Rake – Spiritborn Leveling Build for Diablo 4 (Season 8)

Build Introduction

This Spiritborn leveling build focuses on using the Jaguar Spirit Guardian and its abilities, bringing high mobility and heavy damage together to create an efficient and fast-paced playstyle. Thrash allows you to dash to targets and slash through enemies with strong attacks like Rake and Rushing Claw. With the added Soar Eagle movement ability and The Hunter Ultimate, you will have enough movement and escape possibilities to take on larger groups of enemies and deal punishing damage. To find out more general information about leveling as a Spiritborn in Diablo 4, you can check out our main Spiritborn Leveling Guide.

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Check our Leveling Tier List to see how this build compares to others.

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Allocation of Skill Points

Below is the optimal order for spending your points as you level up. If you are missing skill points, complete Renown Tier 1-3 in every zone.

Order	Skill	Cluster
1	Thrash	Basic Skill
2	Enhanced Thrash	Basic Skill
3	Rake	Core Skill
4	Enhanced Rake	Core Skill
5	Rampant Rake	Core Skill
6	Rake Rank 2	Core Skill
7	Rake Rank 3	Core Skill
8	Rake Rank 4	Core Skill
9	Rake Rank 5	Core Skill
10	Accelerated Thrash	Basic Skill
11	Soar	Focus Skill
12	Enhanced Soar	Focus Skill
13	Replenishing Soar	Focus Skill
14	Vortex	Focus Skill
15	Vigorous	Core Passive
16	Armored Hide	Defensive Skill
17	Enhanced Armored Hide	Defensive Skill
18	Reinforced Armored Hide	Defensive Skill
19	Velocity	Core Passive
20	Rushing Claw	Potency Skill
21	Enhanced Rushing Claw	Potency Skill
22	Poised Rushing Claw	Potency Skill
23	Rushing Claw Rank 2	Potency Skill
24	The Hunter	Ultimate Skill
25	Harmonious Hunter	Ultimate Skill
26	Exalted Hunter	Ultimate Skill
27	Rushing Claw Rank 3	Potency Skill
28	Rushing Claw Rank 4	Potency Skill
29	Rushing Claw Rank 5	Potency Skill
30	The Hunter Rank 2	Ultimate Skill
31	The Hunter Rank 3	Ultimate Skill
32	The Hunter Rank 4	Ultimate Skill
33	The Hunter Rank 5	Ultimate Skill
34	Adaptive Stances	Key Passive
35	Vigorous Rank 2	Core Passive
36	Vigorous Rank 3	Core Passive
37	Velocity Rank 2	Core Passive
38	Velocity Rank 3	Core Passive
39	Focal Point	Focus Passive
40	Focal Point Rank 2	Focus Passive
41	Focal Point Rank 3	Focus Passive
42	Apex	Focus Passive
43	Apex Rank 2	Focus Passive
44	Apex Rank 3	Focus Passive
45	Diminishment	Focus Passive
46	Diminishment Rank 2	Focus Passive
47	Diminishment Rank 3	Focus Passive
48	Potent	Potency Passive
49	Potent Rank 2	Potency Passive
50	Potent Rank 3	Potency Passive
51	Furnace	Potency Passive
52	Furnace Rank 2	Potency Passive
53	Furnace Rank 3	Potency Passive
54	Endurance	Defensive Passive
55	Endurance Rank 2	Defensive Passive
56	Endurance Rank 3	Defensive Passive
57	Perseverance	Defensive Passive
58	Perseverance Rank 2	Defensive Passive
59	Perseverance Rank 3	Defensive Passive
60	Resilient	Potency Passive
61	Resilient Rank 2	Potency Passive
62	Resilient Rank 3	Potency Passive
63	Resolution	Ultimate Passive
64	Resolution Rank 2	Ultimate Passive
65	Resolution Rank 3	Ultimate Passive
66	Spiritual Attunement	Ultimate Passive
67	Spiritual Attunement Rank 2	Ultimate Passive
68	Spiritual Attunement Rank 3	Ultimate Passive
69	Supremacy	Ultimate Passive
70	Supremacy Rank 2	Ultimate Passive
71	Supremacy Rank 3	Ultimate Passive

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Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Rushing ClawSoarArmored HideThe HunterThrashRake

If you are unsure how to use these skills, read the Build Mechanics section after setting up your skill bar.

Wondering what comes after Level 60 or which Paragon boards to pick? Head to the Spiritborn Builds page and choose an endgame build to continue progressing your character even further.

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Spiritborn Class Mechanic — Spirit Hall

The Specialization of the Spiritborn Class becomes available at Level 15. It is recommended to complete the “Sacred Hunt“ questline in Kehjistan as soon as possible. The quest is given by Tarka.

The Spirit Hall system allows you to choose two animal spirits as protective guardians to receive powerful passive bonuses. The first, primary Spirit Guardian can be selected at Level 15, after completing the quest. Followed by the secondary Spirit Guardian at Level 30. Each Guardian has a different primary and secondary bonus ability, and you do not have to pick the same Guardian twice!

The Spirit Hall allows you to combine two different Spirit Guardians or stick with just one.

• Primary Spirit Guardian: Gorilla
  • Casting a Gorilla Skill deals 100% Thorns to enemies you hit and grants a Barrier for 10% of Maximum Life, up to 40%, for 3 seconds. All Skills are now also Gorilla Skills.
• Secondary Spirit Guardian: Jaguar
  • Maximum Ferocity is increased by 1. Gain 1 stack of Ferocity whenever you kill an enemy or damage a Boss.

For this leveling build, we choose the Gorilla as the primary and Jaguar as secondary Spirit Guardian. The Gorilla as primary guardian is great for leveling, as it provides extra survivability as well as a Barrier. For our secondary guardian, we pick the Jaguar spirit to increase maximum Ferocity stacks by 1, which means even more attack speed.

Keep in mind that if you select the Gorilla as your primary guardian, all of your skills will be considered Gorilla skills as well. This means that any + Rank to Gorilla skills on your gear or items will increase the rank of all of your skills, which now also count as Gorilla skills.

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Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

When picking your gear, higher Item Power generally indicates stronger gear, but you should also consider the affixes and effects that are relevant to your class and build. When making gear decisions, keep an eye on both Item Power and the specific attributes that complement the build.

Legendary Aspects

For general information on how to unlock the Codex of Power, head to our dedicated Aspects and Codex of Power guide. You can imprint Aspects onto items by visiting the Occultist.

Listed below are all the Aspects that are important for this Jaguar focused Rake Spiritborn leveling build. You can equip any aspect from this list in the slot it drops for, as they are all useful while leveling. 

If you want a recommendation regarding which Aspect to get first, the Aspect of Wild Claws will be the most useful while leveling because it synergizes greatly with Rake. You can unlock this aspect through finding it naturally, as a random drop. 

For best results, combine these Aspects with the right stat/affix priorities.

Aspect Name	Legendary Aspect Power	Source
Aspect of Plains Power (Offensive)	Lucky hit: up to 25% chance to create a Mystic Circle for 10 seconds. Casting a Jaguar skill in Mystic Circles empowers them to keep your Ferocity at maximum and increase your damage by x% per stack while you remain within.	Random Drop
Aspect of Turbulence (Utility)	Soar casts Vortex at its landing location and deals x% increased damage	Ruined Wild, Nahantu
Aspect of Redirected Force (Offensive)	Gain increased critical strike damage equal x% of your block chance. Blocking doubles this bonus for 10 seconds.	Random Drop
Aspect of Wild Claws (Offensive)	Rake manifests a Spirit Jaguar which also casts Rake at a random enemy, dealing x% base damage.	Random Drop
Accelerating Aspect (Offensive)	Critical strikes with core skills increase your attack speed by x% for 5 seconds.	Random Drop
Aspect of Interdiction (Defensive)	Gain x% Block chance per resolve stack	Random Drop
Aspect of Endurance (Defensive)	Your Resolve has a x% chance to not be lost when you are hit for each stack of ferocity you have	Random Drop
Aspect of the Dark Dance (Resource)	Every 5 seconds, your next core skill costs life instead of primary resource. Will only occur if you have at least 60% of your maximum life. Skills that spend life deal x% bonus damage.	Random Drop
Aspect of Haste(Mobility)	Every second while moving gain x%[+] Bonus Movement Speed for 1.5 seconds, up to x%[+].	Seething Underpass, Nahantu

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Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

During your leveling journey, you may stumble across items with very good affixes. Tempering these items can provide you with a significant boost in character power, so make sure you understand how it works. 

Tempering is only possible if you have already found a few Tempering Manuals while leveling!

Keep an eye out for the following stats and modifiers that are particularly beneficial for this build (listed in order of importance):

Gear Slot	Important Affixes (ranked by priority)	Tempering Recipes and Affixes
Helm	1. Ranks to Rushing Claw 2. Dexterity  3. Armor	Spiritborn Guard (Defensive): Armored Hide Active Duration Jaguar Innovation (Utility): Rake Size
Chest	1. Ranks to Armored Hide 2. Resistances 3. Dexterity	Jaguar Innovation (Utility): Thrash Size Spiritborn Guard (Defensive): Armored Hide Active Duration
Gloves	1. Ranks to Rake 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Attack Speed	Eagle Innovation (Utility): Soar Size Jaguar Finesse (Offensive): Mystic Circle Potency
Pants	1. Dexterity 2. Ranks to Trash 3. Resistances	Worldly Endurance (Defensive): Total Armor Jaguar Innovation (Utility): Rake Size
Boots	1. Dexterity  2. Movement Speed 3. Ranks to Focus Skills	Natural Motion (Mobility): Movement Speed Jaguar Innovation (Utility): Rake Size
Amulet	1. Attack Speed 2. Movement Speed 3. Critical Strike Chance	Spiritborn Guard (Defensive): Armored Hide Active Duration Jaguar Finesse (Offensive): Jaguar Damage
Rings	1. Critical Strike Damage 2. Attack Speed 3. Resistance Needed	Worldly Stability (Resource): Resource generation Jaguar Finesse (Offensive): Jaguar Damage
Weapon	1. Damage 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Dexterity	Natural Finesse (Offensive): Damage to Close Enemies Jaguar Augments (Weapon): Chance for Rake to Extra hit

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Gems and Runewords

Listed below are the best Gems to socket into gear for each item type.

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Emerald For increased Critical Strike Damage	Emerald for Dexterity	Skull For more Armor

Runewords

If you find one of the Runes listed below, you can equip them as a Runeword on your Chest or Pants.

Runewords are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and replace gems in gear. Improve your build by combining a trigger Rune of Ritual and an effect Rune of Invocation. You can equip up to two Runeword pairs (four Runes) at a time. For a detailed guide on Runewords, check out our Runewords Guide!

Runeword Combination	Runeword Effects
Zan Tzic	Zan – Gain: 150 Offering — Cast an Ultimate Skill. Tzic – Requires: 200 Offering, Cooldown: 1 Second (Overflow: Increase damage by 1% per Offering) — Evoke the Spiritborn’s Concussive Stomp, dealing damage and Knocking Down enemies.
Poc Wat	Poc – Gain: 2 Offering — Spend 5% of your Maximum Resource. Wat – Requires: 100 Offering, Cooldown: 1 Second — Evoke the Necromancer’s Horrid Decrepify, Slowing enemies, reducing their damage, and letting you Execute them.

Paragon starts at Level 60. So, once you reach this level, switch to one of our Endgame Builds here.

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Boss Powers (Season 8)

During Season 8, you can unlock and rank up Boss Powers using Spectral Ash earned from Apparition Incursions, which provide powerful bonuses to support your build as you level.

Slot	Boss Power & Drop Location	Effect
Main Power	Any World Boss power	Please refer to the listed powers here.
Modifier	Flesh Reaper’s Disruption (Incursion)	Gain 5%[x] Vulnerable Damage, increased by 0.25%[x] for each 1% of Crowd Control Duration Bonus you have, up to a maximum of 10.5%[x].
Modifier	Torusk’s Rage (Incursion)	Gain 5%[+] Attack Speed, increased by 0.25%[+] for each 1% Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies you have, up to a maximum of 10.5%[+].
Modifier	Hatred’s Embrace’s Haste (Incursion)	Gain +5% Critical Strike Chance, increased by +0.5% for each 1% of Shadow Resistance you have, up to a maximum of +70%.

Mercenaries

During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock Mercenaries to assist you. While you can choose freely early on, we recommend Raheir as your main companion, for the added survivability he provides, and Varyana as Reinforcement.

Raheir Skill Tree choices:

• Core Skill: Shield Charge
• Core Passive: Raheir’s Guard
• Iconic Skill: Crater
• Iconic Passive: Iron Wolf’s Call

Varyana Reinforcement choices:

• Opportunity Skill: Rake
• Reinforcement Skill: Shockwave, then switch Bloodthirst as soon as you unlock it, for increased Attack Speed.

Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

The main skill of this build is Rake. It is important to build stacks of Ferocity in order to reduce the resource cost of Rake, allowing you to spam this skill as much as possible. To increase Rake damage, we pair up the skill with the Aspect of Wild Claws which will manifest an additional Jaguar guardian casting Rake to your target. 

Thrash is present to support our damage, mobility, and vigor generation. In the same way, Rushing Claw is a great skill to reach your targets faster and inflict damage. Use Armored Hide as a defensive to boost your survivability. 

To get around quickly, we make use of 2 Eagle skills from the Focus cluster: Soar provides great mobility and makes your enemies Vulnerable, and when combined with the Aspect of Turbulence, will automatically cast Vortex, so no enemy can escape you! If you do not have this aspect yet, put Vortex on your skill bar instead of Soar, and use it whenever you want to group up enemies. 

1. Use Soar to engage enemies and make them Vulnerable.
   1. With the Aspect of Turbulence, you will automatically cast a Vortex at the same time.
2. Armored Hide to protect yourself. 
3. Rushing Claw to move through the enemy group and increase dodge chances.
4. Cast The Hunter for increased damage and additional stacks of Ferocity.
5. Spam Rake.
6. Thrash to recover Vigor.

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Head to the Alchemist in any main town and craft Elixirs to boost your stats and experience gain for 30 minutes! Remember to gather the necessary crafting materials by foraging plants (to get Bundled Herbs)

Listed below are Elixirs that will be useful for you while leveling as a Spiritborn:

1. Elixir of Resourcefulness for better Resource Management.
2. Elixir of Advantage to boost Attack Speed.
3. Elixir of Iron Barbs or Elixir of Fortitude for a small defensive boost until other options become available.

Return to the Alchemist again when you reach Level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60, to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival! You can upgrade your potion at Level 60 multiple times, depending on whether you have the required materials or not.

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Season 8 Updates

For a complete overview of Season 8, its mechanics and theme, new leveling activity, and other changes coming with this season, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub here.

Here is a quick overview of seasonal changes relevant to this build:

• Rushing Claw: Base Damage increased from 50% to 80%.
• Poised Rushing Claw:
  • Previous: When Rushing Claw hits an Elite enemy you gain 10% increased Dodge chance for 6 seconds.
  • Now: Rushing Claw now has 20 Maximum Charges. Casting it consumes all of its Charges to increase its damage by 25%[x] per Charge and it hits a larger area.
• Aspect of Wild Claws: Damage increased from 45-65% to 65-85% of Rake’s Base damage.
• Aspect of Plains Power: Legendary ranks increased from 8 to 21. Damage increase per stack of Ferocity increased from 2.0-4.1% to 2.0-5.0%.
• Fixed an issue that allowed for snapshotting of the Resilient Passive.
• Fixed an issue where Resource Generation stats for other classes would display in character stats for Spiritborn Players.
• Fixed an issue where casting The Hunter could cause the Wanderer to get partially stuck under the ground.

Difficulty and Endgame

Once you hit Level 60 with this build, you will be ready to tackle harder difficulties as you transition into more challenging endgame content. Make sure to pick one of our recommended endgame builds to continue your journey! Additionally, keep your Obols until you reach maximum Level (60), then spend them on a weapon to kickstart your preferred endgame build.

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Changelog

• April 26th, 2025: Switched Duelist’s Aspect with Aspect of Haste. Added Boss Powers for Season 8.
• January 23rd, 2025: Removed Lost Witchcraft Powers and replaced them with Vengeful Spirit and Hex of Shattering.
• January 18th, 2025: Added Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems for Season 7.
• October 2nd, 2024: Guide created and theorycrafted for Season 6.