[VESSEL OF HATRED] Touch of Death - Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4

Build Introduction

This Poised Touch of Death endgame build focuses on turning the ability into a Core skill, with the Rod of Kepeleke making it free to cast and more powerful at maximum Vigor. Jaguar abilities enhance your damage output, while Scourge boosts Vigor regeneration, and Armored Hide ensures survivability. To manage the high resource demand from the Rod of Kepeleke Unique, the Ring of the Midnight Sun helps sustain your Vigor. This build excels in mobility, damage, and tankiness, making it a top contender for Spiritborn in Season 6 and a likely S-Tier Meta build.

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.
Have questions or feedback about this guide? Join Ghazzy’s livestream and ask him!

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Massive AoE and Single Target Damage
Poison Over Time Damage

Weaknesses

Requires a lot of Uniques
Reliant on Vigor Regeneration

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	Poc Que	Harmony of Ebewaka	According to your secondary Spirit hall choice, your skills are all additionally Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla, or Centipede skills. Your skills deal x{x}% increased damage per Spirit type they have.
Chest	Grand Emerald	Jacinth Shell	Spending Vigor heals you for {x}% of your Maximum Life. Every second, your active cooldowns now drain {x}% of your Maximum Life to reduce their duration by 3 seconds.
Gloves		Aspect of Plains Power	Lucky Hit: Up to a {x}% 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.
Pants	Grand Emerald	Temerity	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		Rakanoth’s Wake	When you cast a Skill with a Cooldown, you explode, dealing {x} Fire Damage.
Amulets(50% bonus)	Grand Skull	Insatiable Aspect	Kills extend the duration of your active Touch of Death swarms by 0.2 seconds. When a swarm is replaced early it bursts for {x}% of the damage it would have done.
Ring	Grand Skull	Starlight Aspect	Gain {x} Primary Resource for every 20% life that you heal or every 120 % life that you overheal when at maximum life.
Ring	Grand Skull	Ring of the Midnight Sun	When you critically strike, you regain {x}% of the vigor you’ve spent in the last 2 seconds. Gain Counterattack’s passive effect.
Weapon (200% bonus)	Xol Kry	Rod of Kepeleke	Your core skills are now additionally basic skills, free to cast, and deal up to 30% less damage based on their vigor cost. When cast at maximum vigor, your core skills consume all vigor to return to full damage, cast at their largest Size, and become guaranteed critical strikes with x{x}% increased critical strike damage for each point of vigor spent this way.

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. All Stats 2. Movement Speed 3. Damage Reduction 4. Ranks to Velocity	N/A
Chest	1. Damage Reduction while Injured 2. Maximum Life 3. Life on Hit 4. Ranks to Endurance	N/A
Gloves	1. Attack Speed 2. Ranks to Core Skills 3. Dexterity	Sharpened Finesse (Offensive): Basic Skill Damage Natural Schemes (Utility): Barrier Generation
Pants	1. Lucky Hit: Up to a 5% chance to Heal x Life 2. Healing Received 3. Damage Reduction While Healthy 4. Maximum Life	N/A
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Non-Physical Damage	N/A
Amulet	1. Ranks to Nourishment 2. Lucky Hit: Up to A Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds. 3. Critical Strike Chance	Sharpened Finesse (Offensive): Basic Skill Damage Worldly Stability (Resource): Resource Generation
Ring 1	1. Dexterity 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Ranks to Mirage	N/A
Ring 2	1. Maximum Life 2. Critical Strike Change 3. Critical Strike Damage	Sharpened Finesse (Offensive): Basic Skill Damage Worldly Stability (Resource): Resource Generation
Weapon	1. Critical Strike Damage 2. Maximum Resource 3. Ranks to Velocity 4. Change for Core Skills To Hit Twice	N/A

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. Furthermore, builds that scale with armor (such as those that use the Aspect of Unyielding Hits) will want to focus on getting more armor than just the cap.

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 Xol Kry 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: Terrify
Iconic Skill: Field of Languish
Iconic Passive: Paranoia

Raheir Reinforcement choices:

Opportunity Skill: Scourge
Reinforcement Skill: Crater

Rotation and Playstyle

This build revolves around efficient Vigor management, letting you cast Touch of Death as often as possible. Thanks to the Rod of Kepeleke, you can use Touch of Death for free because Poised Touch of Death turns it into a core skill, with a high chance of critical strikes. Paired with the Ring of the Midnight Sun, this ensures you maintain Vigor, making your rotation feel smooth and efficient. Touch of Death also benefits from Insatiable Aspect, further boosting its damage.

For defense, Counterattack and Armored Hide provide solid protection, while Scourge and Ravager add crowd control and extra damage. Lastly, your Ultimate The Hunter amplifies your damage even more, rounding out this high-impact, powerful build.

Generally, you will want to 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.
Counterattack for increased critical strike damage.
Cast Scourge for crowd control, Vigor generation, and to interact with Intricacy.
The Hunter Ultimate for even more damage.
Scourge again to benefit from the increased Vigor regeneration rate for 6 seconds.
Spam Touch of Death 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.

This combination lets you repeatedly pull in enemies to then poison them and deal damage with minimal effort.

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.

Rod of Kepeleke (Required): Your core skills are now additionally basic skills, free to cast, and deal up to 30% less damage based on their vigor cost. When cast at maximum vigor, your core skills consume all vigor to return to full damage,, cast at their largest Size, and become guaranteed critical strikes with x{x}% increased critical strike damage for each point of vigor spent this way.
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%.
Ring of the Midnight Sun (Required): When you critically strike, you regain {x}% of the vigor you’ve spent in the last 2 seconds. Gain counterattack’s passive effect.
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.

Mythic Uniques

The Mythic Unique Chest, Tyrael’s Might, is expected to work very well in this build, especially with high-end gear. It could potentially sustain our gameplay loop without relying on the Jacinth Shell Unique. However, further testing is required to fully test its synergy in endgame content.

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: Guide theorycrafted and created for Vessel of Hatred, Season 6.

Touch of Death – Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4