
If Death Blow kills an enemy, it resets that ability’s cooldown and allows you to keep your weapon swap rotation going for as long as you’d like. So the basic rotation for this build is to start with Flay, attack packs of enemies with Rend, and then finish those weakened enemies with Death Blow. In this case, Flay is our Dual-Wield attack, Rend is our Two-Handed Slashing Attack, and Death Blow is our Bludgeoning ability. How are we triggering those weapon swap effects, you ask? Well, most Barbarian builds don’t have to worry about this, but you can actually assign weapon types to many of your attack skills via the Skill Assignment menu. When played correctly, that cooldown reduction ability allows you to have Iron Maelstrom active for every major fight. Not only does it boast the lowest base cooldown time of any Barbarian Ultimate (45 seconds), but you can reduce that cooldown time by one second every time you deal damage after swapping weapons. However, what really makes Iron Maelstrom powerful is its cooldown time. Think of it as your “Smart Bomb” pickup in a shoot-em-up game. It’s an incredibly satisfying screen-clearing Ultimate that feels especially powerful while leveling. Iron Maelstrom is an Ultimate ability that sees you quickly swap between your three main weapon types to unleash a devastating trio of attacks. That search led me to Iron Maelstrom and Walking Arsenal. While there are actually several notable Barbarian leveling builds out there, I wanted to find one that was not only viable but…well, fun. Leveling a Barbarian remains a slow and often challenging process. Unlike Druids, Barbarians didn’t get a lot of leveling love in the recent Season 1 patch. Much like Druids, leveling a Barbarian in Diablo 4 has long been a nightmare.

Key Legendary Aspects: Aspect of Echoing Fury, Aspect of Anemia, Slaking Aspect, Earthstriker’s Aspect, Aspect of Tempering Blows, Needleflare Aspect
