We had a chance to play the Spiritborn early — here’s what we thought of the new class in Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred

Diablo 4‘s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, launches worldwide on October 7 at 4PM pacific time, adding a whole new campaign through the jungles of Nahantu, along with the game’s first new class, the Spiritborn. We were lucky enough to get our hands on the Spiritborn a bit early, and while we won’t be hitting on any campaign spoilers, we’ve put together our first impressions of this new class, along with some helpful tips should you decide to roll one in Vessel of Hatred. 

The Spiritborn was originally teased as an all-new, never-before-seen Diablo class, but when the class was revealed and we got our first look at Spiritborn gameplay, it seemed reminiscent of Diablo 3‘s Monk class. The physical agility and martial weapon similarities of the Monk are apparent in close-quarters combat with the Spiritborn, but invoking the four Spirit Guardians — Jaguar, Gorilla, Eagle, and Centipede — makes the class feel more like a souped up mixture of Druid/Sorcerer casting and spells.

Some of the Spiritborn’s abilities do look, feel, and sound unique, especially when you unlock the Spirit Hall class mechanic, and this helps the Spiritborn differentiate itself enough from the other classes to stand on its own as a unique play experience. At its core the Spiritborn is a versatile class and an absolute blast to play, but depending on the Spirit you choose, it can take a while to get it to a place where it feels really good.

So let’s talk about the Spiritborn, how it feels to play this new class, and the challenges players may face when picking it up for the first time.

Our experience with the Spiritborn class

The Spirit Guardians give the class plenty of options, and players can build their Spiritborn around one guardian individually or mix different spirits together. Rarely did it feel like these different spirits clashed, which gave the Spiritborn some good building blocks — the potential for excellent burst damage at short, medium, and long ranges, depending on your choices. There are also plenty of new Legendary items and Affixes designed to synergize with each Spirit Guardian — and while I didn’t find all of them when I had a chance to preview the Spiritborn, I found enough to have a good set of options to tackle different parts of the game.

I played an Eagle/Jaguar hybrid build, a powerful mixture that cut through enemies at all levels with speed and brute force. But the Centipede Spirit was an early standout when playing: a lot of enemies in Nahantu use poison-based attacks, but since the Centipede uses poison as a focal point of its abilities, it gave players just have an extra layer of protection against these attacks, and also the ability to use the enemies’ poisonous attacks against them.

The Spiritborn’s resource is Vigor, which is generated by their basic abilities and used to activate their more powerful abilities. One of the drawbacks that stood out, specifically in the early game, was how resource intensive the Spiritborn’s abilities were, requiring a stricter combat flow than other classes. It can take time to ramp up to do serious damage.

A compounding issue was that I felt squishy, even when I got into the high level 20 and early level 30, and I relied on health potions a lot. This meant that for nearly each engagement, I needed time to build up the necessary Vigor to start my core ability loop to do real damage. That meant I really needed to nail all of my attacks because missing would prolong the battle, and the longer a battle went on, the higher chance I would get killed. This wasn’t always an issue, but areas like Helltides can make you feel resource-starved and vulnerable, particularly when using aggressive builds. Fellow Blizzard Watch writer Christian Thoma experimented with the Gorilla skills and reported that survivability wasn’t an issue, but some battles were a bit slow because the time-to-kill wasn’t incredibly fast. Players will have to find a balance between aggressive and defensive builds, while managing their resources, to play a Spiritborn.

As soon as Vessel of Hatred goes live, players with the expansion can roll a Spiritborn. But while players who are just joining Diablo 4 with Vessel of Hatred can certainly start with Spiritborn as their first class, it shines once you’ve played through Diablo 4 at least enough to unlock the renown rewards for the first two tiers of each area. These tiers reward you with additional skill point and expands your potion capacity respectively, both of which are incredibly beneficial during the Spiritborn’s early levels. The Tree of Whispers will also be an incredible resource for burst experience and extra gear to help you along your journey.

It’s important to remember these are very early impressions of the Spiritborn based on a limited-review window and in that time, despite the challenges during level, the Spiritborn proved itself as a fun class to play!