Hammer of the Ancients – Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 (Season 11)

Build Introduction

Welcome to the comprehensive guide for the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian at endgame, utilizing insane overpowers and powerful slams to annihilate anything in your way. Bosses? No problem. Nightmare Dungeons? Easy. The Pit? Trivial. With the new Runewords, new Paragon Glyph Levels, New Uniques, and the power of more skill points, this Vessel of Hatred version of a beloved Barbarian build has little problem turning demons in front of them into paste. Let’s dive in!

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Ring of Red Furor

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Aspect of Ancestral Force

Aspect of Earthquakes

Vehement Brawler’s Aspect

Want to know more about the Uniques supporting this build? Jump to the Uniques Section.

Quick Navigation

Use the table below to jump to the sections you are looking for.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Skill Bar Setup for HotA Barbarian (order does not matter)

Hammer of the Ancients Rallying Cry War Cry Challenging Shout Wrath of the Berserker Ground Stomp

Wondering what to do after Level 60? Head to the Paragon Board section to power up the build even further.

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

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 Hammer of the Ancients it requires that we use our Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon so we don’t get to customize our weapon selection as much as other builds.

For our Weapon Technique Slot, we will be choosing Polearm for its damage bonus while healthy (above 80% life) for more consistent damage.

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Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

The following sections cover all systems that are important if you want to improve the power of your character in the endgame of Diablo 4.

Legendary Aspects

Each Aspect is listed with its matching gear slot. Do your best to keep each Aspect in the assigned slot. Remember to salvage Legendary Items with higher Aspect values to unlock them in the Codex of Power, and then imprint them onto gear pieces with the preferred affixes.

Slot	Gems	Legendary 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 (We do NOT care about this line) You deal x[40-60%] increased Fire damage.
Chest	Grand Ruby	Aspect of the Fortress	– For every 10% Life you are missing, gain [1-5%] Damage Reduction
Gloves	N/A	Fists of Fate	– Your attacks randomly deal 1% to [200-300%] of their normal damage
Pants	Grand Ruby	Relentless Berserker’s Aspect	– Lucky Hit: Damaging an enemy with a Core Skill has up to a [15-35%] chance to extend the duration of Berserking by 2 seconds. Double this duration if it was a Critical Strike.
Boots	N/A	Ghostwalker Aspect	– While Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after, you gain 25% + [10-30%] increased Movement Speed and are Unhindered
Amulet	Grand Diamond	Aspect of Limitless Rage	– Each point of Fury you generate while at Maximum Fury grants your next Core Skill within 5 seconds x[1-3%] increased damage up to 15 times.
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 70%
Ring 2	Grand Diamond	Ring of Red Furor	– After spending 100 Fury within 5 seconds, your next non-channeled Core or Weapon Mastery Skill Cast within 5 seconds is a guaranteed Critical Strike and deals x[50-80%] bonus Critical Strike Bonus
Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon	Igni and Lum Runes or Grand Ruby	Aspect of Ancestral Force	– Hammer of the Ancients quakes outward for x[30-60%] increased damage. This bonus is doubled against bosses
Two-Handed Slashing Weapon	Ahu and Qax Runes or Grand Ruby	Aspect of Earthquakes	– Ground Stomp causes an Earthquake that deals [X] Physical damage over 4 seconds. While standing in Earthquakes and for 4 seconds afterwards, you deal x[20-60%] increased damage. Your Earthquakes deal x[20-60%] increased damage
Dual Wield Weapon 1	Grand Ruby	Vehement Brawler’s Aspect	– Casting an Ultimate Skill increases your damage by [10-30%] for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill Ranks
Dual Wield Weapon 2	Grand Ruby	Aspect of Anger Management	– While above 50 Fury, deal x[10-30%] increased damage and gain Berserking, but 3 Fury drains per second.

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. Strength 4. Resistance to All Elements	Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Chest	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Armor	Earthquake Size Barbarian Innovation
Gloves	1. Attack Speed 2. Strength 3. Ranks to Hammer of the Ancients 4. Overpower Damage	Hammer of the Ancients Size Brute Innovation
Pants	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Armor	Ground Stomp Cooldown Reduction Barbarian Strategy
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Maximum Life 3. Strength 4. Fury Per Second	Movement Speed Natural Motion
Amulet	1. % Strength 2. +Ranks to Brute Force 3. + Ranks to Heavy Handed 4. Attack Speed	Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction Ultimate Efficiency — Barbarian
Ring 1	1. Attack Speed 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Strength	Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction Ultimate Efficiency — Barbarian
Ring 2	1. Resistance to All Elements 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Attack Speed 4. Strength	Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction Ultimate Efficiency — Barbarian
2-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Fury On Kill	Chance for Hammer of the Ancients to Deal Double Damage Core Augments — Barbarian
2-Handed Slashing Weapon	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Fury On Kill	Chance for Hammer of the Ancients to Deal Double Damage Core Augments — Barbarian
Dual Wield Weapons	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Overpower Damage	+Ranks to Wallop Vehement Augments

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Uniques and Mythic Uniques

Below you will find information on Unique Items and Mythic Unique Items that are useful and recommended for this setup. If a Mythic Unique is not listed here, it is NOT recommended and won’t benefit this specific build in any way.

Uniques

• Ugly Bastard Helm This helm grant us a massive multiplier to all fire damage. Though changed to only convert damage into fire during Wrath of the Berserker, we don’t actually need to worry about this as we run this particular ultimate and benefit from it as often as possible.
• Fists of Fate even with its change in Season 8 to no longer trigger random Crowd Control effects, it still causes Vulnerable and helps our damage out by a lot. Make sure you’re wearing one that’s at least 250% or more on its Unique Power, this will make it on average, increase our damage by 25% and up to 50% with a maximum 300% roll. A powerful unique.
• Ring of Red Furor This ring has been coming back into the limelight in the last few seasons as certain builds are able to take advantage of it. Thanks to changes Hammer is once more able to wield this to produce massive hammers and crush the demonic hoards.

Mythic Uniques

• Shroud of False Death – An extremely powerful chest item that grants +1 rank to all passive skills we have. This provides everything from some movement speed, to life, to critical hit damage, fortify and everything in between. This also increases our resource generation letting us keep slamming hammers down.
• Harlequin Crest – The infamous Shako. With a huge armor bonus, 20% damage reduction, huge cooldown reduction and +4 ranks to all skills, this item is still extremely powerful providing us full uptime on shouts and our ultimate skill Wrath of the Berserker as well as granting a bit more damage through the ranks to hammer itself which give it even more crushing power.

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Gems and Runes

Below you will find the details about why we’re using the gems we are as well as which runes we want to combine for runewords in Vessel of Hatred. Let’s jump in.

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Grand Emerald for increased Critical Strike Damage	Grand Ruby for increased Strength stat	Grand Diamond for increased Resistances OR Grand Skull for increased Armor

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.

Rune	Rune Effect
Igni	Gain 25 Offering: Stores offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a non-basic skill to gain the stored offering.
Lum	Requires 5 Offering: Cooldown 1 second, Restore 3.5 Primary Resource
Ahu	Gain 15 Offering; Lucky Hit: Up to a 100% chance against non-healthy enemies
Qax	Requires 400 Offering; Cooldown 1 second, Casting a Skill other than a Basic or Defensive Skill spends all of your Primary Resource to increase your damage up to 100% for 1 second.

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Paragon Boards

Paragon unlocks at Level 60 and plays a big role in endgame progression and character power. The following Legendary Nodes and Glyphs are recommended for this build. Keep in mind each Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the level 46 version.

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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:

• Cooldown Reduction
• %Strength
• Attack Speed
• Physical Damage
• +Ranks to Core Skills

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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 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

In this section, we will detail how to play this build, what the various skills and passives are used for and what your damage rotation should be to get the full benefit of this setup to smash the most demons and bosses. Let’s get started!

Playstyle

This build has come back to the old style of HotA that we all know and love. Big hammers dealing big damage. No more Earthquakes doing all of the damage or blowing them up via the new uniques. This is just straight forward raw Hammer of the Ancients damage thanks to the new systems and items in place that allow for some pretty wild combinations. Let’s take a deeper look!

Rotation

We want to build resources via our Shout skills and then begin hammering. We can use Ground Stomp to stun demons and reduce the cooldown of our ultimate skill Wrath of the Berserker. Each Hammer we cast will spend more and more fury refunding more and more as well giving us plenty of resources to keep casting. We’ll be triggering Ring of Red Furor frequently as well giving us guaranteed critical hits and overpowers for even bigger damage numbers.

Skill Use

• Hammer of the Ancients – The bread and butter of the build. We want to be spamming this as often as our resources allow.
• Ground Stomp – We use this powerful crowd control both for its CC but also for its built in ultimate cooldown reduction via Strategic Ground Stomp. Its relatively short cooldown means we should be casting this quite frequently giving us some safety from the hordes but also incredibly high uptime on our next skill.
• Wrath of the Berserker – Our Ultimate of choice. We want this up as often as we can. This gives us everything from damage to berserking and makes our damage go through the roof. We’re also considered Unstoppable during this skill so we can ignore crowd control effects and can continue to keep blasting and smashing.
• War Cry – One our main methods to enter the Berserking state, it grants a large multiplier to our damage for even bigger Hammer of the Ancients hits. You’ll want to cast this often especially during bossing and elite packs.
• Rallying Cry – This shout grants us movement speed, resource generation (the important bit), another source of Unstoppable and some basic resources to get started. We want to press this basically on cooldown.
• Challenging Shout – Lastly this skill provides our main defensive option while doing harder content granting us a large 40% damage reduction and bonuses to maximum life while active. We want to cast this whenever we’re engaging with more difficult enemies such as elite packs and bosses or if we ever find ourselves surrounded by many many demons.

Runeword Synergy

Let’s take a quick look at the runewords we will be using for this setup and explain the interactions that help this build work.

• Igni is our first ritual rune granting us 25 offering every 0.3 seconds. This is about 75 every second and to trigger it we simply need to cast a non-basic skill to gain the stored up offering so every Hammer should trigger this rune.
• Lum is our invocation rune paired with igni. It gives us back 3.5 resources per 5 offering. So with 75 offering every second from Ignire, this is roughly 263 Fury. A gargantuan amount but we’ll need that much to keep chugging through our hammers
• Ahu is our second ritual rune, granting us 15 offering every time we lucky hit an enemy that isn’t healthy. In Diablo 4, Healthy means above 80% HP. So once a monster drops below 80%, it’s considered not healthy, so basically this rune should give us offering every time we finish something off when paired with Hammer of the Ancients‘s very high lucky hit chance.
• Qax is our second invocation rune paired with Ahu. This sometimes drains all of your fury (but don’t worry, our Igni+Lum combo will get it back fast) but gives you a massive 100% damage boost for 1 second for your next Hammer which should make it really destroy whatever it’s aiming for.

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 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 can only drop from things like Helltide or Nightmare Dungeons.

For this build we recommend Elixir of Resourcefulness II for the increased Fury and Fury cost reduction. The increased Fury helps us gain some bonuses from various items and the cost reduction helps keep the rotation feeling smooth. Always have an Elixir active if you can for the increased experience gain which will help you gain Paragon levels faster at endgame.

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Season 11 Updates

For a complete overview of Season 11, its mechanics and theme, new leveling activities, and other changes coming with the Season of Divine Intervention, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub here.

Here is a quick overview of the seasonal changes relevant to this build:

• Damage per 10 points of Strength increased from 1% to 1.1%.
• Carnage damage increased from 30% to 45%.
• Blood Rage damage increased from 45% to 60%.
• Weapons Master damage increased from 30% to 45%.
• Decimator damage increased from 20% to 25%.
• 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 Patch 2.0 when a level 60 Character spends Obols, all gear from that vendor will be 750 item power, the highest non-Ancestral in the game, allowing you to fill out gear with the affixes or Legendary Aspects you need.

Check out our Obol Gambling Tool Guide HERE.

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Changelog

• December 5th 2025: Updated for Season 11
• September 17th 2025: Updated for Season 10
• June 28 2025: Updated for Season 9
• April 25th 2025: Reformatted and updated for Season 8
• March 31st 2025: Updated skill tree recommendations
• January 21st 2025: Added section detailing Earthquake spawns and provided Leap variant information.
• January 19th 2025: Tooltips and Seasonal section updated for Season 7
• January 17th 2025: Build updated for Season 7.