Whirlwind – Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 8)

Build Introduction

Welcome to the build guide for one of the most iconic Barbarian builds across multiple Diablo titles, the Whirlwind Barbarian! Beloved by many, this simple playstyle will have you moving with ease through hordes of demons across the open world and nightmare dungeons, slicing through anything in your way as you become an unstoppable hurricane of steel. We will also be spawning some mighty tornadoes to help us mow down demons even faster. If you like simple but fun playstyles and tons of screen-clearing potential, this may be the build for you.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

Optional Uniques

Arreat’s Bearing

Fists of Fate

Ugly Bastard Helm

Mantle of Mountain’s Fury

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Vehement Brawler’s Aspect

Dust Devil’s Aspect

Bold Chieftain’s Aspect

Aspect of Earthquakes

Quick Navigation

Want to skip ahead? Use the table below to jump to the sections you are looking for.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Skill Bar Setup for the Whirlwind Build (Order does not matter)

Whirlwind Ground Stomp Call of the Ancients Rallying Cry War Cry Challenging Shout

Follow the points allocated in the image above for the complete 71 point build. The additional 12 skill points are completed using the Renown system.

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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 the Whirlwind build, we will be focused on using the expertise of Two-Handed Axe for bonus damage against Vulnerable Enemies as our Technique of choice.

We will want to assign our Whirlwind skill to our Two-Handed Slashing Weapon in order to trigger our bleed from Furious Whirlwind for the extra damage and triggering bleeds which our paragon nodes care about.

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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.

Gear Slot	Gems/Runes	Aspect / Unique	Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Grand Ruby	Ugly Bastard Helm	– Explode when activating Wrath of the Berserker, dealing [X] Fire damage to enemies. While Berserking, damage you would deal is converted into Fire damage and you deal x[80-100%] increased Fire damage
Chest	Grand Ruby	Mantle of Mountain’s Fury	– Hammer of the Ancients also forms a seismic line that deals its damage and slows enemies by [60-80%] for 4 seconds. Earthquakes it passes through explode for their total damage and are consumed (We do NOT care about this unique power for this build)
Gloves	N/A	Fists of Fate	– Your attacks randomly deal 1% to [200-300%] of their normal damage
Pants	Grand Ruby	Arreat’s Bearing	– Ancients you summon are empowered. Korlic creates an earthquake that deals [X] physical damage over 4 seconds when he leaps. Talic leaves behind Dust Devils that deal [X] damage while he whirlwinds and Mawdac ignites the ground burning enemies for an additional [X] damage over 4 seconds when he upheaves the ground.
Boots	N/A	Ghostwalker Aspect	– While Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after, you gain [10-30%] increased Movement Speed and are Unhindered
Amulets	Grand Diamond	Vehement Brawler’s Aspect	– Casting an Ultimate Skill increases your damage by [10-30%] for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill Ranks
Ring 1	Grand Diamond	Bold Chieftain’s Aspect	– Whenever you cast a Shout Skill, its active Cooldown is reduced by [10-30%] per nearby enemy, up to a maximum of 50%
Ring 2	Grand Diamond	Aspect of Vocalized Empowerment	– Your Shout Skills generate [5-12] Primary Resource per second while active
Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon	Bac and Tec Runes OR Grand Emerald	Aspect of Earthquakes	– Ground Stomp creates an Earthquake that deals [X] Physical damage over 4 seconds. While standing in Earthquakes and for 4 seconds afterwards you deal x[10-25%] increased damage. Your Earthquakes deal x[20-60%] increased damage.
Two-Handed Slashing Weapon	Igni and Qax Runes OR Grand Emerald	Aspect of Incendiary Fissures	– Your Earthquakes deal x[40-60%] increased damage and their damage is converted into Fire.
Dual-Wield Weapon 1	Grand Emerald	Dust Devil’s Aspect	– Whirlwind leaves behind Dust Devils that deal [X] damage to enemies in their path. Enemies hit by Dust Devils take x25% increased damage from all other sources for 3 seconds.
Dual-Wield Weapon 2	Grand Emerald	Executioner’s Aspect	-Your Overpowers will spawn an Earthquake every 4 seconds that deals [X] Physical damage over 4 seconds (We do not care about this line) Your Earthquake damage is increased by 5% for every 100 Strength you have up to 200%

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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 guide and Masterworking guides for more details about these topics.

Slot	Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Maximum Resource 3. Strength	1. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation 2. Ground Stomp Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy
Chest	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Needed Resistance	1. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation 2. Ground Stomp Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy
Gloves	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Strength 3. Critical Strike Damage	1. Damage While Berserking Berserking Finesse 2. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Pants	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Needed Resistance	1. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation 2. Ground Stomp Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy
Boots	1. Strength 2. +Ranks to War Cry 3. Movement Speed	1. Movement Speed Natural Motion 2. Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Amulet	1. +Ranks to Counteroffensive 2. + Ranks to Heavy Handed 3. Strength%	1. Damage While Berserking Berserking Finesse 2. Ground Stomp Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy
Rings	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Strength 3. Critical Strike Damage	1. Damage to Close Enemies Natural Finesse 2. Brawling Cooldown Reduction Brawling Efficiency
Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon	1. Strength 2. Fury on Kill 3. Maximum Life	1. Chance for Earthquakes to Cast Twice Wasteland Augments 2. Damage While Berserking Berserking Finesse
Two-Handed Slashing Weapon	1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life	1. +Ranks to Heavy Hitter Vehement Augments 2. Damage to Close Enemies Natural Finesse
Dual-Wield Weapons	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Critical Strike Damage	1. + Ranks to Heavy Hitter Vehement Augments 2. Damage While Berserking 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.

Uniques

Below, you will find the useful uniques for this build. Let’s dive in.

• Ugly Bastard Helm – A new unique from the Vessel of Hatred launch, this helm went largely underrated in the previous season but has received a substantial boost to its power in Season 8 and fits nicely into our build, turning us into a burning whirlwind of destruction.
• Fists of Fate – These gloves might appear at first like a bad joke but they hide an incredible power. If you get a maximum roll of 300% you can expect an average of 150% on any given damage roll which is a 50% damage boost. This and their high crit chance and chance to apply Vulnerable means each quake and spin can do massive damage.
• Arreat’s Bearing – These pants boost our ultimate Call of the Ancients by giving us more quakes from them and some much needed resistances and cooldown reduction for our ultimate.

Mythic Uniques

• Ring of Starless Skies – This Mythic Unique ring provides an amazing source of damage and resource management and will skyrocket the build even further. If you are lucky enough to acquire one replace the ring with Aspect of Vocalized Empowerment immediately
• Shroud of False Death – This extremely powerful chest makes a return giving us all the juice for this new direct whirlwind setup if you’re lucky enough to find one. It provides large damage bonuses and survivability bonuses

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Gems and Runewords

Listed below are the best gems to socket into gear for each slot type.

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Grand Emerald for increased Critical Strike Damage	Grand Ruby for increased Strength	Grand Diamond for increased All Resistance

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

Runes	Rune Effects
Bac	Gain 50 Offering: Travel 5 Meters
Tec	Requires 50 Offering: Cooldown 1 Second, Invoke the Barbarian’s Earthquake dealing damage to enemies within
Igni	Gain 25 Offering: Stores offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a Non-Basic Skill to gain the stored offering
Qax	Requires 400 Offering: Casting a Skill other a Basic or Defensive spends all of your Primary Resource to increase your damage by up to 100% for 1 second.

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Paragon Board

We recommend using the following Legendary nodes and Glyphs to truly take this build into the endgame. Note that each Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the Level 100 version. Note that glyph’s reach their maximum radius and legendary bonuses at level 46. 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

• Wandering Death’s Chest Beam – This is active as long as we’re channeling Whirlwind which we should be doing constantly, it also gives an extra 50% multiplier whenever enemies are struck by it and makes the rest of our kit extremely powerful.

Modifier Powers

• Sinerat’s Flames– Gives us some bonus elemental damage and since we’re converting our damage to fire via Ugly Bastard Helm this is fantastic
• Harbinger of Hatred’s Volley – This give us another multiplier to vulnerable damage whenever we activate our main power which we should be doing near constantly
• Hatred’s Embrace’s Haste – Free bonus critical strike chance which we want as more crits means more Gohr’s Devastating Grips procs

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Mercenaries

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

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

The extremely popular Spin2Win playstyle remains intact in Diablo 4 for the Barbarian class. Let’s do a quick pass over our skills and how we use them in this straight forward but powerful build.

• Generate resources via Rallying Cry and War Cry as well as getting struck from Tactical Challenging Shout
• Use Ground Stomp to trigger Berserking and spawn Earthquakes via Aspect of Earthquakes
• Use Call of the Ancients as often as possible for their resource generation and extra quakes through Arreat’s Bearing
• Try to spin through enemies so that Dust Devil’s Aspect‘s new 25% damage amplifier applies to them when the dust devils hit them.

Runeword Synergy

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

• Bac grants us Offering for every 5 meters we move, which isn’t terribly far and as a Whirlwind Barb we should always be on the move looking for new monsters
• Tec is our main to generate Earthquakes outside of Ground Stomp. We spawn Earthquakes by walking and whirlwinding around which makes generation very easy and largely passive
• Igni builds up offering every 0.3 seconds, meaning every second it builds up 75 Offering for us whenever we use a Non-Basic Skill like our shouts.
• Qax spends all of our resource, which we shouldn’t have an issue getting back, to give us a powerful damage boost that helps our spins and quakes do even more damage.

Which Elixir Should You Use?

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 an Elixir providing any Resistance you need most, or the new Elixir of Resource (Resource cost reduced by 10-20%). Maximum resource increased by 10-25) for more efficient spins!

Return to the Alchemist again every 5 to 10 levels to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival.

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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:

• Whirlwind damage increased from 24% to 52%
• Violent Whirlwind changed to now increase the damage of your next weapon mastery skill after holding whirlwind for 2 seconds
• Gohr’s Devastating Grips reworked, now triggers an explosion every 3 seconds for [300-600%] of Whirlwind’s damage as Fire. Critical Strikes with Whirlwind reduce this time by 0.2 seconds down to a minimum of 1 second. Gohr’s damage now also scales with Whirlwind damage.
• Whirlwind‘s damage now increases with attack speed
• Wrath of the Berserker ‘s damage is now always 500% regardless of Skill Ranks
• Aspect of Grasping Whirlwind Now pulls enemies to you every 6-3 seconds
• Dust Devil’s Aspect Now also causes enemies hit to take 25%x damage from all other sources for 3 seconds
• Tec reduced from 1400% to 700%
• Executioner’s Aspect now 5% instead of 15% per 100 strength and capped at 200%

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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.

Changelog

• May 2nd 2025: Gear and rune recommendations updated
• April 25th 2025: Reformatted and updated for Season 8
• March 31st 2025: Skill tree recommendations updated
• February 6th 2025: Unique section and build mechanics updated
• January 19th 2025: Tooltips and Seasonal section updated for Season 7
• January 16th 2025: Updated for Season 7.
• November 27th 2024: Aspects and Mythic Unique section updated for mid-season patch.
• October 24th 2024: Paragon section updated for post-launch boards.
• 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.
• June 13th 2024: Updated stat priority.
• May 4th 2024: Updated guide format and added Season 4 information.
• May 2nd 2024: Updated for Season 4 and Patch 1.4.0, ownership of page transferred, guide restructured.
• March 5th 2024: Updates for Patch 1.3.3.
• February 5th 2024: Marshal Glyph changed to Seething.
• January 30th 2024: Marshal Glyph changes.
• January 21st 2024: Season 3 speculative changes.
• October 23rd 2023: Build revamped for Season 2.
• October 13th 2023: Build Adjusted to prepare for Season 2 launch.
• September 6th, 2023: New format and updates.
• August 2nd, 2023: Patch 1.1.1 section added with build specific changes.
• July 20, 2023: Guide updated for Season 1.