Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred Spiritborn Class Hands-On: Everything You Need to Know

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It doesn’t take all that much to get me to dive back into Blizzard’s stellar ARPG, Diablo 4, which has had a fantastic run of seasonal content and updates in the year since it made its devilish debut. But after an extensive hands-on with its upcoming character class, the Spiritborn, I might be kissing my free time goodbye altogether. This jack of all trades impressively mixes up the Diablo ecosystem with its most customizable and varied class yet, opens up a whole new unexplored aspect of Diablo lore, and most importantly, lets you summon a giant spectral gorilla to Hulk-smash demons into pink giblets. By the end of my time exploring Vessel of Hatred’s spooky jungles and dark dungeons, I was ready to forsake my roguish 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 dropped right into the action in the new region of Nahantu to craft my build and dismember everything in sight. Though all of the following things are in there, I didn’t see any story, meet any NPCs (aside from vendors), or get to check out the new hireable mercenaries feature. That said, my access to the Spiritborn class and all it offers was pretty exhaustive, so I’ll be focusing on that. Let’s dive in!

The Spiritborn are an entirely new class to the Diablo series, complete with their own lore that’s tied up in the ancient civilization of Nahantu – as seen in the Act 3 jungles of Diablo II – and the ethereal spirits with which they commune. Unlike the other Diablo IV classes, where you dive quite deep into a specific fantasy like tanking with the Barbarian or doing mad DPS with the Rogue, the Spiritborn is much more customizable and varied, thanks to the four guardian spirits you can choose to build into. Those four spirits are: the eagle, which focuses on mobility, evasion, and lightning damage;