It doesn’t take all that much to make me dive back into Blizzard’s stellar ARPG, Diablo 4, which has had a fantastic array of seasonal content and updates in the year since it made its diabolical debut. But after extensive hands-on work with the upcoming character class, the Spiritborn, I might say goodbye to my free time altogether. This jack-of-all-trades impressively blends the Diablo ecosystem with its most customizable and diverse class yet, opens up a whole new unexplored facet of Diablo lore, and most importantly, lets you summon a giant spectral gorilla to Hulk-smash demons in pink insides. By the end of my time exploring the ghostly jungles and dark dungeons of Vessel of Hatred, I was ready to abandon my rogue ways and declare myself a Spiritborn main, and that’s no small feat.
A quick housekeeping note: my time playing Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred was focused almost exclusively on the Spiritborn character class. After choosing my preferred Spiritborn warrior, I was thrown straight into the action in the new region of Nahantu to craft my build and dismember everything before my eyes. While all of the following is there, I haven’t seen any story, met any NPCs (besides vendors), or been able to check out the new mercenary mercenary feature. However, my access to the Spiritborn class and all it has to offer has been pretty comprehensive, so I’ll focus on that. Let’s dive in!
The Spiritborn are an entirely new class for the Diablo series, complete with their own history that ties into the ancient civilization of Nahantu—as seen in the jungles of Act 3 of Diablo II—and the ethereal spirits they interact with. Unlike other Diablo IV classes, where you dive pretty deep into a specific fantasy like tanking with a Barbarian or doing crazy DPS with a Rogue, Spiritborn is much more customizable and varied, thanks to the four Guardian Spirits you can choose to build into . These four spirits are: the eagle, which focuses on mobility, evasion, and lightning damage; the gorilla, which is associated with survival and physical damage; the jaguar, which is the king of DPS, attack speed and fire damage; and my personal favorite, the centipede, who uses poison, debuffs, and lifesteal to control the battlefield and feed on the misery of your enemies.
Each of these spiritual guardians is represented by a massive ghostly avatar that imbues you with power and occasionally takes to the battlefield itself to wreak havoc on your enemies, such as how the centipede bursts onto the scene to start spewing giant orbs of poison in everything before your eyes, or the eagle that descends to smash your enemies into dust. The skills and abilities that correspond to each of these spirits appear in the Spiritborn skill tree as color-coded nodes, so you can easily identify which ones you might want to focus on depending on your chosen spectral BFF.
These four different styles, and the different builds you can create from them as a result, make Spiritborn feel like four new classes in one. For example, a slow-moving, extremely durable gorilla build will feel much different than a jaguar build when teleporting around the map. But while you’ll have to choose one of them as your primary patron, one of the most defining characteristics of the hero class is the ability to hybridize your build with some of the powers offered by other guardian animals. So for example, if your jaguar build feels a bit awkward, you can reach across the path to your gorilla spirit and add a few of his tank abilities to your repertoire, making you significantly more durable.
It’s a whole new ballgame from the much more fantasy-specific that other character classes offer, and I was worried at first that it would make her feel like a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. But the longer I played, the less I worried about the class feeling underpowered as I got deep into a centipede-eagle (centipede?) build that had me flooding the battlefield with life-sucking poison, then I rush out of reach when things get too hot. “You’d think there’d be some sort of identity crisis, but if you’re playing the assembly, it doesn’t—it works,” Diablo IV game director Brent Gibson told me. “And I think the team did a great job of choosing the right things in each of the lanes that make it so unique and different without trying to turn it into a giant creamed corn.” From what I’ve played so far, I’m inclined to agree.
After trying half a dozen different builds, I was very much sold on this highly unorthodox class and really enjoyed how different each of the spirits felt and how flexible the class was, allowing me to take on different roles depending on my current need or flight of fancy. Whether any of these builds will be able to compete with the five existing and much more focused classes remains to be seen, but for now I’m really encouraged by what I’ve seen and have a feeling I’ll be running as a Spiritborn exclusive when I tackle Vessel of Hatred later this year.
