There are multiple ways to play Barbarian in Diablo 4. From the classic Whirlwind build to the walking tank Thorns build, each one has a different playstyle. Another classic build from the old days is making its return in Diablo 4, the Bleed build—and it’s more powerful than ever.
The Bleed build focuses on Flaying, Rending, and Rupturing your enemies until they bleed out. With so many ways of bloodletting, the Bleed build focuses on a different playstyle compared to the other Barbarian builds we have here. The best way to run a Bleed build is as follows.
A guide to Bleed Barbarian in Diablo 4
The Bleed build is an interesting choice for a Barbarian, a class that specializes in quick bursts of damage with builds like Double Swing and Hammer of the Ancients. This build focuses on bleed skills with half of the chosen skills being Flay, Rend, and Rupture. The objective of this build is to slowly drain enemies dry with bleed damage while you move from pack to pack.
As such, this build is a relatively slower way of playing the Barbarian. Instead of a burst damage playstyle, you will be playing more of a hit-and-run assassination playstyle, only slower. Since it is not a very Fury-intensive build, the major resource to maintain here is cooldowns. Maintaining optimal uptime on your skills is the key to maxing out this build.
On the plus side, one of the major strengths of this build lies in its DoT (Damage over Time) potential. With quick casts of Rend and Flay, you can cleave through multiple enemies and leave them bleeding. Additionally, the rest of your skills will grant you increased defenses and improved uptime on your Berserking status, allowing you to last far longer in battle.
Now, we talk about what skills to pick to make this build possible.
Bleed Barbarian skill progression
Since this endgame build is very similar to popular leveling builds like the Rend build, you should see some similarities between the skills we will choose. First, we pick all the bleed damage skills we will need to make this build tick.
- Flay: Attack the enemy, causing minor damage and applying a bleed status effect, dealing bleeding damage over time.
- Rend: Cleave all enemies in a frontal arc, dealing damage and inflicting bleeding to all affected targets caught in the area of effect.
- Rupture: Stabs your weapon through all enemies in front of you. When the weapon is removed, all inflicted bleed effects are removed and the accumulated damage is applied at once.
Flay is our Basic skill of choice for this build. Since it applies bleed and generates Fury, there is no better Basic skill that synergizes better than this one. Improving it with Enhanced Flay also has a chance to leave affected enemies Vulnerable (with a two-handed weapon). The final upgrade for this build is Battle Flay, which causes your attacks to deal additional bleed damage to affected enemies.
Rend is our Core skill for this build. Rend is a similar skill to Flay, dealing more damage and applying bleed to a group of enemies instead of just one. Its upgrade, Enhanced Rend, increases any Vulnerable status effect you previously applied on the affected enemies. Finally, Furious Rend recovers Fury per enemy hit, ensuring that you can always spam the skill.
Rupture rounds up our bloodletting trifecta as our Weapon Mastery skill. The skill can only be used when you equip a slashing weapon. The first upgrade to this skill—Enhanced Rupture, causes an explosion of bleeding damage, with increased damage per 50 points of Strength. Then we pick up Warrior’s Rupture to improve our attack speed each time Rupture makes contact.
- Rallying Cry: Release a shout that increases your and your allies’ movement speed and resource generation speed. Allies gain these bonuses for half the duration of the skill.
- Death Blow: Attack all enemies in front of you. If you kill an enemy with Death Blow, its cooldown resets. This skill can only be used with any complete Arsenal weapon.
Rallying Cry is a utility skill that gets you and your party going with movement speed and faster resource generation to spam skills. Enhanced Rallying Cry turns you Unstoppable, supporting the hit-and-run nature of this build. Tactical Rallying Cry grants you bonus Fury and even faster resource generation when you cast it.
Death Blow is your finishing move when the enemies’ health drops low from blood loss. Enhanced Death Blow makes this skill a great boss killer while Warrior’s Death Blow is great for maintaining your Berserking status for as long as possible.
Finally, to give this build the extra oomph it needs, we pick up one of the best Ultimate skills that synergizes with the other five.
- Iron Maelstrom: Perform a combo of three attacks using three weapon types.
- The first hit uses your two-handed bludgeoning weapon to damage and stun all enemies.
- The second hit uses your two-handed slashing weapon to damage and inflict bleed on all enemies.
- The final hit uses your dual-wield weapons to attack all enemies.
Now that we have the active abilities sorted out, the next section will deal with the passive abilities needed to make them shine.
Best Bleed Barbarian passives
These passives directly affect the power of your offense and defense.
- Martial Vigor: Increases your damage resistance against elites.
- Aggressive Resistance: Increases your damage resistance when Berserking.
- Pit Fighter: Increases your damage output against close enemies and your damage resistance against distant enemies.
- Hamstring: Slow all healthy (over 80 percent health) enemies that you inflict with bleeding.
- Cut to the Bone: Deal bonus bleeding damage to all Vulnerable enemies.
- Heavy-Handed: Deal increased critical strike damage when using two-handed weapons.
The utility passives will help you survive.
- Imposing Presence: Increases your max health pool.
- Booming Voice: Increases the duration of all your Shout skills.
- Guttural Yell: Decreases the damage of nearby enemies when you use a Shout skill.
- Raid Leader: Heals nearby allies for a percentage of their max health when you use a Shout skill.
- Prolific Fury: Increases your Fury generation when Berserking.
- Swiftness: Increases your movement speed.
Finally, we select the Key Passive that significantly buffs this build.
- Gushing Wounds: When you inflict bleed, you have a chance (proportional to your critical strike chance) to deal bonus bleeding damage based on your critical strike damage. Overpowering a bleeding enemy also causes an explosion that deals additional bleeding damage.
Bleed Barbarian Arsenal choices
The Barbarian’s Arsenal system is the class’ unique mechanic. This system brings out the most of the Barbarian’s weapon masteries by enhancing a certain weapon or playstyle that suits the build you’re going for. The Arsenal system unlocks at level five and gains more choices the more you level up.
In our bleed build, we choose two different weapon masteries for the Barbarian.
- 2H Sword Expertise: Deals a portion of your physical damage as bleeding damage. After you successfully slay an enemy, you deal increased bleeding damage for a short while.
- 2H Axe Expertise: Deals increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. Additionally, your critical strike chance against Vulnerable enemies also increases when you use an axe.
Since the build focuses on the Barbarian’s bloodletting capabilities, picking up two-handed Sword Expertise is a must. The guaranteed bleed damage is an excellent addition to this build and the bonus bleeding damage after a kill is just icing on the cake. Two-handed Axe Expertise rounds off this build by granting additional damage against Vulnerable enemies.
Best Bleed Barbarian Aspects
There are several aspects to choose from, but for a Bleed build to succeed, these aspects should perform exceptionally well.
- Aspect of Berserk Fury: You gain increased Fury regeneration per second when you are Berserking.
- Aspect of Berserk Ripping: You deal additional bleeding damage along with your base damage while you are Berserking.
- Aspect of Disobedience: Dealing damage grants you increased armor per attack.
- Aspect of Limitless Rage: When your Fury is at its maximum, each point of extra Fury generated increases the damage of your next Core skill.
- Aspect of Might: You gain increased damage reduction when you use a Basic skill.
- Bold Chieftain’s Aspect: Casting a shout skill decreases its cooldown based on how many nearby enemies were affected. The cooldown reduction can go up to a total of six seconds.
- Edgemaster’s Aspect: Your skills deal increased damage depending on how much Fury you have. The bigger your Fury pool, the more damage you deal.
- Iron Blood Aspect: You gain damage reduction which increases based on how many bleeding enemies are around you.
- Rapid Aspect: You gain increased attack speed when you use a Basic skill.
- Relentless Berserker’s Aspect: Your Berserking duration increases each time you damage an enemy with a Core skill.
Apart from these Aspects, one legendary weapon fits in perfectly well with this build.
- Fields of Crimson: Casting Rupture creates a pool of blood under the enemy. This pool of blood inflicts additional bleeding damage and causes all enemies caught in the pool to take increased bleeding damage from your attacks.
Imbue your best weapons and armor with these Aspects for smooth progression on your Bleed build.
