Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred Spiritborn best build, skills, aspects, gear and gems
Tame the world with Vessel of Hatred’s new class
With the launch of Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred comes the introduction of the Spiritborn - an entirely new class which we’re deep-diving into on this page, discussing the best Spiritborn class build and much more.
There are plenty of new gameplay content and systems being introduced with Diablo 4’s latest update and expansion, but the Spiritborn is perhaps the most notable of them all.
In this guide, we’ll be scouring the highs and lows of this new class, pointing you towards the best Spiritborn skills, gear, aspects, gems, and more.
On this page:
How to play the Spiritborn in Diablo 4
From a ground level, the Spiritborn class is focused on various animals that each make up the thematic foundation and core fantasy that the moment to moment gameplay is predicated on.
It’s through these animals and the various abilities and playstyles they allow for that you’re able to take on the hordes of hell in an entirely new way, distinct from that of the other classes in the base game.
Whilst their playstyles can cross over here and there, each feature their own elemental damage alignment and a general throughline in each of their skills and class features that makes them all distinct.
The four animals are Gorilla, Eagle, Jaguar, and Centipede.
Gorilla skills and abilities are primarily focused on area-of-effect, Physical-based damage output with options to gain resistance to damage and control-impairing effects.
With the Eagle, skills are a mix of long range and crowd control attacks, with some handy bonuses for dodging, and an elemental affinity of Lightning damage.
Jaguar skills focus on close-range combat and evasion, with Fire-based abilities that grant dodge chances, attack speed boosts, and more.
Skills from the Centipede affinity have a focus on debuffing enemies with Poison elemental attacks that apply slow and damage over time effects.
Your skills, equipped gear, and aspects will ultimately determine how you play the Spiritborn class, but early on I got the sense that there's strong potential for self-sustaining and fast-paced, DPS-focused builds across the board.
As is the case with other classes, Spiritborns also have their own magic-style gauge you expend to use a selection of skills - here it’s called Vigor, and is comparable to the Sorceror's Mana gauge, for example.
You’ll keep this topped up by attacking enemies with your Basic skills, and with the right build, you can keep this high to consistently make use of the stronger abilities at your disposal.
In the early hours, we were leaning into a mix of Eagle and Centipede skills, weakening large groups of enemies before tearing through them with a mix of the Eagle’s close and long-range abilities. The more skills we unlocked, its potency only increased, and speaking personally, the build I've formed in the process of playing this class has me leaning on sticking with the Spiritborn rather than going back to Sorcerer.
There is a lot to delve into regarding how our build functions and evolved as we climbed up the levels, so let's begin dissecting more of the specifics with what makes this class tick.
Diablo 4 Spiritborn best skills and build explained
The core growth and moment-to-moment gameplay that exists within Diablo 4 is entirely hinged upon the skills you equip and use within combat.
How they function, the effects they apply, and how best to use them is all affected by a varying set of factors including your stats, playstyle, and equipped gear.
Before delving into the more nitty-gritty details on gear, stats, aspects, and more, we’re going to look at the skills which make up the fundamentals of the Spiritborn class, starting with Basic Skills all the way up to Ultimate.
Whilst you’re free to mix and match and substitute various abilities for something else that might suit you, we’re focusing on a Spiritborn build all about a mix of Lightning and Poison damage output through fast-paced attacks, crowd control debuffs, and a hell of a lot of dodging.
Basic Node
Thunderspike: With this as your base attack, you’ll be able to employ longer range attacks as a starting point, generating extra Vigor with each use thanks to the Enhanced Thunderspike skill. Additionally, you’ll attack with this skill when using your evade thanks to Accelerated Thunderspike. A cool bonus right off the bat is that this evade has synergy with the base skill's third attack perk, meaning you can chain attacks and dodges back to back to keep yourself mobile. This only becomes even more prominent the further down the skill tree we get.
Core Node
Quill Volley: Arguably the strongest skill of this whole bunch, Quill Volley lets you throw multiple lightning feathers, perfect against a crowd of enemies. Each feather can pierce through multiple combatants. As for upgrades, Enhanced Quill Volley and Advantageous Quill Volley are what we’re picking, unlocking the ability to make enemies vulnerable and throw more feathers at once, respectively.
You could instead opt for the Rampant upgrade instead of Advantageous for extra range and critical strike chance - though both are worth trying to see what works best for you.
Passive Skills
- Vigorous increases all forms of Vigor generation.
- Velocity auto regenerates Vigor whilst moving if damage has been dealt in the last few seconds.
Together, these will help you keep topped up on Vigor to use Quill Volley more often. Since they also have three tiers of upgrades, their effects can even be improved further.
Focus Node
Vortex OR Soar: Personally speaking, I’ve been a little undecided on which skill feels like the best pick here since they each have solid benefits. As an ability, Vortex felt like the right play for crowd control purposes, with upgrades that buff your next skill and increase its own damage when you have a Barrier - this synergises nicely with the Auspicious passive Defensive skill.
With the Soar skill though, you can cover large distances and make enemies vulnerable, letting you deal an additional 20-per-cent damage, with upgrades guaranteeing a critical strike, and either extending the window in which enemies become Vulnerable, or making you Unstoppable.
I preferred Vortex personally, just for the extra crowd control benefits and synergy with a couple of other skills, but I could see how Soar is one worth picking too.
Something worth noting here though is you can actually combine the effects of these if you manage to get an Aspect of Turbulence, as we discuss in the Aspects section further down.
Passive Skills
- Mirage leans into the evasion aspects of the build, increasing your dodge chance and granting increased critical strike chance upon doing so.
- Focal Point adds an extra buff that changes depending on the weapon you’re using.
As a bonus, if you’re using Focal Point and Soar, you might want to pick Diminishment too, which reduces the damage Vulnerable enemies deal to you - since Focal Point gives a chance of making enemies Vulnerable when using Polearms, and Soar leans heavily into making enemies Vulnerable too, there’s several skills here, all of which are working in tandem.
Defensive Node
Scourge: This is the primary way with which we’ll be debuffing enemies in this build - using this ability, nearby enemies will be afflicted with Fear and Slow along with Poison damage over time. You can combine this with Vortex above, bringing enemies in close, then debuffing them all. These effects are classified as crowd control effects, and with the Enhanced Scourge and Reinforced Scourge upgrades, you’ll deal increased damage to affected enemies whilst gaining Vigor over time respectively.
Passive Skills
- Patient Guard is primarily here since you needed it unlocked to access Auspicious, but you’ll gain additional block chances, and blocked damage reduction whilst still - admittedly, it's a bit of a redundant bonus considering this build's playstyle.
- Auspicious is another boost to survivability, whereby you’ll gain a regenerating Barrier which - whilst active - will boost the damage of Vortex by 300 per cent as mentioned earlier.
- Endurance grants 5 Vigor when casting Defensive skills - in this case, that’s Scourge, and is just a further boost to keep you topped up on being able to cast Quill Volley.
- Antivenom and Nourishment are a couple of extra Passives you might want to invest into here, for extra survivability buffs like Poison Resistance and improved Healing.
Potency Node
Touch of Death: Going alongside the Scourge skill, we’re picking this and - at minimum - its Enhanced Touch of Death upgrade, allowing the base skill’s poison and swarm effects to heal whilst active too.
Passive Skills
- Brilliance we’re primarily picking just to get to Acceleration, but either way, it’s granting a slight Skill damage increase based on movement speed which does have some synergy with some of the build's overall playstyle.
- Acceleration is another key element of the class, upping the number of Evade charges you can have - up to three extra - and increasing the damage of the next Eagle skill cast after an evade. With the Spirit Hall feature we go into shortly, this seems like it's a flat-out damage buff for all equipped skills, following an evade.
As an extra note about Acceleration - thanks to the Thunderspike skills we unlocked and detailed earlier, you can actually regenerate Evades with every third dodge. If you get any gear with extra Evade charges on, you’ll be able to increase the uptime here even further, and almost always have a dodge available.
Ultimate Node
The Hunter: For this Ultimate skill, you could go with any other, but paired with its Harmonious and Exalted upgrades, you’re gaining Ferocity stacks granting increased damage and attack speed, whilst also having a chance to recharge the Ultimate skill instantly. Whilst not a guarantee, having this backup and reliance from an Ultimate skill introduces another aspect with potentially high uptime.
Passive Skills
There’s a few worth considering here, but how much you invest into them depends on where else you’re spending points across the whole tree:
- Sustenance heals you when hitting enemies with an Ultimate Skill.
- Intricacy lets you reset cooldowns for the last Potency, Defensive, or Focus skill used, granting a free use of it on top of that.
- Spiritual Attunement increased maximum Vigor whilst an Ultimate skill is equipped, a pretty solid choice for this build since we do have an Ultimate skill equipped.
Key Passives Node
You can only pick one skill here, but we’ve got two options that both fit pretty well within this build that are each worth trying.
Option 1 - Prodigy’s Tempo: This one synergises perfectly with the core loop of the class, making it so every third consecutive cast of a Basic skill - which includes our Evade thanks to the Thunderspike upgrade - will increase the rank of all other Skills by two for five seconds, boosting their damage and various attributes temporarily. Additionally, a similar benefit is applied to the third cast of Core and Potency Skills, reducing the cooldowns of on-cooldown Skills, with an additional bonus based on their ranks.
Option 2 - Adaptive Stances: Whilst less appealing than the previous one, with this Key Passive, you’ll get a range of benefits based on the base Spirit of a Skill - Eagle skills cast grant a movement speed buff, Gorilla skills grant damage reduction, Jaguar skills grant increased attack speed, and Centipede skills allow you to regenerate health. These bonuses don’t stack, however, when using another Skill, all of your core stats will be increased by 50 per cent temporarily. All in all, this skill is focused on buffing core attributes of your character and could still be pretty useful to try out.
Just like with any build, you’re of course free to mix and match and change what doesn’t work for you at any time. Generally speaking though, this build is strong at controlling the battlefield, with deep synergy across several skills, all of which feed into each other on some level, boosting your combat prowess, and effectively carving through the hordes of hell.
As a final note here, a large amount of this build and some of the recommendations of gear and perks below are centered around movement speed and evasion. Since there's a fix incoming to slow down the rate at which you can evade due to a bug whereby the "Spiritborn is able to break animation frames during Evade immediately", whilst the build will still function, it may be less potent.
With this in mind, you might want to lean more towards the Quill Volley skill, maybe opting for another Mobility skill which will help for our recommendation of the inclusion of the Aspect of Falling Feathers. We get into this Aspect and more in the following sections, so be sure to keep reading for the full rundown.
Diablo 4 Spiritborn best Spirit Hall skills
As is the case with each class in Diablo 4, the Spiritborn has its own unique system, with mechanics and features that no other class can use.
In the Spiritborn’s case, they have access to the 'Spirit Hall', a system that allows for the altering of alignment for all equipped Skills without changing their base effects, whilst also adding extra modifications and bonuses to enhance your build.
After unlocking the feature via the The Sacred Hunt quest, available at Level 15, you’ll equip a Primary Spirit, with access to a Secondary Spirit later at Level 30 - the former adds a strong passive effect to all equipped skills, whereas the latter grants a weaker, but still handy, passive effect.
Each of the Spirits are actually pretty good and can synergise with a range of builds, so you can probably pick whatever you feel best complements your overall playstyle, but since we’re leaning heavily into evasion, we’re going with the Eagle as our Primary Spirit.
This opens up a movement speed bonus upon casting any skill and evading now fires off several Storm Feathers in the seconds following that cast.
With this spirit in tow, chaining together evades and attacks will now also have even more feathers flying everywhere as you dart and weave through and around your foes.
Combining it with our chosen Thunderspike skill and upgrades like the Acceleration Potency skill which adds additional Evade charges, it’ll keep you stocked up to remain evasive and mobile.
In terms of the Secondary Spirit, we’re picking either the Eagle - for a critical strike chance increase upon moving - or Centipede, which enables us to heal based on the number of enemies poisoned in the last few seconds.
If any of these aren’t quite working in your favour, feel free to swap them out any time - since there’s no skill point or other requirement here, you’re able to change them whenever you feel like it.
Diablo 4 Spiritborn best gear
As many ARPG fans are acutely aware of, skills are only part of the story when it comes to creating the best build. What really elevates your entire playstyle are the various gear items and modifications you can acquire alongside these that not only boost core character stats, but also provide additional bonuses to the various skills you have equipped.
We’ll generally leave it up to you to add bonuses wherever you feel it’s needed, though we have some recommendations for stats and bonuses you might want to keep an eye out for, with an additional section below running through key aspects that layer on top of the build detailed above.
As a few examples, here’s stats you’ll want to keep an eye out for:
- Dexterity bonuses are handy, since it’s the stat that the Spiritborn’s skill damage scales with.
- Maximum Evade Charge is a neat bonus that only layers on top of the Acceleration and Thunderspike skills, giving you more mobility and attack potential.
- Evade Cooldown bonuses are another alternative to the above, whereby attacks can reduce its cooldown.
- Resource-based stats are handy since you can reduce how much Vigor is required for skills, and how much Vigor you have overall.
- Speed bonuses like movement or attack speed are just solid for additional mobility.
- Polearms synergise with the Focal Point and Diminishment skills we mentioned earlier, though even if you just have Focal Point, each weapon type has its own bonus.
It’s always worth combing through your stat list, as well as armour drops you get - especially as you begin to move towards the endgame - to ensure that all of your gear is complementing your build.
Of course, the deeper you get into the game, the more complex rolls you’ll notice on gear, allowing for more customisation and fine-tuning.
Diablo 4 Spiritborn best Aspects
The further you progress in Diablo 4, completing dungeons and more, you’ll slowly unlock a slew of 'Aspects' which can be socketed into various pieces of gear to grant a variety of powerful perks, providing another layer of customisation beyond your skills.
Since the game’s launch in 2023, there have been a multitude of new Aspects added, acquired by completing dungeons, or getting lucky with your drops. Some of these are class-agnostic, whereas others are class-specific.
Aspects are a core part of the buildcrafting experience in Diablo 4, and these perks can enhance your playstyle and skills in a variety of ways - if you'd like to search for a specific one, you can do so via its associated Collections page in the menu.
Whilst you’re free to try out a variety as you play, we’ve got a few recommendations here that complement the skills we’ve outlined above:
- Aspect of Falling Feathers triggers Storm Feathers to drop when moving with Mobility skills or Evades, and collecting these feathers increase movement speed by 20 per cent for up to 16 seconds - whilst there are no Mobility skills being picked, this build grants a pretty high uptime on the Evade which can be used with this Aspect.
- Combined with the Aspect above, you might also want to equip the Aspect of Recalling Feathers to enable your Focus skills - in this case, Vortex or Soar - to recall all nearby Storm Feathers.
- Speaking of, with the Aspect of Turbulence, you’re able to cast Vortex at the same time as Soar along with increased damage too - with this, you’re getting the best of both worlds.
- The Aspect of Shared Misery is a solid way to expand the crowd control potential of this build, with the chance that hits on enemies struck by a crowd control effect will spread that effect to nearby enemies too.
- As a bonus one worth noting, the Rebounding Aspect is a neat way to customise how the Quill’s Volley skill functions, adding an explosion at the apex of the feathers fired, as well as a rebounding effect where they return flight to where the skill was cast from.
The Aspect of Turbulence in particular might be useful to pick, particularly if you're planning on moving away from the evasion aspects of the build in light of upcoming changes - as discussed earlier. By using this Aspect, if you were running with both Vortex and Soar, you can swap out Vortex for a Mobility skill which will then help you have more opportunities to cast the effects of the Aspect of Falling Feathers.
Ultimately, which ones you hunt down and chase may depend on what parts of the build you want to augment, and whether you’re playing a Seasonal or Eternal character, as new Aspects are added along with balance changes to the core classes themselves, it’s likely that this chase will differ and develop over time.
There’s a ton of synergy to be had across all skills and Aspects, and you’re able to put together a wide variety of all different kinds of combinations and built types that each complement the different skills you have equipped.
One final point worth bringing up however, is that the Aspects you hunt down and acquire can roll with different stats - with higher quality versions coming from random drops you’ll find out in the wild.
While you can acquire many from Dungeons, those particular drops won’t be the absolute best versions of them, so you’ll still want to hunt down Legendary drops and more with those Aspects featured on them.
Diablo 4 Spiritborn best gems
Gems in Diablo 4 are minor bonuses that you can provide to specific stats that’ll just help you lean further into a particular direction. In a similar way to Aspects, there’s a bit more freedom in how to equip and use them.
Again though, with our focus on keeping Vigor up which requires basic attacks to land, we’re going for Gems that top off a few things like skill damage and Dexterity.
For weapons, we're picking Topaz gems to net a +40 per cent boost in Basic Skill damage.
In terms of Armour, you've got several slots that Gems can be socketed into, but a good Gem type to focus on here is Emerald as they'll increase your Dexterity stat, upping your skill damage.
Finally, when it comes to Jewelry, it all depends on what you feel the class best needs. Each type of Gem provides some kind of resistance, so you might want different Gems for different content.
Ultimately, you could also just pick Skull Gems - for a flat Armor stat increase - or Diamond that'll increase resistance to all elements, albeit by a less amount compared to the other Gems.
To be fair, this min-maxing aspect of the game might be one all players have different preferences on, and so we'll leave it up to you to make the final call on what works best for your specific build.
For more on Diablo 4, be sure to check out our other class guides like this one, covering the best skills, aspects, gear and more for the Sorcerer, Rogue, and more.