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Will Sawyer

How to swap your weapons in Diablo 4

Diablo 4 Barbarian Frenzy skill weapons

Swapping your weapons in Diablo 4 is easy, as they swap by themselves based on the skills you’re currently using - but it works a bit differently for Barbarians. If you’re new to Diablo, you might have expected that you could switch between your weapons with a single button press, but the game effectively does it for you as you switch your skills and attacks. This makes playing one of the four magical Classes in Diablo 4 - Sorcerer, Rogue, Druid, or Necromancer - quite easy as you can just spam your magic and weapon skills. However, the Barbarian is the only Class that uses more than two weapons, and you can switch between them for certain skills. To optimize your Barbarian, it’s very useful to know exactly how to swap weapons in Diablo 4, so I’ve laid out how the system works below.

 How to switch your Diablo 4 weapons

(Image credit: Blizzard)

All Diablo 4 Classes have a ‘Main Hand’ and an ‘Off Hand’ slot that can hold weapons, shields, or other items that fit your Class, but you automatically swap weapons based on the skill you’re currently using. The same rules apply if you’re playing as a Diablo 4 Barbarian, but since they are treated to two extra weapon slots - ‘Two-Handed Bludgeoning’ and ‘Two-Handed Slashing’ - you’ll find that certain skills are compatible with multiple weapons. For example, the Frenzy Skill can only be used with Dual Wield weapons, but the Flay Skill can be used with any Slashing weapon, which includes one and two-handed weapons. Therefore, it’s up to you to decide which weapon you use, so to swap your Diablo 4 weapons, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Character menu and navigate to the Abilities tab.
  2. Choose ‘Skill Assignment’. On PC you can click the button at the bottom of the Abilities tab, and on controller you can click in the left stick.
  3. Move the cursor over a Skill that you have unlocked and lock under the ‘Arsenal Selection’ section. It’ll show you what weapon types can be used with this skill.
  4. Cycle through the available weapon types by pressing the middle mouse button, X on your Xbox controller, or Square on your PlayStation controller. You can also settle for Auto-Select and let the game choose, but I recommend that you choose your most powerful weapons manually. 

Once you’ve chosen your weapons, back out of the Skill Assignment menu and you’ll have your desired armaments ready for each of your Barbarian Skills. While it might not seem like it, this is important for optimizing your Barbarian as you might focus your build around certain Skills and effects that can only be used by certain weapons. As an example, the Barbarian Skill Tree has several Skills that revolve around Bleed damage. They can only be used by Slashing weapons, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve got your most powerful Slashing weapon selected for those skills if you’ve got more than one.

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