This guide covers all the details and strategies you need to tackle the new aspirational content, the Abattoir of Zir, in Diablo 4.
What is Abattoir of Zir
The Abattoir of Zir was included in Update 1.2.3, released December 5, 2023. Unfortunately, it’ll only be around until the end of the Season of Blood.
This means the Abattoir of Zir will only be available until January 16, 2024, lasting approximately 6 weeks. It won’t be going into the core game immediately, or possibly ever, so enjoy it while it’s around and hope it makes a return later.
The Abattoir of Zir is a new piece of aspirational content, that involves completing a short dungeon under a strict time limit of 10 minutes. As aspirational content, it’s targeted at players who have reached Level 100 and want to push the limits of their build.
If you’re familiar with Diablo 3’s Greater Rifts, it’s a very similar system. It’ll ask you to defeat many high-level enemies to spawn bosses, all of which need to be defeated without dying.
Keeping with the name Abattoir of Zir the bosses are multiple of Zir’s Blood Seekers. This means you’ll need to deal with multiple Elites based on our playable classes.
The Abattoir of Zir has a total of 25 different difficulties, each progressively ramping up the difficulty similarly to Nightmare dungeons. Its lowest difficulty starts just above Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons in difficulty, starting with level 155 Enemies.
How to Access the Abattoir of Zir
The Abattoir of Zir is seasonal content, meaning this cannot be accessed on the Eternal Realm.
To access the Abattoir of Zir, we will need to have completed the Season Journey for the Season of Blood. This doesn’t need to be 100% completed, just enough tasks done to claim all the rewards, meaning we can skip out on PvP or the Uber Lilith encounter if it’s not our preferred type of content.
With the Season Journey completed, we can craft a Bloodforged Sigil at the Occultist in any town. This will cost a good bit of Sigil Powder, but most builds that are ready to take this content on will have plenty of this stocked up.
With the Bloodforged Sigil crafted, we can head straight into it from the map, similar to a Nightmare Dungeon, or manually enter the portal located in Ked Bardu. Entering manually is a good idea, so you can make sure you’re fully buffed up and ready to go before starting the timer.
Rewards for the Abattoir of Zir
The Abattoir of Zir has two main rewards, the massive amount of Paragon Glyph Experience and Unique Tears of Blood Paragon Glyph. Assuming you’re not doing the high Tier, we’ll also be granted the ability to craft a Bloodforged Sigil that is one tier higher of than the one we just completed. Of course, there’s always the bragging rights that we cleared a specific tier, or cleared it faster than others.
Speaking of that Paragon Glyph Experience; even at Tier 1 the Abattoir of Zir will reward roughly triple the Paragon Glyph Experience of a Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon, despite being only slightly harder.
It starts at a baseline of 1,000 Paragon Glyph Experience, which for comparison a Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon offers just 339 currently. Just make sure you get your main glyphs leveled up before you start dumping it into the Tears of Blood Glyph.
The Unique Tears of Blood Paragon Glyph is a very potent glyph for scaling your damage. This glyph grants huge bonuses to damage based on the Core Stats allocated in range as well as heavily boosting the Rare Nodes in range.
Unlike other glyphs that cap out at Level 21, this one goes up to Level 200 and takes increased amounts of Experience to level. This means it will eat a lot of the excessive amounts of Paragon Glyph Experience granted by the Abattoir of Zir.
Abattoir of Zir Tips and Strategies
With rewards out of the way, let’s talk strategies to set ourselves up for success.
General Tips
Just as we would for Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons, we will need to be fairly defensive to survive. However, unlike Nightmare Dungeons, we have a strict timer meaning we’ll need to balance our damage and defenses well. Most builds do this already, but it’s especially important for the Abattoir of Zir.
A good baseline for ideal defenses is around 12,000+ Armor and capped Resistances. All classes can achieve this, though many will need the Aspect of Disobedience to get enough Armor. This should provide more than enough defenses to cover our generic resistance to all of our incoming damage, which alongside generic Damage Reduction affix rolls ensures our survival.
Knowing if our damage is high enough is a harder task, as the Attack Power stat is incredibly misleading as a metric. Thankfully, we have Nightmare Dungeons to more easily test how ready we are. Be sure to test damage output in Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons for the best approximation of the starting point for the Abattoir of Zir.
Now, something most players won’t already be doing while interacting with most of Diablo 4’s content is swapping gear. Having alternative pieces of gear to swap on and off can greatly improve our damage and survivability on the fly, giving us access to additional Aspects or Unique Effects. Key gear swaps to consider will be Unique Items including the Godslayer Crown for bosses. Additionally, gear swaps between AoE and single-target damage are also great, like swapping Aspect of the Umbral for a more offensive ring option to take out bosses quicker.
Abattoir-Specific Tips
Time is our biggest enemy in the Abattoir of Zir, so keeping a good pace will determine how easy or hard it becomes. You won’t want to reach the boss with very minimal time left on the clock, as you’ll be in a rush to take them out and be more prone to a fatal, run-ending mistake. Make sure you have enough time to handle the boss encounter safely!
We said it before but it’s worth repeating, apply your buffs before entering the Abattoir of Zir! The timer will start ticking down the second you load in, so you’ll save a bit of time by prepping before entering. This might not be a huge thing for PC players, but it will benefit console players for sure.
Don’t be afraid to repeat a tier either, as leveling Paragon Glyphs, especially the Unique Tears of Blood Paragon can provide a ton of damage. This glyph has the highest potential boost to damage compared to any other glyph. We might not need them to be maxed to start, but the more of them we do max, the better.
While it’s not exactly Abattoir-specific in the sense of completing the Abattoir, make sure we’re placing the Tear of Blood Paragon Glyph properly. Placing this potent Paragon Glyph in a Glyph Node that’s in a corner often results in less overall potential. Though most boards that aren’t the Starter Boards will generally be okay if we’re not looking to max out the radius and effects. Just make sure it’s on a board that has two rare nodes that benefit the build.
Best Abattoir of Zir Builds
This list is based on posts made in the Diablo 4 community, so different variations of the builds listed below may perform differently. This is just a general list to provide insight into the current build used in the Abattoir of Zir and how far they’ve gotten based on what we could find.
Barbarian
With Hammer of the Ancient being a popular and powerful build, It’s no surprise that the vast majority of Barbarian runs these first few days are all using it. Some even already reaching nearly Tier 20!
You can try our Frenzy Barbarian Build Guide, which also features HotA as a core damage skill if you don’t want to lean as heavily into Frenzy itself.
Though not as burst-heavy as HotA, Whirlwind has always been a stable build that’s performed well in all content. Abbatoir of Zir seems to be no exception, clearing up to near Tier 20 as well!
You can use our Whirlwind Barbarian Build Guide for an effective Barbarian Build that can easily handle the Abattoir!
Druid
Druid doesn’t seem to be a popular class in general this season. There’s very limited amount of Druid runs out there in general.
Despite that Pulverize Druids should have the most success due to their current power in Season 2.
Our Pulverize Druid Build Guide has everything you need to get this build going and what to look for in general.
In the same vein of powerful AoE options, the Subterranean Landslide Druid should be on nearly equal footing, as it can use many of the same tools as Pulverize.
You can check out the Critical Strike-focused version of our Subterranean Landslide Druid Build Guide for more information. Despite focusing only on Critical Strikes, it’s still an insanely powerful option.
Necromancer
Necromancer is often a popular class for harder content due to its high damage potential and great survivability. It’s No surprise that the top three builds for the Necromancer are the top choices for Abattoir of Zir as well.
Bone Spear is no surprise here, it does fantastic damage and and easily one of the strongest Necromancer builds available. It can take a bit of getting used to if you’ve never tried it before, but is an excellent build.
You can find our Bone Spear Necromancer Build Guide here, which provides the info you need to pick up this powerful build.
Blood Lance is up next, and it’s possible variations can lead to it being Strong DPS build or high Burst Damage build. Thanks to Season 2 juicing up Overpower, Blood Lance got a good boost overall as well.
Our Blood Lance Necromancer Build Guide covers the DPS variation with notes for the more burst-heavy version too!
The last build that seems very popular for Abattoir of Zir for its high survivability and decent clear speed is the ever-present “Infinimist” build. Unfortunately, we haven’t created a version of this build just yet, but it will be available soon!
Rogue
Rogue is another highly popular class for endgame content due to it many high-damage builds. To nobody’s surprise, most of it’s popular builds clear Abattoir very well.
First up is Flurry, which has phenomenal AoE with high Vulnerable and Crowd Control backing it up. This makes it fairly stable and easy to survive with, but doesn’t always have quite the same punch as other skills.
We’ve covered the Shadow Flurry Rogue Build here as a solid starter build option, as well as the more endgame-oriented Poison Flurry Rogue Build as a full build.
Up next is Penetrating Shot, and it’s no surprise seeing it here with the Tibault’s Will bug still being in place. This bug really tipped it into the powerful build it is currently.
Here’s our Penetrating Shot Rogue Build Guide which covers our take on the build using an interaction that was very likely overlooked for it!
Then there’s Rapid Fire, which is arguably the Rogue strongest build option for Ranged attacks. Much like Penetrating shot, it also can abuse Tibault’s Will for insane damage potential and AoE.
Here’s our Rapid Fire Rogue Build Guide, for our take on this popular skill. This one focuses more heavily on imbuements, but can easily be adapted to any variation you see fit.
Finally, there’s Twisting Blades, the Rogue’s strongest melee build currently available. This build is already well known for its strong clear and high damage. Unfortunately, we don’t have a version of this build available to share just yet, but stay tuned!
Sorcerer
Sorcerer is a very popular class, though many say it falls off late-game. Yet here it is, clearing Abattoir of Zir, though it seems to be heavily dominated by one build.
If you guessed Ball Lightning, you’re correct. This build has been insane with the Season 2 Vampiric powers and it’s been wild to watch and play.
We don’t have a Ball Lightning Build up just yet, but it’s coming very soon!
Arc Lash is Likely going to be the next best substitute, as it’s not too different from the Ball Lightning Build, outside of using Arc Lash to make liberal use of Unstable Currents instead of Ball Lightning.
Check out our Arc Lash Sorcerer Build Guide which has a lot of great synergies with various Vampiric Powers to deal it’s own damage as well as rapidly fire off other lightning spells, including Ball Lightning!
That’s everything we have on the Abattoir of Zir for now. We’ll update this guide as time goes on to include additional tips and information as we get more time with the Abattoir of Zir.
