Rumors of a Paladin or “sword-and-board” class have been circling around Diablo 4 since before it was released. Of the five original classes, the “holy warrior” archetype is the one that the acclaimed ARPG has truly felt like it’s been missing.
As a huge Crusader fan in Diablo 3, and an enjoyer of Paladin archetypes, I was hopeful about getting a Paladin-like character with Diablo 4’s first expansion. Instead, Blizzard announced that the brand-new Spiritborn would be Diablo 4’s first new class, coming in the Vessel of Hatred expansion on Oct. 8.
At first, I have to admit my reaction was “What a bummer.” After all, this means waiting another year at least until I can embody an updated version of a Crusader in Diablo 4’s open-world Sanctuary. But on July 11, I was able to visit Blizzard and get a preview of the Spiritborn to learn what it is, how it plays, and perhaps most importantly, why it isn’t a Paladin. And after speaking to one of Blizzard’s game designers, Bjorn Mikkelson, and associate class designer Stephen Stewart, I’ve changed my tune. I’m glad that the Spiritborn will be the first new class in Diablo 4 instead of a holy warrior.
The pitch for the Spiritborn is that they’re agile warriors who use melee strikes to deal with their foes. While attacking, they can also call on their Spirit Guardians to decimate their enemies. There are four Spirit Guardians to choose from, and each has their own identity: Gorilla, Jaguar, Eagle, and Centipede.
Each Spirit Guardian has their own set of abilities in the ability tree — typically one per primary, core skill, ultimate, etc. — that fits into their theme. Jaguar abilities are all about speed and fire, whereas Gorilla abilities focus on protecting themselves and others while dealing physical damage. Eagle abilities have far more range than the other Spirit Guardians and focus on precision and lightning damage. The visually grossest and flashiest of the four is the Centipede, which is all about poison and the earth.
The Spiritborn’s main class mechanic allows you to essentially pledge yourself to two Spirit Guardians at once — or the same Spirit Guardian twice. From there, you can mix and match any of the classes’ abilities together to create new synergies. Your primary Spirit Guardian will give you a unique passive and change all of your skills to use that Guardian’s keyword (i.e. if you pledge yourself to the Jaguar, all skills in your tree will become Jaguar skills). Your second Spirit Guardian will grant you their secondary passive, which is another unique effect that can change up your build.
Just hearing about how the class works, I found myself comparing it to the Druid. Both classes pledge themselves to animal spirits and call forth that power to deal damage. But when I tried to compare the two classes mid-interview, Mikkelson and Stewart gave me a bit of an “ehh, not really” look, which I understood mere moments into my play session. The Spiritborn doesn’t feel like the Druid at all. No, the Spiritborn feels like the Monk from Diablo 3.
As someone who always wanted to enjoy Monk but could never get into their heavy support builds, I was immediately delighted by the Spiritborn. It felt like I’d always wanted Monk to feel. Each of my primary skills dashed me to my target, and each had a three-hit combo. I had skills to help me control the battlefield — like one that let me vacuum up all the enemies around me — and others that gave me interesting ways to deal damage. For example, I had a Gorilla skill that caused me to slam the ground, making two fist imprints on either side of me. Each circle did decent damage, but if I could trap an enemy in the Venn diagram-like overlap of the circles, I’d deal even more. Within minutes I was able to both control the battlefield and move through it unencumbered.
Blizzard set me up with four different versions of the Spiritborn, each set at level 30 and centered around a specific Spirit Guardian. In my brief session, I was amazed at how different each felt — like four distinct classes rolled into one. And these were just the purified forms, builds meant to accentuate the speed of Jaguar or the slow tankiness of Gorilla. Spiritborn feels like it’ll be a fast, simplistic delight in the hands of a player who just wants to focus on one style. But it’s easy to imagine Spiritborn also serving as the perfect class for the theory-crafters out there.
Even with the developer’s excitement around the Spiritborn, the shadow of the Paladin hung over my trip. Fellow members of the press brought it up quite candidly in our group interview, and Mikkelson mentioned it unprompted in my chat with him and Stewart. But all of these mentions served a purpose. Not to explain away why there is no holy class, but to make it clear that this alternative is better in the long run.
“If we’re sitting down and making Paladin, that is a very specific ask, that has a very specific history in our game of different expectations,” said Mikkelson. “If I’m telling you it’s the Spiritborn, what are your expectations for that? Right? Like, you’ve never heard this name before, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything to you. And so it’s a somewhat different brainstorming process of almost being like, ‘What could someone want from this? And how can I try to make that a reality?’ And there’s endless possibilities.”
“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Stewart. “Because when the world is completely open, then you can do whatever you want. But then you’re trying to distill down ‘well, what would make the class sing the most?’ And you don’t have any guardrails, right? Sometimes constraints help, because it keeps you creatively in a certain box, where you know that these are the things that are expected. And then how do we innovate on top of that? Even if we decide that we want to do something that pays more homage to classes that have come before, it’ll be from this new perspective.”
Paladins or Crusaders come with a lot of baggage. People have been playing those characters for over a decade, so players will be expecting them to come with certain builds to satisfy everyone’s favorites. In the same way that you can’t imagine a Barbarian shipping without a Whirlwind build, a Paladin must have Blessed Hammer spam, Captain America shield throws, and so on. But the Spiritborn is so unique and creative that it has clearly given the Diablo 4 developers a chance to experiment with something new. And that gives me hope that these devs will come to their holy class with fresh eyes whenever it does inevitably appear.
And so, until Blizzard announces a Paladin-like, I’ll have the Spiritborn to hold me over. And if what I’ve seen is any indication, I’ll have plenty of interesting builds to try while I wait.
Disclosure: This article is based on a preview event held at Blizzard Entertainment studios in Irvine, California, on July 11. Blizzard provided Polygon’s travel and accommodations for the event. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.