike Damage – Worldly Finesse
Dual Wield Weapons	1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life	1. Chance for Dust Devils to Cast Twice Wasteland Augments 2. Dust Devil Damage Berserking Finesse

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Uniques and Mythic Uniques

Below you will find information on Uniques and Mythic Uniques that are useful for this build. Moreover, if you are interested in target farming Mythic Uniques, check out our How to Farm Mythic Uniques guide.

Unique Items

Below you will find the useful uniques for this build. As a reminder, beyond Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus there are not many useful uniques to this setup as most of our power comes from the tempering affixes. This may change in the future and this guide will be updated if it does.

• Tibault’s Will – This item is recommended for those wishing to go for a more offensive setup at the cost of some toughness. This will also help with resource management for bosses which can be a weakness of the build, by generating a large amount of resource whenever you become Unstoppable
• Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty – Similar to Tibault’s, we only equip this if we’re going for an offensive setup at the cost of some toughness since we’ll lose a solid source of Fortify in Aspect of Numbing Wrath.

Mythic Uniques

Here are the useful mythic uniques for this build. If a mythic unique is NOT listed, it is not used by this build in any meaningful capacity.

• Ring of Starless Skies – Our Mythic Unique of choice should you be lucky enough to find one. If you do find it, you will replace the ring that uses Aspect of Vocalized Empowerment.
• The Grandfather – A powerful Mythic Unique two-handed sword. This will replace your Two-Handed slashing weapon. If you find one you will move Devilish Aspect to your Dual-Wield weapon and replace Aspect of Inner Calm.
• Harlequin Crest – If you are fortunate enough to find one of these, you simply replace your helm with Aspect of Numbing Wrath and use the built-in damage and cooldown reduction as well as numerous ranks to all your skills for more power and survival.
• Heir of Perdition – The new helm on the block proves to be extremely powerful ,even more so than the famous “shako” above. If you acquire one equip it and enjoy the benefits it provides such as ranks to double swing, increased crit chance and lucky hit as well as a 60% damage multiplier that can go higher if you’re grouping with others wearing this item.
• Tyrael’s Might – The pound for pound best chest in the game returns to prominence in Vessel of Hatred. If you’re fortunate enough to run into this item, equip it over every other chest in the game. It’s massive toughness boost will allow you to push harder and harder content through sheer force of being able to survive whatever comes your way.

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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 increased Critical Strike Damage	Grand Ruby for increased Strength	Grand Skull for increased Armor or Grand Diamond for All Resistances

For your jewelry it may be necessary to change the Grand Diamond/Grand Skull for another gem of a specific type such as Grand Sapphire to ensure all of your resistances are capped at 70% and your armor is at least 1000.

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
Tam	Gain 25 Offering; Cast a Non-Channeled Core Skill
Lum	Requires 5 Offering; Cooldown 1 second, Restore 3.5% Primary Resource
Igni	Gain 25 Offering; Stores offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a Non-Basic Skill to gain the stored offering
Wat	Requires 100 Offering; Cooldown 1 second, Evoke the Necromancer’s Horrid Decrepify slowing enemies, reducing their damage and letting you execute them

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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. Keep in mind, Glyph’s reach their maximum radius at 46 and unlock their Legendary bonus at 45. Let’s take a look!

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Boss Powers (Season 8)

Season 8 brings a slew of powers to equip similar to Season 2’s Vampiric Powers. You can equip a total of 4 powers. A single main power that will trigger its primary effect when certain conditions are met and three modifier powers that modify the main power and other skills for even more power. For this build we recommend the following combination:

Main Power

• Grigoire’s Lightning Square – This will give us some extra damage on every cast of Double Swing

Modifier Powers

• Harbinger of Hatred’s Volley – Gives us extra vulnerable damage whenever we trigger our primary boss power which we should have all the time
• Hatred’s Embrace’s Haste – Grants us extra crit chance based on our shadow resistance stat, granting at minimum 5% and up to 12%
• Flesh Reaper’s Disruption – Grants us an extra 5% vulnerable damage increased by our crowd control duration up to a maximum of 10%. While we don’t go out of way to increase this, an extra 5% vulnerable is still very helpful as this 5% is a multiplier

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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 Subo, The Drunken Archer:

• Opportunity Skill: War Cry
• Reinforcement Skill: Trip Mines

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

This build rushes in and shouts to begin spamming Double Swing which will spawn a myriad of Dust Devils thanks to our aspects such as Windlasher Aspect, Devilish Aspect, Aspect of Fierce Winds, and our Tempered affixes. We use our Challenging Shout and Wrath of the Berserker as survival cooldowns and use War Cry to gain Unstoppable and avoid crowd control.

Additionally, for those wishing to truly optimize their weapon setup, a Two-Handed Axe is recommended for the Two-Handed Slashing Weapon slot due to its implicit “Damage to Healthy Enemies” so our Dust Devils will hit mobs for high initial damage and ideally one shot them fueling our Double Swings even further thanks to all of our Fury on Kill stats on our gear.

Runeword Synergy

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

• Tam generates 25 Offering every time we cast a non-channeled core skill such as our main attack Double Swing
• Lum requires only 5 Offering to restore 3.5% primary resource which helps with our sustain. Since we generate 25 when paired with this rune, we have 20 offering that goes into “overflow” and the Overflow on the Lum rune increases the amount of resource restored further helping with our Fury sustain.
• Igni builds 25 Offering every 0.3 seconds and then when we cast a non-basic skill such as Double Swing or our Shout skills, we gain the stored offering.
• Wat requires 100 offering which requires Ignite to build for 1.2 seconds to trigger Wat and then we invoke Horrid Decrepify from the Necromancer which slows enemies, reduces their damage, and lets us execute them at low HP helping speed up our clear and fuel our Fury on Kill stats.

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 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 only drop from things like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. 

For this Dust Devil build, we recommend Elixir of Advantage for the increased attack speed to spam more Double Swing and conjure even more Dust Devils to fill our screen and mop up every demon in sight. Craft the highest value Elixir of Advantage you can to get the most attack speed possible.

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Season 8 Updates

For a comprehensive look at what’s new in Season 8, please check out our Season Hub

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

• Double Swing damage increased from 60% to 66% and cost reduced from 25 to 20
• Violent Double Swing ‘s effect moved to Enhanced Double Swing and vice versa
• Wrath of the Berserker now always deals 500% damage rather than scaling with skill ranks
• Concussion is now a 20% chance to stun enemies for 2 seconds (up to 30% with 2-handers) and also deals 30/60/90% physical damage to them.

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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 the expansion when a level 60 Character spends Obols, all gear from that vendor will be 750 item power, the highest non-ancestral power allowing you to fill out gear with the affixes or Legendary Aspects you need while also having a small chance to grant Ancestral item power 800 gear.

Check out our Obol Gambling Tool Guide HERE.

Changelog

• April 25th 2025: Reformatted and updated for Season 8
• March 31st 2025: Skill tree recommendations updated
• January 19th 2025: Tooltips and Seasonal section updated for Season 7
• January 14th, 2025: Build updated for Season 7
• October 3rd 2024: Build updated for Season 6 and Vessel of Hatred
• August 2nd 2024: Guide updated for Season 5 and patch 1.5.0
• May 18th 2024: Updated weapon selection information in the advanced section, updated gem colors and stats on gear due to season 4 changes from PTR to Live servers.
• May 4th, 2024: Guide format updated, added season 4 changes and advanced information
• May 2nd, 2024: Updated recommended masterworking targets on specifc slots
• April 25th, 2024: Guide created