Not all builds in Diablo IV have to be complicated. One of the major keywords for Warlock skills is “Hellfire”. Hellfire is cool. One of the Warlock’s ultimate skills is Apocalypse, a spell that goes all the way back to the first Diablo game - essentially a big, powerful explosion. Big powerful explosions named Apocalypse are cool. That’s it, that’s the thought process. We wanted to blow things up and see how far we could make it building around that skill. While this build didn’t end up being the powerhouse that our Dread Claws build ended up being, it did take us fairly far into Torment difficulty and was a fine way to level up a character to level 70. Most importantly, it’s fun, so if you want to run around blowing up entire screens of demons, we’ve got a build for you!

Page Breakdown¶

Video Guide¶

If you want to see a variation of this build in action, check out the video below:

Volatile Overpower Apocalypse Warlock Build¶

As mentioned earlier, this build is pretty simple. Our main offensive spells are Umbral Chains (turned into a Hellfire skill via the Chain Whips upgrade) and Apocalypse, which is - when this build is functioning correctly - our main damage-dealer. If you’re a bit too strong, Umbral Chains will deal too much damage and kill enemies on its own, if you’re too weak… well, you’ll probably die, so that’ll be easy to sort. With the Annihilation upgrade to Apocalypse you’ll get rid of the cooldown for Apocalypse, instead being able to cast it whenever Hellfire skills generate 20+ hits, but ideally waiting until you’re at or close to 100 hits to cast a powered-up version of the spell. Umbral Chains can generate a lot of hits quickly and with the right gear you can spam it to increase the rate at which you build up Apocalypse stacks for bigger, more frequent, and most importantly, more damaging booms.

You’ll also want to use the Ritualist Soul Shard with the Scorching Fragment upgrade. This will allow you to work the Overpower and Volatility mechanics into the build, further increasing your damage. In fact, you’ll always be Overpowered with this setup, but casting Hellfire Occult skills (pretty much any of your damage-dealers) will drain your Life. Use Summon Valloch any time you have the Dominance to do so (or when there’s a dangerous mob in sight) to Fortify you and pay these Life costs for you. Rotate in cooldown skills like Dark Prison (altered by the Chain Aura upgrade), Nether Step (to escape sticky situations and give you damage reduction) and Sigil of Chaos for various buffs any time they’re off cooldown. Most importantly, keep blasting!

VOAW Build Pros and Cons¶

Skills¶

Really just here to have some summons on the field, which gives us bonus damage thanks to Fathomless Paragon Board. With the Meat Shields upgrade, this is basically just a passive skill that summons you a Fallen every 2~ seconds. If they do damage and generate Wrath and Dominance, great, but they’re really just here to juice damage a bit..

Mostly used to give you Overpower stacks, Wrath regeneration and defray the Life cost of keeping your Hellfire skills Volatile, summoning Valloch regularly should also help you generate Fortify and keep you from falling into a Life hole by casting your offensive spells.

Hits enemies a lot and generates stacks for Apocalypse. Also benefits you by Slowing enemies refunding Wrath costs when its duration expires. Once you get the third upgrade, Chain Whips, it becomes a Hellfire skill.

Grants you ranged damage reduction, slows nearby enemies, and gives you Fortify when you defeat nearby enemies.

Mostly used to generate more Volatility stacks on demand, best used before serious blasting begins! Also will kill your summons in the radius (Command Fallen) when used, which synergizes with some of our Paragon Boards.

The highlight of the build, it deals heavy damage and with the Annihilation upgrade you can cast this much faster than cooldowns would normally allow.

Best Gear and Affixes¶

Not a lot of clever gimmicks here, we want to boost our Critical Strike Chance primarily, and our Critical Strike Damage secondarily, as both will combine to provide massive amounts of damage. Other than that, Attack Speed will help juice up the benefits gained by the Brutal Gorilla’s Aspect (which should regularly be adding to our damage thanks to the Accelerate Aspect and our high Critical Strike Chance). Otherwise any time you see a chance to get Fire Damage or Hellfire Skills, those are usually safe choices. Defensive gear is less exciting, you want Resistances, Armor and Life with a good mix of all three. The Aspect of Scorching Heat will boost our damage based on our Fire Resistance’s damage mitigation, but this will almost certainly be around 70%, so the gains are pretty limited there inasmuch as it’s pretty hard to be Torment-ready and have less than 60% in most resistances, so getting 80% of your fire damage mitigation as a damage boost should account for a fairly stable 50%~ bonus.

Mother’s Embrace shouldn’t be hard to get and it’s a pretty solid build staple - might also not be necessary given how this build generates Wrath, but it’ll generally keep you from having to fuss with Wrath costs. The Ring of Starless Skies may take some work to get, but it causes our Umbral Chains to boost our overall damage, which makes it an even better lead-in to Apocalypse. Use the Crushing Aspect in the meantime.

List of Suggested Affixes and Stats¶

This build will challenge early Torment tiers without much gear optimization, but you really need to buff your Paragon Boards and Glyphs to make a deeper push into the Torment difficulties. A big roadblock will be your Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage, which will require some serious gear optimization to get fully on-line. You ideally want as close to 100% Critical Strike Chance as possible, with 80% being relatively functional. Apocalypse swings big, so the difference between a normal hit and a critical strike with +2,000% Critical Strike Damage is… well, do the math. This takes a lot of rerolling and some luck to get, and it’ll probably be the major late-game focus of the build.

Charms and Talismans¶

A new variety of gear to play with, you’ll be able to find Talismans and Charms as normal loot. Talismans go in the middle and provide their own affixes, as well as unlocking 3-6 Charm slots.

• Talisman: A good mid-term goal for this build is to get a unique Talisman with 5-6 Charm slots and Critical Strike Chance as an affix. Getting one with boosts to some of the set Charms you plan to use would be nice, but that could take a long while.

• Charms: For the majority of the game - especially considering this build’s ceiling - you’ll want to focus on set Charms that belong to the Slaughter set and Practiced Technique Sets. Getting three pieces from the former will net you +5% Damage Reduction, +x10% Damage, +10% Damage Reduction from Elites and x15% Damage to Elites (elites are really all that matters late-game), while two items from the latter set will further yield +5% Attack Speed and +15% Movement Speed.

Paragon Boards¶

Honestly, the Paragon Board’s Legendary Nodes aren’t quite as generous to the Hellfire/Occult Warlock as it seems to be for the Abyss/Demonology Warlock, but such is life. Nodes that give you Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Damage, Cooldown Reduction and the like are always good, while for Glyphs we focus on… mostly do the same but with some Hellfire/Occult damage buffs thrown in.

List of Suggested Paragon Boards and Rare Nodes¶

Glyphs¶

As usual there’s a lot of power to be had in the Warlock’s Glyphs, here’s the ones we’d focus on, in order:

• Destruction: Boosts your Critical Strike Damage when you invest in nearby Willpower nodes, and when you unlock them, the additional bonuses give you up to 20% extra damage against enemies you critically strike. The legendary bonus is another 20% Critical Strike Damage. What’s not to like?

• Wrath: Just like Destruction above, you get more Critical Strike Damage when you purchase nearby Willpower nodes. The additional bonus causes critical hits to generate Wrath and the legendary bonus is another flat 20% Critical Strike Damage bonus.

• Hellforge: Your Hellfire skills (which are all our damaging skills worth mentioning) deal more damage when you buy 5 Intelligence in the radius. Meet the requirements for the additional bonus and you get a flat 15% bonus to damage with skills empowered by Volatility (which they will be all the time). Legendary bonus is another bonus to damage with Hellfire skills.

• Occultist: Similar to Hellforged, above, save you deal more damage with Occult skills for every 5 Intelligence in range. Umbral Chains and Apocalypse are both Occult skills as well as Hellfire (with the right upgrades), so this works well for us. With the additional bonus active you’ll also deal 12% more damage to enemies for 10 seconds when you hit them with an Overpowered skill, which should be all of them. The legendary bonus is another flat damage bonus with Occult skills.

• Entropy: Increases your damage significantly when skills are empowered with Volatility, which they always will be. Also recovers Wrath when a skill is empowered and the legendary bonus gives a flat damage boost. Very efficient for this build! Slight downside is you need to invest in local Intelligence for this Glyph, rather than the more common Willpower.