Rock Splitter Gorilla 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

• You need to stand still as much as possible during combat. This enables your Runewords to activate and pull enemies into you.
• You useRock Splitter to deal all of your damage. This is also additional defense with the Block Chance from Enhanced Rock Splitter
• You need to use Scourge on cooldown for ongoing heals.
• Defensively, you have several tools in your kit. Rotate Counterattack and Armored Hide while maintaining the innate Block Chance with your Rock Splitter
• (On Bosses) When Bosses near the Injured threshold, cast The Hunter for a 100% multiplier.

Spiritborn Spirit Hall

Primary: Centipede selection grants a good amount of Damage Reduction as well as Slow to enemies. This also enables the use of Centipede damage passives.

Secondary: Gorilla is an awesome utility allowing for permanent uptime on Unstoppable

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 if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Rock Splitter Gorilla Thorns Spiritborn focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Lith + Qua- While standing still, you constantly cast Earthen Bulwark which grants Barrier but most importantly triggers the Rune for the next Runeword.
• Xol + Kry - Kry drastically improves the gameplay of this build. Due to the constant Fear from Scourge, this allows you to constantly pull the mobs back into range.

Alternative choices

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

• Noc - Scourge constantly applies fear and has a very high uptime so this is a good generator
• Cir - With your primary damage coming from Rock Splitter this is an easy generator with high attack speed
• Xal - For extra defense
• Ohm - 15% Damage multiplier
• Mot - A decent amount of damage reduction

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 assist you from time to time in certain situations.

Hired : Raheir

He offers you unparalleled defense that in turn buffs your offense. Valiance and Bastion reduce the damage you take and save you in dire situations. Inspiration gives you two great damage boosts as Raheir uses his skills either to save you or to attack enemies. 

Reinforcement : Varyana

Call Varyana, the Berserker Crone as your reinforcement Mercenary when you cast Counterattack to attack with Ancient Harpoons, to pull enemies in. This is important as  Scourge is constantly fearing and with your Runeword selections you want to standing still as much as possible. Pulling enemies in is a huge quality of life improvement for the build which will then keep them pulled in with Vortex.

To enable the Rock Splitter Gorilla 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.

Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Rock Splitter Gorilla 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 Rock Splitter Gorilla Thorns 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.

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?

With the Gorilla secondary, you have an insanely high uptime on Unstoppable however, if you find yourself in a pinch and your Gorilla is inactive, you can use Armored Hide to become Unstoppable.

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.
• Include a source of Unstoppable if possible to get out of crowd controls.
• Use defensive elixirs and incenses instead of offensive ones.

Do regular thorns impact this build?

The damage that you are scaling with this build is applied directly with Rock Splitter. While you do gain some damage from thorns when you are hit, it is negligible.

Mechanics

Sepazontec

• This Unique weapon is a massive damage increase. This enables your Rock Splitter to always utilize the third attack which is what applies the direct Thorns damage for this build.
• Getting a GA on Chance for Basic Skills to Deal Double Damage, is a substantial damage increase and allows for a high chance to deal double damage while also hitting the third attack three times per hit.

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
• Elixirs
• Moonrise
• Artillery Shrine
• Mercenaries

Cap 2

• Ferocity
• 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.

Video coming soon

The Rock Splitter Gorilla Thorns is a fast paced, defensive, AOE damage dealing machine. You utilize your basic attack to deal all of your damage with thorns, there is no resource management and no downtime in your combat.

• Rock Splitter applies thorns on every hit with the use of Sepazontec.
• Incredibly defensive build. Rotate your defensive skills to ensure maximum survivability.
• The Hunter can be used both as a mobility skill and a lethal damage skill when mobs are injured.
• Standing still while fighting is very important to proc your Runewords as the Vortex pulls all mobs into you.

Written by seroc

Reviewed by Wudijo