The Diablo 4 Early Access beta gave some fans a taste of the long-awaited sequel, but it’s the game’s Open beta that most players are truly excited for. After all, that beta will not only give everyone the chance to try the game (regardless of whether they pre-ordered the retail version or not), but it will finally let us play with all five of Diablo 4‘s starting classes.
Before we dive into a few of the best early builds for all of those classes, here are a few things to keep in mind:
– As before, these builds are based on what we currently know about the game thanks to the Early Access beta, earlier previews, and datamined information. This article will be updated for the retail release of the game.
– This article primarily focuses on the best solo builds since that’s how many people may have to experience the beta until things open up a bit. For co-op players, be sure to always synergize with your partners. If they offer massive single-target damage, you might need to bring more AoE to the party. If you can turn a flexible skill slot into a party buff ability, it might be a good idea to pick that ability up.
– Due to the limited nature of the beta, this guide will primarily focus on Skills and Stats rather than recommended gear and other high-level upgrades that are not currently available. Future versions of this article will feature much more information regarding those aspects of the game.
– Finally, the massive size of Diablo 4‘s skill trees makes it difficult to simply include a picture of the final build. Instead, we’ll be sharing links to a build calculator that showcases the Level 25 versions of each build. Hopefully, more resources will become available in the future that will make it easier to share all of this information.
With that out of the way, here are some of the best builds for every class you’ll find in the Diablo 4 open beta.
Diablo 4 Beta – Best Barbarian Build: Tank of Thorns
Barbarian Build Full Skill Tree
Primary Skills: Flay, Rend, Challenging Shout, Death Blow, Call of the Ancients
A good Flay and Whirlwind “Bleed” build can actually get you through a lot of content as the Barbarian, but I’m opting for a slight variation of that concept that focuses more on the class’ powerful Thorns abilities.
Thorns are defensive tools that automatically damage any enemy that attacks you. This build is designed to not only maximize your Thorn uptime (and the damage they deal) but your defensive capabilities as well. It’s certainly a tank build, though it’s not as passive as you might think.
Flay is the obvious basic attack choice for this build as its Combat Flay upgrade allows us to easily generate your first Thorns. Rend is our Core ability choice due to its Bleed synergy with Flay. Those Bleeds will be a big help during boss fights and Elite encounters.
The Defensive tree is where this build gets really interesting. Outburst not only generates additional Thorns based on our max life, but the upgraded version of that ability grants our Thorns additional bleed damage. Meanwhile, the upgraded version of Challenging Shout increases our life, decreases the damage we take, and generates additional Thorns equal to half of our maximum life. You’ll want to grab all of these upgrades before moving on, as they are the heart of this build.
We’re skipping the Brawling tree for now and heading straight to the Weapon Mastery section so that we can pick up Death Blow and Enhanced Death Blow. These are the Barbarian’s best friends in boss fights, and they’re also pretty useful against the mobs of weakened enemies we’ll be facing.
Finally, we’re going for the Call of the Ancients Ultimate, which is basically a screen-clearing smart bomb. It’s one of the best reasons to play as a Barbarian, and it’s incredibly powerful here despite its lack of obvious synergies.
Just keep in mind that this build can be a little more gear dependent than other beta builds will be. You’re looking for items that increase your maximum health, offer additional defensive capabilities, and, best of all, synergize with your Thorn damage. This build certainly works without the perfect gear, but it certainly shines when you get better equipment.
Diablo 4 Beta – Best Rogue Build: Shadow Flurry
Primary Skills: Invigorating Strike, Flurry, Shadow Step, Dark Shroud, Shadow Imbument, Shadow Clone
Since I still love the Barrage/Poison ranged Rogue build I previously shared, let’s take a look at a melee version of the Rogue class that is already proving to be incredibly powerful.
The cores of this build are Flurry and Shadow Imbument. Flurry is a powerful AoE melee ability that unleashes a barrage of strikes on nearby enemies. Shadow Imbument imbues your weapons with Shadow damage that can (among other things) make corpses explode and damage other nearby enemies. Combined, those abilities allow you to unleash a flurry of strikes that turn recently slain enemies into bombs. It’s an incredibly fun and undeniably effective way to deal with larger groups of foes.
The rest of this build is designed to support that core combo. Invigorating Strike helps us keep our Energy levels high (though Puncture is an interesting alternative), while Shadow Step and Dark Shroud offer some much-needed defensive and evasion abilities. Exploit and Malice make our Flurry combo even more powerful (as does the always-valuable Shadow Clone Ultimate).
Boss fights can be a little tricky with this build, especially if that boss doesn’t summon creatures that you can use your Shadow combo on. I put a couple of points in Precision Imbument (which increases the Critical Strike chance of our Imbued attacks) to help you out a bit against single targets, but you definitely have a couple of flex points in this build that can go towards whatever fits your playstyle. Twisting Blades, for instance, could be a big help during certain fights.
Finally, be sure to increase your enemy Vulnerability uptime through gear upgrades whenever possible. Vulnerability makes this build even better, and while you will gain some natural Vulnerability output via your other abilities, that status effect makes everything this build is already doing that much better.
Diablo 4 Beta – Best Sorcerer Build: Chained Lightning
Sorcerer Build Full Skill Tree
While there are a few viable Sorcerer builds out there that emphasize Fire, Ice, and Lightning (or a combination of those core abilities), the power of that class’ Chain Lightning ability is pretty hard to deny at the moment.
As it does in many other games that feature similar abilities, Diablo 4’s version of the Chain Lightning spell summons a powerful lightning attack that that then spreads to other enemies. It’s an expensive ability, but it’s pretty hard to beat in terms of pure AoE damage. It also works really well with our basic lightning attack, Arc Lash, which also unleashes AoE lightning damage and can even eventually stun affected enemies.
With those two abilities handling most of your AoE needs, the rest of this build is designed to offer some additional protection and much-needed single-target damage. For instance, Teleport not only offers additional lightning damage but is one of the best evasive abilities in the game regardless of class. Ice Armor, meanwhile, offers additional protection uptime when you deal damage, which is quite nice given how much damage we’ll be dealing with this AoE build. It even offers a little extra mana regen, which is also nice considering that this build is certainly a resource hog.
Ice Blades and Hydra are two interesting additions to the basic Chain Lightning build. Ice Blades is fantastic against bosses (and helps reduce our cooldown timers), while Hydra is just a generally useful attack that deals a respectable amount of safe damage during most fights. Ice Blades is the more essential of those two abilities, so if you’d rather not put so many points into two Conjuration spells, feel free to swap Hydra out for Blizzard, Ball Lightning, or even just some additional points into enhancements or Arc Lash.
Glass Canon and Elemental Attunement are two enhancement abilities that just work well with everything else this build is trying to do, though you can swap those out for other enhancements or separate attacks if you just want to experiment with additional possibilities. I like leaning heavily into Glass Cannon given how well it synergizes with Ice Armor, but I’ve seen other versions of this concept work well that don’t take that high-risk, high-reward approach.
Unstable Currents is our obvious Ultimate choice, and it really does take this build to the next level. Simply spam Arc Lash while that Ultimate is active, and you’ll unleash a barrage of various Lightning abilities that will leave you feeling like you somehow just unlocked a cheat code.
Diablo 4 Beta – Best Necromancer Build: Blood Mage
Necromancer Build Full Skill Tree
Primary Skills: Hemorrhage, Blood Surge, Blood Lance, Blood Mist, Iron Maiden, Bone Spirit, Blood Wave
Rather than focus on summoning, this Necromancer build leans heavily into the Necromancer’s powerful Blood magic abilities. Those abilities are generally used to offer the Necromancer some extra defensive and healing options, but when you invest all of your points into them, you end up with a surprisingly tanky caster that can deal tons of AoE and single-target damage.
Hemorrhage is an incredibly powerful basic attack that contributes to the two things this build is most often trying to do: gain life and fortify your caster. It just perfectly synergizes with every other ability we’re picking up in ways that most other basic attacks simply don’t.
Blood Surge is basically an AoE version of Hemorrhage (in the best ways possible), while Blood Lance is an ideal single-target damage spell that even grants an attack speed buff during boss fights. You could put a few more points into Blood Surge if needed, though this version of the build sacrifices two of those points for some powerful Blood Lance enhancements.
Blood Mist and Iron Maiden are where this build gets really interesting. Both of those spells essentially create an area around you that not only damages nearby enemies but buffs and heals your character while it’s dealing damage. Honestly, these may be two of the best “tank” abilities that you’ll find outside of the Barbarian class.
We’re mostly using the Summoning tree to pick up some incredible Blood enhancements, though Bone Spirit looks to be one of those abilities that you can justify running regardless of your build. Hey, who doesn’t want to summon a giant spirit that runs into packs of enemies and detonates itself for massive damage? It’s ultimately a flex ability, though, so if you’d rather stick to the blood theme, consider spending the three Bone Spirit points on upgrading existing enhancements or even acquiring the Spiked Armor skill from the Macabre tree.
Finally, there’s the Blood Wave Ultimate. It’s the obvious choice from the Ultimate tree, though I could see a higher-level version of this build that incorporates a few more summoning abilities eventually opting for the Army of the Dead Ultimate instead. For the beta, though, Blood Wave is basically an overpowered version of Blood Surge that makes quick work of larger groups of enemies.
Diablo 4 Beta – Best Druid Build: Werewolf
Primary Skills: Claw, Shred, Rabies, Wolves, Blood Howl, Lacerate
To be honest, Druid is the toughest Diablo 4 class to properly build (or even theorycraft) at the moment. Not only are Druids an inherently complicated class, but they’re currently the class we know the least about based on the game’s early previews and datamined information. However, this Wolf build certainly looks like one of the most promising Druid archetypes in the very early stages of the game.
This is a very aggressive version of the Druid class that leans almost entirely into the Druid’s “Wolf form” abilities. To be more specific, this build focuses on the Wolf form’s intriguing ability to deal poison damage through both powerful single-target attacks and AoE abilities.
It all starts with the Claw ability, which can easily be upgraded with the Fierce Claw enhancement that deals a respectable amount of early poison damage to a single target. That ability also synergizes with Shred: a devastating trio of quick attacks that can also be upgraded to inflict poison damage. With the skills alone, you should be able to deal the kind of single-target damage that many other early-game classes can only dream of.
Where things really get interesting, though, is when you’re finally able to acquire the Rabies skill from the Wrath tree. That ability not only allows you to quickly poison individual targets but then spread that single-target poison to all nearby enemies. With the right upgrades, Rabies should allow you to convert quite a bit of this build’s incredible single-target damage into equally effective AoE damage. As you can see, we’re also grabbing several enhancement abilities that either increase the damage we do to poisoned targets or grant us some other additional benefit when fighting poisoned enemies. After all, we’ll be fighting a lot of them.
The rest of this build is designed to offer some much-needed defensive and AoE abilities. Blood Howl is an especially useful self-healing shout that can easily be spammed thanks to an enhancement that reduces its cooldown time whenever you kill an enemy. It certainly gives this build some much-needed sustainability.
The Wolves skill, meanwhile, not only offers valuable multi-target damage while we’re waiting to acquire Rabies but eventually makes Rabies even more powerful thanks to the other upgrades found in this tree. Again, it turns out that easily poisoning enemies and then summoning a pack of wolves that deal extra damage to those poisoned enemies is pretty good.
Finally, we’re going with Lacerate as the obvious Ultimate ability for this Wolf build. It doesn’t appear to be the game-changing ultimate that some other classes have access to, but nobody is going to complain about becoming invulnerable and dashing around the area while you deal 400+% damage to anything that gets in your way.
Just know that the optimized version of this build may eventually incorporate a few Werebear abilities in order to take advantage of that form’s enhanced defenses (something this build currently lacks despite the power of Blood Howl). For that matter, you might be better off going with a Werebear build before level 15 (when you still respec for free) and then pivoting to the Wolf build once you’re able to unlock the Wolves summoning skill.