With the tuning coming in the 1.1.1 patch of Diablo IV, which class and build will deal the highest damage in Season 1? Let's sort out the new D4 Season 1 DPS Tier List by breaking down the best DPS build for each class alongside the upcoming changes to them!

D4 Season 1 Highest DPS Build Tier List (1.1.1)

Now with Season 1 nicely underway in Diablo IV, we want to talk about the highest damage builds with the 1.1.1 update. Each class in pre-season had arguably the best build overall, with some classes like Rogue having a good variety of competitive builds and others having a lot less. Well, now we've had a chance to play around with the endgame in Season 1, get our top Hearts, and so on. While with the upcoming 1.1.1 patch, both Sorcerer and Barbarian are going to have a lot of changes coming to their mechanics, aspects, and even uniques. Unexpectedly there are also nerfs and buffs for the other three classes. The meta of D4 Season 1 is going to change with the 1.1.1 update coming. 

Now with things stacking up, what going to be the new best builds for each class in Diablo IV with the 1.1.1 patch notes?  Let's break it down for you!

Related Read:

Diablo 4 1.1.1 Tier List - Best Season 1 Builds Ranking for Each Class after 1.1.1 Patch

D4 Unique Drop Rate & Best Farm Locations in Season 1

Diablo 4 1.1.1 Buff Build Tier List - Top 10 Best Buffed Builds

5 - Highest DPS Druid Build: Tornado Wolf Druid (A Tier)

Druid actually comes down to similar options as pre-season- Tornado Wolf or Pulverized Bear, now cotton believes tornado wolf to simply be the best option, and for good reasons. Firstly they fixed the Tornado seeking legendary aspect, because sometimes before that patch Tornadoes that were homing in on enemies would for some reason do no damage, now that stopped happening. It's fixed and that's good for this build obviously. Second to that is they fixed one of the Spirit Bones  - the Avian Wrath. Avian Wrath was weirdly broken, somehow the effect was providing 30 Critical Strike damage as an additive compared to it is what it says it should be a multiplier, which is obviously a lot stronger in the late game. That's a major damage increase genuinely massive for the late game and good frigids as a whole but particularly this build will get to. Third the new heart - Inexorable Force pulls enemies on top of you from far which is a core mechanic to many of the best build in Diablo 4, simply being able to group up enemies in just a moment is massive for your speed clear potential which is tight how quickly your class levels. And with Tornado Wolf being just so fast and so good for speed clear compared to other builds, this just makes it even better at exactly that - you're able to stack up the tornadoes much better especially with the Homing tornadoes actually working, now they'll group up for you. It's just this big Wombo Combo that all ties into that all-important heart  - the Caged Heart of the Barber, those two to four seconds of build-up then pop work great, you essentially just Grizzly Rage for that 10 times critical damage which obviously grows in power, you pull in all the enemies thanks to that force pull, you smash them with a tornado which then scales up the crit multiplier. You're given the time thanks to Caged Heart of the Barber to build up damage further, giving you the ability to stack up the crit more and more giving you more chances for Lucky hits and procs including your key passive other than that might work super well in this context. So you're just able to benefit from Caged Heart of the Barber super well with the tornado wolf, building up all that damage in a really quick period, really efficiently flying through the dungeon, and it works great in single Target on Elites massive packs, whatever the speed potential is so high. Therefore we just think that Tornado Wolf is the best option overall.

4 - Highest DPS Necromancer Build: Bone Spear Necro (A Tier)

For Necromancer, the Bone Spear build is dealing the highest damage. Despite the hefty Nerfs in fact, Bone Spear was the most Nerf build for Necromancer in the 1.1 patch, it's still the best build overall for Necro. It remains insane from the get-go thanks to leveling with its fast power buildup and keeps insane in the end game thanks to the ridiculously high damage numbers you could reach. It never has issues especially in Season 1 because they put the top tier resource generator for Bone Spear - the aspect of exposed flesh as a seasoned Journey reward at stage 2 or chapter 2, and that brings it to the Codex, so you can solve any resource problems of the build really early on. While other builds like Minions or Bloodlands are much more promising now. 

There are two versions for the Bone Spear build: the raffle heart choice basically of Caged Heart of the Barber, or the great feast Necromancer unique. Caged Heart of the Barber allows you to build up so much damage because of our high DPS potential the high burst potential, that you can stack up to very high numbers even 250 million damage in one hit. Meanwhile, the Great Feast provides you with a more consistent burst potential giving you that outrageous 95 times increase to all damage. But there's a cost in that - you have a drain of 5 Essence per second, that sounds worse than it actually is though because your max Essence becomes so high that 5 per second is really little. And we also have incredible ways to generate Essence very quickly that drain means very little. We think ultimately Caged Heart of the Barber is way better at single Target, while Great Feast is a more consistent general clear option.

3 - Highest DPS Sorcerer Build: Ice Shards Sorc (A Tier)

Sorcerer to be fair is going to change a lot in 1.1.1, it is going to be a very different class. But you know before then, currently, there are two options - are you going Ice Shards or Arc Lash? In both cases, you're definitely using Caged Heart of the Barber, and both have their pros and cons. For example, obviously being melee is negative, you'll have to be close to your enemies which exposes you to a bit more damage than being ranged which is obviously an issue for sorcerers currently. Where there does seem to be a ton of damage, reduction improvements, and changes coming for a sorcerer that is currently not the case. And that's the biggest issue with the Arc Lash version. Then as fun and as good as it is more people are likely going to swear by or go for Ice Shards for now just because playing at range means you can avoid more damage. But the major perk of Arc Lash is that it seems to come online smoother sooner which is important for the general grind process and progress to full build.

Ice Shards is again going to appeal to more players and generally be a safer pick and probably most people would say is the best build, it is going to be very interesting though to see how things change in patch 1.1.1 and there seems to be a lot of build variety potential coming for sorcerer at last.

2 - Highest DPS Barbarian Build: Hammer of the Ancients Barb (S Tier)

Barbarian is also a major focus for 1.1.1 and beyond it's interesting because Sorcerer had so many pages referring to its upcoming changes in that latest campfire chat and then Barbarian the older one that we were expecting to get so many changes for had like half. And unfortunately, the reactions we are seeing from Barbarian players so far is that they seem a bit underwhelmed certainly compared to the stuff that's coming to Sorcerer. Barbarian is in a weird State and it needs love, we want to see that 1.1.1 do enough.

The fight between the best builds remains the same are you playing Hammer of the Ancients or are you playing Whirlwind? Now thanks to Caged Heart of the Barber, you're always going to be able to generate hilarious hits via the stacking damage and that is obviously insane with Hammer of Ancients because you're able to get the biggest damage there and then Caged Heart of the Barber allows for even bigger spikes. But you know the same can be said for Whirlwind, in fact, Caged Heart of the Barber will help you stack up better single Target bursts which is an issue for the Whirlwind build. So obviously it's very hard to say which is better between the two, Hammer for example has a lot more issues mob clearing in a smooth consistent way compared to the easy mode that is Whirlwind spam. You bring one of the other for different reasons but now they're more homogenized and competitive on both sides. 

1 - Highest DPS Rogue Build: Twisting Blades Rogue (S Tier)

Rogue is getting some really minor updates in 1.1.1 of all the classes, having said that this is already the most balanced class by far. It's so obvious when you look at all the different builds and how close they are in power, it's very impressive. The best rogue builds are also using Caged Heart of the Barber because it's strong as hell. Rogue is so fast not just in Mobility but its ability to burst and build up damage to pop with Caged Heart of the Barber. Whether you're using imbuements or not though, those builds are fantastic and with Caged Heart of the Barber in particular really good. As you'd expect twisting blades is an ideal version for this due to its ability to lower cooldowns as part of its passive enhancement, but also because twisting blades as an attack have this sort of initial stab, and then after a moment the blades come out dealing damage on their way back to you, so normally you jump to a Target and you hit them with multiple twisting blades then move away or dash away teleport away into position to drag the blades through the mob pack or whatever. The timing works really well with say Barber's two to four-second window of build-up for the pop - jumping in stabbing a few times, jumping out Barber pops with twisting blades coming back to you, it works really well. But it has to be mentioned that both the penetrating shot and barrage builds are doing so well in Season 1, it was the imbuement penetrating shot build that made it to level 100 first as Rogues class overall, further Barrage is working super well with Vile Apothecary, in particular, using those multiple imbuements. So Rogue is just killing it in terms of balance and options in Season 1. If we had to pick one build though we would say imbuement Twisting Blades using Barber over Vile Apothecary but it is very close.