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An often overlooked part of making a powerful character in Diablo 4 is deciding on your defensive skills. Staying alive is the most important part of gameplay and newer players might focus more on building up their damage rather than shoring up their defense. Barrier is a powerful mechanic that provides temporary maximum health, keeping you alive againsꩲt powerful hits.
While not as plentiful as other defensive options, Barrier should not be forgotten about. This guide will take you through how Barrier works and the primary sources of generation you'll want to keep an eye out for.
How Does Barrier Work?
Put simply, Barrier is a shield that is applied on top of your actual life. It will lower upon taking damage but preserve your underlying ಌlife total.
Your life can regenerate using effects such as Health Potions, but it will not heal your Barrier. Most Barrier effects only last for a limited time, but they can stack on top of each other to build up a large shield.
Barrier works differently from Fortify, in that it will not lower any incoming damage amounts, but will instead prevent it. It is typica𓃲lly applied faster, whereas Fortify normally takes a while to build its strength.
This makes Barrier more useful for on-demand bursts of damage, where you know you need a quick defensive to survive, suc𒉰h as an AoE Explosion.
However, while Fortify applies itself in percentages of your maximum health, Barrier is a flat amount.
This means that it does not scale with stats such as maximum life, and it is possible for Barrier to fall behind in its effectiveness, certainly while leveling, or before you can obtain some Barrier Generation.
How To Generate Barrier
Barrier can be generated via a few different methods, but perhaps the most effective is the Aspect of the Protector Legendary power.
This will grant you a sizeable Barrier when damaging an Elite enemy, which is typically where you'll be wanting the majority of your shields in the first place.
Although it has a cooldown, the Barrier lasts ten seconds, usually long enough to take down most non-boss enemies. This Aspect is great because it is not class locked, meaning any character can make use of the power once Imprinted.
For more specificꦿ sources of Barrier, these classes also have learnable skills that can generate ෴a shield on demand.
- Barbarian - Iron Skin
- Druid - Earthen Bulwark
- Sorcerer - Ice Armor, Protection, Deep Freeze
These are fantastic defensive tools, and it is no surprise that all three of these skills are core talent choices for the majority of top-tier builds.
Sorcerer is probably the best class when it comes to creating Barriers, as multiple talents will extend the size and d🐼uration of each shield. Being able to proc it manually is also very powerful,༒ as you can pre-defensive a dangerous pack of enemies.
Barrier Generation will increase the size of any Barrier applied by that percentage. There are a couple of ways this can be achieved, the simples𒁃t being to equip items with thꦚe Barrier Generation stat. This can be found on certain item slots:
- Helm
- Chest
- Rings
- Offhand/Shield
This skill will only increase the size of applied Barriers, not the duration or cooldown.
Alongside some class skills, there is another way to increase Barrier Generation. The Diamond Gem grants this stat when applied to Armor pieces, up to a maximum 💃of five percent from a Royal version.
If you are running a Barrier based defense, then you will probably want to try socketing Diamonds into your Armor, as the stacking increases can reallওy begin to add up.
Gems can be upgraded and unsocketed at Jeweler NPCs, so try to socket �🌠�the highest-quality versions you can find.
If you are instead running a defense based around Fortify, then you will most likely find more value from socketing Sapphires. Fortify is generally much easier𒐪 to generate and keep up, albeit at a lower defensive benefit than Barrier.