If you’ve heard one thing about the Spiritborn in Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred, it’s probably that it’s broken. Not in a bad way, but in a “how am I doing so much damage?” way. Developer Blizzard Entertainment is also well aware of the incredible numbers the Spiritborn is putting up, and they plan to do something about it — just not quite yet.
In a recent developer livestream, Blizzard addressed the Spiritborn’s overwhelming power. According to the developer, nearly 60 percent of players are currently using the Spiritborn class, leaving the remaining five classes to pick up the scraps. For comparison, the most popular class last season was the Sorcerer, which attracted about 30 percent of players. Part of that popularity is undoubtedly just that Spiritborn is the newest addition to Diablo 4’s roster, and it happens to also be fun as hell to play. But part of what makes it so fun is its ability to mow down monsters at an incredible rate, and it turns out not all of that is intentional.
Blizzard has already had to squash a few damage-increasing bugs with the Spiritborn, including one that let them unleash a constant stream of electrified feathers so powerful, it actually lowered the frame rate for other players online. There’s nothing quite so disruptive left in Spiritborn’s kit at this point, but Blizzard has said that it’s still way stronger than it should be, thanks to some unintentional synergies between its skills that are providing extreme boosts to damage. Given that, players were ready for Vessel of Hatred’s mid-season update on November 15 to cut the Spiritborn down to size. But it turns out the patch is bringing nothing but buffs.
Rather than nerf the Spiritborn, Blizzard is using this patch to level the playing field a bit by increasing everyone’s damage output. That applies even to the Spiritborn, which will see buffs to the skills that players aren’t using as much, which could help encourage players away from its current most busted builds. The buffs coming to Spiritborn are small compared to those aimed at other classes.
While the mid-season patch attempts to raise the floor for all classes, Season 7 will see Spiritborn brought down closer to everyone else’s level.
“In Season 7, we are going to be fixing all the unintended interactions we found with Spiritborn,” class designer Adam Jackson said. “You can expect a lot of changes there. Until then, enjoy what you have now.”
Blizzard hasn’t revealed exactly what will be changing about the Spiritborn or how much players can expect their damage output to be slashed. What we do know is that players will get a preview of those changes before they hit the game if they choose to. Sometime after Thanksgiving, Blizzard will introduce a public test realm — an alternate server that lets players test upcoming changes — with the upcoming Spiritborn nerfs implemented. Season 7 is expected to launch in mid-January on the game’s main servers. The developer will share more details on the PTR in another livestream held at some point during the week of November 18.
Whatever adjustments Blizzard makes to the Spiritborn, they’re all but guaranteed to be controversial among some players. Since the upcoming changes are aimed at fixing unintended interactions, players who’ve spent the most time trying to optimize their characters will see the biggest nerfs, meaning that some players may not be much worse off in Season 7. No matter what, we have another few months to have fun with the age of the overpowered Spiritborn. Before Season 7 arrives, it’s a good idea to take Jackson’s advice and enjoy Diablo 4’s most broken class.
