Blizzard fully revealed Diablo 4fresh class – Spiritborn – through live broadcast on Thursday. The Spiritborn is the first entirely fresh class to appear in a numbered Diablo game in over a decade, and will be coming to Sanctuary as part of Ship of Hate October 8 extension.
The creators of Spiritborn describe this class as a martial arts class and clearly reference the Monk class in Diablo 3. The subject matter is completely different, however. While Diablo 3 The monk draws from Buddhist stereotypes, while the Spiritborn is connected to the jungle and its various cultures.
As a Spiritborn, you manifest your power from four Spirit Guardians, which also provide your core mechanics. Guardians manifest as part of your core abilities, and each one offers a unique playstyle. Jaguar’s attacks deal fire damage and raise your attack speed—the idea is pure chaos. Gorilla steers things in a more defensive direction, allowing you to deal physical damage and protect yourself from gigantic hits. Eagle is speed and lightning damage, and gives you more ranged moves. Finally, Centipede lets you poison and scare your enemies with powerful crowd control abilities.
When creating your Spiritborn build, you can stick to one Spirit Guardian identity or spread out and exploit multiple. Customization is further enhanced by the Spirit Hall, which is your unique class mechanic. In the Spirit Hall, you can choose one Spirit Guardian to dedicate yourself to. This will give you a primary passive that fits that Guardian’s playstyle. You can then choose a secondary Guardian that will give you a different bonus. If you really like the playstyle of one Guardian, you can even dedicate yourself entirely to one of them to gain both bonuses.
In terms of weapons, you’ll wield glaives, polearms, and staves as Spiritborn. A full set of Ancient and Legendary items will also be available at launch for Spiritborn, including Tempering recipes.
Spiritborn is available exclusively for Diablo 4Ship of Hate expansion, the price of which for the standard edition is $39.99.