Rake Thorns Spiritborn Endgame Build Guide

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:

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Skill Rotation

• Hold Rake, dash from pack to pack with The Hunter and Soar.
• Spam Armored Hide whenever it is off cooldown..
• (On Elites & Bosses) Make sure they are poisoned by either Toxic Skin or Scourge.

Spirit Hall

Spirit Hall

Primary: ‍Gorilla is how you convert your Thorns damage into active damage by adding it to all of your skills. You also generate life and barrier with this spirit hall.

Secondary: ‍Gorilla grants to unstoppable when you are at 5 Resolvecharges, which is very easy considering the secondary hall also increases your maximum Resolveby 2.

Unlocking the Spirit Hall

Once you reach level 15, you have to complete a short questline starting in Gea Kul, Kehjistan. A Priority Quest leads you there to help out Tarka. After a few stops outside of town you have to enter the Sacred Hunting Grounds and defeat the Spirit Beast. While inside this dungeon you have to use the emote wheel at two separate stops, once for "Help", once for "Thanks" in order to progress. The boss fight is relatively long and difficult for low level characters, so it's recommended to do this quest on normal. After finishing the quest your secondary Spirit Hall unlocks automatically at level 30.

Use the slider to see 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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

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, Helms, Pants or Chest Armor.

Best in Slot

• Zan + Que - Casts Earthen Bulwark granting you a large barrier for defense and more damage with Viscous Shield
• Tam + Ohm - War Cry buffs you with extra damage & Berserking for massive damage output

Alternative choices

As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Poc - You continuously gain and spend tons of Vigor, so this is an easy activator
• Vex - The extra skill ranks help with increasing damage
• Xal - For extra defense
• Gar - To reach 100% crit more reliably
• Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and executes enemies at 10% HP, can be combined with Xol in your other Runeword to generate large amounts of offering
• Yom - Petrify is a massive damage multiplier, especially against bosses

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 you with Fortify, Stuns, some extra damage, more resistances and prevents you from getting oneshot every 30 seconds thanks to Valiance. Beware that he's not present when playing in groups and make sure you remain resistance cap without him.

Reinforcement: Subo

Choose Trip Mines to knock enemies down when you cast Rake.

To enable the Rake Thorns 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.

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Rake Thorns 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.

This section is designed to guide your Rake Thorns Spiritborn from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter and Ancestral.

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?

The build works really well when you decimate everything in seconds, but may get overwhelmed if fights are long against high level monsters. There are several adjustments you can make when you have trouble with more difficult content:

• Check if your Armor & Resists are capped.
• Use defensive consumables.
• Roll Maximum Life instead of offensive stats on as many pieces as possible.
• Kite enemies when they become Unstoppable.

How can I trigger Unstoppable?

You are almost always unstoppable with this build thanks to the Gorilla secondary Spirit Hall. You must maintain 5 stacks of Resolve for unstoppable and can lose a stack when you get hit.

What can I do for better Vigor recovery?

Make sure you are spamming Scourge for Vigor generation. Try to find a very high roll on your Wound Drinker ring.

Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?

Generally hardcore and softcore share the same builds. Outside of being more prudent in your gameplay, you can also tweak the setup slightly to raise your survivability:

• Focus more on armor & resists, making sure that they are always capped especially as you transition into higher torment difficulties.
• Focus more on maximum life rolls, for example replacing DPS stats like main attributes, attack speed, critical strike chance and additive increased damage rolls. Also masterwork life more than normal if no other crucial stats have priority.
• Focus on adding defensive skills, passives and paragon nodes first as you level up.
• Play on a slightly lower difficulty than normal, don't push into difficult territory. As long as you can deal with all enemies swiftly, they can't retaliate.
• Use defensive elixirs and incenses instead of offensive ones.

Mechanics

Attack Speed Caps

• While all the exact mechanics are much more nuanced, there are two separate Attack Speed Bonus caps of +100% that apply to all builds for a total potential of +200%. For Spiritborn, these two caps are distributed in the following way:

Cap 1

• Gear rolls
• Paragon nodes
• Elixir
• Artillery Shrine

Cap 2

• Ferocity
• Accelerating
• Adaptive Stances

Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.

Stagger

Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects and instead take Stagger Damage when hit by one. The amount of stagger damage dealt depends on the type of CC and is proportional to its duration. After being hit by a CC effect, the Boss will temporarily take less Stagger Damage from a CC of the same type.

Effectively, this means that when you're just spamming one type of CC you don't need to spam any more of it than what you need to keep a normal enemy permanently CC-d. To stagger the Boss quickly you need to use as many different types of CC as possible. After the Boss is staggered it gains a certain amount of stacking Stagger Damage Reduction for the rest of the fight:

• After 1st Stagger: 20%
• After 2nd Stagger: 40%
• After 3rd Stagger: 60%
• After 4th Stagger: 90%

Bosses naturally regain 1% of their Stagger HP every second and when that regen is combined with 90% Stagger Damage Reduction it becomes borderline impossible to Stagger the Boss again unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.

Coming soon.

• The Rake Thorns Spiritborn is a hard hitting, fast-paced build that performs well in any scenario. With many mobility and utility skills at your disposal you are ready for anything that comes your way.
• You stack as much Thorns damage as possible and use your Gorilla Spirit Hall and skills to convert thorns into direct damage.
• Stay in your Mystic Circle and move them with Soar thanks to the Sky Power affix.
• Attack speed increases the rate you apply your thorns damage and your generation.
• Jump from pack to pack with your mobility skills and keep your Resolve stacks up with Armored Hide.

Written by Lucky Luciano

Reviewed by Wudijo