Diablo 4’s Best Class Will Continue Its Reign of Terror in Season 10

Since the release of Diablo 4‘s Vessel of Hatred expansion, the Spiritborn has been an overwhelming force in the meta. Each season seems to provide the Spiritborn with new tools to bolster its kit further and make it the go-to class for players looking to optimize their runs of endgame content like the Pit of the Artificer and the Lair Boss ladder. From the looks of it, Diablo 4 Season 10 won’t be bucking this trend either, setting the Spiritborn up for success before the season has even begun.

In Season 9, the Spiritborn received the meta-defining Balazan’s Maxtlatl Unique, which allowed the class to take advantage of its Thorns stat by dealing additional damage scaling with the player’s Thorns and inflicting Poison Damage over time with each successive attack. This Unique became the focal point for many of the Spiritborn’s best Diablo 4 Season 9 builds, with the versatility to fit into a variety of build archetypes. Balazan’s Maxtlatl looks largely unchanged heading into Season 10, and the addition of new Chaos Armor and Chaos Perks could mean the Spiritborn has more tools to work with than ever before.

Looking at the balance changes from the Diablo 4 Season 10 PTR, the Spiritborn has gotten some solid buffs to skills that make up some of the class’s best builds. It’s not clear if these changes will stand when the final patch notes for Diablo 4 Season 10 release, but as it stands, a couple of key skills have gotten buffs:

• Crushing Hand
  • Previous: Creates 2 shockwaves on either side that overlap and deal 50% damage each
  • Now: Deal 100% damage each
• Rake
  • Previous: Conjure claws that rake through enemies in front of you, dealing 30% damage before exploding for an additional 45% damage
  • Now: Deals 40% damage before exploding for an additional 60% damage

In addition to the buffs to these skills, the Spiritborn’s Key Passive Noxious Resonance has been reworked, likely for the better. Now, Critical Striking an enemy causes Poisoning to burst and deal 300% of the Poisoning damage to them instantly, whereas it only dealt 180% of the Poisoning damage previously. However, the trade-off is that the burst damage done to surrounding enemies has been reduced from 20% to 10%. Still, this seems like a fair trade that ultimately improves the Key Passive, especially for single-target fights against Diablo 4‘s Lair Bosses.

Spiritborn Seems to Have Evaded Significant Nerfs in Season 10

While the Spiritborn is in a position to get a few nerfs in Season 10, none of them seem likely to have an impact on the meta. The most disappointing nerf is the reduction to Quill Volley’s damage from 26% to 20%, but this is negligible even when considering it applies to all five quills that the skill launches. It’s still possible that the Spiritborn could see some more significant nerfs before the start of Season 10, but so far, it’s looking favorable for the class.

Chaos Armor Seems Made for Diablo 4’s Spiritborn

The addition of Chaos Armor in Diablo 4 Season 10 is already game-changing on its own, allowing Uniques to appear in gear slots where they can’t usually be found. But the Spiritborn stands the most to gain from this new feature, given that a lot of the Spiritborn’s gear is obsolete simply because there are better Uniques available in a given slot. As a result, Spiritborn players should be able to take advantage of new combinations of Uniques not possible before.

For example, the Rod of Kepeleke has been one of the Spiritborn’s best weapons basically since it was released. Now that it can appear in the pool of Chaos Uniques, players could potentially have the Rod of Kepeleke’s Unique affix on a piece of armor, leaving room for another Unique Weapon like the Wushe Nak Pa to be used instead. Powerful headgear like Harmony of Ebewaka and Loyalty’s Mantle are also set to be in the Chaos Armor pool, so players could potentially still utilize them while running the Mythic Heir of Perdition on the Spiritborn for a truly terrifying gear setup.

Diablo 4

9/10

Released

June 6, 2023

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language

Engine

Proprietary Engine