Key Passives will give Diablo 4 Spiritborn more “open-ended” gameplay options

The Spiritborn is the new class being added to Diablo 4 in its first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, and it comes equipped with four Key Passives that are “designed to be more open-ended.” But what does that mean?

The developers have stated that the Spiritborn Key Passives allow players to “acutely refine [their] builds with added flexibility,” and we can see that in their skill descriptions. Although there are four of them, they aren’t directly designed around the four Spirit Guardians — that is, you don’t necessarily have one Key Passive for Gorilla builds, another for Jaguar builds, etc. Each Key Passive can adapt to multiple different play styles, and players of this new class are, in fact, often inspired to take skills from multiple Spirit Guardians in the first place.

Each of the four Spiritborn Key Passives is flexible and can fit into many different builds

Without further ado, let’s read the descriptions for these powerful passive skills and perhaps unravel how they’re going to be used.

Adaptive Stances

The Base Spirit of a Skill cast grants:

• Eagle: 30% Movement Speed
• Gorilla: 30% Damage Reduction
• Jaguar: 30% Attack Speed
• Centipede: 30% Life Steal

Casting a Skill of a different Base Spirit:

• Swaps to the new bonus
• Increases Core Stats by 50% for 5 seconds.

This Key Passive will benefit players for using at least two spirits in their builds — and based on the class previews we’ve seen so far, a majority of Spiritborn players should be doing just that. Perhaps Adaptive Stances will work better if you’re constantly swapping between Guardians without really committing to just one of them most of the time.

As long as you use a skill from a different Guardian from the previous every five seconds, you should keep the powerful 50% buff to your Core Stats going.

Noxious Resonance

Your Critical Strikes cause enemies to burst 100% of the Poisoning on them as Poison damage to those around them.

This Key Passive will probably heavily benefit Centipede builds, and it’s hard to imagine players picking it otherwise. But keep in mind that Centipede isn’t just about poison — it also has fear and slow effects, and even some healing, meaning that not every Centipede-focused character will get the full benefit from Noxious Resonance.

At the same time, builds that aren’t Centipede-focused might end up using a Poison skill or two extensively, making this skill a perfect fit for them. One thing to note is that this Key Passive requires players to specialize into Crititcal Strike, lest it become ineffective.

Prodigy’s Tempo

Every third consecutive cast of the same Basic Skill increases all Skill Ranks by 2 for 5 seconds. Every third consecutive cast of the same Core or Potency Skill reduces all Skills’ active Cooldowns by 10%, increased by 2% for each of their Skill Ranks.

The Spiritborn’s basic skills are three-hit combos, much like Diablo 3’s Monk. This Key Passive greatly boosts that. So if you’re the kind of player who really enjoys this style of fast-paced, combo-heavy gameplay — and keeping track of your every third hit — this Key Passive might be for you.

It should be noted that using lots of skills that have cooldowns will work well with this Key Passive, due to the constant cooldown reduction it provides.

Vital Strikes

You deal 100% increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. After making an enemy Vulnerable, your next Direct damage dealt to them:

• Heals you for 2% of your Maximum Life
• Generates 5 Vigor
• Removes the Vulnerable effect

This is the Key Passive of choice for Vulnerable builds. Besides making you deal considerably more damage to Vulnerable enemies — meaning that you’ll be aiming to constantly apply it — this Key Passive also seems well-suited to tankier characters, due to constantly providing you with some self-healing.

It also constantly generates the Spiritborn’s resource, Vigor, so Vital Strikes might be the choice for builds that spend a lot of Vigor, making them less resource starved.

You’ll be able to play around with the Spiritborn class and these new Key Passives once Vessel of Hatred releases — on October 8.