[VESSEL OF HATRED] Stinger - Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4

Build Introduction

This Stinger-focused Spiritborn endgame build will melt down any enemy by spreading massive poison damage. With the Aspect of Infestation, Stinger will spawn Pestilent Swarms, which deal additional poison damage to multiple enemies. The Gorilla as primary Guardian will provide plenty of protection, while the Ring of Writhing Moon and Ring of the Midday Hunt will increase our poison damage even further.

This endgame guide assumes your Spiritborn is Level 60 and meets all the build requirements. If you are just starting out with a new Spiritborn character, we recommend heading over to the Stinger Leveling Build and then switching to this endgame version when ready.

For information on Season 6, you can check out our Season Hub.
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Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

High Damage over Time
Massive AoE Damage
Good Survivability

Weaknesses

Requires good Resource management
Damage heavily relies on Poison DoT

To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Follow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the completed build. If you are missing skill points, complete Renown Stages 1-4 in every zone to get the missing additional points.

Spirit Hall Choice

The Spirit Hall allows you to combine two different Spirit Guardians or stick with just one.

Primary Spirit Guardian: Gorilla
- Casting a Gorilla Skill deals 100% Thorns to enemies you hit and grants a Barrier for 10% of Maximum Life, up to 40%, for 3 seconds. All Skills are now also Gorilla Skills.
Secondary Spirit Guardian: Jaguar
- Maximum Ferocity is increased by 1. Gain 1 stack of Ferocity whenever you kill an enemy or damage a Boss.

For this endgame build, we use the Gorilla as the primary Spirit Guardian for extra survivability and because it provides a Barrier, which helps us to focus more on dealing damage and worry less about staying alive. Additionally, we pick the Jaguar as secondary Spirit Guardian for the increased Ferocity.

Paragon Board

Paragon unlocks after reaching Level 60, and is considered an endgame progression system. Leveling up your paragon greatly increases your character’s power! We recommend using the following Legendary nodes and Rare Glyphs to improve the build even further as you grind through the endgame. Note that each Rare Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the Level 46 version.

Keep in mind that the Paragon Boards were selected during theorycrafting with their beta version, and everything is still subject to change until after the release of the Vessel of Hatred expansion.

Gear, Stats, Gems, Runes, and Elixirs

The following sections cover all systems that are important if you want to improve the power of your character in the endgame of Diablo 4.

Legendary Aspects

Each Aspect is listed with its matching gear slot. Do your best to keep each Aspect in the assigned slot. Remember to salvage Legendary Items with higher Aspect values to unlock them in the Codex of Power, and then imprint them onto gear pieces with the preferred affixes.

Additionally, if you are trying to farm a specific item, we recommend using your Obols to target farm them!

Gear Slot	Gems/Runes	Aspect / Unique	Legendary Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Grand Emerald	Harmony of Ebewaka	Your Skills are all additionally Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla, or Centipede Skills based on your secondary Spirit Hall choice. Each Spirit type on a skill increases its damage by 50%.
Chest	Poc Que	Jacinth Shell	Spending Vigor heals you for x% of your Maximum Life. Every second, your active cooldowns now drain 10% of your Maximum Life to reduce their duration by 3 seconds.
Gloves		Conceited Aspect	Deal x% Increased Damage while you have a Barrier active.
Pants	Grand Emerald	Aspect of Plains Power OR Temerity	Aspect: Lucky Hit: Up to a 25% chance to create a Mystic Circle for 10 seconds. Casting a Jaguar Skill in Mystic Circles empowers them to keep your Ferocity at maximum and increase your damage by x% per stack while you remain within. Unique: Effects that heal you beyond 100% life grant you a Barrier up to x% of your Maximum Life that lasts for 8 seconds. You may now drink your healing potion while at full life.
Boots		Duelist’s Aspect replace with Rakanoth’s Wake	Aspect: Maximum Ferocity increased by 1-5. Unique: When you cast a Skill with a Cooldown, you explode, dealing {x} Fire Damage.
Amulets(50% bonus)	Grand Skull	Aspect of Infestation	Lucky Hit: Centipede skills have up to a 35% chance to spawn a pestilent swarm from the target which deals {x} poison damage per hit. Pestilent swarms now also deal 100% of their base damage as poisoning damage over 6 seconds.
Ring	Grand Skull	Ring of Writhing Moon	A Pestilent Swarm spawns from you every 10 seconds, dealing {x} Poison damage per hit. Your Pestilent Swarms now orbit around you and generate 1 Vigor per hit.
Ring	Grand Skull	Ring of the Midday Hunt	Your Maximum Vigor is increased by 50% and every kill grants you 1-7 Vigor. While you have any Ferocity your Poisonings deal their damage in 33% of the normal duration.
Weapon (200% bonus)	Xol Kry	Aspect of Pestilence	Stinger spawns a Pestilence swarm at its target location which deals x% of Stinger’s Base damage per hit. Pestilent swarms now last 100% longer and spiral outwards.

The combination of Stinger with the Aspect of Infestation and Aspect of Pestilence, as well as both unique rings, allows you to deal powerful poison damage to multiple enemies. Additionally, the Harmony of Ebewaka unique helm increases our survivability even more, as it tags all skills with the Gorilla spirit and grants the guardians primary passives.

If you do not have Rakanoth’s Wake, you can use the Duelist’s Aspect instead. The same goes for Temerity, which you can replace for the Aspect of Plains Power if needed.

Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

Affixes on the same line are considered to be equally important. Bolded affixes are the most important targets for Masterworking upgrades. To masterwork, you will need rare materials that only drop from Nightmare Dungeons. Be sure to check our Tempering and Masterworking guides, for more details about these topics.

Slot	Targeted Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	1. Dexterity 2. Armor 3. Resistance	Spiritborn Guard (Defensive): Armored Hide Active Duration Centipede Innovation (Utility): Stinger Size
Chest	1. Ranks to Armored Hide 2. Resistances 3. Armor	Spiritborn Guard (Defensive): Armored Hide Active Duration Centipede Innovation (Utility): Stinger Size
Gloves	1. Ranks to Stinger 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Damage over Time	Centipede Finesse (Offensive): Pestilent Swarm Damage Centipede Innovation (Utility): Stinger Size
Pants	1. Dexterity 2. Armor 3. Resistances	Centipede Innovation (Utility): Stinger Size Spiritborn Resolve (Defensive): Armored Hide Resolve Generation Rate
Boots	1. Dexterity 2. Movement Speed 3. Armor / Resistance	Natural Motion (Mobility): Movement Speed Centipede Innovation (Utility): Stinger Size
Amulet	1. Attack Speed 2. Ranks to Ravenous 3. Resource Cost Reduction	Worldly Finesse (Offensive): Critical Strike Damage Jaguar Efficiency (Resource): The Hunter Cooldown Reduction
Rings	1. Attack Speed 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Critical Strike Damage	Gorilla Efficiency (Resource): – Defensive Cooldown Reduction Centipede Finesse (Offensive): Centipede Damage
Weapon	1. Dexterity 2. Damage over Time 3. Crit strike damage	Centipede Augments (Weapon): Chance for Stinger to Extra Hit Worldly Finesse (Offensive): Critical Strike Damage

The priority order of Resistances is Lightning > Poison > Fire > Cold > Shadow.

Make sure to get enough Armor, which is capped at 1,000. However, remember that in higher difficulties there will be a penalty to armor and resistance, so you will need a higher amount to compensate for the loss.

Gems and Runewords

Listed below are the recommended Gems and Runewords to socket into your gear.

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
N/A (we use XolKry instead)	Grand Emerald For more Dexterity.	Grand Skull For more Armor.

For Jewelry Gems, simply use any gem that provides the resistance you lack the most.

Runewords

Runewords are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and can be used to strengthen or fill a build’s weaknesses. Two Runewords have to be combined to create a new effect:

A trigger Runeword of Ritual that provides Offerings when the condition is met
An effect Runeword of Invocation that costs Offerings and triggers an action.

Once the Runeword of Ritual has generated enough Offerings, the Runeword of Invocation will trigger its effect. Some Runewords of Invocation will have overflow effects, meaning that extra Offerings that have been created will be used to empower the triggered effect. For more information on how Runewords work, take a look at our comprehensive Runeword Guide.

Runewords replace Gems in gear.
Only two Runeword pairs (4 Runes in total) can be equipped at a time.

The following are recommended Runeword combination options for the Centipede endgame build of the Spiritborn:

Runeword Combination	Runeword Effects
Poc Que	Poc – Gain: 5 Offering. Spend 5% of your Maximum Resource. Que – Requires: 300 Offering (Overflow: Increased Duration). Cooldown: 1 Second. Evoke the Druid’s Base Earthen Bulwark, granting yourself a Barrier.
Xol Kry	Xol – Gain: 150 Offering. Evoke power from another Class. Kry – Requires: 600 Offering. Cooldown: 3 Seconds. Evoke the Spiritborn’s Vortex, dealing damage and Pulling In enemies.

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Visit the Alchemist and craft an Elixir providing any Resistance you need most, or the Assault Elixir to increase Attack Speed. Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from activities like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!

The following Elixirs are useful for most Spiritborn builds:

Elixir of Precision provides the highest damage output increase.
Elixir of Advantage increases your attack speed.
Elixir of Resourcefulness helps with resource issues, if you struggle with resource management.
Elixir of Fortitude for additional survivability.

Mercenaries

During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock different NPC Mercenaries who join you on your travels. In the early endgame, you can generally pick any mercenary you like, as they will not play an essential role until you optimize your build in the endgame. However, if you would prefer to get a recommendation, we would advise selecting Aldkin as your main companion, and Raheir as Reinforcement.

Aldkin Skill Tree choices:

Core Skill: Haunt
Core Passive: Exhaustion
Iconic Skill: Chain of Souls
Iconic Passive: Shared Pain

Raheir Reinforcement choices:

Opportunity Skill: Pick “Injured” as opportunity skill (will automatically trigger when you become Injured)
Reinforcement Skill: Provoke

Rotation and Playstyle

The build is rather simple, centered around Stinger as the main source of damage. Jaguar skills will provide all the mobility you need, as Ravager allows your core skills to dash to your target and increases your Vigor generation. Moreover, The Hunter boosts your damage even further when hitting Injured enemies. The Gorilla’s Armored Hide helps with protection and increases survivability, while Rock Splitter is a good filler and generates Vigor.

Stinger will greatly benefit from the Aspect of Infestation, Aspect of Pestilence, as well as both unique rings (Ring of Writhing Moon and Ring of the Midday Hunt), to deal increased poison damage and summon a Pestilence Swarm that will spiral outwards.

Furthermore, you should always use Scourge before and again one time after The Hunter for the interaction between Intricacy and Reinforced Scourge.

Let’s see how this build will look in action:

Use Ravager to start the fight.
Armored Hide for increased protection.
Cast Scourge for crowd control, Vigor generation, and to interact with Intricacy.
The Hunter Ultimate for even more damage, especially to Injured enemies.
Scourge again to benefit from the increased Vigor regeneration rate for 6 seconds.
Toxic Skin for increased Poison damage.
Spam Stinger as much as possible!

Another interesting interaction worth mentioning within this section comes from the Runewords we use in this build to trigger powerful effects. We use PocQue in Armor and XolKry in our Weapon.

When you spend 5% of your Maximum Resource, you gain 5 Offering from Poc. Once you reach 300 Offering, Que automatically evokes the Druid’s Earthen Bulwark, granting a Barrier. This action also triggers Xol, which activates when another class power is used. Xol grants 150 Offering and Kry then evokes the Spiritborn’s Vortex at 600 Offering, pulling in enemies and dealing damage.

Uniques and Mythic Uniques

Below you will find information on Uniques and Mythic Uniques that are useful and recommended for this build. Moreover, if you are interested in target farming Mythic Uniques, check out our How to Farm Mythic Uniques guide.

If a Unique or Mythic Unique is not listed here, it is NOT recommended and won’t benefit this specific build in any way.

Uniques

Listed below are the recommended and optional Unique Items for this build.

Ring of Writhing Moon (Required): Every 10 seconds a Pestilent Swarm spawns from you which deals {x} Poison damage per hit. Pestilent Swarms now always spawn orbiting around you and generate 1 Vigor per hit.
Ring of the Midday Hunt (Required): Your Maximum Vigor is increased by 50% and every kill grants you 1-7 Vigor. While you have any Ferocity your Poisonings deal their damage in 33% of the normal duration.
Harmony of Ebewaka (Required): Your Skills are all additionally Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla, or Centipede Skills based on your secondary Spirit Hall choice. Each Spirit type on a skill increases its damage by 50%.
Jacinth Shell (Required): Spending Vigor Heals you for x% of your Maximum Life. Every second, your active Cooldowns each drain 10% Maximum Life from you to reduce their durations by 3 seconds.
Temerity (Highly Recommended): Effects that heal you beyond 100% life grant you a Barrier up to x% of your Maximum Life that lasts for 8 seconds. You may now drink your healing potion while at full life.
Rakanoth’s Wake (Highly Recommended): When you cast a Skill with a Cooldown, you explode, dealing {x} Fire Damage.

Note that the Duelist’s Aspect is a great alternative on Boots until you find Rakanoth’s Wake.

Mythic Uniques

This Stinger Spiritborn build does not require any Mythic Uniques!

Advanced Information

Detailed information about this build will be updated once Vessel of Hatred is released and the class has been thoroughly play-tested.

If you want to have a look at builds that focus on other spirit guardians, you can find all our Spiritborn builds listed on this page.

Obol Gambling

Obol gambling is a great way to potentially find item upgrades or items missing from your build. Similar to Kadala in Diablo 3, you can use Obol vendors in town to try and get any specific item that you are missing. When a Level 60 Character spends Obols, all gear from that vendor will be 750 item power, the highest non-Ancestral item power in the game, allowing you to fill out gear with the affixes or Legendary Aspects you need. There is also a small chance to receive an Ancestral piece with item power 800.

You can check out our Obol Gambling Tool here!

Changelog

October 5th, 2024: Updated Skills, Paragon Boards, Mercenary Skills, Temper Affixes, and Gear.
October 3rd, 2024: Guide theorycrafted and created for Vessel of Hatred, Season 6.

Stinger – Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4