Whirlwind – Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 11)

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

Fists of Fate

Tibault’s Will

Ugly Bastard Helm

Rage of Harrogath

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Vehement Brawler’s Aspect

Dust Devil’s Aspect

Aspect of Fierce Winds

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 Wrath of the Berserker 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 Polearm 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	– Casting Wrath of the Berserker causes you to explode dealing [X] Fire damage. While Wrath of the Berserker is active your direct damage dealt is converted into Fire. You deal [40-60%]x increased Fire damage
Chest	Grand Ruby	Rage of Harrogath	– Luck Hit: Inflicting Bleeding on an enemy has up to a [20-60%] chance to reduce the Cooldown of your Skills by 1 second.
Gloves	N/A	Fists of Fate	– Your attacks randomly deal 1% to [200-300%] of their normal damage
Pants	Grand Ruby	Tibault’s Will	– You deal [10-20%] increased damage while Unstoppable and for 5 seconds after. When you become Unstoppable you gain 50 of your Primary Resource
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	Dust Devil’s Aspect	– Whirlwind leaves behind Dust Devils that [X] damage to enemies in their path. Enemies hit by Dust Devils take x25% increased damage from all of your other sources for 3 seconds.
Ring 1	Grand Diamond	Aspect of Vocalized Empowerment	– Your Shout Skills generate [5-12] Primary Resource per second while active
Ring 2	Grand Diamond	Aspect of Anger Management	– While above 50 Fury deal x[10-30%] increased damage and gain Berserking but 3 Fury drains per second
Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon	Bac and Vex Runes OR Grand Emerald	Aspect of Fierce Winds	– 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 x1% increased damage per 1% their size is increased
Two-Handed Slashing Weapon	Ahu and Qax 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[25-60%] increased damage. Your Earthquakes deal x[20-60%] increased damage
Dual-Wield Weapon 1	Grand Emerald	Aspect of Inner Calm	– You deal x[5-13%] increased damage. Triple this bonus after standing still for 3 seconds.
Dual-Wield Weapon 2	Grand Emerald	Vehement Brawler’s Aspect	– Casting an Ultimate Skill increases your damage by [10-30%] for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill ranks.

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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 Life 3. Strength 4. Resistance to All Elements	Challenging Shout cooldown reduction Barbarian Strategy
Chest	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Armor	Challenging Shout cooldown reduction Barbarian Strategy
Gloves	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Strength 3. Attack Speed 4. Critical Strike Damage	Dust Devil Size Wasteland Innovation
Pants	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Armor	Challenging Shout cooldown reduction Barbarian Strategy
Boots	1. Strength 2. +Ranks to War Cry 3. Movement Speed 4. Fury Per Second	Movement Speed Natural Motion
Amulet	1. +Ranks to Counteroffensive 2. + Ranks to Heavy Handed 3. Strength% 4. Cooldown Reduction	Wrath of the Berserker cooldown reduction Ultimate Efficiency — Barbarian
Rings	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Strength 3. Resistance To All Elements 4. Attack Speed	Wrath of the Berserker cooldown reduction Ultimate Efficiency — Barbarian
Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon	1. Strength 2. Fury on Kill 3. Maximum Life 4. Critical Strike Damage	Chance for Dust Devils to cast twice Wasteland Augments
Two-Handed Slashing Weapon	1. Strength 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Maximum Life 4. Fury On Kill	Damage While Wrath of the Berserker is active Berserking Finesse
Dual-Wield Weapons	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Vulnerable Damage	Damage While Wrath of the Berserker is active 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 – Though changed in the latest patch to require Wrath of the Berserker to be active to gain its damage bonus, builds that still use Wrath as their ultimate of choice still gain powerful benefits from this helm including the damage conversion and fire based buffs. An excellent helm for this setup
• Fists of Fate – An item that on the surface may look awful, reducing your damage to 1% of its normal damage?! But really, this is a massive increase to your average hit by around 1.5x and with Whirlwind’s spins and all the dust devils going out, you’ll see a huge benefit from using these gloves
• Tibault’s Will – These pants grant us a huge multiplier whenever we’re unstoppable which thanks to our Wrath of the Berserker and Rallying Cry we should be with alarming regularity. These also help smooth our resources out giving us 50 fury every time we become unstoppable which should help us keep spinning.
• Rage of Harrogath – Since using a slashing weapon with Whirlwind triggers a bleed, we’ll be able to benefit from this unique and gain some cooldown reduction to our Wrath of the Berserker for even more uptime.

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 Bold Chieftain’s Aspect.
• Heir of Perdition – With the changes to Ugly Bastard Helm this Mythic helm is now the most powerful helm option for this build granting us a permanent 60% multiplicative damage increase as well as a lot of quality of life in the movement speed and crit and lucky hit chances. If you’re lucky enough to snag one, equip it over your Ugly Bastard Helm without hesitation as it doesn’t require the condition of being in Wrath of the Berserker to gain its benefits and provides more core skill ranks for Whirlwind

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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 Otherwise

For your jewelry, you can freely swap between Diamonds and Skulls based on your needs. Armor and Resistances no longer have hard caps you need to hit to reach your defensive potential. Instead you can now freely swap the gems between them depending on what you need the most. Are you dying to physical strikes? Use Skulls for more armor. Are you dying to elemental abilities light lightning damage or poison pools? Use Diamonds for more resistances. Always be sure to check your Toughness stat and use what works best for you!

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
Ahu	Gain 15 Offering: Lucky Hit – Up to a 100% chance against Non-Healthy Enemies
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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Season 11 Mechanics

Divine Gifts

As you complete the season journey and fight across Sanctuary you will earn the ire of the lesser evils. Defeating them will grant you corrupted essences which you can then purify into Divine Gifts. There are 8 of these in total and you will have four Purified and four Corrupted allowing you to modify various content and get different boons and reward as a result. For this build our recommended setup is below:

Purified

• Essence of Lies
• Essence of Pain
• Essence of Screams
• Essence of Sin

Corrupted

• Essence of Squalor
• Essence of Shadows
• Essence of Anguish
• Essence of Hellfire

Sanctification

Season 11 brings a new way to “Finish” an item called Sanctification. Any item of item power 750 or higher can be Sanctified, but BE WARNED: Sanctification will make it so that you cannot alter the item any further so it should always be the final step in the crafting process! It provides many powerful options to enhance your builds. While there are no bad outcomes with all Sanctification bonuses providing some power, there are some options that provide larger bonuses than others, so we recommend the follow options if you’re fortunate enough to acquire them:

• %Strength
• Cooldown Reduction
• Attack Speed on your 2-Handed Weapons
• Physical Damage
• Adding Devilish Aspect to your item

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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 where Whirlwind when combined Aspect of Fierce Winds does the majority of our damage.

• Generate resources via Rallying Cry and War Cry
• Whirlwind through enemies to apply bleeding thanks to Furious Whirlwind
• Use Ground Stomp to stun enemies and reduce the cooldown of Wrath of the Berserker as well as generate earthquakes via Aspect of Earthquakes so we can benefit from their power
• Maintain Wrath of the Berserker to gain the benefits of Ugly Bastard Helm for both of their massive multipliers and unstoppable status
• Cast Challenging Shout for survival in tough spots

Runeword Synergy

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

• Bac grants us 50 offering every 5 meters we travel, which isn’t terribly far and since we’re always spinning and on the move, this should be fairly easy to maintain
• Tec is yet another way for us to generate quakes so we can always benefit from the damage multiplier of Aspect of Earthquakes. Since this cost 50 Offering and Bac gives us 50, every 5 meters we travel will spawn a quake for us.
• Ahu builds up offering for us every time we Lucky Hit an enemy that isn’t Healthy (meaning below 80%) which should happen extremely frequently as we spin through packs
• 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 ancients and dust devils 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 11 Updates

For a comprehensive look at what’s new in Season 11, please check out our Season Hub.

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

• Damage per 10 points of Strength increased from 1% to 1.1%.
• Blood Rage damage increased from 45% to 60%.
• Decimator damage increased from 20% to 25%.
• Weapons Master damage increased from 30% to 45%.
• Aspect of Anger Management now grants 10-30% increased damage and Berserking while above 50 Fury instead of only granting Berserking.

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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

• December 5th 2025: Updated for Season 11
• September 20th 2025: Chaos Armors and Season 10 section updated
• September 17th 2025: Updated for Season 10
• July 31 2025: Clarified Rupture use case in rotation
• June 28th 2025: Build updated for post campfire chat changes for Season 9
• June 17th 2025: Build updated for season 9
• May 19th 2025: Updated Unique recommendations
• 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.