Diablo 4: Endgame Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian Build

Hammer of the Ancients is one of the crunchiest and most satisfying abilities that the Barbarian has in Diablo 4, capable of delivering big, meaty swings that can turn most monsters into chunky red mists in a single hit.

While the Triple Shout Whirlwind build is the most commonly used one in Diablo 4’s endgame Barbarian meta, Hammer of the Ancients still has a place in the class’ repertoire with its slow yet extremely gratifying playstyle. Here’s a Level 60 HotA setup that can one-shot dungeon elites and devastate pretty much everything else.

Updated January 24, 2025 by Marc Santos: Season of Witchcraft introduced a number of changes to the Barbarian class, including buffs to Hammer of the Ancients. This also includes a new Unique that makes HotA even more devastating than usual, especially when paired with Earthquake effects. We’ve updated this Diablo 4 Barbarian build to account for these Season 7 changes.

Diablo 4 Hammer of the Ancients Endgame Build (Season 7)

First, players need to understand that Hammer of the Ancients needs time to ramp up. Its strongest upgrades make it deal the most damage while the player is at max Fury — pacing and resource management play critical roles in this build, and players must adjust their style if they want to deal the most DPS.

This build will also use Earthquake from Legendary Aspects, which also got buffs during Season 7. The Aspects that enable Earthquake also give useful buffs for DPS and survivability, and with a specific Unique item, HotA becomes signiicantly stronger.

Hot Bar Skill Setup

Your skill bar should consist of the following:

Combat Bash guarantees an Overpowered HotA proc after every four Bash crits. This is a very strong effect that will maximize your damage and consistency with Hammer of the Ancients. However, you’ll need a decent amount of Critical Strike Chance for this. You can replace this with Combat Lunging Strike so you can get the Berserking buff when you crit.

Rallying Cry increases your Resource Generation, which is great for overcapping on Fury for the sake of Legendary Aspects. It also increases the Barbarian’s survivability by providing movement speed and Unstoppable. Meanwhile, War Cry is your on-demand Berserk button that grants a massive damage buff that becomes stronger the more enemies are around you.

Call of the Ancients is the preferred Ultimate here for its universal effectiveness. It’s a fire-and-forget skill that can help burn down tanky targets while increasing the player’s resource generation. Top all of these off by equipping Two-Handed Axe in the Weapon Expertise Technique slot to increase damage against Vulnerable targets.

Passive Skill Setup

This setup aims to maximize your damage output, survivability, and Fury Generation. Unconstrained is great if you can constantly maintain the Berserking status, but if you’d rather have something that’s less reliant on a timed buff, use Unbridled Rage instead.

If you do opt for Lunging Strike, get some points into Endless Fury, Aggressive Resistance, and Prolific Fury. These ease the Barbarian’s resource issues in Diablo 4, though the latter two will only work if the player is Berserking.

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The other passives are here to improve survivability and quality of life. Raid Leader grants passive health regeneration when Shouts are active, while Wallop increases Two-Handed Bludgeoning Weapon damage against anything that’s Vulnerable or Stunned.

Gear and Legendary Aspects

The Aspects and Uniques listed above give players a nice balance of offense, defense, and utility. You’ll need to adapt your playstyle to this setup, though. Ideally, you should only use HotA when you’re at full Fury. Keep using basic attacks between packs of enemies, pop your Shouts when necessary, then bring the Hammer of the Ancients down once you’re fully buffed.

If you lack any of the Uniques mentioned in the table, you’ll be glad to know that they can be picked up as loot from Diablo 4’s bosses. Get a group together or challenge these bosses alone once you think you’re strong enough to handle them.

Paragon Board Setup

There’s a fair bit of planning involved in building Paragon Boards in Diablo 4. Get Blood Rage first and unlock its Legendary Node as soon as you can. This will give you a chance to go Berserk every time you kill a bleeding enemy. After that, grab Carnage for the bonus attack speed — the faster you hit, the more Fury you generate, and the more you’ll get to use HotA at full power.

After these, grab Decimator for extra Vulnerable damage and Bone Breaker for Overpower buffs, then path toward their Glyph Sockets, Legendary Nodes, and other Rare nodes that synergize with your build. If you have any Paragon Points left over, feel free to add more boards of your choosing.

Season 7 – Witchcraft Powers

In Season of Witchcraft, players get to use a variety of Witchcraft Powers that can augment builds with new effects. For this Diablo 4 Hammer of the Ancients build, we’ll be using the following:

• Piranhado – Groups enemies up for big HotA hits.
• Aura of Siphoning – Passively poisons enemies near you. Heal for every enemy poisoned.
• Shaken Soul – Apply Vulnerable to every enemy affected by Aura of Siphoning.

You’re free to use other Witchcraft powers for the remaining slots. These three are arguably the most important for the build, so use the rest of the slots to cater to your own preferences.

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Released

June 6, 2023

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