It does not take much for me to pick up Blizzard’s excellent role-playing game, Diablo 4, again. In the year since its devious launch, the game has received an incredible amount of upgrades and seasonal content. But I might have to bid my leisure time farewell after getting hands-on with its forthcoming character class, the Spiritborn. This master of all trades offers up a whole new uncharted territory in the Diablo narrative, combines the most flexible and versatile class yet, and—most importantly—allows you to conjure a massive spectral gorilla to smash monsters into pink giblets like a Hulk. I was prepared to give up my roguish ways and declare myself a Spirit-born main by the time I finished exploring the eerie forests and gloomy dungeons of Vessel of Hatred, and that is no minor feat.
Just to make a small housekeeping remark, I spent practically all of my time in the Spiritborn character class in Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred. I was thrown into the action in the new Nahantu region right away, where I had to choose my favorite Spiritborn fighter and start mutilating whatever I saw. I did not see any story, meet any NPCs (apart from vendors), or view the new hireable mercenary feature, even though all of the foregoing are present. Having said that, I will be concentrating on the Spiritborn class because I had fairly complete access to everything it had to offer. Now let us get started!
As seen in Diablo II’s Act 3 jungles, the Spiritborn is a completely new class to the Diablo franchise, complete with ethereal spirits they commune with and their lore rooted in the ancient Nahantu culture. Due to the four guardian spirits, you can choose to build into, the Spiritborn class in Diablo IV is far more flexible and varied than the other classes, where you go pretty deep into a certain fantasy like tanking with the Barbarian or doing insane DPS with the Rogue.
These four spirits are the jaguar, who is the king of DPS, attack speed, and fire damage; the eagle, who concentrates on mobility, evasion, and lightning damage; the gorilla, who is all about physical damage and survivability; and my personal favorite, the centipede, which uses poison, debuffs, and lifestyle to control the battlefield and profit from the misfortune of your enemies.
