Poison Thorns – Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4 (Season 9)

Build Introduction

Poison Thorns focuses on reflecting incoming damage back to enemies, using the Razorplate chest and Balazan’s Maxtlatl uniques to deal heavy Thorns damage. This build combines Poison damage with Toxic Skin to improve your damage-over-time (DoTs) and maximize Thorns damage through your core skill, Quill Volley. Choosing the Jaguar as your Spirit Guardian will also increase your overall damage, making this build highly efficient in punishing enemies.

Starting new? Begin with our Quill Volley Leveling Build and switch to this one at Level 60.
Have questions or feedback about this guide? Join Ghazzy’s livestream and ask him!

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Loyalty’s Mantle

Razorplate

Mother’s Embrace

Balazan’s Maxtlatl

Required Aspects

Rebounding Aspect

Want to know more about the Uniques supporting this setup? Jump to the Uniques section.

Quick Navigation

Want to skip ahead? Use the table below to jump to the sections you are looking for.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Toxic SkinRavagerArmored HideThe HunterQuill VolleyVortex

Wondering what comes after Level 60? Head to the Paragon Board section to power up the build even further.

And if you want to see how everything plays out in combat, check out the Rotation and Playstyle section for a quick breakdown. If you are missing skill points, complete Renown Tier 1-3 in every zone.

Spiritborn Class Mechanic – Spirit Hall Choice

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

• Primary: Jaguar
  • Every 15th time you deal direct damage to an enemy with a Jaguar Skill, unleash an additional strike dealing 15% of the damage you have dealt to them in the last 0.5 seconds. All Skills are now also Jaguar Skills.
• Secondary: Jaguar
  • Maximum Ferocity is increased by 1. Gain 1 stack of Ferocity whenever you kill an enemy or damage a Boss.

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Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

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

Gear Slot	Gems/Runes	Aspect / Unique	Legendary Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Ahu Ohm	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 and {x}% Cooldown Reduction.
Chest	Poc Que	Razorplate	Thorns have a 10% chance to deal {x}% increased damage.
Gloves		Aspect of Plains Power	Lucky Hit: Up to a 25% change 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
Pants	Grand Amethyst	Balazan’s Maxtlatl	Each attack damages Close enemies for {x}% of your Thorns and deals 100% of this damage as Poisoning over 3 seconds. Each time you’ve retaliated with Thorns, for 5 seconds the Poisoning damage is increased by 100%, up to 300%.
Boots		Duelist’s Aspect	Maximum Ferocity increased by {x}.
Amulets(50% bonus)	Grand Skull or Luminate Eye	Vehement Brawler’s Aspect	Casting an Ultimate Skill increases your damage by {x}% for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill Ranks
Ring	Grand Skull or Seal of Denial	Rebounding Aspect	Quill Volley’s feathers explode at their apex and return to where they were cast, dealing {x}% of their normal damage both times.
Ring	Grand Skull or Idol From Below	Mother’s Embrace	If a Core skill hits 4 or more enemies, {x}% of the Resource is refunded.
Weapon (200% bonus)	Grand Amethyst	Conceited Aspect	Deal {x}% increased damage while you have a Barrier active.

Curious how this build compares to other endgame options? Take a look at our Endgame Build Tier List.

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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. Be sure to check our Tempering and Masterworking guides for more details about these topics. Want to jump back up to the gear table?

Slot	Targeted Gear Affix	Tempering Affixes
Helm	All Stats Movement Speed Damage Reduction Ranks to Velocity	N/A
Chest	Thorns Thorns Thorns Thorns	N/A
Gloves	1. Dexterity 2. Lucky Hit: Up to a 15% chance to restore primary resource 3. Attack Speed	Jaguar Finesse (Offensive): Mystic Circle Potency Natural Schemes (Utility): Barrier Generation
Pants	Dexterity Maximum Life Thorns Ranks to Bastion	N/A
Boots	1. Attacks reduce Evade’s cooldown by 1.5 seconds 2. Maximum Life 3. Movement Speed 4. Dexterity	Eagle Innovation (Utility): Vortex Size Natural Motion (Mobility): Movement Speed
Amulet	1. Dexterity 2. Attack Speed 3. Ranks to Potent	Jaguar Finesse (Offensive): Mystic Circle Potency Spiritborn Recovery (Defensive): + Resilient
Ring	1. Attack Speed 2. Dexterity 3. Resistance to All Elements	Jaguar Finesse (Offensive): Mystic Circle Potency Jaguar Efficiency (Resource): The Hunter Cooldown reduction
Ring	Attack Speed Critical Strike Chance Lucky Hit Chance All Stats	N/A
Weapon	1. Quaterstaff: 45% Block Chance 2. Lucky Hit: Up to a 15% chance to restore primary resource 3. Maximum Life 4. Dexterity	Jaguar Finesse (Offensive): Mystic Circle Potency Jaguar Augments (Weapons): Primary Jaguar Spirit Hall Potency

Prioritize capping all of your Resistances, and make sure to reach the Armor Cap of 1,000. However, certain builds that scale with armor, such as this one, benefit from having more armor in general. Furthermore, in higher difficulties, there will be a penalty to armor and resistance, so you will need a higher amount to compensate for the loss.

Looking for progression beyond gear? See our Paragon recommendations or Runewords Synergy next.

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Uniques and Mythic Uniques

Below, you will find information on Uniques and Mythic Uniques that are useful and recommended for this build. 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.

• Loyalty’s Mantle (Required): 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.
• Razorplate (Required): Thorns have a 10% chance to deal {x}% increased damage.
• Balazan’s Maxtlatl (Required): Each attack damages Close enemies for {x}% of your Thorns and deals 100% of this damage as Poisoning over 3 seconds. Each time you’ve retaliated with Thorns, for 5 seconds the Poisoning damage is increased by 100%, up to 300%.
• Mother’s Embrace (Required): If a Core skill hits 4 or more enemies, {x}% of the Resource is refunded.

Mythic Uniques

The Poison Thorns Spiritborn does not require any Mythic Uniques!

If you are interested in target farming Mythic Uniques, check out our How to Farm Mythic Uniques guide. Or you can return to the Build Requirements.

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Gems and Runewords

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

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Grand Amethyst For more Damage Over Time	Grand Amethyst For more Barrier Generation	Horadric Jewels or Grand Skull For more Armor

In Season 9, you should rather socket Horadric Jewels in your Jewerly. These gems will give you +120 Armor, +6% Resistance to All Elements and a unique power to boost your Horadric Powers. Check out more information in this section.

Runewords

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!

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

Runeword Combination	Runeword Effects
Ahu Ohm	Ahu – Gain: 15 Offering. Lucky Hit: Up to a 100% chance against non-Healthy enemies Ohm – Requires: 600 Offering. Cooldown: 2 seconds. Invoke the Barbarian’s War Cry, increasing your damage dealt by x15% for 6 seconds.
Poc Que	Poc – Gain: 5 Offering. Spend 5% of your Maximum Resource. Que – Requires: 300 Offering. Cooldown: 1 Seconds. Evoke the Druid’s Earthen Bulwark, granting yourself a Barrier.

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Paragon Board

Paragon unlocks at Level 60 and plays a big role in endgame progression. The following Legendary Nodes and Glyphs are recommended for this build. Keep in mind that each Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the Level 46 version.

Need a refresher on how the skills are set up? Click here to return to the Skill Tree section.

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Horadric Spell (Season 9)

During Season 9, you will unlock Horadric Spellcraft, letting you build and bind your own spell to one of your active skills. You can upgrade your spell’s power using Horadric Phials, increasing its impact on your build.

Slot	Power	Effect
Catalyst	Celestial Surge pair it with Quill Volley	Awaken an Oracular Rune that Pulls In all surrounding enemies. A torrent of stars follow that randomly strike the area 20 times for damage each. Rank 10: Stars periodically fall around you and are guaranteed to crash around a Nearby enemy for the same damage.
Infusion	Corrosive Vapor	Enemies damaged by it take 320% Poisoning damage over 4 seconds. This effect can only happen on each enemy every 3 seconds. While equipped, your Poison Damage Bonus is equal to that of your highest Damage Type Bonus. Rank 5: Deactivates monster Vampiric effects for 8 seconds.
Arcana	Bottled Wind	Invoking your Catalyst grants a Barrier equal to 30% of your Maximum Life for 4 seconds. After it dissipates, its essence is bottled back up (+4% each rank).
Arcana	Fractured Core	Your Catalyst deactivates monster Damage Resistance Aura effects for 2.5 seconds, but you take 10% more stacking damage for the same time (+0.5 each rank).
Arcana	Reactive Ooze	After your Catalyst activates, you gain 5% Maximum Resource Generation per second for the next 10 seconds (+3% each rank).

Horadric Jewels

Horadric Jewels can be crafted at the Wayfinder using Horadric Phials and Gem Fragments, once you collected the Horadric Tome for this specific jewel. You can collect these recipes by doing Horadric Strongrooms in Nightmare Dungeons.

Horadric Jewel	Effect
Idol From Below	You gain 6%[x] primary stat, 8%[x] maximum life and you are always Unhindered. However, you will be hunted in Sanctuary’s darkest places by Jewel Guardians who were entombed to protect this relic.
Seal of Denial	While you have two or more Arcana from the School of Denial equipped, gain 30%[x] more Barrier, Fortify and Thorns.
Luminate Eye	Your Catalytic Skill gains 25%[+] Cooldown Reduction.

Mercenaries

During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock different NPC Mercenaries who join you on your travels. For this build, we would advise selecting Raheir as your main companion, for the added survivability he provides, and Varyana as Reinforcement.

Raheir Skill Tree choices:

• Core Skill: Ground Slam
• Core Passive: Raheir’s Aegis
• Iconic Skill: Bastion
• Iconic Passive: Inspiration

Varyana Reinforcement choices:

• Opportunity Skill: Quill Volley
• Reinforcement Skill: Bloodthirst

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

This Poison Thorns build revolves around maximizing Thorns damage while poisoning enemies with Toxic Skin. Thorn damage is significantly improved by gear like Razorplate, and Balazan’s Maxtlatl. You will increase Thorns procs with Toxic Skin, and Armored Hide, making the reflected damage devastating to your enemies.

Additionally, the ring Mother’s Embrace helps with the resource costs of your core skill Quill Volley. Paired with Rebounding Aspect, it builds a very strong main skill to use to deal damage. Loyalty’s Mantle also plays an important role in reducing Vigor costs so that you can manage your resource more easily.

Overall, this build is straightforward: use your abilities to poison enemies and apply damage while your Thorns reflect enemy attacks, making it incredibly effective against large groups. This combination of high Thorns damage and efficient Vigor management results in an easy and powerful playstyle.

1. Engage with Vortex to gather your enemies.
2. Use Armored Hide to boost your survivability and block chance.
3. Activate Toxic Skin to increase Thorns damage.
4. Activate Ravager, allowing your core skills to dash to the targets
5. Use The Hunter for additional damage.
6. Spam Quill Volley.

Runeword Synergy

• Ahu Ohm: Ahu gains 15 Offering when you trigger a Lucky Hit on non-Healthy enemies. That Offering fuels Ohm, which activates War Cry, giving you +15% increased damage for 6 seconds. It has a 2-second cooldown, so if you are building Offering fast, you can keep this buff rolling during big fights. Together, this combo gives you a loop: damage enemies, generate Offering, and trigger War Cry to power through everything else.
• Poc Que: Poc gives you 5 Offering every time you spend 5% of your Maximum Resource. It is easy to trigger often in any active build. Que spends 300 Offering to grant you Earthen Bulwark, giving you a Barrier. The synergy here keeps your survivability high during sustained combat, letting you rotate resource spenders and trigger frequent Barriers as you farm or push through endgame.

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! 

The following Elixirs are useful for most Spiritborn builds:

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

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Season 9 Updates

For a complete overview of Season 9, its mechanics and theme, new leveling activity, and other changes coming with the Season of Witchcraft, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub here.

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

• Balazan’s Maxtlatl (New Unique Pants):
  • Affixes
    • +107-121 Dexterity
    • +424-457 Maximum Life
    • +268-373 Thorns
    • +2-3 Ranks to Bastion
  • Power
    • Each attack damages Close enemies for 100-150% of your Thorns also deals 100% of this damage as Poisoning over 3 seconds.
    • Each time you’ve retaliated with Thorns, for 5 seconds the Poisoning damage is increased by 100%, up to 300%.
• Harmonious Hunter:
  • Damage bonus to Injured decreased from 100%[x] to 50%[x].
  • Reduced maximum Ferocity gained from 4 to 2.
• Exalted Hunter:
  • Previous (on PTR): Killing an enemy while The Hunter is present reduces this cooldown by 5 seconds. Hitting a boss reduces its cooldown by 1 second.
  • Now: Killing an enemy while The Hunter is present has a 40% chance to instantly reset its Cooldown. This chance is halved after each consecutive reset.
• Noxious Resonance:
  • Previous: Your Critical Strikes cause your Poisoning on an enemy to burst, dealing 100% of the total Poisoning instantly to them and 20% of it to surrounding enemies before removing the Poisoning effect from the primary target. This damage is increased by 30% of your Critical Strike Damage bonus.
  • Now: Your Critical Strikes cause your Poisoning on an enemy to burst, dealing 180% of the total Poisoning instantly to them and 20% of the burst to surrounding enemies before removing the Poisoning effect from the primary target.
• Nourishment: Damage bonus now applies to all Poison damage instead of just Poisoning Damage.
• Paragon Board – Convergence
  • Previous: You deal bonus damage equal to 20%[x] of your 2 highest bonuses to Damage with Physical, Fire, Lightning, Cold, Poison, and Shadow combined, up to 30% total.
  • Now: You deal bonus damage equal to 3.5%[x] of all your bonuses to Damage with Physical, Fire, Lightning, Cold, Poison, and Shadow combined, up to 30% total.

Obol Gambling

Similar to Kadala in Diablo 3, the Purveyor of Curiosities lets you gamble your Obols for 750 item power gear at Level 60, making them a great way to fill in missing affixes, Aspects, or upgrades. There is also a small chance to receive an Ancestral piece with item power 800.

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Changelog

• June 28th, 2025: Added Horadric Spells and Jewels, as well as changed Skills, Gear, Paragon, and Mercenaries for Season 9.
• January 18th, 2025: Added Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems for Season 7.
• October 20th, 2024: Guide created for Vessel of Hatred, Season 6.