Diablo 4 Season 7 Quake-HOTA Barbarian Build: How To Build It?
The exciting Diablo 4 Season 7 has finally arrived. Are you ready to face all the challenges and threats brought by the new season? In addition to the necessary consumables such as sufficient gold coins and items, a qualified construction plan is also a necessary preparation for starting a new season journey. Here, we will start to introduce a Quake-HOTA Barbarian Build that is very powerful in Season 7 in the future.
The core of this build is the new Chest Armor, which allows us to make Earthquakes explode through Hammer of the Ancients. As early as on PTR, we can clearly feel that the damage potential of Earthquake in the new season is slightly higher than HOTA itself, so this build is also more focused on Earthquake damage.
However, with the new body armor and gloves, you can also reach a Hammer of the Ancients skill level of more than 50 points. So it also has a variant that focuses on HOTA damage, and in theory you can even try to create a balanced combination of the two. How to build it depends on your game style.
Skill Tree
Let’s start with the skill tree. First, HOTA and Whirlwind, one point each. Damage scaling is crucial for Hammer of the Ancients, as it increases all the damage we deal, and overpower hits will happen quite often.
Alternatively, we can also take the passive skill below, Warpath, and use Iron Skin as our only defensive skill, which will provide additional damage reduction and make Aspect of the Iron Warrior unstoppable.
Then we have War Cry and Leap, each Leap will generate additional Earthquakes. And Aggressive Resistance will provide some nice protection. Since we will always apply Berserking in Weapon Mastery Cluster, it has very good synergy with some of the passive skills at the bottom of the skill tree to increase our Earthquakes damage. Finally, we also need Key Passive, Unconstrained.
For the pure HOTA variant, maximizing HOTA effect is of course a no-brainer, and at the same time, we also need to invest 3 points each in Heavy Handed and Brute Force. For both variants, we choose Two-Handed Axe Mastery and use a one-handed weapon to perform all other attacks except Hammer of the Ancients.
Paragon Board
Next, let’s look at Paragon Board system. For the starter board, we chose Challenger Glyph. Here we have a weapon aspect that increases our Earthquake damage proportional to our Strength value. So we want to stack as much as possible on Paragon system and equipment.
On equipment, Force Of Nature is a must-have for an Earthquake build. So for Legendary nodes, we stack damage to close enemies on equipment. Meanwhile, on this board, we also light Dominate for continuous powerful attacks.
Next up is the classic Blood Rage Dominate board. Like we said before, we also continuously stack Berserking, so we can get a double damage bonus here. In addition, there is Paragon Glyph, Rumble, which is the most important Glyph regarding Earthquake damage, so there are a lot of Strength nodes on this board to maximize its effect.
Then there is Decimator board, which also provides a solid damage bonus, depending on whether we need more Berserking damage or damage to close enemies.
The last board is Bone Breaker, which provides an additional vigorous attack, which will not only increase our damage but also generate additional Earthquake on this board. However, since we already use Exploit Glyph for a pure HOTA build and want to use Weapons Master board with Crusher and Wrath Glyph, we will abandon Force Of Nature and the last two glyphs.
Equipment
For the necessary equipment required for this build, the first thing we mention must be Ugly Bastard Helm. Because it converts all our direct damage into fire damage and then provides a significant bonus to all our fire damage.
In addition, the new Mantle of the Mountain’s Fury is also a good unique Chest Armor choice. Because we always want a higher chance to deal double Earthquake damage, and the unique item effect causes Earthquake to explode, dealing all the damage in one burst. That’s why we definitely want to increase Earthquake duration, because longer duration means more damage from the explosion.
For gloves, we used Earthstriker’s Runic Gloves. To be honest, HotA rank isn’t as important as the extra Strength and Temper here. So we prefer to choose a gear that deals more damage to close enemies and has more Earthquake size. Of course, you can definitely choose other gear, depending on how much Diablo 4 Gold you have.
Then we equipped Aspect of the Iron Warrior on the pants, and Temper determines Earthquake size and Iron Skin cooldown.
Additionally, since we need Fury per second to make sure our resource management works on Amulets, we use Aspect of Bul-Kathos, which makes our Leap generate additional Earthquakes and provides additional damage reduction when standing in an Earthquake.
New Patch Buffs
Thanks to the new patch, we also get a powerful damage multiplier that scales with Strength stat. So that’s why we stack so much Strength to easily reach over 1,000% damage bonus. Of course, Temper to maintain the duration of Earthquake and damage to melee enemies are also important.
Items Needed For Pure HOTA Variant
For the pure HOTA variant, we want to add as many ranks as possible, so we have different priorities here. For equipment, we chose Banished Lord’s Talisman, Ring of Starless Skies, and Ring of Red Furor.
In the meantime, because we also want to stack strength and critical strike damage here, different weapons are also needed. You can add Grandfather Unique Two-Handed Sword to this setup, insert Runewords into the armor pieces, and fill the weapon with red gems to deal more overwhelming damage.
If you need more good equipment to optimize your build, then you might want to follow iGMeet Discord, where some giveaways from time to time may allow you to get some free resources.
Final Thoughts
In short, the above is all for this guide. Because this build has only been tested on Season 7 PTR so far and still needs to be patched and optimized, Quake-HOTA Barbarian Build you use must be much stronger than what you see so far, and you can customize it to your play style. However, keep in mind that when playing this build, the biggest damage comes from Earthquake, otherwise you can also try pure HOTA Barbarian, which is also fun and should be able to run high-level Pit. Let’s look forward to this build making Barbarian class shine in the new season!
Jan-20-2025
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Diablo 4 Season 9 (4 Best N ...
Excited! The much-anticipated Season 9 Sins of the Horadrim is expected to enter Diablo 4 at 10:00 AM PST on July 1, bringing some new game mechanics, a significantly improved Nightmare Dungeons, and some changes to existing classes. Among the six classes at this stage, Necromancer has always been recognized as the top class by players with its super strong damage ability, both in leveling content and endgame content. Although S9 has weakened its Overpower, Soul Rift and Blood Wave to some extent, it is relatively stable overall. Therefore, choosing a stronger class from the beginning and picking some suitable build options for it will make your exploration in the new season more efficient. With that in mind, this guide will recommend some of the best Necromancer builds you can try, based on previous PTRs and recent developer updates and patch notes, as well as some things to keep in mind when using them. 1. Necromancer Builds Focused On Summon Minions The most popular Necromancer builds have always relied on summoned minions to perform dual attacks, and with the help of the exclusive Unique added to Diablo 4 Season 9, the effectiveness of this type of build will be greatly improved. What needs to be paid attention to here is that you need to change your minions from Skeletal Warriors and Golems to Skeletal Mages, so that they can be converted into Skeletal Arch-Mages with more powerful damage capabilities in subsequent difficult battles with Diablo 4 Gold. In this type of build, you can choose Ring of Mendeln and Blood Moon Breeches to match Skeletal Mages accordingly, such as increasing the attack speed, skill level and damage capabilities of the minions. But since Necromancer class itself has some poor survival attributes, you may need to put some Mythic Uniques in it to increase your character’s tankiness. Or use Horadric Spell combos added in Season 9 to improve this situation. Here are the ones I can recommend to you: Smoldering Ember+Bloody Charm+Fractured Core+Invigorating Helix and Cosmic Anomaly+Corpse Explosion, they will make your minions more and more, and the combat ability will become stronger and stronger. But the specific attributes and statistics may have to wait for the official release of the new season to be determined. 2. Blood Wave Necromancer Build Yes, you read that right. Although Blood Wave has been weakened a bit in this new season, it is still very stable and can be the focus of your attention. However, what I can recommend here is to try to use Blood Wave with Cosmic Anomaly. In this combination, the combination of Alien that can perform continuous explosions and Blood Wave skill that can deal extremely high bleed damage, making it extremely efficient at clearing out groups of enemies in Nightmare Dungeons, Helltide, and Infernal Horde. Additionally, choosing some Horadric spells that can increase your bleeding damage and attack speed will help your character smoothly and easily kill all low to mid-level monsters and bosses within a safe ranged attack area, allowing you to earn more loot. For the gear you can put in it, Kessime’s Legacy is a recommended option. Similarly, this Blood Wave Necromancer build will also need some Mythic Uniques to complete safe exploration objectives. 3. Blood Spear Necromancer Build Of course, Blood Spear with the same damage type is also an important skill you should pay attention to in Diablo 4 Season 9. However, to deal the most damage, you’ll need the help of Uniques like Memory of Indira, Path of Trag’Oul, and Face of the Undying. So it will cost a little more than Blood Wave in terms of the amount of D4 Gold invested. But this is not without a way out. You only need to use Smoldering Ember, Fractured Core, Bloody Charm, and Tranquil Stone to form your Horadric Spell to create a perfect combination of Bone Prison with strong control ability and Bone Spear with strong penetration ability. Thanks to this combination, you can see those enemies trapped in the solid Bone Prison in the battle, and then defeat them directly with those projectiles that are enough to disintegrate the enemy instantly. This process basically does not exceed 10 minutes, so you can use it as the most important rotation in the leveling stage where efficiency is more valued. 4. Necromancer Builds Focused On Damage Over Time This type of Necromancer Build seemed to be very popular before Season 5, but gradually faded out of the spotlight due to the changes in various skills and item attributes. However, the addition of Horadric Spells has brought this type of build back to life. For example, use Corpse Explosion skill with Decompose and Blight to cause a lot of continuous shadow damage, and then use a Horadric Jewel called Tyrant Bane to cause more continuous damage until the enemy disappears. This is very useful for kiting strategies when dealing with enemies or bosses with vigorous defenses and high health: you just need to watch the enemy’s attack moves at every step and dodge in time, and wait for them to slowly die. These are Necromancer builds worth trying in Diablo 4 Season 9 Sins of the Horadrim, which is expected to be released on July 1. And after the new season starts, here will continue to provide you with quest guides or build guides in S9 so that you can easily create a powerful build that suits you best. I wish you a happy game!Jun-29-2025
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Diablo 4 Season 6: What Can ...
Diablo 4 Season 6 is currently underway, and some major updates have been made in the mid-season, aiming to adjust the gameplay and enhance the class balance to improve the player experience. The developers held an hour-long Campfire Chat live broadcast on November 12, 2024, detailing all the possible changes that players want to know about the second half of Diablo 4 Season 6. Mid-Season Update Patch Notes Diablo 4 Season 6 mid-season patch proposes solutions to class balance issues, enhances the abilities of some underperforming classes, and improves the excitement of activities and makes the gameplay more engaging. At the same time, the developers have publicly stated that the full patch notes will be released later this week. There will be more explanations about Season 7 in the upcoming PTR livestream. About Patch Notes The developer's lead class designer Adam Jackson said that until Season 7, the current strength of Spiritborn will not be adjusted, and players can rest assured about this. The patch to enhance the abilities of other classes will also be released next week, but the developers have also made it clear that the strength of other classes will not exceed that of Spiritborn. This is to avoid numerical explosions that exceed the scope of what the game can bear. Regarding these changes, the developers will release news again next week to discuss the relevant content of Season 7. Including possible weakening of Spiritborn, an increase in the drop rate of ancestral items, an increase in the rewards of Legion events crafting materials, and some changes to Runewords. At the same time, the developers also said that the long-awaited armory system, that is, the mechanism that can switch back and forth between builds like presets, may also be launched in Season 7. Highlights In The Patch Minor skill buffs for build diversity have been enhanced. Some Under-used skills have been slightly improved to provide new ideas for the creativity of all class builds. At the same time, the five core classes, namely Barbarians, Druids, Necromancers, Rogues, and Sorceresses, have been enhanced to a certain extent. While not as strong as Spiritborn, there are significant buffs to core skills, passives, and select Legendaries and Uniques. These changes have narrowed the gap between the original 5 basic classes and the new classes that old players felt after the release of Spiritborn. This also makes players more interested in developing the potential power of all classes instead of all flocking to Spiritborn. If you want to shine in the class you are interested in, then buy Diablo 4 Gold and developing a corresponding class build strategy will be your main goal. There are also power-ups for Shrines. Artillery, Blast Wave, and Conduit Shrines now scale with player level and paragon level, making them more impactful in the late game. On Runewords side, they now cost less to activate and are more powerful. Ancestral items have also received buffs, making them a key addition to any build. Upcoming Events Midwinter Blight event is returning, and with increased loot and limited-time XP rewards, this event will bring more Diablo 4 Gold and other benefits than ever before. This is important for players as everyone is working to improve their paragon level. At the same time, Mother’s Blessing Event update will also bring additional rewards to players. For some players who return to Diablo 4, they can enjoy Eternal Realm character boost. When they return to the game, they can have a character promoted to level 50 for free and unlock Altars of Lilith awaits, which is convenient for players to have powerful power at the beginning of the game. After Thanksgiving in the US, the developers will conduct a short game test for Season 7, that is, PTR, and many details will be announced in the live broadcast next week. This undoubtedly aroused the new interest of the majority of players. Let us look forward to what new surprises the developers will bring us.Nov-12-2024
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Diablo 4 Season 4: Know The ...
These 8 tips are useful, especially for newer players, but perhaps even Veterans of the game will find them valuable too. Before entering Diablo 4 Season 4, if you have enough Diablo 4 Items in your inventory, they will help increase your likelihood of defeating your enemies. Let’s jump right into it. 1. Auto-cast Abilities In case you wonder: Auto casting skills do not require any macro, special mouse or external software. You can turn on auto-cast by simply using your keyboard. And here is how: First, go to “options”, then “controls” window. Assign the secondary button of a skill you want to auto-cast to one of the numeric keypad buttons. Those are the 1 to 9 buttons on the right side of your keyboard. Next, with the “Num Lock” function turned on, Hold the assigned numeric key and press “Num Lock” button to turn off the functionality. And there you go. Your character will now auto-cast the ability whenever it’s ready! To disable auto-casting, simply turn on “Num Lock” and press the skill button again. 2. Seasonal Journey Rewards The seasonal journey rewards are account-wide, while Iron Wolf’s rewards are character-based. So when you level your first character, you may be wondering which seasonal rewards to pick up and which ones to leave for later, or perhaps for your alts. You certainly want to pick up all Iron Wolf’s rewards as soon as you unlock them. Each character can level and pick up their own rewards from that vendor. The level of rewards from Iron Wolf’s also seem to be tied to the level you had when you unlocked them, not when you opened the box. So there’s basically no point in holding back. It’s a bit more tricky when it comes to seasonal journey rewards since they are account wide. This means that if you picked a couple of seasonal chapter rewards for your first character, but let’s say then decided to switch a class, you won’t have seasonal journey rewards available on that new character. It’s not a big deal. Besides the potential cool Legendaries, and Uniques that could drop from rewards caches. Luckily, though, the drops are very generous in Season 4, so don’t lose sleep over that. 3. Use Favorite Function The third tip I have for you: use “favorite” functionality. In case you didn’t know, you can mark aspects and items as favorite. When you mark aspect as favorite, it will show up first when you are selecting legendary power from Codex of power. This is a big quality of life thing for overtime. You will replace legendary powers Time and time again. And here’s how I like using this feature for aspects: When I start a new character and get an idea for a skill or build that I want to use, I go to the “collection” section on the pause menu. It’s the only place where you can actually mark aspects as favorites. By the way, the marking is done with a space bar on the PC. Then I go through all the available aspects and mark those that seem applicable to my build. It is a bit of a pre-work, but makes your life so much easier in the long run. So you don’t have to search for a specific legendary power. Every single time you want to switch an item, which is a pain in the ass. Now let’s talk about pieces of gear. You can also mark them as favorite to avoid accidentally selling good items to a vendor or stopping you from mass salvaging items at Blacksmith. To mark a piece of gear, hover over the item and press the button assigned to mark items as junk twice! The first press marks an item as junk, while the second press marks it as favorite. On PC, that’s again a “space bar”. Personally, I like marking all my current equipment as favorite to prevent losing accidentally an item while I am trying out different pieces of gear. 4. Craft Seasonal Potions You can craft seasonal potions with Obols. If you haven’t used seasonal potions yet, make sure to give them a try! Holy Bolt is a particularly strong potion to use as it turns you into a permanent artillery machine. Obols are currency that you normally used to gamble for items. You get Obols from Helltides chests. And considering you will probably spam Helltides all the damn time, you will quickly accumulate a lot of Obols. Once you get a decent set, it’s a good time to spend some Obols on potion crafting. Beware, though, that the cost is quite high with 350 Obols per potion. But I would still suggest that you use Holy Bolts despite the high cost. The power gain justifies the cost as they provide a massive boost to your damage, especially when playing Minion Necromancer. 5. Aspects’ Icons On Items The next tip I got for you is to pay attention to symbols on the items at Blacksmith. So you get inventory full of legendary items. How do you know easily which ones to sell and which to salvage? Go to Blacksmith and salvage the items with the white icon on them. This icon means that the legendary power on this piece of gear is either not unlocked in your Codex of Power, or the value of legendary power on the item is higher than the one you have unlocked in Codex of Power. So whichever is the case, you definitely want to salvage this item unless you want to use it. There is also another red-ish icon, which means that salvaging this item unlocks a new cosmetic look. These icons, unfortunately, were not visible so easily when opening inventory, without going to an NPC like Blacksmith or vendor. To see them in your inventory. Without going to NPC, you have to hover over an item and look for an icon with a text explanation at the bottom of the item description. This can be unfortunately easy to miss, especially when you have to compare function turned on. This way, the item description often does not fit into the screen and requires you to scroll down to see the icon. It’s kind of annoying and I hope they will change it in the future. 6. Enchanting Affixes Preview You can check possible Affixes when enchanting an item. So you get a nice piece of gear but want to change one affix on it. You go to Occultist and enchant that statistic, but how do you know whether you should keep that new Affix or perhaps roll further? Here’s where the icon located at the top-right corner of Enchanting Window comes to the rescue. It shows the list of all possible Affixes to be rolled and also their ranges! You can actually also access this information on consoles. To do that, simply press “triangle” or “Y” button at the Enchanting window. 7. Farm Blood Maiden Spam Blood Maiden in Helltides for great XP and loot! Helltides has been an awesome place to both level up and get great loot in the process. I strongly recommend you to check out this place Located in every Helltide invaded area, which has an Altar with three pillars. Pillars can be activated by inserting Baneful Hearts, which are dropped across Helltides. By the way, you keep Baneful Hearts after Helltide finishes while all unused Cinders are lost after the current Helltide event ends. When all three pillars are activated, waves of enemies will spawn in that location. And when enough demons are defeated, the boss will spawn the Blood Maiden. She can be a tough enemy who has three main mechanics: First, she spawns disciples who are tougher Elites mobs. You definitely want to deal with them fast so you don’t get overwhelmed later on. She also casts fire rings around random players. When you get one on you, move away from the boss and other players to avoid killing everyone. And lastly, she will create an expanding circle, dealing with quite high damage. Just simply dodge it. When defeated, Maiden will drop a lot of items with some legendries plus crafting materials. And players who contributed more Baneful Hearts to activate pillars may get more loot. So don’t be a cheap bastard. 8. Use Profane Mindcages Speaking about Helltides, use Profane Minds to boost experience and cinders. Have you noticed Profane Minds in your second inventory tab? This item increases the level of enemies in Helltide by 10, for 60 minutes! As far as I know, ten levels above yours is the cap for bonus experience in Diablo 4, so the boost works great. Using Profane Minds is a great way to level up faster and get tons of cinders in the process. Don’t be too stingy with them as you will drop Profane Minds in Helltides, anyway. And here are a few things to consider: First, the boost lasts 60 minutes, so activate it when you are planning to have a bit longer session. Next, dying with Profane Mind actively disables the boost, so use it when the current Helltide enemies are not posing too much threat. And enemies level is capped to 50 in World Tier 1 and 2. So it does not make sense to activate this boost if you are in that Tier while being above level 40. These are my gaming experiences, I hope they are useful to you.May-26-2024
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Blizzard has released patch ...
Blizzard has released patch 2.7 for Diablo 2 Resurrected ahead of the start of season 4 on May 4. The latest update brings some buffs to the Assassin and Druid classes, as well as a change to the Next Hit Delay system. This change will allow certain skills to land on a single enemy in quick succession where they would have been affected by a shared cooldown before, resulting in improved damage consistency. Additionally, four additional character slots have been added across all online modes, allowing players to partake in season 4 without having to delete any of their old characters. Characters that have been transferred to non-ladder from previous seasons will have their respec counter reset, providing players with more opportunities to experiment with their builds. However, players are advised to transfer any items from ladder season 2 to regular storage before season 4 begins, as they will lose access to these items once the new season starts. Finally, Druids can now shapeshift directly between Werewolf and Werebear forms, making it easier to gain the bonuses from both forms. This is great news for players using the Metamorphosis Diablo 2 Resurrected Runeword introduced last season. This season marks the final season of Diablo 2 Resurrected before the highly anticipated release of Diablo 4. Season 4 is an opportunity for players to start fresh and prove their skills by bringing their favourite class to level 99 faster than anyone else. With the added improvements and changes in patch 2.7, players can look forward to an even more exciting season of Diablo 2 Resurrected. Diablo 2 Resurrected season 4 start date and timeMay-17-2023