Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn Endgame Guide! This build relies on Gorilla Skills and combines extreme speed with high AoE damage by spamming combos of 3x Crushing Hand that trigger Prodigy's Tempo. Through stacking Maximum Resolve tempers we scale damage and defense with Perseverance, Colossal and Rampant Crushing Hand.
This build doesn't need much to get started besides one Dungeon Codex Power, but Spiritborn has access to many strong aspects that amplify this build. Unyielding Hits and Redirected Force are powerful legendary effects that buff our damage by stacking armor and block chance. Later on, we include Harmony of Ebewaka to combine the effects of three Spirits at the same time before we switch to the final setup.
Our resources are solved differently depending on the tools available to us, starting with Vital Strikes and various ways of triggering Vulnerable which is later replaced by Prodigy's Tempo and the Rod of Kepeleke + Ring of the Midnight Sun combo which allows us to permanently crit with massive extra damage on every attack once we reach a high enough resource generation threshold.
All in all, the Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn represents a fun AoE machine that excels at speedfarming but still packs a punch against tough enemies. Let's get started!
During Season 6, the following unintended mechanics have been uncovered that make this build significantly stronger than normal. Beware that they may get fixed and the same build may not work remotely as well in future patches once these are addressed by the devs and for the time being it's possible to create setups that lean much further into all these bugs that would otherwise look absurd. Additionally, beware that through various double- or triple-dipping of multipliers you may experience vastly different performance with just minor tweaks in your setup as these bugs exponentially increase your damage done.
- Elixir of Antivenin grants +3000% life instead of +15%, allowing you to scale the below bonuses to the moon. This elixir can be crafted after completing the "Pinch of Poison" side quest in Gea Kul. Thanks to this, Overpower variants using Banished Lord's Talisman are massively favored over Unyielding Hits where possible.
- Viscous Shield, instead of giving you a 0-33% damage multiplier bonus, multiplies its benefit by the factor of (max life / base life). With base life 400 and typical endgame setups reaching ~30k+ you can expect to get roughly a 2000-3000% dmg increase instead of 33%. This also means that any time you lose any barrier, your damage suffers greatly. To reach these life values, we invest heavily into Resilient and Maximum Life that would otherwise be wasted.
- Jaguar, instead of dealing 15% true damage of the last 0.5sec, double dips on various damage multipliers, including the above bugged out Viscous Shield.
- Fell Soothsayer's, instead of dealing less damage per kill when chain reacting, actually deals more damage thanks to double dipping (triple dipping with the above) of various damage multipliers, allowing you to oneshot any enemy in the game including Pit 150 bosses. This also means that single target bosses that don't spawn adds to chain react from are much harder to kill and you may have to leave the run.
- Instead of capping at 100%, Interdiction with many Resolve stacks allows you to go above and get more damage with Redirected Force.
- Maximum Resolve stacks, instead of tempering to 2 and masterworking to 6 on a triple crit, actually masterwork to 13 for a much bigger than normal benefit from the above and Colossal.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Spiritborn Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Crushing Hand is our main ability. It's a simple skill that creates two AoE effects on your sides which overlap in the center. Focus elites while smaller enemies just explode on the side. With more Resolve stacks its damage increases, so way aim for a high count at all times. We also build extra barriers while attacking with this skill.
- Ravager adds chip damage against targets we hit. It also allows us to dash into packs using Crushing Hand and increases resource generation while active. This is an important part of the infinite resource engine with Ring of the Midnight Sun and we aim for 100% uptime.
- Scourge proves a powerful damage buff to crowd controlled enemies and massive amount of healing.
- Armored Hide is our defensive tool and main source of Resolve. Keep an eye on your stacks and activate it as needed for a powerful defensive buff from Perseverance and offensive with Colossal. Rock Splitter can be used early on to gain Vigor and a block chance buff and more Resolve stacks if needed. In the lategame, there is no need for a generator.
- The Hunter is our Ultimate Ability. It does a good amount damage on its own but is mainly used for a large range of offensive buffs: Supremacy, Resolution, Intricacy and Harmonious Hunter.
- Before the above final setup comes online by acquiring either Accursed Touch or Ring of the Midnight Sun, we play with Soar (over Armored Hide), The Seeker (over The Hunter), Rock Splitter (over Counterattack) and Vital Strikes (over Prodigy's Tempo) to solve our resources.
Skill Rotation
- Use Crushing Hand to deal damage. Ideally, overlap the two AoEs on elites and cast it 3x in a row every time to trigger Prodigy's Tempo.
- Keep Ravager active at all times for resources and to jump from pack to pack.
- Use Scourge on tough elites.
- Activate Armored Hide when low on Resolve stacks, when you're crowd controlled or when taking heavy damage.
- Activate The Hunter as often as possible for various buffs like Supremacy and Resolution.
- Press Counterattack to dodge all incoming hits (doesn't work against ground effects).
Spiritborn Spirit Hall
Primary: Jaguar for passives synergy and to deal extra damage.
Secondary: Gorilla since we stack Resolve synergies.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Spiritborn Spirit Hall Guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.
Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.
Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn Endgame Paragon
Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Fitness
- Spirit
- Outmatch
- Colossal
- Turf
To Level 46
- Spirit
- Outmatch
- Fitness
- Colossal
- Turf
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Poc + Que - We constantly spend all of our resources, triggering Earthen Bulwark for extra defense and synergy with Viscous Shield
- Xol + Jah - With the free Teleport cast we can go even faster and jump from pack to pack while oneshotting screens
- Ohm or Xal - Can be used instead for the War Cry damage or extra life buff if needed, especially in pit pushing
Alternative choices
As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows execute at 10% HP. When combined with Xol in your other Runeword it also generates large amounts of offering
- Cir - Generates offering by spamming your core skill
- Gar - For more crit (before Rod of Kepeleke)
- Mot - Generates Dark Shroud for extra defense
- Tam - We spam our core skill all the time
- Yul - Another efficient way of generating offering
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.
Hired: Raheir
He provides us with Fortify, Stuns, some extra damage, more armor for Unyielding Hits and prevents us from getting oneshot every 30 seconds thanks to Valiance. Beware that he's not present when playing in groups and make sure you remain armor capped without him.
Reinforcement: Varyana
We choose Earth Breaker for extra crowd controls which preferably happens exactly when we cast Scourge so monsters don't run away.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.
Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds
- 15+ total Crushing Hand ranks
- 30+ Resolve stacks
- 50%+ Attack Speed
- 1800+ Dexterity
- 4,000+ Armor
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 7,000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
It is critical that Ring of the Midnight Sun fully restores your Vigor every time you hit. If it doesn't you won't do any damage. You need at least 100% resource generation with a perfect 50% roll on Ring of the Midnight Sun. Here are a few data points showing Ring of the Midnight Sun roll and the required Resource generation to fully restore Vigor:
- 35% roll on Ring of the Midnight Sun requires 186% resource generation
- 40% roll on Ring of the Midnight Sun requires 150% resource generation
- 50% roll on Ring of the Midnight Sun requires 100% resource generation
This means that a good affix on Ring of the Midnight Sun is required to have a chance of making the combo with Rod of Kepeleke work. Resource Generation stacks multiplicatively with each source. In this build sources are: Intelligence, Vigorous, Measured Ravager, Paragon nodes on the Sapping board. This leaves you with Yen's Blessing and/or Resource Generation tempers on jewelry to finish the rest. With good endgame gear, one of these is enough, but before that you may need to add extra tempers, masterwork crits or Vigorous ranks to achieve this result. Learn more about this interaction in the mechanics section below.
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% All Resistances and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with offensive or utility stats.
- Before acquiring Ring of the Midnight Sun and great rolls on your gear, the combo of Accursed Touch + Vital Strikes is your ticket to infinite Vigor. If you don't have this aspect yet, check out the first step in the skill tree above that includes Soar & The Seeker instead of Armored Hide & The Hunter, among other smaller adjustments on the tree.
- Redirected Force scales your damage through Armored Hide, Patient Guard and your weapon if you're using a quarterstaff. Keep an eye on your buffs and time your defensive skill to boost it.
- Unyielding Hits is a weapon damage buff that we activate automatically with our skills. This aspect is so powerful that we overcap armor massively in order to scale it.
- Plains Power & Forest Power spawn Mystic Circles that grant you insane barriers, armor (for Unyielding Hits) and extra damage. Try to make the best use of these circles especially on bosses but don't let them slow you down when they're not in the right place.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher Paragon, your Armor & Resistance values are constantly shifting. Ensure to stay capped at with at least 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in to maximize survivability.
- Focus on reaching high Attack Speed and ranks to Furnace & Crushing Hand as your primary damage attributes on gear.
- Rod of Kepeleke is the first major upgrade. With it we no longer need to worry about resources and can switch to the endgame skill tree. However, just casting your Core Skill for free is only the beginning as we aim to gain the guaranteed empowered crit on every hit later on.
- In addition, this item allows you to benefit from buffs to Basic Skills like Basic Damage tempers, Basic Skill Ranks on pants, Follow Through and Prodigy's Tempo. We also add Moonrise instead of Unrelenting.
- Ring of the Midnight Sun is the second piece of the resource puzzle. With a good roll and enough extra Resource Generation, it's possible to fill your entire resource bar at once after Rod of Kepeleke consumed it all, creating an infinite loop of full and empty resources between every attack. In order to achieve this, we combine the bonus from Intelligence, resource tempers on jewelry, Yen's Blessing, Measured Ravager and paragon nodes like Opportunist on the Sapping.
- Resource Generation bonuses multiply with each source, so with a 50% Ring of the Midnight Sun roll you actually need less than a combined nominal 100% bonus from other sources. If you are not hitting the full resource reset on every attack, add or masterwork Resource Generation tempers or rank up Vigorous. See more in the Mechanics section below.
- Harmony of Ebewaka is an incredible damage buff but requires us to temporarily switch our secondary Spirit Hall to Centipede while using it.
- Maximum Resolve Stacks tempers grant us more hits until we lose our damage reduction but you still aim to keep them as high as possible at all times due to Perseverance, Colossal and Rampant Crushing Hand.
- Yen's Blessing (alternatively Rakanoth's Wake) is almost exclusively used for its huge all resistance bonus but also comes with a good amount of movement speed and helps us to reach the Resource Generation target. With it we can focus on stacking armor instead of resistances for Unyielding Hits.
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- We add Harlequin Crest because the combined value of armor, life and skill ranks equals roughly the same power as Harmony of Ebewaka.
- Thanks to the extra skill ranks, we also reset all our cooldowns way faster using Prodigy's Tempo, ensuring better uptime of important buffs.
- Lastly, we get more The Hunter to stack the ultimate passive bonuses more reliably and trigger Jaguar more often.
- Remember to switch the secondary Spirit Hall back to Gorilla after unequipping Harmony of Ebewaka.
- A second item to add is Shroud of False Death. We lose Resolve stacks but the combined value of many small bonuses on the skill tree make up for it.
- Make sure to stay resistance capped as you enter Torment 4. You can freely swap between resistance rolls and armor rolls on your gear and then tweak it further with gems in your jewelry.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- If you want to fly through easy content, replace Counterattack with Soar.
This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- When fighting monsters in high tiers of the Pit, remember that after crowd controlling elites for 5 seconds, they become Unstoppable for 8 seconds. This may be the right moment to start kiting them around because they can freely retaliate and it's difficult to keep them into the right position for shotgunning.
- We replace a few utility nodes and Auspicious to take up more damage on the tree and run Ohm instead of Jah for the War Cry buff.
- Take note that this build has a few crowd control-based damage modifiers such as Dominant and Revealing, which cannot activate on Unstoppable targets and non-staggered bosses.
This version is based on the Mythic variant but takes Banished Lord's Talisman instead of Unyielding Hits to guarantee a Crit + Overpower on every attack. This has comparable power to the original and can be easily swapped to if you are playing similar overpower builds with other core skills already. The main advantage is that this is way easier to gear as long as you hit the max. Vigor breakpoint of 245+ (explained below) because a lot of power comes from very difficult to acquire amulets in the original while the unique is easily farmable from Duriel & Andariel.
Gear & Skills
- The gameplay and setup are largely the same as before and adjustments can be made similar to the Speedfarming or Pit Pushing variants.
- Without Unyielding Hits, we no longer prioritize stacking armor and just aim for the cap of 1000 in Torment 4.
- Maximum Vigor: You get 100 base, 30 from Spiritual Attunement, from 20 Magic Nodes & 8 from a Rare Node on the Sapping board for a total of 158 baseline. (Note: 10 more with Shroud of False Death).
- For Banished Lord's Talisman to work, we need to have (275 - (base cost of skill)) resources. Crushing Hand costs 30 so the target is 245.
- We need another 87 Maximum Vigor (77 with Shroud of False Death) from Rod of Kepeleke and the buff of Outmatch slotted into the Sapping socket combined (changes with Glyph level). If you can't reach that, you can also add Tibault's Will, Harlequin Crest or Elixir of Resourcefulness II.
- Maximum Life and Fortify are powerful damage scalars for Overpower damage. This build achieves Fortify with Shield Charge from Raheir or in groups from party buffs or Assimilation on the chest (removing Shroud of False Death).
- Thanks to some bugs you can get even more damage out of this setup by stacking Maximum Resolve, Maximum Life and Barrier Generation as much as possible to boost the Redirected Force + Interdiction combo as well as Viscous Shield.
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
What can I do to improve survivability?
Why am I not doing any damage?
What can I do when I run out of Vigor all the time?
Why is Counterattack chosen but not on the bar?
Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?
Mechanics
Rod of Kepeleke + Ring of the Midnight Sun
Rod of Kepeleke
Jacinth Shell
Unyielding Hits
Mystic Circles
Convergence
Drive
In-Fighter
Counterattack
Ravager
Barrier Generation
Attack Speed Caps
Stagger
Video Guide
Summary
The Crushing Hand Gorilla Spiritborn is powerful AoE speedfarmer that nukes everything around it with ease.
- Spam Crushing Hand, ideally 3x in a row for the cooldown reset of Prodigy's Tempo.
- Combine Rod of Kepeleke and Ring of the Midnight Sun with enough resource generation to proc a guaranteed crit every time.
- Stack Armor, Attack Speed and Critical Strike synergies.
- Keep up your Resolve stacks.
- Kapow!
Credits
Written by wudijo