The new Spiritborn class in Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred mows down hordes of enemies with the assistance of guiding animal spirits. Each skill in the Spiritborn’s repertoire is linked to one of these spirits. The Best Spiritborn Spirit in Diablo 4 for you is largely going to depend on your specific playstyle and desired build. Every spirit has a unique way of dispatching enemies and offers different advantages to your character. Here’s a breakdown of every spirit in Diablo 4, what they excel at, and how best to utilize them.
The Jaguar
Specializing in strong single-target damage and generating stacks of ferocity to increase your attack speed, the Jaguar spirit is built for aggressive players and boss fights. Jaguar is all about stacking damage on top of damage. Its standout skill, “Ravager,” ensures you always have a minimum of three ferocity stacks active. This pays off in big ways when paired with “Invasive Rushing Claw,” which needs four ferocity stacks to generate additional charges.
Jaguar is also great at generating Vigor, the Spiritborn’s primary resource. “Enhanced Thrash” generates bonus vigor after defeating an enemy, and “Measured Ravagar” increases vigor generation by 30%. Mixing ferocity and vigor generation pays off when using Jaguar’s core skill, “Rake.” Upgrading it to “Rampant Rake” reduces its vigor cost by the amount of ferocity stacks you have active, making it a very cheap way to dish out big damage!
However, Jaguar lacks decent crowd control and AoE options. None of its skills can debuff enemies or deal with large groups as effectively as other spirits can. Moreover, its cumulative damage requires enemies to survive your initial barrage of attacks. This means Jaguar’s maximum potential can only be seen when fighting on harder difficulties and against bosses. Still, the attack speed generation behind a great deal of its skills can be very powerful if paired with other spirits’ abilities.
The Eagle
If you’re interested in dashing around the battlefield, the Eagle spirit is your best friend. The most mobile of all the spirits, Eagle’s skills revolve around evasion and spreading out damage to as many enemies as possible in the process. Skills like “Accelerated Thunderspike” and “Replenishing Soar” afflict enemies with Vulnerable while simultaneously refreshing your evade cooldown or offering an additional form of navigating through enemies. “Acceleration” increases your number of evade charges, and buffs your next Eagle skill’s damage by 30%. You can pair this with “Vortex,” “Razor Wings,” or “Quill Feathers” to hit multiple enemies with supercharged AoEs and missile attacks.
Unfortunately, Eagle’s damage output is largely dependent on enemies running into your missile attacks or standing in one place for its AoEs. This is harder to pull off in a pure Eagle build, as your constant evasion will displace enemies away from your attacks. Vulnerability is a great debuff to have handy, but without the damage to back it up will largely be underutilized. Focusing on Eagle’s evasion skills and passives while speccing into a different spirit’s offensive capabilities may yield better results. Coincidentally, Eagle and Jaguar synergize particularly well due to their aggressive playstyles.
The Gorilla
Gorilla is the Spiritborn’s defensive backbone. It focuses on barrier generation, block chance, and crowd control. “Armored Hide” passively generates Resolve every five seconds, guaranteeing damage reduction. Skills like “Enhanced Concussive Stomp” and “Enhanced Crushing Hand” generate barriers equal to a percentage of your maximum life. Gorilla users will want to stand directly in the line of fire, generating barriers, soaking damage, and knocking enemies back and to the ground with “Rocksplitter” and “Concussive Stomp.” “Payback” is Gorilla’s most active ability, reducing its cooldowns and featuring upgrades that increase its damage output when enemies attack the user. Gorilla also provides the Spiritborn with access to Thorn-related skills. “Accelerate Rock Splitter” and “Adaptable Armored Hide” both generate and utilize thorns to deal damage to their enemies.
Gorilla is a heavily defensive spirit. It’s great for providing decent sustainability to an otherwise squishy class. Unfortunately for the Spiritborn, the Gorilla spirit doesn’t do much damage on its own. It sacrifices the high-energy, constantly moving gameplay of the class for a safer, slower playstyle. What’s more, Gorilla’s abundance of defensive options are locked behind exclusive ability upgrades. If you spec into a thorns build, you lose out on damage reduction or more crowd control, and vice versa. Like with Eagle, it may prove useful to pick up one or two Gorilla abilities, then mix-and-match them with another spirit’s skills instead.
The Centipede
Easily the most self-sufficient of all the Spiritborn spirits, Centipede is laser-focused on distributing poison damage to enemies. “Stinger” inflicts poison within a certain area, and “Touch of Death” spreads poison-based damage when enemies are defeated. Centipede’s ultimate skill, “The Devourer,” is a great opener. Once fully upgraded and active, enemies poisoned for their remaining health will explode into Pestilent Swarms that inflict further damage to other enemies. Centipede also offers some amount of lifesteal in the form of “Enhanced Touch of Death” and “Adaptable Scourge.”
Unlike the other spirits, Centipede’s upgrades and general passives funnel back into its own skills effectively. A pure Centipede build is possible, focusing on self-healing and doubling down on Centipede-related passives such as “Ravenous” and “Oppressive.” Passives like “Nourishment” not only increase the healing from your lifesteal, but they also increase your poison damage when healing. Centipede can do explosive damage, it provides sustainability, and even offers some crowd control effects to round out its repertoire.
Like Gorilla, it lacks the mobility options that otherwise define the Spiritborn class. However, it also doesn’t have as many defensive options as Gorilla does. Therefore, playing a pure Centipede build typically requires careful positioning and well-executed attacks. Finally, Centipede doesn’t play well with other spirits; if you’re going to use it, you more-or-less have to commit to it exclusively. That being said, it makes for a consistent and safe build- especially when you’re leveling.
Combine Your Spirits
The Spiritborn is strongest when they capitalize on specific core elements rather than devoting themselves to a single spirit. Eagle’s evasion-based skills pair well with Jaguar’s “Counterattack” and Centipede’s “Toxic Skin.” Both of these damage enemies when you dodge or are being attacked. “Ravager’s” attack speed generation synergizes well with any of the Spiritborn’s Basic skills, which all confer bonuses every third strike. “Replenishing Toxic Skin” grants additional thorn damage to poisoned enemies, and if you’re running a Gorilla thorns build, will easily boost your overall damage. Rather than deciding on a single spirit to base your build on, focus on how you want to deliver damage. From there, choose the skills and passives that best facilitate that method. This will ensure your Spiritborn topples enemies with ease, even if your build isn’t totally optimized.
Every spirit has their unique strengths. Bringing those strengths together is what makes the Spiritborn an interesting class to play. Even so, if you’d like to invest in just one, the Centipede is hands down your best bet. While the other spirits require help from one another to prop themselves up, Centipede stands tall on its own.
Hopefully this clears up some of the mystery surrounding the Spiritborn spirits, and helps you make a decision on how to build your loadout! Fully realizing your Spiritborn build will take some time, especially since you’ll have to level-up a brand new character from scratch. It may help to know the latest on How to Level up Fast in Diablo 4. While you’re leveling, make sure to bring some mercenaries with you! To find out which mercenary companion works best with your playstyle, click here.
Diablo 4 and the Vessel of Hatred expansion are available for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.
Published: Oct 10, 2024 02:45 pm