Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred brings a new story, a thrilling chapter, many quality-of-life changes, mechanics, features, and even some new endgame dungeons to explore. One of the greatest highlights of the expansion is meeting the brand new class – Spiritborn.
Here’s everything you need to know about the new Spiritborn class, with details for each animal variant.
What Is The Spiritborn Class?
The Spiritborn class taps into the “unformed lands” similarly to the Witch Doctors, making them skilled in close combat. They excel at strong melee attacks, drawing inspiration from four unique Spirit Animals.
Four unique spirit animals are:
Jaguar – Fire damage and multiple attacks
Eagle – Electric Damage and Agility
Gorilla – Physical Harm and Defense
Centipede – Poisonous Damage and Weakness.
The Spiritborn class is a mix of Rogue, Assassin, Druid, and Witch Doctor, making them versatile in close-range combat using Spirit Animals.
While they are not built for long-range attacks, their four unique playstyles make them effective whether you’re playing solo or in a team.
Jaguar Spiritborn
If your play style is a fast-paced, relentless attack, Jaguar skills are perfect for you. This build focuses on high damage and constant offense, offering a straightforward, aggressive combat style ideal for players who love to stay in attack mode.
Spiritborn – Jaguar Skills
Thrash:
Thrash is the main basic skill for the Jaguar Spiritborn. It lets you leap at enemies and strike, with every third attack also hitting nearby foes.
This skill generates Vigor (the Spiritborn’s resource), so it’s crucial when you’re running low and need to charge up for stronger abilities. It’s a quick, reliable move to keep the fight going on.
Rake:
Rake is your most important Vigor-spending ability, unleashing a strong double-swipe attack that hits all enemies in front of you.
It’s perfect for dealing heavy damage in close combat once you’ve gathered enough Vigor.
Ravager:
Ravager effortlessly boosts your Ferocity by three, enhancing your offensive power. When activated, it adds an extra hit to every skill you use for the next six seconds.
To increase damage, activate Ravager before unleashing your Vigor-spending abilities!
Counterattack:
Counterattack gives you a 15% chance to dodge incoming attacks and also strikes back when you successfully dodge a direct attack (but not against area effects like fire or poison).
When you activate this power, it lets you dodge all attacks for three seconds. You can use it twice in a row for six seconds of complete dodging, or space out its use depending on your strategy.
Rushing Claw:
Rushing Claw lets you dash forward a certain distance, striking each enemy in your path twice. It’s a great way to take on groups of foes and can deal some serious damage.
The Hunter:
Use your ultimate skill to leap forward and perform a strong ground-slam attack. After the slam, you’ll follow up with seven additional strikes on all nearby enemies.
If you take down an enemy with this ability, you have an almost 50% chance to reset its cooldown instantly, so you can use it again right away. Just keep in mind that each time you try to reset it, that chance drops by half.
Spiritborn – Jaguar Spirit Hall Passives
First Passive:
Every skill you use is labeled as “Jaguar.” After dealing damage with Jaguar skills 15 times, you unleash an extra attack that inflicts additional damage equal to 15% of the damage you’ve dealt in the last 0.5 seconds. With Jaguar’s rapid attack speed, this bonus can significantly improve your damage output.
Second Passive:
Increase your maximum Ferocity by 1%. Each time you defeat an enemy or damage a boss, you gain one stack of Ferocity, empowering your attacks even further.
Eagle Spiritborn
Spiritborn – Eagle Skills
Thunderspike:
Thunderspike Charges forward to strike your enemy, dealing damage with each hit. Every third strike resets the cooldown on your Evade (dodge roll) skill, which enables you to quickly escape from danger.
Quill Volley:
Your primary Vigor spender, this ability allows you to launch a flurry of sharpened quills at your foes, dealing damage to every enemy caught in their path.
Vortex:
This crowd-control (CC) ability pulls enemies toward you, making them easy targets for a powerful attack. While it might not be a must-have for the quickest Eagle builds, it’s a great way to gather enemies together for your Quill Volley or Razor Wings, which helps you in hitting multiple enemies at once.
Razor Wings:
Launch a spinning disc of feathers that acts like a boomerang, returning to you after striking enemies. You can improve this ability with the Invasive Razor Wings skill, allowing the disc to circle you and hit surrounding enemies instead of just those in a straight line.
This enhancement is highly recommended for maximizing your damage against multiple targets.
The Seeker:
Unleashes the power of the Eagle’s spirit as it swoops down to strike your enemies, dealing damage upon arrival and again as it departs.
This ultimate ability delivers a powerful one-two punch, ensuring that your foes feel the full force of the Eagle’s might.
Spiritborn – Eagle Spirit Hall Passives
First Passive:
Transforms all your skills into Eagle skills, granting you a movement speed bonus similar to what you receive from Storm Feathers each time you use an Eagle ability.
Also, when you evade, you release Storm Feathers at nearby enemies, hitting them as you move.
Second Passive:
Increases your Critical Strike Chance by 4% for every four meters you move, with the bonus resetting two seconds after you land a Critical Strike.
Given the high mobility of Eagle Spiritborn, you’ll be able to score critical hits frequently.
Gorilla Spiriborn
Spiritborn – Gorilla Skills
Rock Splitter:
Charges at your enemy and hits a strong strike that deals damage while also increasing your Block chance. If you invest in enhancing this ability, it will further strengthen your defense.
Crushing Hand:
This flexible skill is great for any build. It slams down and creates two damaging shockwaves. If you enhance it, enemies hit by both shockwaves will be knocked down.
If you’re having trouble with survival or crowd control, or if your main Vigor spender isn’t essential to your build, think about switching to Crushing Hand for better effectiveness.
Armored Hide:
This passive ability grants you increased damage reduction and provides two stacks of the “Resolve” buff every few seconds, reducing damage taken while blocking.
When activated, you become Unstoppable and gain a 100% Block chance for a short duration. This means you can’t be stopped, or slowed, making it an excellent way to break free from your enemy abilities.
Concussive Stomp:
This ability releases a shockwave that damages enemies and knocks them down for a few seconds. If you improve it, you’ll gain a Barrier that boosts your health, making you more survivable.
You can also opt for a second enhancement that deals six times the damage to Unstoppable enemies and bosses, ensuring it’s useful in any situation.
Payback:
This powerful smash attack has a 15-second cooldown, but you can reduce that cooldown each time your enemy hits you. Use it as soon as it’s available! You might want to enhance it to gain passive Vigor whenever you take damage.
This enhancement also lets you spend all your Vigor when using Payback, dealing extra damage based on how much you spent. It’s a strong option for a full-on attack!
The Protector:
This ultimate skill creates a powerful slam that lasts for six seconds, dealing damage while generating a protective barrier around you.
It’s perfect for those crucial moments when you need a little extra survivability to secure a kill on a boss or a tough group of elites.
Spiritborn – Gorilla Spirit Hall Passives
First Passive:
This passive adds the Gorilla tag to all your skills. Whenever you use a Gorilla skill, it deals 100% damage to your enemies and grants you a Barrier to boost your survivability.
Second Passive:
Increases your maximum Resolve by two. Once you have at least five stacks of Resolve, you’ll gain the Unstoppable status, letting you move freely without any restrictions.
Centipede Spiritborn
The Centipede Build is all about poisoning and weakening your enemies. It channels the power of the Centipede spirit to finish off those poisoned foes.
Unlike the quick and explosive Jaguar build, the Centipede Build focuses on dealing damage over time, which means it will take longer time to defeat your enemies, but it’s very reliable.
It also works well with healing and debuffing enemies, making it a strong and strategic option, especially in the endgame where it stands out as one of the best builds.
Spiritborn – Centipede Skills
Withering Fist:
This is the basic Centipede ability for enhancements, choose Accelerated Withering Fist to reduce the damage dealt by poisoned enemies if you’re struggling to survive, or go with Sharp Withering Fist to boost your damage against groups of enemies.
Stinger:
This is your main Vigor spender. Pick Rampant Stinger to boost your single-target damage, which is ideal for tough bosses and elites.
Alternatively, go for Advantageous Stinger to apply Vulnerable debuffs to enemies and add healing to your build.
Toxic Skin:
Leave a poison trail behind you that will also boost your Thorns damage. If you’ve chosen Advantageous Stinger, pair it with Measured Toxic Skin to land Critical Hits every second on enemies made Vulnerable by the Stinger, enhancing your damage output.
Scourge:
Scourge is a handy skill for controlling groups of enemies by making them afraid and slowing them down, which allows you to take them out as they try to escape.
If you pick Reinforcing Scourge, you’ll regain more Vigor when you use it. On the other hand, if you’re looking for more survivability, choose Adaptable Scourge, which heals you for a portion of the damage you deal.
Touch of Death:
This skill hits an enemy and releases a swarm of insects that deal damage over time. If the enemy dies, the swarm will move on to another target.
You can choose Invasive Touch of Death to add a pulse of poison damage to nearby enemies, or Poised Touch of Death to eliminate the cooldown but make it cost 70 Vigor each time you use it.
we recommend going for Poised Touch of Death, but you’ll need a way to generate more Vigor, and Reinforcing Scourge can help with that.
The Devourer:
The key to the Centipede build, this skill summons a giant centipede spirit that instantly executes any enemy whose health has been fully consume by poison.
It also spreads poison on the ground and fires poison beams, making it perfect for fighting Elites or Bosses. Each rank reduces the cooldown, bringing it down to about 30 seconds at rank 5.
Spiritborn – Centipede Spirit Hall Passives
For your Spirit Hall, Centipede is the best option. The first Centipede passive transforms all your skills into Centipede skills, slowing down enemies hit by them, and this effect can stack up to eight times. This applies to every skill you use.
If you’re having trouble surviving and mainly using Centipede skills, you might want to consider the first passive from Gorilla instead for some extra toughness.
For your second choice, focus on healing. You’ll recover 1% of your Maximum Life for each enemy you’ve poisoned in the last three seconds, up to a total of 5%. This adds great sustainability to your build.
