Diablo 4 Gold

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 IGGM 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!

Wanderer, the new Diablo 4 season is about to start. Are you ready? For every player, the initial goal of a new season journey is to level up, and although some people don't mind seeing the scenery halfway, the vast majority of people want to reach the level cap as quickly and efficiently as possible so that they can enter the endgame mode they really want to play.

With this in mind, here, we will discuss some tips on leveling in Season 7, especially the overall leveling plan and specific strategies, on how we can optimize them and make them better according to the changes in the new season.

It is worth mentioning that most of the information we have at present comes from D4 Season 7 PTR, which may affect some parts of it, both because of the nature of Public Test Realm and because they have changed the game since the second edition, but they do tell us some new content.

Do You Need To Skip Campaign?

The first big question is whether you skip Vessel of Hatred Campaign, and the answer is very likely. If you skip the dialogue and scenes in the expansion campaign entirely, you can actually finish it and level up in a few hours.

Especially in Season 7, you don’t have to do the campaign because some new changes severely limit the actual benefits of doing so, but Vessel of Hatred Campaign itself is not actually a slow way to level up. So if you want to do Diablo 4 DLC campaign, it’s not a direct fault, but there are better ways, especially ones that overlap more with long-term goals.

Mercenaries

A quick note first, at this point we’re not sure what will happen to Mercenaries in the new season. If you skipped the campaign on both the live servers and PTR, you already have Mercenary unlocked from your main character, of course, provided your main character has already completed the campaign, and Mercenary levels are shared between characters. However, we’re not sure if skipping the campaign will automatically unlock Mercenary in the new season, or if we’ll have to do the quest again.

Regardless, for Mercenaries, I specifically recommend Subo, as he’ll help you find herbs more easily, which will help you keep your Elixirs stocked up to ensure that XP buffs from Elixirs never wear off.

Beyond that, there are more general uses in between, and it’s recommended that you use Varyana and her passive skill, which gives you extra movement speed when you kill things with Massacre Bonus. It’s a perfect open world leveling combo.

Completing Headhunts

Next, let’s look at the mainstay of the new season mechanics, Witch Powers, which are all tied to Tree of Whispers, and the result of that is a new sub-region takeover event called Headhunts.

Among these events will be a whole new and improved set of Whispers of the Dead activities that will offer more rewards, there will be a ton of new monsters in there, and when you complete them, you can repeatedly turn them in for tons of Diablo 4 Gold and XP.

Since this is Whispers of the Dead event, combined with the fact that open world activities don’t scale in difficulty with the player’s level, we’re guessing the more people you interact with, the more efficient your leveling will be.

What’s more, the developers have said that they will reduce the density of monsters and elites in Headhunts areas in the last patch made between PTR and release, so this means that the fastest way to level up is expected to be in these Headhunts areas unless they completely eliminate the monster density in them.

So let’s continue to assume that they won’t completely destroy the monster density in Headhunts and make it our main activity. Players will complete Whispers in Headhunts areas, however, it will eventually spawn a boss around the main tree of the area.

If your goal is just pure pursuit of leveling speed efficiency, I would say that you should never kill the boss. Honestly, most leveling builds in Diablo 4 don’t focus on bosses or single target damage, so it makes sense to stick to your strengths and keep doing Whispers. If you run out of Whispers in an area, just move on to another Headhunts area.

Season Questlines

It is well known that the best way to level up in Diablo 4 is to interact with the season questlines themselves, and Season 7 is no exception, especially since this season will be directly tied into Coven’s Favor Reputation.

This is the new Reputation system for Season 7, and it unlocks things for you, like more parts of the questline, and Witch Powers that you can’t get from anywhere else. So, combined with the actual reward boxes from Whispers of the Dead Caches, this has the potential to give you some really nice power upgrades when you level up, speeding up your leveling process.

Rootholds Dungeon

Also of note are the new Rootholds mini-dungeon activities, which let you get Sigils from Silent Chests and Whispers Caches. What’s more, they’re highly intensive activities, so they’re completed very quickly compared to regular dungeons, and they have decent rewards, too.

The only downside is that there’s always a boss at the end of a Roothold, so whether or not you do this when leveling up depends on your single target damage. If your single target damage isn’t good, the general Whispers in Headhunts area will be more effective, but if single target damage is good, then you can do whatever Rootholds you encounter when you run into them.

Choosing Difficulty Tiers

The next big question is how to choose your Difficulty Tiers, how difficult these activities should be when you do them.

This is a pretty easy problem to solve, just do it and don’t try to prove anything to someone. Start with Normal Difficulty, get to level 15 or so, then if you’re only half as fast on Hard Mode as you are on Normal, then maybe you can try to bump it up to Hard Mode, because the extra gold and XP from running on Hard Mode is worth it. But if it takes twice as long to kill monsters, then it’s not worth it.

So if you want to increase your leveling efficiency by increasing Difficulty Tier, the most important thing is to keep up the speed. This is an efficiency game, so only do it when your build and gear are good enough, no matter how good you think it is subjectively.

Using Elixirs

It is well known that Elixirs give you 5% extra experience as long as they are activated. These Elixirs are easy to make early on, especially the high-level Elixirs, which give you 8% extra experience once you can start making and using them. Of course, this number itself is not high, but every little bit counts, and if you activate them 100% of the time, then it will definitely accumulate.

Season Journey

Meanwhile, Season Journey itself is also a consideration. Based on information leaked by the developers, we’ve learned that our early-game quests should be more effectively aligned with the efficient leveling activities of the first few chapters of Season Journey. This means that if we’re lucky enough, it will directly align with what we’re already doing and give us some nice little power boosts when we open those reward caches.

Season Blessings

The last thing to talk about is season boosts, which you can unlock with Smoldering Ashes after reaching them on the free track of Season 7 Battle Pass. The one consistent function they have always had is to get Boost XP buffs by killing monsters. So if you only care about leveling speed, this is also where you want to stick with the first four Smoldering Ashes.

Outro

In short, these methods should allow you to level up to level 60 easily and quickly. Of course, we still need to pay attention to the new seasonal activities, interact with them, and enjoy the new content they add in Season 7, and the new things they provide also happen to be a very effective way to level up. If you want to better welcome the new content that is coming, then you can pay attention to the giveaways that are often launched in IGGM Discord. Here is your chance to get free D4 products and help you conquer the Sanctuary! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new season!