There are a few forms of defensive buffs added to your characters in Diablo 4, whether it’s reduction, Barriers, Fortify or, other general armor and defense increases. One of these peaking interest is the Barrier term, which operated very differently from other defensive parts of the game. So, to help clarify it, here’s a Diablo 4 Barrier guide, detailing what you can expect from it.

View Full-size

Here is what having a barrier on looks like in Diablo 4, feat the Sorc’s Frost Armor.

What are Barriers in Diablo 4?¶

Barriers are a term to describe some very temporary shielding from skills across various classes. These type of skills provide a very limited from of shielding for a small period of time. The sorts of skills this includes are:

• Iron Skin: Barbarian’s Barrier
• Earthern Bulwark: Druid Barrier
• Aspect of Shielding Storm: Necromancer legendary affix that applies a barrier with Bone Storm.
• Snap Frozen Aspect: Rogue’s legendary affix provides a barrier for each enemy you evade through that are affected with chill or frozen.
• Ice Armor: Sorcerer Barrier

In addition, some classes have passives they can take that grant extra forms of barrier through their kit. The Sorcerer has some of those passives in their Deep Freeze ultimate, whole they have Protection that grants a barrier whenever you use a cooldown for 5 seconds.

So, if you’re playing a particularly squishy class, or need an active shield to grant temporary hit points over your life, then barriers are the source of that protection. Feel free to browse through your skill tree and look for the tags for barrier to see what consistent of a barrier, and what improves your barriers.

You will also find there’s some other synergy with barrier from other items sources. You can find that some legendary affixes increase your damage while you have a Barrier active. Meanwhile, one of the confirmed uniques in the game, called Temerity, has an effect that grants you bonus barrier whenever you heal past your max life. So, suppose you want defensiveness, especially those classes that don’t benefit too much from Fortify. In that case, barriers are a good use of defensives, especially when you can get legendary or unique items.