Touch of Death – Spiritborn Build for Diablo 4 (Season 13)

Build Introduction

This Touch of Death endgame build focuses on turning the ability into a Core skill with Swarm of Swarms , and using the Rod of Kepeleke Unique Charm to make it also count as a Basic Skill. This combination makes the build deal excellent damage over time when Touch of Death is used at maximum Vigor. It also has additional durability to survive being in melee combat with dangerous enemies.

Starting new? Begin with our Quill Volley or Payback leveling builds, and then switch to this one at Level 70. Have questions or feedback about this guide? Join Cashlarond’s livestream!

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Harmony of Ebewaka

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

Quick Navigation

Use the table below to jump to the sections you are looking for.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

RavagerScourgeArmored HideCounterattackThe DevourerTouch of Death

Wondering what comes after Level 70? 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

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 5.0% of Maximum Life, up to 30%, for 3 seconds.
  • All Skills are now also Gorilla Skills
• Secondary Spirit Guardian: 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	Grand Emerald	Harmony of Ebewaka	According to your secondary Spirit hall choice, your skills are all additionally Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla, or Centipede skills. Your skills deal x{x}% increased damage per Spirit type they have.
Chest	Bac Ohm	Aspect of Interdiction	Gain [1 – 15%] Block Chance per Resolve stack.
Gloves	Grand Emerald	Ferocious Aspect	Maximum Ferocity increased by [4 – 6].
Pants	Tam Que	Aspect of Glynn’s Anvil	Your maximum Resolve is increased by 2. Resolve increases your Damage Reduction by an additional + [1 – 5%].
Boots	Grand Emerald	Aspect of Tenacity	You gain Resolve for each [40 – 20] Vigor you gain while at maximum Vigor. This Resolve can overfill your maximum Resolve stacks by 5.
Amulets(50% bonus)	Grand Topaz	Echo of Kwatli	Increases your damage against Vulnerable enemies by 100%. After making an enemy Vulnerable, your next direct damage restores 5% of your Life and 10 Vigor, and removes the Vulnerable effect.
Ring	Grand Ruby	Aspect of Adaptability	Basic Skills generate 5 additional Primary Resource, once per Skill. Basic Skills deal [0.4-0.6%](x) increased damage for each point of Primary Resource you have.
Ring	Grand Topaz	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 [1 – 2.5%] per stack while you remain within.
Weapon (200% bonus)	Grand Diamond	Aspect of Redirected Force	Gain increased Critical Strike Damage equal [30 – 70%] of your Block Chance. Blocking doubles this bonus for 10 seconds.

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 Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	1. Dexterity 2. Armor 3. Maximum Life 4. Maximum Resource	Worldly Endurance – Maximum Resolve Stacks
Chest	1. Dexterity 2. Maximum Life 3. Armor 4. Vigor Regeneration OR Maximum Resource	Worldly Endurance – Maximum Resolve Stacks
Gloves	1. Dexterity 2. Attack Speed 3. Vulnerability Damage Multiplier 4. Critical Strike Damage Multiplier	Worldly Finesse – Vulnerability Damage
Pants	1. Dexterity 2. Armor 3. Maximum Life 4. Resistance	Worldly Endurance – Maximum Resolve Stacks
Boots	1. Dexterity 2.Maximum Life 3. Move Speed 4. Armor	Natural Schemes : Barrier Generation
Amulet	1. Dexterity 2. Maximum Life 3. Vulnerability Damage Multiplier 4. Critical Strike Damage Multiplier	Worldly Finesse – Vulnerability Damage
Ring 1	1. Dexterity 2. Critical Strike Damage Multiplier 3. Vulnerability Damage Multiplier 4. Attack Speed	Worldly Finesse – Vulnerability Damage
Ring 2	1. Dexterity 2. Critical Strike Damage Multiplier 3. Vulnerability Damage Multiplier 4. Attack Speed	Worldly Finesse – Vulnerability Damage
Weapon	1. Weapon Damage 2. Maximum Life 3. All Damage Multiplier 4. Critical Strike Damage Multiplier	Worldly Destruction – Attack Speed

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

• Harmony of Ebewaka (Required): 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%.
• Echo of Kwatli (Highly Recommended) – Provides a huge increase to damage against vulnerable targets, and generates additional Vigor and Heals you whenever you hit a vulnerable target, but removes the vulnerable effect.

Mythic Uniques

Currently, we have no recommended Mythic Uniques for this build, although that may change with further playtesting. Check back soon!

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 Diamond For More Damage	Grand Emerald For More Dexterity	Grand Gems For additional Resistances

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!

Here are the recommended Runeword combination options for this endgame build of the Spiritborn:

Runeword Combination	Runeword Effects
TamQue	Tam – Gain: 25 Offering, Cast a non-channeled Core Skill Que – Requires: 300 Offering, Invoke the Druid’s Earthen Bulwark, granting yourself a Barrier.
PocKry	Poc – Gain: 5 Offering, Spend 5% of your Maximum Resource. Kry – Requires: 300 Offering, Invoke the Spiritborn’s Vortex, dealing damage and Pulling In enemies.

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Paragon Board

Paragon unlocks at Level 70 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 100 version.

Once you can maintain the Vigor costs without using Ring of the Midnight Sun, you can switch the Menagerist Glyph to Ritual Glyph, and use Aspect of Plains Power on a regular Legendary ring, dropping the Ring of the Midnight Sun entirely. This is a sizeable damage increase but requires a great deal of Vigor generation.

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

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Season 13 Mechanics

Season 13 sees the launch of the long awaited Lord of Hatred Expansion. While there are no specific Seasonal Mechanics, there plenty of new systems to explore, including War Plans, Talismans, the Horadric Cube and more!

Talismans – Seals and Charms

One new addition with the Lord of Hatred Expansion is the Talisman system. This allows you to add a Seal and up to 6 Charms that provide powerful bonuses to your character. This includes adding additional Unique effects without having to wear a specific unique, or even to collect new Set Charms that grant more powerful bonuses as you socket more of the set. For a more detailed breakdown check out our General Talisman Guide here!

This build uses the powerful effects of the Rezoka’s Rage Charm Set’s Prowess buff to gain additional Cast Speed, Critical Strike Damage, Dodge Chance and Damage Reduction. It also uses the the Unique Charm Rod of Kepeleke to make your Touch of Death free to cast, and to grant a massive boost to damage whenever it is cast at maximum Vigor.

Seal	6 Charm Slots, Rezoka’s Rage Unique Effect
Charm Slot 1	Rod of Kepeleke
Charm Slot 2	Phoba of Rezoka’s Rage
Charm Slot 3	Fer of Rezoka’s Rage
Charm Slot 4	Mlor of Rezoka’s Rage
Charm Slot 5	Linta of Rezoka’s Rage
Charm Slot 6	Berú of Rezoka’s Rage

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Mercenaries

During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock Mercenaries to assist you. While you can choose freely early on, we recommend Raheir as your main companion, 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: Scourge
• Reinforcement Skill: Bloodthirst

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

This build, like most Spiritborn Builds, doesn’t have a set specific rotation, instead focusing on using most of your skills on cooldown to maintain high uptime on powerful buffs while spamming Touch of Death to deal most of its damage. The Devourer can be used for a powerful, on demand burst of damage against tough enemies, and to provide additional healing over time through the The Devourer‘s Healing passive node.

Let’s see how this build will look in action:

1. Use Ravager on cooldown to deal additional damage and gain additional Cooldown Reduction.
2. Use Scourge on cooldown to fear nearby enemies and gain additional Damage Reduction.
3. Use Counterattack on cooldown to increase your Dodge Chance and reduce Damage over Time taken.
4. Use Armored Hide on cooldown to gain a large amount of Block Chance, and additional Resolve.
5. Use The Devourer to apply damaging debuffs to enemies, and increase your healing over time.
6. Spam Touch of Death as your primary damage source.

In very difficult Endgame content you may encounter very dangerous enemies. In these situations it may be best to use a hit and run strategy, applying your Touch of Death and The Devourer damage over time effects and then moving away to avoid incoming damage, before re-engaging.

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Runeword Synergy

• PocKry – Spending Vigor by using Touch of Death with the Rod of Kepeleke Unique Charm will trigger the Spiritborn Vortex skill without needing to add it to the Skill Bar, allowing you to passively group enemies up through your regular skill use.
• TamQue – Consistently triggers Earthen Bulwark when spamming your Touch of Death skill, granting Barrier each time it activates for strong defensive sustain.

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Season 13 Updates

For a full overview of what is new in Season 13, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub. Here is a quick overview of seasonal changes relevant to this build.

• Season 13 overhauls the Skill Tree and adds the new Talisman system, as well as adding several new core systems, such as the War Plans endgame system and the Horadric Cube.

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Obol Gambling

Similar to Kadala in Diablo 3, the Purveyor of Curiosities lets you gamble your Obols for 850 item power gear at Level 70, 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 900.

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Changelog

• April 28th, 2026: Added support for New Skill Tree
• April 25th, 2026: Preliminary Guide Update for Lord of Hatred Season 13
• September 20th, 2025: Merged the build back to one page. Added Chaos Perks and Chaos Armor for Season 10.
• July 31, 2025: Removed mention of alternative Duelist’s Aspect on Chest.
• June 28th, 2025: Added Horadric Spell and Jewels for Season 9.
• April 20th, 2025: Added Boss Powers for Season 8. Adjusted Skill Tree and Spirit Hall choices.
• January 15th, 2025: Adjusted the build for Season 7:
  • Added Occult Gems and Witchcraft Powers recommendations.
  • Removed Tyrael’s Might for Shroud of False Death on the chest.
  • Switched Soar for Vortex.
  • Changed gems and runewords.
• October 13th, 2024: Added Video Guide.
• October 11, 2024: Updated Paragon Board and changed Runewords from Weapon to Armor.
• October 9th, 2024: Updated Skills, Paragon, Gear, and exchanged Xol for Tam Rune.
• October 5th, 2024: Guide theorycrafted and created for Vessel of Hatred, Season 6.