Diablo 4 Season 8 New Boss Belial: What Impact Does His Return Have On The Gameplay And Plot Of The Game?

Spiritborn received a big buff in Season 9, so it is likely to be the best class in Season 9. Besides the Thorns Spiritborn Build that utilizes the new unique item Balazan’s Maxtlatl obtained by Spiritborn, Quill Volley Spiritborn, which has been powerful for several seasons, is also one of the top Spiritborn builds in season 9.

Diablo 8’s Boss Powers are not as flexible as Horadric Spells, and Horadric Spells, which can freely choose the damage type, make Spiritborn farming faster.

Pros And Cons

Pros

• Very high overall damage
• Good survivability
• High mobility
• Nearly permanently unstoppable

Cons

• Diablo 4 items dependent and gear-intensive

Quill Volley Spiritborn Gears

• Helm: Loyalty’s Mantle (Emerald + Emerald)
• Chest Armor: Shroud of False Death (Emerald + Emerald)
• Gloves: Aspect of the Moonrise
• Pants: Aspect of Forest Power (Ahu + Qax)
• Boots: Duelist’s Aspect
• Weapon: Rod of Kepeleke (Poc + Ohm)
• Amulet: Aspect of Plains Power (Scornful Light)
• Ring 1: Ring of Starless Skies (Elemental Brand)
• Ring 2: Rebounding Aspect (Brilliant Sigil)

Quill Volley Spiritborn has many pros, while the only con is the gear. This set of equipment contains 4 legendary aspects, which have lowered some requirements, but the most difficult to get are the two Mythic unique items, Shroud of False Death and Ring of Starless Skies. They are several times more difficult to farm than other unique items, and you may have to farm for several hours in the dungeon to get a random Mythic unique item.

Before you get these two mythic items, you can temporarily replace them with other items. The recommended items are:

• Ring: Ring of the Midnight Sun
• Chest Armor: Aspect of Layered Wards

The difficulty of obtaining these two Diablo 4 items is not high, but it will affect your maximum damage. If conditions permit, try to replace them.

Skills

• Quill Volley (Rank 5): Enhanced Quill Volley and Advantageous Quill Volley
• Armored Hide (Rank 1): Enhanced Armored Hide and Reinforced Armored Hide
• Counterattack (Rank 1): Enhanced Counterattack and Reinforced Counterattack
• The Hunter: Harmonious Hunter and Exalted Hunter
• Scourge (Rank 1): Enhanced Scourge and Reinforced Scourge
• Vortex (Rank 1): Enhanced Vortex
• Primary Spirit: Jaguar
• Secondary Spirit: Jaguar

Quill Volley Spiritborn relies mainly on Quill Volley, and you keep sending out feathers like a shotgun, killing large groups of enemies, and enemies that are close to you will take more damage. This is why this build is good at farming dungeons and dealing with bosses.

The reason for choosing Quill Volley as the core skill of Spiritborn is actually very simple. It not only has the highest damage at close range among all other core skills, but also has a longer range than core skills. Other skills cannot compete with it at all.

The above skills are the skills you will get after reaching the end game. You can try other skills in the early stage and then use Diablo 4 gold to reset the skills and add points again after you get enough skill points.

Horadric Spells

The role of Horadric Spells cannot be underestimated. The performance in PTR has proved that they even change the way the game is played. In Season 9, which was officially launched on July 1, some Horadric Spells have been reworked, while most have been strengthened.

Catalyst

Celestial Surge: Summon a rune that can pull all surrounding enemies into it, and then a torrent of stars will randomly hit the area 20 times, causing damage each time.

• Cooldown time: 15 seconds (11.2 seconds at level 20).
• Lucky Hits: Reduced from 30% to 18%
• Level 10: Stars will periodically fall around you, damaging nearby enemies.

Influsion

Smoldering Ember: Your Catalyst spells now deal Fire and/or Burn damage.

• Bonus: Destroy enemy structures and have a chance to ignite the ground beneath the enemy, dealing Burn damage over 5 seconds (increased from 150% to 450%). When equipped, your Fire damage bonus is equal to your highest damage type bonus.
• Level 5: Disables Chilling Effect on Monsters (increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds).

Arcana

• Gleaming Conduit: Increases the range of your Catalyst skill by 10% (8% For every level):
• Bloody Charm: Celestial Surge reduces the cooldown by 2 seconds per successful kill on non-boss enemies with less than or equal to 10% health (+2% For every level).
• Fractured Core: Each time you use a Catalyst skill, the monster’s damage resistance aura will be deactivated for 2.5 seconds, but you will receive 10% more DoTs from skills at the same time (+0.5 per level).

The adjustment to Horadric Spells is a buff for Quill Volley Spiritborn. Horadric Spells can keep monsters’ damage resistance auras inactive, and constantly execute enemies, resetting the cooldown of Catalyst skills. You can imagine that whether it is a dungeon or The Pit, Quill Volley Spiritborn will be very fast to farm!

Mercenaries

Players who own the DLC can use Diablo 4 gold to hire mercenaries to help you. They can resist some damage or provide you with buffs.

Hired: Raheir

• Skills: Fortify‍ and Valiance

Reinforcement: Varyana

• Skills: Earth Breaker‍ and Scourge

The above is the general content of Diablo 4 Season 9 Quill Volley Spiritborn. If you want to play Spiritborn in a relaxed and fun style, then this build can satisfy you. You don’t need to use any other skills besides Quill Volley to pass most nightmare dungeons.

Druid of Diablo 4 Season 9 was severely weakened by Cataclysm, and the new unique item of Season 9 originally also could not bring much improvement to Druid in testing, but fortunately the developers drastically modified this unique item before the official launch. While current Druid may still not be the best class, but it is worth trying.

So if you plan to play a Druid in Season 9, you need a leveling build, and Earth Spike Druid may be one of the best leveling builds in Season for Druid.

Earth Spike Druid Skill

• Earth Spike (Rank 5): Enhanced Earth Spike and Wild Earth Spike
• Storm Strike (Rank 1): Fierce Storm Strike and Empowering Storm Strike
• Cyclone Armor (Rank 1): Enhanced Cyclone Armor and Innate Cyclone Armor
• Earthen Bulwark (Rank 1): Enhanced Earthen Bulwark
• Trample (Rank 1): No
• Petrify (Rank 5): Prime Petrify and Supreme Petrify:
• Debilitating Roar (Rank 1): Enhanced Debilitating Roar and Innate Debilitating Roar

Spirit Boons

• Deer: Advantageous Beast
• Eagle: Iron Feather and Avian Wrath
• Wolf: Bolster
• Snake: Obsidian Slam

Earth Spike Druid’s skills mainly rely on Earth Spike and Storm Strike Use them together to quickly clear monsters. Since these skills are mainly used to deal with monsters in a large area, they may not fast to deal with bosses.

The advantages of the above skills are survival, control, damage, and even unstoppable to prevent monsters from releasing control skills to interrupt your farming rhythm. You can learn Earth Spike skill in the early stage, which is your main skill, and Storm Strike is the last skill you can learn. You can learn other skills to increase damage in the early stage and then use Diablo 4 Gold to reset the skill points after the level is sufficient.

How To Loop Farm?

1. Release Earth Spike multiple times to knock down the enemy and weaken the enemy’s health.
2. Use your defensive skills to stay tough most of the time.
3. When you are besieged, you can use Trample to move and escape.
4. Use Petrify to control surrounding enemies and increase the critical hit damage of your attacks.

Earth Spike Druid Equipment

• Helm: Aspect of Might
• Chest Armor: Aspect of Quicksand (Ahu + Xan)/ (Noc + Qax)
• Gloves: Rapid Aspect
• Pants: Aspect of Concussive Strikes
• Boots: Aspect of Metamorphosis
• Amulet: Aspect of Adaptability (Idol From Below)
• Ring 1: Seismic-shift Aspect (Luminate Eye)
• Ring 2: Crashstone Aspect (Scornful Light)
• Weapon: Exploiter’s Aspect (Ruby)
• Offhand: Aspect of the Moonrise

Since this build is a leveling build, you don’t need to have unique items. The above equipment is for your reference. As long as you find a better upgrade item, replace it. These can slightly improve your farming efficiency.

So how do you judge whether an item is better? You just need to know which affixes are useful to you. Your helmet, chest plate, pants, and boots need to provide you with armor, maximum health, or various resistances. (For shoes, the higher the speed, the better. Speed is important both in your early stage and in the endgame.)

Your other equipment can focus on attack speed, critical hit chance, and willpower. Especially attack speed, it can help you clear monsters and farm gold faster, and you can save your materials and Diablo 4 gold for the endgame.

Earth Spike Druid Horadric Spells

As the season power of season 9, Horadric Spells are much more interesting than Boss Powers, and some of them are particularly suitable for farming dungeons. And Horadric Spells were strengthened before Season 9 officially went online, and now they are even stronger.

Catalyst (Storm Strike) Disintegrate

Effect: Release an arcane conductor and shoot a continuous beam between your character and it, causing steady lightning damage to monsters over 8 seconds.

Catalyst is more of a framework, but Infusion and Arcana are something which really make it work.

Infusion: Corrosive Vapor

Effect: Your Catalyst now deals poison or poison damage.

Enemies damaged by Catalyst will be poisoned over 4 seconds (up from 150% to 320%). This effect applies to each enemy every 3 seconds. Your poison damage bonus is equal to your highest damage type bonus, and it negates lifesteal effects on monsters at level 5 of Catalyst (up from 5 seconds to 8 seconds).

Corrosive Vapor allows Catalyst to deal poison damage, which works well with Druid’s passive skills.

Arcana

Shifting Powder

• Effect: Catalyst increases your movement speed by 30% (+8% per level) during and for 5 seconds after the effect ends.

Bloody Charm

• Effect: Your Catalyst will execute normal enemies with health below or equal to 20% and elite enemies with health below 10%. (Cannot execute bosses)

Fractured Core

• Effect: Each time you use a Catalyst skill, the damage resistance aura of the monster will be deactivated for 2.5 seconds, but you will receive 10% more DoT skills at the same time (+0.5 per level).

Shifting Powder allows you to move faster, and Bloody Charm skill can execute low-health enemies, which will undoubtedly greatly increase the speed of farming.

Fractured Core is almost mandatory in the endgame, but you can also replace it with Sapping Crux when you are in the main story.

These are Diablo 4 items required for the skills of Earth Spike Druid leveling build. The requirements are very low, but the farming efficiency is very high. After you reach the endgame, you can easily convert it to a higher damage endgame build with little loss.

The next DLC for Diablo 4 will not be officially announced until 2026, but players are clearly impatient to wait. New endgame content, new dungeons, new weapons, and the question that all players are concerned about, the new class.

The DLC will definitely have a new class, just like Vessel of Hatred brought Spiritborn, but Spiritborn feels a bit like a combination of Rogue and Druid to me. There has been a heated discussion in the player community about what class will appear in the next DLC.

Classes In Previous Series

Diablo I

• Warrior: Tristram
• Rogue: Eastgate Keep in Dark Woods
• Sorcerer: Caldeum

As the founder of the series, Diablo I referred to many settings in DND in class design. The three classes represent strength, dexterity and intelligence, which became the design reference for many subsequent games.

Diablo II

• Amazon: Skovos Isles
• Assassin: Caldeum (Diablo II Lord of Destruction)
• Barbarian: Harrogath
• Druid: Scosglen (Diablo II Lord of Destruction)
• Necromancer: Hawezar
• Paladin: Westmarch
• Sorceress: Caldeum

Diablo II is the best in terms of player response and is the de facto pioneer of this type of game, a true masterpiece. Players can play 7 classes in Diablo 2, and each class has its own characteristics.

Diablo III

• Barbarian: Harrogath
• Crusader: Hawezar (Diablo III: Reaper of Souls)
• Demon Hunter: Dreadlands
• Monk: Ivgorod
• Witch Doctor: Nahantu
• Wizard: Xiansai
• Necromancer: Hawezar (Diablo III: Rise of the Necromancer)

Diablo III’s classes have changed a lot from the previous game. The only classes that remain are Barbarian and Necromancer, but in fact, the gameplay of Wizard and Sorceress is not much different, and Players like Crusader and Witch Doctor.

Diablo III grows faster than Diablo IV. It takes a long time to get the best Diablo 4 items in Diablo 4, but in Diablo III, you may become very strong in just three hours.

Diablo IV

• Necromancer: Hawezar
• Druid: Scosglen
• Rogue: Eastgate Keep in Dark Woods
• Barbarian: Harrogath
• Sorcerer: Caldeum
• Spiritborn: Spirit Realm (Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred)

Diablo IV’s class design is relatively conservative, closer to Diablo 2. Spiritborn is a more interesting class, but its functions overlap with Druid and Rogue. But most players can still accept such a class that can use poison.

Diablo Immortal

• Barbarian: Harrogath,
• Crusader: Hawezar
• Demon Hunter: Dreadlands
• Monk: Ivgorod
• Necromancer: Hawezar
• Wizard: Xiansai
• Blood Knight: Shassar Sea
• Tempest: Cold Isles

Diablo Immortal is a mobile game, so it may not be appropriate to put it here, and some players are even reluctant to admit that it is part of Diablo series. But Diablo Immortal has more playable classes, and Blood Knight and Tempest are new classes, and maybe Diablo 4 will learn from them.

Players’ Thoughts

• Paladin
• Crusader
• Monk

These three classes are the ones that players want to play the most, and Paladin may be more popular. Paladin appeared in Diablo 2. He is a power class that can defend, provide buffs to the team, and serve as a support for the team, which is almost all the current classes lack (Crusader and Paladin are very similar).

There are shields in Diablo 4, but almost most classes will not use this Diablo 4 item, so Diablo 4 needs a real class that uses shields.

Warrior is also one of the most popular classes. His positioning is similar to Paladin. He can use swords, shields and light spells.

Finally, there is Monk, who is fast and agile, can use spells of various elements, and can move quickly on the battlefield. He is a very refreshing class to play (some players say that Spiritborn is a Monk that uses poison and thorns, which does make some sense).

On the other hand, players want to play a knight-type class, Paladin, Crusader or even Blood Knight.

Developers’ Ideas

For developers, if the new class of the 2026 DLC is Paladin, it is too similar to Diablo 2, and they claim that they will bring a brand new class, so they are likely to create a new class, just like Spiritborn.

Since there is a great lack of classes like warriors, the next class is likely to be based on warriors and paladins to create a real tank class. If the developers listen to the players’ ideas, this class may also use sacred-related spells.

The best possibility is that they may launch more than one class and let some classic classes return, which is not impossible, because the developers of Diablo 4 announced that they have a 10-year update plan, so 7 classes may not be the end of Diablo 4.

The speculation about the new class of Diablo 4 is very exciting, but in terms of the work efficiency of the developers of Diablo 4, just adjusting the value of Diablo 4 items, designing 6 new unique items, and new unique powers for each season is enough to exhaust them in one season. At least two or three seasons are needed before players can wait for the actual news of the new class, so please be patient.

Diablo IV Season 9 will come soon, and PTR is over. Many builds have shown their damage and are expected to become the new season’s Meta builds. Among them, Whirlwind Barbarian Build is likely to be the top of the Tier S lineup in Season 9.

What really stands out is not how fast it can clear the dungeon, but how fast it can kill the final boss. The Pit Guardian didn’t even have time to refresh before it was instantly killed by a burst of damage. With very high damage, it could successfully pass Level 150 The Pit.

Pros And Cons

Pros

• Extremely high damage
• Very fast farming speed
• Happy play style (you just need to keep turning)

Cons

• Relying on Diablo 4 items
• Need to manage skill cooldowns
• Relying on Horadric Spells
• Monotonous and repetitive gameplay

Barbarian Season 9 Changes

Because of the changes to Overpower mechanic, some builds were affected in Season 1. But Barbarian’s own exaggerated damage-dealing ability, as well as the fun gameplay of using Call of the Ancients as a summoning build, makes it still one of the best classes.

Whirlwind Barbarian Equipment

• Helm: Heir of Perdition (Ruby + Ruby)
• Chest Armor: Rage of Harrogath (Ruby + Ruby)
• Gloves: Fists of Fate
• Pants: Arreat’s Bearing (Ruby + Ruby)
• Boots: Relentless Berserker’s Aspect
• Amulet: Aspect of Apogeic Furor (Reverie Horn)
• Ring 1: Aspect of Ancestral Charge (Elemental Brand)
• Ring 2: Ring of Starless Skies (Idol From Below)
• Bludgeoning Weapon: Aspect of Earthquakes (Yul + Kry)
• Slashing Weapon: Aspect of Ancestral Echoes (Ahu + Qax)
• Dual-Wield Weapon 1: Aspect of Fierce Winds (Emerald)
• Dual-Wield Weapon 2: Vehement Brawler’s Aspect (Emerald)

Collecting such a set of equipment is undoubtedly a challenge. It contains two Mythic Unqiue Items. To farm a Mythic unique item, you may have to farm hundreds of times in a dungeon. If you collect 4 Resplendent Sparks, I suggest you use it and Diablo 4 gold to make Ring of Starless Skies first. And this build requires the lucky hit chance provided by Mythic unique items to trigger the effect of Fists of Fate.

Whirlwind Barbarian Skills

Wrath of the Berserker (rank 1): Goes into a berserk state and knocks back nearby enemies, becoming unstoppable.

Modifiers:

• Prime Wrath of the Berserker
• Supreme Wrath of the Berserker

Challenging Shout (rank 5): Taunts nearby enemies and gains a large amount of damage reduction.

Modifiers:

• Enhanced Challenging Shout
• Tactical Challenging Shout

Rallying Cry (rank 5): Increases movement speed and resource survival rate.

Modifiers:

• Enhanced Rallying Cry
• Tactical Rallying Cry

War Cry (rank 1): Roars and increasing damage dealt to Barbarian and nearby allies.

Modifiers:

• Enhanced War Cry
• Power War Cry

Flay (rank 1): Causes the enemy to bleed after dealing damage to it.

Modifiers:

• Enhanced Flay
• Battle Flay

Whirlwind (rank 5): Rapidly spins and attacks surrounding enemies, dealing massive damage.

Modifiers:

• Enhanced Whirlwind
• Violent Whirlwind

Although Whirlwind Barbarian Build is often paired with Call of the Ancients, this build is for ultimate damage, so Wrath of the Berserker is its ultimate skill, and Flay is fused to further increase its damage.

As for the new unique boots in Season 9, Hooves of the Mountain God does not work well with this build, and is not highly recommended.

Horadric Spells

Catalysts

• Celestial Surge: Summons, a rune that pulls in all surrounding enemies. Then, a torrent of stars randomly strikes the area 20 times.

Infusions

• Smoldering Ember: Causes your catalyst to deal fire and burn damage, and has a 10% chance of catching it on fire.

Arcana

• Bloody Charm: Your catalyst will execute low health non-boss enemies, doubling the execution threshold for non-elite enemies and increasing with catalyst level, successfully killing enemies can reduce skill cooldown.
• Fractured Core: When you use a catalyst, it temporarily cancels the monster’s damage resistance aura, and you will take slight continuous damage.
• Siphoning Gizmo: Lucky hits convert your DoT damage into 100% instant damage.
• Sapping Crux: Enemies hit by catalyst skills enter a fragile state for eight seconds. (It can be replaced by Siphoning Gizmo)

The idea of choosing this Horadric Spells is basically to reduce the monster’s defense to increase damage. Flay can make the enemy enter a bleeding state, so you can pair it with Siphoning Gizmo. If you prefer to use Whirlwind, replace it with Sapping Crux.

Compared with Flay Bleed Barbarian build, Celestial Surge gathers monsters together, and with the effect of Bloody Charm, you can trigger Celestial Surge almost infinitely. Therefore, Whirlwind Barbarian Build is very fast in farming Diablo 4 gold.

The gameplay of Whirlwind Barbarian Build is very simple. You basically just need to turn it up, then release the ultimate skill to increase the damage, and finally use the effects of Flay and Horadric Spells to instantly deal hundreds of billions of damage.

As long as you try it a little, you can understand why it can successfully pass 150 The Pit. Few builds can do this. Season 9 will be officially launched in early July. Maybe the developers will weaken this gameplay, so whether it is the strongest or not will have to wait until season 9 is officially launched.

With the end of PTR, players who played in PTR have basically understood what kind of season Season 9 is. What is the difference between it and other seasons? Is it a remake of Season 7? Do you think this season needs improvement?

So here is a brief introduction to what kind of season this is based on the PTR of Season 9.

Horadric Spells

First is the unique power of Season 9 Horadric Spells. This may be the best seasonal power at present. It differs from Boss Powers of Season 8. It not only brings player additional skills and damage value improvements, but you can also use modifiers to create a set of interesting builds.

Horadric Spells has 5 catalyst skills:

• Astral Pillar
• Celestial Surge
• Cosmic Anomaly
• Disintegrate
• Propulsion

These 5 catalyst skills are not very special. They can basically be understood as a basic piece of equipment, and players usually pay more attention to the affixes and quality of the equipment.

Horadric Spells also have 5 Infusions to let you customize the type of damage caused by Horadric Spells, which makes Horadric Spells more flexible than other seasons. Any class can match a Horadric Spells they need.

Arcana enriches the playability of Horadric Spells. At present, there is an entertaining gameplay that relies on the combination of Arcana to allow your character to continuously teleport in the dungeon. This gameplay is suitable for any class and the speed of farming Diablo 4 Items is very fast.

There are also a bunch of Horadric Jewels that work with Horadric Spells in Season 9, and you have to be at least in Torment I to start crafting them. But they’re pretty average in Season 9.

New Dungeons

Another big change in Diablo 4 Season 9 is that the developers have made a big change to the dungeon content. But in terms of the experience, it’s basically three nightmare dungeons stitched together, so it doesn’t feel special.

But in the dungeons of Season 9, you will get items with better affixes, and the developers have promised that they will increase the drop rate of items, which is a very good adjustment because players are tired of farming dungeons repeatedly, and then selling a bunch of unused weapons and accessories in their backpacks to merchants for Diablo 4 gold.

But unfortunately, Mythic Unique Items are still difficult to farm. Even in Torment IV, players still have to farm hundreds of times to get a Mythic Item, and not all players will spend all their free time on Diablo 4. This still needs improvement.

Class

Necromancer

Season 9’s Necromancer has maintained its strength, but because of the weakening of key skills and Overpower mechanism, Necromancer’s survivability in Season 9 has decreased a lot.

Although Skeletal Arch-Mage can cause powerful damage, these skeletons themselves lack defense. And their AI is not very smart. If you want to play a summoner, you might as well try Hydra Sorcerer.

Druid

Druids also got some new things in Season 9. A Unique Two-Handed Mace called Rotting Lightbringer further improves the damage of Pulverize Position Druid in S9 PTR.

When Druid uses Pulverize, it can create a poison pool under his feet. You can create AoE and make enemies vulnerable by just casting Pulverize, so it’s not slow to farm gold, but Druids are not as good as they used to be because of the nerfs to Cataclysm and  Overpower.

Rogue

Rogue is not as good as other classes in Season 9, because you basically only have Death Trap Rogue build to play, and other play styles are basically nerfed, so you don’t have many choices. If you are tired of playing Death Trap Rogue, then you’d better not play Rogue in Season 9.

Barbarian

Whirlwind Barbarian build and Flay Bleed Barbarian build are both interesting Barbarian builds. They have good damage and a fast farming speed, and can easily enter level 150 The PIt.

Barbarian is in a middle position in Season 9. Its other builds are not so good, and its equipment requirements are very demanding.

Spiritborn

Spiritborn was very strong in Season 9, and its other builds were very good, especially Quill Volley Thorns Spiritborn build. Season 9’s unique items brought a whole new way to play Spiritborn, and its damage and farming speed are both top-tier. Its minor drawbacks are its reliance on unique items and the fact that it takes a little time to accumulate damage.

Sorcerer

Sorcerer is probably the best class in Season 9, as Hydra Sorcerer build is the most fun build on the PTR, and its damage-dealing ability is also top-tier.

Who wouldn’t want to try to summon an army of Hydras? And it’s going to get bigger! Hydra Sorcerer build beats all the other builds by a lot in terms of fun alone.

Overall, Season 9 wasn’t a standout, but it was more interesting than Season 8. Horadric Spells and Hydra Sorcerer build added a lot of points to this season. If they are not weakened after the official launch, then Season 9 should be an above average season.

Barbarian is a class that many players love to use. It can not only do crazy damage, but also has good survivability. But in Season 9, Barbarian was nerfed. Can it still be as powerful as Season 8?

There is no doubt that Barbarian can still do it easily. Season 8’s Boss Powers are indeed very powerful, but difficult to use. Season 9’s Horadric Spells are much more flexible than Boss Powers. With this new power, Flay Bleed Barbarian Build can easily do terabytes of damage, even entering The PIt at lv 150 is not a problem for it.

Pros And Cons

Pros

• Very high damage
• Very fast farming speed
• Easy damage accumulation

Cons

• Damage cap depends on your base damage
• Requires a very high lucky hit chance (preferably 100%)
• Takes a little time to accumulate damage
• Price comparison depends on Diablo 4 items

Barbarian Season 9 Adjustments

We all know that Overpower mechanic was greatly weakened in Season 9. Any build that relies on this mechanic basically has a significant reduction in damage. Barbarian is naturally also affected, but generally speaking, the impact is not too big because Barbarian’s damage sources are more diverse.

Many of Barbarian’s skills have been enhanced, and the one with the largest enhancement is Flay. Its continuous damage has increased from 48% to 115%, which is one of the reasons why this build uses it as the core.

Barbarian gets a new unique item in Season 9:

Unique Boots: Hooves of the Mountain God

Affixes

• Inherent: Attacks reduced by 2.5 seconds
• Increases movement speed by 17.5-23%
• Increases base attack speed by 16-25%
• Increases Fury by 7-10 per second
• Increases Ranks to Belligerence by 2-3

Unique Power

• When max Fury is reached, your Fury will drain rapidly until depleted, and all your basic skills will now cleave and deal bonus damage.

This unique item adds a cleave effect to the Flay Bleed Barbarian Build’s base skill Flay, significantly increasing Barbarian’s efficiency in farming Diablo 4 gold. However, it is not irreplaceable.

Horadric Spells

Catalyst

• Disintegrate: Summons an Arcane Conductor that fires a continuous beam between the character and it, dealing damage over 8 seconds.

Infusions

• Smoldering Ember: Causes your Catalyst to deal Fire and Burning damage, and you have a 10% chance to set it on fire.

Arcana

• Bloody Charm: Your Catalyst will execute low health non-boss enemies, doubling the execution threshold for non-elite enemies, and increasing with higher Catalyst levels.
• Fractured Core: When you use your Catalyst, it temporarily cancels the monster’s damage resistance aura, and you take a minor DoT.
• Siphoning Gizmo: Lucky Shot converts 100% of your damage over time into instant damage.

The real thing that makes Barbarian’s damage reach trillions in this Flay Bleed Barbarian Build is Siphoning Gizmo. By constantly triggering Lucky Shots, you can stack the burning damage of Catalyst skill with the bleeding damage of Flay skill to create amazing damage numbers.

Flay Bleed Barbarian Build Skill Equipments

• Helm: Ugly Bastard Helm (Ruby + Ruby)
• Chest Armor: Rage of Harrogat (Ruby + Ruby)
• Gloves: Fists of Fate
• Pants: Aspect of Bul-Kathos (Ruby + Ruby)
• Boots: Hooves of the Mountain God
• Amulet: Aspect of Adaptability (Scornful Light)
• Ring 1: Ring of Starless Skies (The Starflux)
• Ring 2: Aspect of Inner Calm (Elemental Brand)
• Slashing Weapon: Aspect of Earthquakes (Ahu + Qax)
• Bludgeoning Weapon: Aspect of the Moonrise (Igni + Tec)
• Dual-Wield Weapon 1: Shard of Verathiel (Emerald)
• Dual-Wield Weapon 2: Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus (Emerald)

In terms of equipment selection, although Ugly Bastard Helm has been weakened, whether it is rage, fire damage or enhanced lucky hit, it is the effect needed for this build.

Ring of Starless Skies can provide 12.5% Lucky Hit chance, which is very important for Flay Bleed Barbarian Build. Because you’d better be able to reach 100% Lucky Hit chance to ensure that you can trigger the effect of Siphoning Gizm every time.

In addition, the higher the base damage of this build, the faster you can deal damage, so you’d better use Diablo 4 gold and materials to Masterworking your equipment, which will further increase the damage of these builds.

Flay Bleed Barbarian Build Skill

• Flay: Rank 5
• Dropdown Arrow: Rank 1
• War Cry: Rank 1
• Challenging Shout: Rank 1
• Rallying Cry: Rank 1
• Wrath of the Berserker: Rank 5
• Rupture: Rank 1
• Technique: Two Hand Axe

In terms of skill selection, Flay is the core of Barbarian damage. You need to use other skills to increase damage and reduce the opponent’s defense.

This build has very low skill requirements. You can get the skills and Horadric Spells you need very early, but you’d better upgrade Horadric Spells as soon as possible.

It’s just a test at present. It’s not known whether Flay Bleed Barbarian Build will be weakened after Season 9 is launched. If it is not weakened, then it may become one of Meta Barbarian Builds of season 9, and you can perform like a superman in The Pit.