The Barbarian has gone through several iterations of builds over the years. From their humble beginnings as an expansion class in Diablo: Hellfire, Barbarians have been a mainstay of the series all the way up to Diablo 4, where the class is more versatile than ever. The Barbarian is so versatile that one of their builds doesn’t even revolve around any of their skills, just one effect: Thorns.
When you have a class that can simply stand there and absorb damage while, at the same time, reflect enough damage to kill their attackers, you know you have a winner. The Thorns build allows you to do just that. If you want to have a chill time playing Diablo 4 and skewer everything that tries to hurt you with minimal effort, this build is for you.
A guide to Thorns Barbarian in Diablo 4
The Thorns build existed since the beginning of Diablo 2 when Thorns damage was an effect added to the series back in 2000. As far as an effect goes, Thorns is highly underutilized because of how one-dimensional it can be. But things started to change following the release of Diablo 4’s Patch 1.1.1 and as other builds lost prominence, the Thorns build remained strong.
As mentioned earlier, the Thorns build doesn’t revolve around any particular Core, Wrath, or Ultimate skill. In fact, since Thorns is an additional effect, all we have to do is maximize the damage reflection rate of our Thorns to make sure we’re able to clear out endgame content. The skills that we pick will supplement this build with crowd control, repositioning, and defense.
As such, the skills we will be picking for this build are all essential for getting your Barbarian in melee range of your enemies. Ensure that you have as many enemies as possible hitting you at all times to output a high amount of Thorns damage back onto them. Making this outcome possible will involve picking up skills that can get enemies close to you or get you close to them.
Now that you know what we’re looking for in this build, let’s pick up our six skills.
Thorns Barbarian skill progression
The six skills that make this build work will all have to synergize with each other and the purpose of this build. Since this build doesn’t use any Core skills, we will pick up two different Basic skills for the purpose of stacking Thorns and generating Fury. Both of these skills will deal damage over time and bursts of quick damage while generating Thorns.
- Flay: Attack the enemy, causing bleeding damage over time and minor impact damage on hit.
- Frenzy: Releases a barrage of quick attacks. Each attack deals a percent of your base damage. Every successful hit also increases the attack speed of your next attack.
Flay might not be the best damage-dealing tool in the Barbarian’s arsenal but the bleeding damage is nothing to scoff at. With proper modifiers, you can also increase your Thorns output depending on how many times you hit the enemy with Flay.
On the other hand, Frenzy ramps up the damage numbers early in the game. Having your attack speed increase with every hit of Frenzy makes this a potent scaling damage dealer even in the later stages of the game. It is a good move to keep up your damage output on bosses and elites.
- Steel Grasp: Fire three chains out, dealing moderate damage with each one and pulling back enemies they come in contact with.
Since the Thorns build involves reflecting damage at close range, you definitely need a skill that brings enemies close to you. Steel Grasp is perfect for fulfilling that role, and with certain modifiers, it can do so much more. Leaving all enemies hit in a vulnerable state is perfect for finishing them off while the other modifier will grant you the Berserking status when Steel Grasp hits an enemy.
- War Cry: Increase the damage output of you and your nearby allies for a short while. The duration is doubled for the casting Barbarian.
- Rallying Cry: Increase the movement speed and resource generation of you and your nearby allies for a short while. This duration is doubled for the casting Barbarian.
- Challenging Shout: Increase your damage reduction by 40 percent while you aggravate all nearby enemies to attack you instead of your allies.
The rest of the active skills comprise shouts, a staple of any Barbarian build. If enemies seem to be avoiding you because of the fear of getting impaled by your Thorns, draw them over with Challenging Shout. The damage reduction on this skill ensures that you won’t take as much damage but your Thorns output will still remain the same regardless.
With the appropriate modifiers, you gain bonus health and even more Thorns damage when you use Challenging Shout.
War Cry and Rallying Cry are powerful shouts in both solo play and party play. Increasing the damage, movement speed, and resource generation of you and your party will allow them to power through any obstacle and shred enemies along the way. Given that the bonus gained is doubled for the caster (in this case, your Barbarian), you will turn into a powerhouse.
The next section will tackle passive abilities that synergize well with these active skills.
Best Thorns Barbarian passives
These passives are great for offense and defense.
- Outburst: Gains a flat increase to your Thorns damage. Additionally, your Thorns damage increases further based on your maximum life.
- Tough as Nails: Gains a flat increase to your Thorns damage. Additionally, your Thorns damage also inflicts bleeding on all enemies that are affected.
- 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.
- Counteroffensive: Increases your damage output when you have over half of your maximum health as Fortify.
These passives are more utility and healing-based.
- Imposing Presence: Increases your max health pool.
- Swiftness: Increases your max movement speed.
- 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.
- Thick Skin: Gains Fortify each time you take direct damage.
The key passive is the backbone of the build.
- Unconstrained: The damage bonus from Berserking is increased by 60 percent. Additionally, the maximum duration of Berserking is increased by five seconds.
Choosing the right passives is even more important when you start getting to higher-level areas like Nightmare Dungeons, where enemies have the potential to one-shot you if you aren’t careful.
Thorns Barbarian Arsenal choices
The unique class mechanic of the Barbarian, the Arsenal system, brings out the best of the Barbarian’s mastery of all weapon types. This system unlocks at level five and every build uses different choices to bring out the best in them. When it comes to the Thorns build, there are two choices in the Arsenal system that we will be focusing on.
- 1H Axe Expertise: Grants increased critical strike chance against injured enemies. This bonus is doubled when using two axes.
- 2H Axe Expertise: Deals increased damage to vulnerable enemies. Additionally, your critical strike chance against vulnerable enemies also increases when you use an axe.
Our weapons of choice in this build will be axes, so focusing on one-handed axes and two-handed axes will bring out the most in the respective weapon type. Additionally, when you get a Lucky Hit using one-handed axes, your critical strike chance will increase even further while increasing your attack speed when you land a critical hit. This bonus is doubled with two axes.
Best Thorns Barbarian Aspects
The final part of this build revolves around choosing the best Aspects for your Barbarian. The right Aspects will take this build to heights it never could get to before.
- 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 Echoing Fury: Your shout skills generate Fury while their bonuses are active.
- Aspect of Might: You gain increased damage reduction when you use a Basic skill.
- Aspect of Inner Calm: You deal increased damage for each second you stand still.
- Aspect of Numbing Wrath: When your Fury is at its maximum, each point of extra Fury generated grants you additional Fortify.
- 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.
- Death Wish Aspect: You gain additional bonus Thorns damage when Berserking.
- Ghostwalker Aspect: You phase through enemies for a short while when you turn Unstoppable.
- Iron Blood Aspect: You gain increased damage reduction for each bleeding enemy nearby.
- Needleflare Aspect: Your Thorns damage has a chance to damage all enemies around you.
- Rapid Aspect: You gain increased attack speed when you use a Basic skill.
If you get lucky and acquire these two pieces of gear, this build will be complete.
- Razorplate: This helm gives you a massive boost to your outgoing Thorns damage.
- Ancient’s Oath: This weapon adds two more chains to your Steel Grasp for a total of five chains. Additionally, enemies that are hit by the skill will take increased damage for a short while.
