The build I primarily focused on, Centipede is all about poisoning and weakening your enemies, and calling upon the mighty power of the Centipede spirit to execute your poisoned foes. Unlike Jaguar, Centipede is all about damage-over-time. It’s slower to kill than Jaguar, but it’s consistent and synergistic with healing, weakening enemies, and probably the second strongest endgame build right now.
Spiritborn – Centipede Skills
Withering Fist is the basic Centipede ability, but when choosing enhancers, you can go with Accelerated Withering Fist if you are having trouble staying alive (it reduces the damage dealt by poisoned enemies) or Sharp Withering Fist if you want to maximize damage you deal against groups of enemies.
Stinger is what you’ll use to spend your Vigor. Choose Rampant Stinger if you want to improve your single target damage (a good idea if you struggle against bosses and elites) and Advantageous Stinger if you want to add some Vulnerable debuffs and healing into your play.
Toxic Skin gives you a trail of poison behind you, and it adds to your Thorns damage. If you picked Advantageous Stinger, pick Measured Toxic Skin to generate Critical Hits every second to foes made Vulnerable by that Stinger enhancement.
Scourge is a great way to help keep yourself alive by CC’ing enemies. Feared and slowed, you can pick them off as they flee. Choose Reinforcing Scourge to get more Vigor back when you use it, but you can opt for Adaptable Scourge if you are having trouble staying alive, as it gives you a chance to be healed for a portion of the damage it deals.
Touch Of Death is a strike that unleashes a swarm of insects that cause damage over time. If you kill the afflicted enemy, the swarm will seek out a new host to damage. Invasive Touch Of Death adds a pulse of damage to the attack, dealing poison damage to surrounding enemies every second. Poised Touch Of Death, however, removes the cooldown on the ability, changing it to cost 70 Vigor per cast. I recommend this option, but you’ll need to generate more Vigor (Reinforcing Scourge is a great way to do this).
The Devourer is the lynchpin of the whole Centipede build. Summoning a massive centipede spirit, it will instantly execute any enemy who has had poison build through their entire health bar. It also spreads poison on the ground and shoots poison beams, making it great to call when Elites or Bosses are about. Every rank you add into the ability reduces the cooldown, letting you get it down to nearly 30 seconds at rank 5.
Spiritborn – Centipede Spirit Hall Passives
Your Spirit Hall will be best served by selecting Centipede as well. If you choose the first passive for Centipede, it turns every skill into a Centipede skill, and reduces and slows every enemy hit by Centipede skills (which is now EVERY skill), stacking up to eight times.
If you are having trouble staying alive, and are running largely Centipede Skills, you can also opt to choose Gorilla’s first passive.
The second selection in the Spirit Hall will add passive healing. Heal one percent of your Maximum Life for every nearby enemy you Poisoned in the last three seconds (up to five percent).
Spiritborn are powerful, no matter which way you slice it. They have some of the most satisfying and useful gameplay loops in the game, with tons of viable ways to play them. Regardless of which build you decide to use, I’m sure you’ll have a good time.
As someone who loved the Witch Doctor class in Diablo III, having a similar ‘spirit-based’ class which focuses on close-range combat instead of spell-casting is a heck of a lot of fun.
Go with the spirits, friend, and put an end to Mephisto’s ambitions. Happy hunting!
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