Best Diablo 4 Barbarian build: Rend enemies and bleed bosses

The best Diablo 4 Barbarian build for my ticket utilises the class's incredible bleed abilities. Attacks like Rend can be absurdly strong, stacking damage on bosses and enemies that'll keep ticking down even when you're trying to evade or make some space. There are also a tonne of great aspects that synergize with bleed, giving you stuns, extra damage, or even added survivability when nearby enemies are bleeding. 

This build is fairly fleshed out—excuse the pun—in terms of skills you can use and particularly passives that will enhance what your bleeds do and the power of your Rends. Since it focuses around a core skill that you can access early on, this build is a long term investment as you gradually unlock the passives, aspects, and other abilities that really make it strong. Here's the best Diablo 4 Barbarian build for bleeding enemies.

Bloody Barbarian build

The bloody Barbarian build is a fun and effective way to turn your warrior into a damage-dealing, blood-draining beast. Skills like Furious Rend and Fighter's Death Blow will let you quickly fill up on Fury, plus passives like The Hamstring and No Mercy will slow and increase crit chances against bleeding enemies, making your two-handed weapon attacks even deadlier than they already are.

Here are the six skills you need for this build, followed by the passives:

Skills

• Battle Lunging Strike: Closes the distance between you and the enemy and deals damage, while generating Fury
• Furious Rend: Cleave a wide arc in front of your character that applies big bleed to everything it touches
• Tactical Challenging Shout: 40% damage reduction, boosts your health, and generates Fury
• Strategic Rallying Cry: 10% increased movement and Fortify, plus additional Fortify when you take damage
• Mighty Warcry: Grants Fortify, increased damage, and Berserking.
• Fighter's Death Blow: Increase damage to bosses, generates Fury when it does damage

Passives

• Pressure Point: Increases chance to render an enemy vulnerable.
• Booming Voice: Extends duration of shouts.
• No Mercy: Increases damage reduction.
• Defensive Stance: Increases damage reduction.
• Hamstring: Slows enemies upon bleed.
• Cut to the Bone: Deals increased damage to vulnerable enemies.
• Heavy Handed: Increased critical strike damage when using two-handed weapons.
• Gushing Wounds: Increased critical strike damage bonus upon bleed.

Bleed is one of the best abilities that the Barbarian possesses, letting them stack damage on bosses and elites to eat away their health. Rend, in particular, is very strong, cleaving a wide arc in front of your character that applies big bleed to everything it touches. To generate Fury for your Rends, you'll want to use Fighter's Death Blow, which is a powerful single strike that resets immediately on kill, and grants 20 Fury provided you damage an enemy.

You won't have Death Blow unlocked initially, though, so I recommend Battle Lunging Strike. This attack deals decent damage but also applies 20% of its damage as bleed, letting you farm up Fury to use Furious Rend. What makes this variant of Rend strong is that it grants you four Fury for every enemy you hit, letting you use the attack more, but it also extends the duration of vulnerable applied to enemies. To maximise this, you'll want the Pressure Point passive, giving your Rend up to a 30% chance of making enemies vulnerable, and Cut to the Bone, which means your bleeds deal extra damage against vulnerable enemies.

The Hamstring, No Mercy, and Heavy Handed passives also work very well together to enhance crits through bleed. The first slows enemies you bleed, the second gives increased crit chance against slowed enemies, and the third increases crit chance if you're using a two-handed weapon, which since this is a bleed build, you should be. To top this off, you'll want the Gushing Wounds ability that increases bleed damage by 100% based on your crit chance and damage.

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Expertise and Aspects

The reason you should use a two-handed sword for your bleed build is because of the Barbarian's Arsenal upgrades. The two-handed axe upgrade gives you 15% increased damage against vulnerable enemies, which fits very well with the build above, while the two-handed sword that you'll be using deals 20% of direct damage as bleed, and 30% increased bleed damage for five seconds after you kill an enemy.

Now, for survivability there are a range of shouts to add damage reduction and movement to the build. Tactical Challenging Shout gives you 40% damage reduction, boosts your health, and generates Fury based on damage you take, while Strategic Rallying Cry gives you 10% increased movement and Fortify, plus additional Fortify when you take damage. This works very well with the Defensive Stance passive that grants a base damage reduction when you have Fortify. Mighty Warcry is also a great addition in terms of granting Fortify, increased damage, and Berserking. Whichever you choose, it's a good idea to boost your shout durations with the Booming Voice passive.

Finally, here are the Aspects:

• Aspect of Anemia: Direct damage against bleeding enemies has a 20% lucky hit chance to stun them for two seconds.
• Slaking Aspect: You have a 30% lucky hit chance to gain 20 Fury when Rend deals direct damage to at least one bleeding enemy.
• Iron Blood Aspect: Gain 2% damage reduction for each nearby bleeding enemy up to 10% maximum. 

On the whole it's a pretty simple build: you use Death Blow to generate fury before chaining it into Rend, applying big bleeds, slow, and vulnerable for increased bleed damage and crit chance. Meanwhile, Rallying Cry, Challenging Shout, and Warcry give you extra damage, survivability, and increased speed to stay alive. If you ever don't kill an enemy with Deathblow and have to wait for its cooldown, use Lunging Strike to farm enough fury to start the loop again. 

While this build focuses more on buffing Rend as a core skill with passives and surviving with shouts, there is definitely potential to add more Berserking into the mix with Wrath of the Berserker, or swapping Battle Lunging Strike for Combat Lunging Strike. Aspect of Berserk Ripping also deals additional bleed damage while you are Berserking so is a good compliment, while Relentless Berserker's Aspect has a chance to extend Berserking if you deal damage with Rend.