Spiritborn are the agile, monk-like characters in Diablo 4, and are exclusive to 2024’s Vessel of Hatred DLC. Despite being the “fast melee class,” the Spiritborn are much more complex than they initially seem, as they can command four unique beast spirits to imbue their abilities and create new identities.

Thankfully, we’ve spent quite a bit of time with the Spiritborn, and have put together a build guide to help you get through Vessel of Hatred and Diablo 4 season 6. In this Diablo 4 build guide, we’ll show you a great leveling build to get you through the campaign and teach you how to make your own best Spiritborn build.

This build is based off of the build we used during the game’s review period. It focuses primarily on centipede and eagle skills to deal damage, with one gorilla skill snuck in to help keep you alive. With this build, we were able to complete the Vessel of Hatred campaign on Hard without ever switching off.

Below, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of how to spend all 69 skill points as you level, and which Legendary powers you can use to enhance your Spiritborn. Note that this build is not intended to carry you into Torment difficulty and beyond.

Your primary damage method in this build is poison, which you spread with a mixture of Scourge and Withering Fist. You’ll then use Stinger to burn down all poisoned targets in the immediate area. Vortex helps gather enemies in for Scourge, Armored Hide keeps you alive, and The Seeker gives you a great ultimate that guarantees critical strikes, allowing you to proc your Noxious Resonance key passive on big targets.

While leveling, you’ll want to start with one combination of Spirit Halls, and then swap to another.

Before you get your key passive, you want to have centipede as your primary and your secondary (use gorilla instead if you’re getting popped instantly and unable to heal) spirit. This will allow you to deal more damage to targets because they’ll constantly be slowed. You’ll also heal when you poison enemies.

When you unlock the Noxious Resonance key passive and acquire the Reaper’s Legendary Aspect, swap your primary spirit hall to the eagle so all of your skills will gain crit chance against poisoned enemies. If you’re still struggling to get regular crits, swap your secondary spirt hall to eagle as well, otherwise stick to centipede or gorilla for defense.

There are a few key Aspects to help make this build come together, all of which can be found in new dungeons in Nahantu. While leveling, it’s best to place these Aspects on your jewelry (and never weapons), as the stats you get from rings and amulets won’t hurt you too much if they’re kept low — meaning you won’t go broke reprinting build-critical aspects. While all of these Aspects are found in dungeons, keep an eye out for wild versions, as you’ll be able to upgrade their capabilities in your codex.

All Spiritborn builds revolve around the four animal spirits that govern their collection of skills: gorilla, jaguar, eagle, and centipede. What’s cool about the Spiritborn is that each of these animals have skills you can build on to make a complete single build — like all eagle skills for a super speedy hero. But you can also combine them together to get some very potent combinations, like mixing eagle with centipede to make a poison/crit build to burst down groups quickly.

Like the other classes, you’ll be looking to your key passives as you think about what you want to start building toward. But in addition to that, you’ll also want to look at the Spirit Hall bonuses. Your primary Spirit Hall animal not only gives you a powerful passive, it also turns all skills into that skill type — picking gorilla, for example, will also add the “gorilla” modifier to every skill you have. Combine these ideas together to create something special.

All of that is very overwhelming, but thankfully, Blizzard has ensured each animal type has their own identity. Starting with jaguar, this animal spirit brings attack speed and fire damage to the field. Gorilla skills are primarily about defense and knocking enemies down. Eagle skills are about moving quickly and critically striking enemies. And finally, centipede skills are all about poison and damage over time effects.

When you’re thinking about starting a build, look first to the type of identity you want (speed, poison, speed, etc), and then pick the animal spirit that best suits that. But don’t be afraid to change things up as you go. Just because you want to do a poison build doesn’t mean the centipede is your best spirit hall ally. Like all things in Diablo, you need to look at the complete picture of Legendary Aspects, skills, class mechanics, and passives before you can put together a great puzzle. But the great news with the Spiritborn is that there are so many different puzzles you can make that you’re pretty likely to stumble into a decent one on your own.

Looking for other Diablo 4 builds? We have explainers on the Sorcerer, Necromancer, Rogue, Druid, and Barbarian classes.