[VESSEL OF HATRED] Gorilla Thorns - Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4

Build Introduction

This theorycrafted Gorilla Thorns Spiritborn endgame build focuses on using the Jaguar’s Rake skill to scale Thorns’ damage while maintaining a high level of mobility during close combat. Since most of the damage is coming from Thorns, the build will require a few Uniques to work as intended.

This endgame guide assumes your Spiritborn is Level 60 and meets all the build requirements. If you are just starting out with a new Spiritborn character, we recommend heading over to the Quill Volley Leveling Build and then switching to this endgame build when ready.

For information on Season 6, you can check out our Season Hub.
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Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Great Mobility
Good AoE and Single Target Damage

Weaknesses

Damage mainly comes from Thorns

To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Required Aspects (Non-codex)

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Follow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the completed build. If you are missing skill points, complete Renown Tier 1-4 in every zone to get the missing additional points.

Spirit Hall Choice

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: Gorilla
- Maximum Resolve increased by 2. When you have at least 5 stacks of Resolve, you are Unstoppable.

For this endgame build, we choose the Gorilla as both the primary and secondary Spirit Guardian. Using the Jaguar’s Rake, with the Gorilla as a primary spirit guardian, we will significantly scale Thorns’ damage, allowing us to deal huge damage to enemies or bosses.

The passive of having the Gorilla as a secondary guardian, when combined with the Armored Hide skill, will drastically improve our Resolve stacks generation, make us Unstoppable, and increase our damage even further.

Paragon Board

Paragon unlocks after reaching Level 60, and is considered an endgame progression system. Leveling up your paragon greatly increases your character’s power! We recommend using the following Legendary nodes and Glyphs to improve the build even further as you grind through the endgame. Note that each Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the Level 46 version.

Gear, Stats, Gems, Runes, and Elixirs

The following sections cover all systems that are important if you want to improve the power of your character in the endgame of Diablo 4.

Legendary Aspects

Each Aspect is listed with its matching gear slot. Do your best to keep each Aspect in the assigned slot. Remember to salvage Legendary Items with higher Aspect values to unlock them in the Codex of Power, and then imprint them onto gear pieces with the preferred affixes.

Additionally, if you are trying to farm a specific item, we recommend using your Obols to target farm them!

Gear Slot	Gems/Runes	Aspect / Unique	Legendary Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Grand Emerald / Runes	Loyalty’s Mantle	While your spirit hall choices match: their bonuses are 100% more potent. Skills of their Base Spirit gain x% Vigor Cost Reduction. Skills of their Base Spirit gain x% COoldown reduction.
Chest	Grand Emerald / Runes	Razorplate	Thorns have a 10% chance to deal {x}% increased damage.
Gloves		Aspect of Turbulence	Soar casts Vortex at its landing location and deals {x} increased damage.
Pants	Grand Emerald / Runes	Assimilation Aspect	You have 8% increased Dodge chance. When you dodge, Fortify for {x}% of your maximum life.
Boots		Scorn of the Earth	Soar deals {x}% increased damage and your evade is now Soar.
Amulets(50% bonus)	Grand Skull	Bristleback Aspect	When you dodge or block an attack you trigger x% Thorns attacks against the attacker.
Ring	Grand Skull	Needleflare Aspect	Thorns damage dealt has a x% chance to deal damage to all enemies around you and your minions.
Ring	Grand Skull	Aspect of Wild Claws	Rake manifests a spirit Jaguar which also casts Rake at a random enemy, dealing x% Base damage.
Weapon (200% bonus)	Grand Emerald	Aspect of Plains Power	Lucky Hit: up to a 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.

The new Spiritborn Scorn of the Earth Unique boots, together with the Aspect of Turbulence, make for an incredibly powerful combination, turning your Evade into Soar, and automatically casting Vortex. This allows us to use other skills instead, as the normal Evade (space bar) skill will now cast both spells simultaneously.

Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

Affixes on the same line are considered to be equally important. Bolded affixes are the most important targets for Masterworking upgrades. To masterwork, you will need rare materials that only drop from Nightmare Dungeons. Be sure to check our Tempering and Masterworking guides, for more details about these topics.

Slot	Targeted Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	1. Armor 2. Dexterity 3. Ranks to Razor Wings	Gorilla Innovation (Utility): Armored Hide Active Thorns Bonus Spiritborn Guard (Defensive): Armored Hide Active Duration
Chest	1. Ranks to Armored Hide 2. Thorns 3. Armor/Resistance	Spiritborn Guard (Defensive): Armored Hide Active Duration Natural Schemes (Utility): Thorns
Gloves	1. Maximum Life 2. Attack Speed 3. Dexterity	Eagle Finesse (Offensive): Vulnerable Damage Natural Schemes (Utility): + Thorns
Pants	1. Armor 2. Maximum Life 3. Dexterity	Natural Schemes (Utility): + Thorns Spiritborn Resolve (Defensive): Maximum Resolve Stacks
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Ranks to Ravager 3. Ranks to Focus Skills	Natural Motion (Mobility): Movement Speed Gorilla Innovation (Utility): Armored Hide Active Thorns Bonus
Amulet	1. Ranks to Apex 2. Total Armor 3. %Dexterity	Natural Schemes (Utility): + Thorns Spiritborn Resolve (Defensive): Maximum Resolve Stacks
Rings	1. Attack Speed 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistance to All Elements / Lucky Hit: Change to Make Enemies Vulnerable	Jaguar Efficiency (Resource): The Hunter Cooldown Reduction Natural Finesse (Offensive): Damage to Close Enemies
Weapon	1. Maximum Life 2. Dexterity 3. Vulnerable Damage	Gorilla Augments (Weapon): Primary Gorilla Spirit Hall Potency Gorilla Finesse (Offensive): Gorilla Damage

The priority order of Resistances is Lightning > Poison > Fire > Cold > Shadow.

Generally, Armor is capped at 1,000. However, as this build scales with armor, it is recommended to try and get as much as you can.

Gems and Runewords

Listed below are the recommended Gems and Runewords to socket into your gear.

Gems

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

Runewords

Runewords are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and can be used to strengthen or fill a build’s weaknesses. Two Runewords have to be combined to create a new effect:

A trigger Runeword of Ritual that provides Offerings when the condition is met
An effect Runeword of Invocation that costs Offerings and triggers an action.

Once the Runeword of Ritual has generated enough Offerings, the Runeword of Invocation will trigger its effect. Some Runewords of Invocation will have overflow effects, meaning that extra Offerings that have been created will be used to empower the triggered effect. For more information on how Runewords work, take a look at our comprehensive Runeword Guide.

Runewords replace Gems in gear.
Only two Runeword pairs (4 Runes in total) can be equipped at a time.

The following are recommended Runeword combination options for the Gorilla Thorns endgame build of the Spiritborn:

Runeword Combination	Runeword Effects
Xol Ohm	Xol – Gain: 150 Offering. Evoke power from another Class. Ohm – Requires: 500 Offering (Overflow: Increased Duration). Cooldown: 2 Seconds. Evoke the Barbarian’s Enhanced War Cry, increasing your Movement Speed and damage dealt.
Feo Yom	Feo – Gain: 1000 Offering. Become Injured or Crowd Controlled (Cooldown: 20 seconds). Yom – Requires: 500 Offering. Cooldown: 5 Seconds. Evoke the Druid’s Petrify, Stunning enemies and increasing your Critical Strike Damage against them.
Bac Eom	Bac – Gain: 50 Offering. Travel 5 meters. Eom – Requires: 100 Offering. Cooldown: 1 Seconds. Reduce your active Cooldowns by 0.25 seconds.

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Visit the Alchemist and craft an Elixir providing any Resistance you need most, or the Assault Elixir to increase Attack Speed.

Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from activities like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!

Elixir of Precision provides the highest damage output increase.
Elixir of Advantage increases your attack speed
Elixir of Fortitude for additional survivability

Mercenaries

During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock different NPC Mercenaries who join you on your travels. In the early endgame, you can generally pick any mercenary you like, as they will not play an essential role until you optimize your build in the endgame. However, if you would prefer to get a recommendation, we would advise selecting Subo as your main companion, and Raheir as Reinforcement.

Subo Skill Tree choices:

Core Skill: Wire Trap
Core Passive: Ready At Hand
Iconic Skill: Trip Mines
Iconic Passive: Mastermind

Raheir Reinforcement choices:

Opportunity Skill: Pick “Injured” as opportunity skill (will automatically trigger when you become Injured)
Reinforcement Skill: Provoke

Rotation and Playstyle

Similar to other endgame builds we have for the Spiritborn, this one is mechanically straight-forward and should be easy to play, making it the perfect build to grind endgame.

The main source of damage in this build comes from Thorns, boosted by various effects. Toxic Skin poisons enemies, increasing Thorns damage to them. Dodging or blocking triggers additional Thorns damage through our Amulet (Bristleback Aspect), and Needleflare Aspect makes this AoE-damage, hitting multiple enemies. The Assimilation Aspect further increases dodge chance, which in turn leads to even more Thorns triggers.

Rake is going to be the skill we actively use the most, as it helps with Vigor generation due to the interaction between Vigorous and the Aspect of Wild Claws, allowing it to hit multiple targets. The Aspect of Plains Power is used for boss fights or tough elite enemies, while the unique Loyalty’s Mantle helmet boosts all our skills and reduces Vigor cost as well as cooldowns, because they are tagged as Gorilla skills due to our primary Guardian choice.

Thanks to the Scorn of the Earth boots and the Aspect of Turbulence, we can jump straight into the fight with a free cast of Soar and Vortex simply by using our Evade skill. After engaging in combat, Armored Hide will provide good protection, followed Ravager to trigger additional damage over 6 seconds:

Evade into the group of enemies to automatically trigger Soar and Vortex for free.
Armored Hide for survivability.
Counterattack to increase dodge change.
Ravager for the added damage buff.
Toxic Skin to poison enemies and increase the Thorns damage done to them.
Spam Rake to gain stacks of Ferocity and deal AoE damage!

Uniques and Mythic Uniques

Below you will find information on Uniques and Mythic Uniques that are useful and recommended for this build. Moreover, if you are interested in target farming Mythic Uniques, check out our How to Farm Mythic Uniques guide.

If a Unique or Mythic Unique is not listed here, it is NOT recommended and won’t benefit this specific build in any way.

Uniques

Listed below are the recommended and optional Unique Items for this build.

Scorn of the Earth (Required): Turns Evade into Soar, providing a free Soar cast every time you Evade.
Razorplate (Required): Increased Thorns Damage. Additionally, Thorns has a 10% chance to deal 100-200% increased damage on top.
Harmony of Ebewaka (Highly Recommended): Your Skills are all additionally Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla, or Centipede Skills based on your secondary Spirit Hall choice. Each Spirit type on a Skill increases its damage by 50%[x].
Wound Drinker (Highly Recommended): Generates additional Vigor each time you deal Thorns damage. Gain Toxic Skin‘s Passive Effect.

This Gorilla Spiritborn build does not require any Mythic Uniques!

If you want to have a look at builds that focus on other items or spirit guardians, you can find all our Spiritborn builds listed on this page.

Obol Gambling

Obol gambling is a great way to potentially find item upgrades or items missing from your build. Similar to Kadala in Diablo 3, you can use Obol vendors in town to try and get any specific item that you are missing. When a Level 100 Character spends Obols, all gear from that vendor will be 925 item power, the highest in the game, allowing you to fill out gear with the affixes or Legendary Aspects you need.

You can check out our Obol Gambling Tool Guide here!

Changelog

October 14th, 2024: Added Headhunter Glyph on 1st Paragon board (was missing).
October 2nd, 2024: Guide created and theorycrafted for Vessel of Hatred, Season 6.

Gorilla Thorns – Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4