In Season 4 of Diablo 4, many changes were implemented to the upgrading and crafting system that allows for builds that were otherwise impossible before. One such character build that has risen to the spotlight this season is the bash barbarian, an overwhelmingly tanky build that relies on cooldown skills as opposed to fury resources. However, the setup's main feature lies within the new tempering system.

Because bash is a basic skill, your main damage has no resource cost, allowing for infinite damage potential. The build relies heavily on stacking life and damage resistance to reach absurdly high levels of survivability, enabling you to push further than ever into Diablo 4's Artificer's Pit. This will be extremely important, as masterwork Diablo 4 Items can push this build to even greater heights.

Best Bash Barbarian Skills and Aspects

Which Skills To To Unlock

One of the greatest parts of this build is not having to worry about resource generation in Diablo 4, so we can invest in cooldown skills that can bolster bash or our defenses. Iron Skin is a fantastic defensive skill that grants an immense barrier that scales with your life, making it a perfect choice for this build.Taking three shouts allows for an easy way to increase your damage or damage reduction with the click of a button. Steel Grasp will pull large groups of enemies in, allowing you to whack entire crowds with bash.

As for the build's aspects, you want to prioritize ones that bolster your basic attack and increase your defense. The most important aspects of this build will be placed on your two-handed weapons and amulet, improving their effectiveness by 100% and 50%, respectively. The Rapid Aspect will increase the bash's base attack speed, while the Aspect of the Moonrise will increase the bash's attack speed again, as well as its damage.

Some of these pieces of gear can be replaced with Uber Unique items once they have been found or purchased with resplendent sparks. For example, you are replacing the Iron Blood Aspect with the Harlequin Crest Helm, which grants a flat 20% Damage Reduction and +4 ranks to all skills.

To increase your life even further, you could substitute the Aspect of Inner Calm with the Doombringer One-Handed Sword, increasing maximum life by a percentage varying from 26% to over 50%. However, these items are not required unless you actively try to push into deeper tiers of the Artificer's Pit.

Two legendary tempering augments are essential to enhance the build. The first is Barbarian Protection, which includes the +[1-2] to Imposing Presence. This passive increases your health pool by 6% per rank, so stacking this affix on gear pieces can drastically boost your Life stat.

The second one is Furious Augments, which includes the tempering affix Bash Cleaves for +[82.5-210]% Damage. According to Blizzard, this tempering is bugged and has no set cap limit for its multiplicative damage scaling. However, they have no plans to change this until next season.

Greater affixes have a 1.5x multiplier to their max roll, making them incredibly important to flesh out a build's true power. Focusing on gear with +1,310 Maximum Life greater affixes will greatly scale your barbarian's health pool, which can reach hundreds of thousands of hit points.

Masterworking your gear in will also heavily influence your stats, but make sure to reroll your gear until you get the 25% boosts in +[1-2] to Imposing Presence, Bash Cleaves for +[82.5-210]% Damage, and +1310 Maximum Life.

Bash Barbarian Paragon Board

According to Rob2628 on YouTube, the most complex part of this build is the paragon boards, as is the case with most Diablo 4 setups. While multiple versions of this build are tailored around specific content, they all primarily use the same rare glyphs. Focus on leveling the following rare glyphs within Nightmare Dungeons to maximize your power.

This paragon board setup is unique because it involves acquiring as many additional maximum life nodes as possible. The more life nodes you unlock, the greater the effect they have. As such, the Bone Breaker paragon board is only taken for additional maximum life nodes, so no glyph is inserted. Stacking these life nodes with the buffs granted from tempering, you'll break past 150,000 Life in buying Diablo IV Items.