Diablo 4 is hitting its stride again at a great time. While the game has gone through some growing pains, it has honed itself nicely based on community feedback. Season 4 was a big step forward, and that good work has followed through into Season 5.
This puts it in a great position ahead of Vessel of Hatred – which is going to be a big moment for Diablo 4. The first expansion of any title is often a good indication of its longevity. How big can players expect these releases to be? How much do they shake things up? How meaningful is the story content? Right now, we only have our speculation to cling to for how significant this drop will be.
A Diablo 4 expansion hasn’t been defined yet. However, one thing that has been pretty well defined from Vessel of Hatred is the Spiritborn. The new class brings something we’ve never seen in the world of Diablo, combining some of the best parts of Diablo 3-era classes into something entirely new.
Now, since the game launched, I’ve played as the Rogue, and I’ve only played as the Rogue. I don’t know what it is, but I have an affinity for the class that has held strong over the last year. Yet, after spending some time with the Spiritborn class at Gamescom, I can say – I’m seriously considering my devotion.
Where the wild things are
The Spiritborn feels like something different for Diablo. It’s been compared to a cross between Monk and Witch Doctor, but to me, it felt pretty unique. The reason for that is Spiritborn almost feels like four classes in one. That’s due to the four Spirit Guardians that guide your playstyle.
With the class, you can choose abilities associated with the Centipede, Eagle, Gorilla, or Jaguar. These aren’t just small strokes either – each of these guardians is very different. Their main principles are this. The Eagle is about mobility and speed and getting around quickly. The Gorilla is a defensive tree more about not taking too much damage and anticipating massive attacks. The Jaguar is all about in-your-face, ferocious attacks to tear through enemies. And the Centipede is all about poisoning and slowing your opponents, controlling them before they can overwhelm you.
As someone who always ends up drawn towards poison, I chose the path of the Centipede, absolutely decimating rooms of enemies as my toxins killed enemies and spread further and further. It was a disgusting chain reaction, and while the enemies I was up against weren’t the hardest, I tore through minions in a Helltide like a hot knife through butter.
That, and being able to spawn a massive Centipede to spray poison and attack my enemies, felt awesome. Will that add to the visual clutter of Diablo 4 in its most chaotic moments? Yes. Having a Spirit Guardian join the battlefield on top of your sorcerer friend using Inferno to make a huge fiery snake, all while a boss launches attacks at you – it could get a bit intense. But, like… come on. It’s a massive centipede you summon from the ground to kill the minions of hell – it’s pretty cool, and only in a Diablo game can you get away with something so wild.
Primal rage
The truly interesting thing about the Spiritborn is just how customizable it is. The real fun will be when you start to mix and match the skills of each of the animal trees together. I didn’t get the freedom to really make my own build in the demo; instead, you selected which Spirit Guardian you wanted to ‘main’, and your spells and passives were largely aligned with that. However, it wasn’t entirely exclusive. For example, I had access to the soar mechanic, which came from the Eagle. This was an ability that let me shoot into the air and land next to an enemy, adding a lot of mobility to my game.
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That was the main instance, but looking through my talent tree, I could see that there were options from other Guardians like Gorilla and Jaguar too. In some ways, it interestingly is reminiscent of Destiny 2: The Final Shape’s introduction of Prismatic. While not an amalgam of older abilities, this mixing of different playstyles to build something unique is enticing. It’s also surprising to see this kind of creative swing just a year into the life of Diablo 4.
There are still a lot of classes fans want to see from the previous games, but there’s respect to be had in Blizzard deciding to go for something new entirely – especially with something with this much range. And let’s be honest, it made sense to use a class that was native to Kurast in the DLC, and the Witch Doctor’s role as a summoner class is already occupied by the Necromancer and Druid in Diablo 4
There wasn’t enough time to get into how much you can mix and match, nor experiment with different build ideas, but the sense I got was that it’d be best to main one Spirit Guardian and throw in splashes from others, especially when it comes to passives and utility skills.
So many of the abilities and aspects all feed into each other directly that having a truly mixed palette may lose that all-important synergy. For example, in Centipede, everything associated with it has to do with poisoning enemies. You can have poison spread constantly by sequencing your abilities and also slow poisoned enemies with passive buffs.
However, if you’re choosing abilities from other Spirit Guardians that lower how much you can poison or take away effects on poisoned enemies – well, the ability you bring in will have to be mighty powerful to let that synergy pass you by.
That’s the Spirit
Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred’s Spiritborn is a surprising addition to the game just a year on. It’s a broad class that almost seems 4-in-1. It’s a creative risk by the development team to make something new and with so many layers, when they could have played it safe by adding a fan favorite from previous games with minimal changes.
It’s easy to appreciate that they didn’t, though. Getting into the theory-crafting with this one will be a lot of fun. Several viable builds across the Spirit Guardians may be meta, each with a distinct way of playing. It’s the kind of class that suggests a certain level of moxie from the dev team. Seeing Diablo in the hands of a team looking to try new things and not default to the classics in order to build this world further is exciting. That may be a lot to conclude from 30 minutes of killing minions on easy mode in a convention center – but there is enough there to suggest that this Diablo team is firing creatively.
This new class is a very promising start to Vessel of Hatred. It’s even done the unthinkable already – it has this Rogue purist considering switching in October.