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Build Introduction
This is your comprehensive guide for building a barbarian who leaps into the air and crashes back down to the ground with a thunderous explosion of raw power. Welcome to our Leap Quake Barbarian! This build is pure fun – leaping across the map, crushing enemies beneath your boots each time you land, and leaving behind an earthquake of molten rock. Incredibly mobile, with both strong defensive and offensive capabilities, this build is a blast to play solo or in a group.
Strengths and Weaknesses
- Great AoE Damage
- Constant Berserking
- Great Defenses
- High “Fun Factor”
- Cooldown reliant
- Mobile enemies can be harder to kill
- Can sometimes be stuck without a leap
To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.
Build Requirements
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Skill Tree Points and Skill Bar
Follow the points allocated in the image above for the complete 59 point build. The additional 12 skill points are completed using the Renown system.
Weapon Technique and Weapon Expertise
For this Leapquake build, we will be using the Two-Handed Axe Technique for its increase to Vulnerable enemies.
Barbarians have a unique mechanic in Diablo 4 where you can assign a weapon type to certain skills. For the Leapquake Barb, we want to assign Leap to our Dual-Wield Weapons in order to benefit from
Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus.
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
Gear, Gems, Elixirs, and Stats
Below you will find sections detailing how best to utilize your character’s gear and equipment. With many layers of power from Tempering and Masterworking, to Legendary Aspects, Gems, and the new Runewords we’ve got you covered on what you will need to make this build work. Let’s dive in!
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 once you salvage the item. You can still find some aspects through dungeons as you could in previous seasons but now you 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.
Slot | Gems | Legendary Aspects / Unique Items | Aspect / Unique Effects |
Helm | ![]() | ![]() | – Each point of Fury generated while at Maximum Fury grants [X] Fortify |
Chest | ![]() | ![]() | – Every [3.5-2.0] seconds, Distant enemies are pulled in and take 10% increased damage for 3 seconds. |
Gloves | N/A | ![]() | – Your Overpowers will spawn an earthquake every 4 seconds that deals [X] Physical damage (We do not care about this part of the aspect) Your Earthquake damage is increased by 25% for every 100 Strength you have. |
Pants | ![]() | ![]() | – ![]() |
Boots | N/A | ![]() | – ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Amulet | ![]() | ![]() | – Your skills gain + [0.10-0.40%] Critical Strike Chance per point of Primary Resource you have, up to + [10-40%]. Each point of Primary Resource above 100 grants x0.2% Critical Strike Damage instead. |
Ring 1 | ![]() | ![]() | – Reduces the Cooldown of ![]() ![]() |
Ring 2 | ![]() | ![]() | – Whenever you cast a Shout Skill, its Cooldown is reduced by [1.0-3.0] seconds per nearby enemy up to a maximum of 6 seconds. |
2-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon | ![]() ![]() OR ![]() | ![]() | – ![]() |
2-Handed Slashing Weapon | ![]() ![]() OR ![]() | ![]() | – Your Earthquakes deal x[40-60%] increased damage and their damage is converted into Fire |
Dual Wield Weapon 1 | ![]() | ![]() | – Your Shout Skills create 3 Dust Devils that deal [X] damage to enemies along their path. Your Dust Devils are [5-25%] bigger and deal 1% increased damage for each 1% their size is increased |
Dual Wield Weapon 2 | ![]() | ![]() | – Skills using this weapon deal [0.2-0.5%] increased damage per point of Fury you have, but you lose 10 Fury every second. |
Gems
Listed below are the best gems to socket into gear for each slot type.
Weapon Gems | Armor Gems | Jewelry Gems |
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
For your jewelry, it may be necessary to change the Grand Diamond for another gem for a specific type such as
Grand Sapphire to ensure all of your resistances are capped at 70%. Due to Season 7’s new Occult Gems, it is recommended for Jewelry to use these new Occult Gems instead of Grand Diamonds and/or Grand Skulls. See the Season 7 section for more details regarding these Occult Gems!
Runes
Runewords returned 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 Runewords 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 | Rune Effects |
![]() | Gain 50 Offering: Cast a Skill with a Cooldown |
![]() | Requires 500 Offering: Cooldown 5 seconds, Evoke the Druid’s ![]() |
![]() | Gain 25 Offering: Stand still fighting for 0.3 seconds |
![]() | Requires 50 Offering: Cooldown 1 second, Evoke the Barbarian’s Earthquake, dealing damage to enemies within |
Elixirs and Health Pots
Visit the Alchemist in any main town to craft helpful Elixirs that increase stats, and experience gain for 30 minutes. Make sure to forage plants and pick up the necessary crafting materials during your adventures; they randomly spawn around the world. Use Elixir of Resource at the highest level you can craft due to its increase to maximum fury thereby empowering our
Power Kick
Return to the Alchemist again 5 to 10 levels, to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival.
Stats, Tempering and Masterworking
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 guide, and our Masterworking guide, as well as our guide about The Pit for more details about these topics.
Gear Slot | Gear Affixes | Tempering Affixes |
---|---|---|
Helm | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Maximum Life 3. Maximum Resource | 1. Leap Slam Size ![]() 2. Maximum Life ![]() |
Chest | 1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Armor | 1. Earthquake Size ![]() 2. Ground Stomp Cooldown Reduction ![]() |
Gloves | 1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Strength | 1. Damage to Close Enemies ![]() 2. Dust Devil Size ![]() |
Pants | 1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Needed Resistance | 1. Ground Stomp Cooldown Reduction ![]() 2. Earthquake Size ![]() |
Boots | 1. Movement Speed 2. Ranks to Brawling Skills 3. Maximum Life | 1. Leap Cooldown Reduction ![]() 2. Dust Devil Size ![]() |
Amulet | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Maximum Resource | 1. Damage to Close Enemies ![]() 2. Leap Cooldown Reduction ![]() |
Rings | 1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Strength | 1. Damage to Close Enemies ![]() 2. War Cry Cooldown Reduction ![]() |
2-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon | 1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life | 1. Chance for Earthquake to Cast Twice ![]() 2. Damage While Berserking ![]() |
2-Handed Slashing Weapon | 1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life | 1. Chance for Earthquake to Cast Twice ![]() 2. Damage While Berserking ![]() |
Dual-Wield Weapons | 1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life | 1. Earthquake Duration ![]() 2. Damage to Close Enemies ![]() |
Rotation and Playstyle
Let’s examine the typical rotation to stomp your way through the demonic hordes.
- Use
Leap until you cannot anymore to jump into the fray.
- Use
Ground Stomp as often as possible to reset
Leap through
Aspect of Perpetual Stomping and to cause even more quakes.
- Use your
War Cry and
Rallying Cry on cooldown for resource and damage.
- Use
Call of the Ancients on tough groups and bosses for big damage.
- Use
Challenging Shout when you need defense or to survive a particularly damaging attack.
Unique Items
Below you will find the unique items useful to this build. Let’s dive in.
Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus – A powerful one-handed sword that we will use to amplify our damage by assigning our dual-wield weapons to
Leap. Once you acquire this sword, replace
Aspect of Inner Calm.
Locran’s Talisman – A new neck introduced in season 5 has been brought to life in Season 6 and Vessel of Hatred for this build. Thanks to our resource stacking to fuel our
Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus, this is the perfect amulet for this setup giving us high crit and crit damage.
Mythic Uniques
Here you will find the mythic unique items that are useful to this build. If a mythic unique is NOT listed here, it is not useful to this build and does not provide any meaningful increase or effect.
Harlequin Crest – The infamous “Shako” and one of the most powerful helms in the game. Equip it as soon as you find it if you’re fortunate enough to get one. With its +4 to all skills, 20% damage reduction, and massive armor buff this is the helm to take this build to the next level.
The Grandfather – The most powerful two-handed sword in the game. Its massive multiplier remains incredibly potent for this build. If you’re lucky enough to find one, drop
Aspect of Inner Calm from your dual-wield weapon, move
Aspect of Fierce Winds to it and enjoy wielding this monster instead.
Paragon Board
We recommend using these Legendary Nodes and Glyphs to truly take this build into the endgame. Note that each Glyph’s information listed below is for the Level 100 version. As a reminder, glyphs reach their maximum radius at Level 46, and unlock their Legendary bonus at Level 45. Let’s take a look!
Season 7: Season of Witchcraft
Season 7 brings a slew of powers to equip similar to Season 2’s Vampiric Powers. 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.
Advanced Information
Mechanics and Playstyle
There is only one opening for this build, and that’s to use Leap! We use a particular rotation of skills to keep resetting our Leap‘s Cooldown using the
Aspect of Perpetual Stomping and
Aspect of Giant Strides. We spec into
Ground Stomp for
Aspect of Perpetual Stomping and the buffed
Tactical Ground Stomp to cause even more quakes. The shout skills are used whenever we need Unstoppable or an on-demand access to Berserking through
Enhanced War Cry which allow us to benefit from our key passive
Unconstrained. Lastly the ability to add multiple skill points to Ultimate abilities makes our choice for
Call of the Ancients all the more powerful when facing down tough single targets with lots of HP such as bosses in the Pit or Tormented Bosses.
Berserking
This buff is almost always activated on our character, and there is very little we do to manage it. The Battle Fervor is our trigger for Berserking and because we will be constantly using our
Brawling Skills (
Leap and
Kick), to auto-renew our Berserking State. We will also have our Ultimate skill available,
Wrath of the Berserker, for high-health targets; this will speedup our movement and damage.
Paragon Details
Let’s break down each of these beneficial nodes and where our Paragon Points are positioned in each of the Paragon 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 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.
Rare Glyph and Legendary Nodes | Effect |
![]() | – Grants + [25%] bonus to all Magic nodes within range Additional bonus after 40 Strength has been purchased within the glyph’s radius: After casting a Shout Skill, the active cooldown of every other non-shout skill is reduced by 2 seconds Legendary Bonus: Increases your damage by [X%] |
![]() | – For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal + [2%] increased damage to Close targets – Additional bonus after 25 Dexterity has been purchased within the glyph’s radius: You gain a 10% Damage Reduction against Close enemies Legendary Bonus: Increases your damage to Vulnerable targets by [X%] |
![]() | – For every 5 Strength purchased within range, your Dust Devils deal [13.2%] increased damage Additional bonus after 40 Strength has been purchased within the glyph’s radius: You deal x13% increased damage for 4 seconds after creating a Dust Devil Legendary Bonus: Increases your Dust Devil damage by [X%] |
![]() | – For every 5 Strength purchased within range, your Earthquakes deal [13.2%] increased damage Additional bonus after 40 Strength has been purchased within the glyph’s radius: You deal 10% increased damage to Bosses and Crowd Controlled enemies for each active earthquake up to 50% Legendary Bonus: Increases Earthquake damage by [X%] |
![]() | – Grants + [30%] bonus to Normal Nodes within range Additional bonus after 40 Strength has been purchased within the glyph’s radius: You deal x8% increased damage while wielding One-Handed Weapons Legendary Bonus: Increases your damage to Elites by [X%] |
![]() | – For every 75 Fury you spend, you gain 15% of your Maximum Life as Fortify |
![]() | – Each time you make an enemy Vulnerable, your damage is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. Overpowering a Vulnerable enemy grans x10% bonus for 5 seconds. |
![]() | – Your Earthquakes have a 75% chance to spawn a Dust Devil every second that deals 200% damage. Earthquake damage is increased by 30% of your Damage to Close Enemies up to a maximum of 150% |
![]() | – Killing a bleeding enemy has a 10% chance to grant Berserking for 5 seconds. Your damage is increased by 10% of your Damage While Berserking bonus up to a maximum of 30% |
Starting Board
- We begin our journey by heading east and grabbing
Brawn and the surrounding magic nodes.
- Next we take the western path through
Tenacity and the nearby magic nodes.
- After that head north and unlock the glyph socket, slot in
Marshal.
- Grab enough Strength nodes nearby, especially both rare nodes
Raw Power and
Iron Strength to activate the glyph’s secondary effect.
- Exit the board through the Northern gate and connect the Warbringer board to it.
Warbringer
- Start by heading north and then take a detour west to grab
Hungering Fury and the nearby magic nodes and then continue north.
- Take a small western detour to grab
Fire Resilience and a few life increasing nodes and then head east to grab the board’s Legendary node
Warbringer.
- Go back to the start of the board and now path east to the glyph socket and unlock it, slot in
Territorial.
- Grab the nearby Dexterity nodes and both nearby rare nodes
Brute Force and
Raw Power.
- Make your way north to make one final pit stop to grab
Core Reserve and the nearby life increasing magic nodes.
- Finally exit the board to the east and connect the Decimator board.
Decimator
- Head east and unlock the glyph socket immediately, slotting
Twister in.
- Grab the nearby rare nodes to the north and south
Destroyer and
Demolish and as much Strength nodes as you can.
- Continue pathing east to grab the board’s Legendary node
Decimator.
- Move north from the legendary node and grab
Pillage and some nearby magic nodes and then unlock the Northern gate and connect the Force of Nature board. Once you finish with this board, return to the Decimator board.
- After finishing Force of Nature, return here and from the Legendary node head south and unlock
Brawn and some nearby magic nodes and then unlock the Southern gate and connect the Blood Rage board.
Force of Nature
- Head north and grab
Denial and the nearby magic nodes. Path north and head to the Legendary node
Force of Nature.
- From the Denial cluster, head north east and unlock the glyph socket and slot in
Rumble.
- Grab the strength nodes nearby including
Raw Power and
Squall and the magic nodes near both.
- After finishing up this board head back to the Decimator board.
Blood Rage
- March south and take a western detour to grab
Craving and the nearby magic nodes.
- Head south from this cluster and unlock the glyph socket, slot in
Challenger.
- Unlock as much Strength nearby as you can, pick up both
Revel and
Wrath and the magic nodes around them.
- Continue south and take a small detour south west to grab
Restorative and the life increasing nodes near it.
- From the Restorative node, go east and grab the board’s Legendary node
Blood Rage.
- From the Legendary node, head south east and unlock
Grit and the magic nodes near it and with that our journey is over! Sort of.
Concluding
At this point, you should have most of your paragon points spend, all 5 boards unlocked, and all of your Glyph’s empowered with their bonuses. You will have anywhere from 40 to 50 points remaining to spend. Getting to the maximum paragon level in Vessel of Hatred is a truly arduous task that requires many many hours. If you are truly one of those few who are hardcore enough to max out your Paragon, we suggest spending these extra points to grab any Rare Nodes and magic clusters nearby the paths we took on your boards that we didn’t take in our initial journey or any normal nodes for stats you might be lacking to gain bonuses for your various rare nodes. Congratulations on making it this far!
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
- January 19th 2025: Tooltips and Seasonal section updated for Season 7
- January 15th 2025: Build updated for Season 7
- October 24th 2024: Paragon section updated for post-launch boards
- October 3rd 2024: Build updated for Season 6 and Vessel of Hatred
- August 4th 2024: Guide updated for Season 5 and Patch 1.5.0
- May 9th 2024: Ownership of page transferred, guide restructured, updated for Season 4.
- March 5th 2024: Updates for Patch 1.3.3.
- January 21st 2024: Season 3 speculative changes.
- October 26th 2023: Build Revamped for Season 2.
- October 13th 2023: Build adjusted to prepare for Season 2 launch.
- August 8th 2023: Added notes about Patch 1.1.1.
- August 5th 2023: Malignant Hearts and Paragon updated for clarity.
- July 27th, 2023: Build creation Season 1.