Spiritborn Gorilla Guide: Abilities and Builds

Welcome to our Diablo 4 Spiritborn Gorilla guide, where we’ll break down its abilities, playstyle, potential builds, and more.

The Gorilla is one of the four Spirit Guardian animals that will be part of the core mechanics of the Spiritborn class that will be added with the release of Vessel of Hatred.

By combining it with the other animals (Jaguar, Eagle, or Centipede), you can mix and match for different approaches and flavors.

Let’s dive in!

Head to our Diablo 4 Build Planner to create your own Spiritborn Gorilla builds now!

What are the Spirit Guardians?

If you want to dive into the background and lore of the new class, we recommend checking out our full Spiritborn reveal by DonTheCrown.

In general, the Spirit Guardians are what grant the Spiritborn their powerful abilities and skills. Some ramp up your damage, others bestow damage over time effects, and you can even get options for defense.

They also affect your associated tag, like how the Claw skill is tagged as “Werewolf skill” embodying the Gorilla spirit adds the “Gorilla” tag to all of your skills.

You can even have two Spirit actives at any one time, which really opens up different pathways and unique combinations for theorycrafters.

The Spiritborn Gorilla Playstyle

Overwhelming force and resilience, the Guardian spirit of the Gorilla is built to endure and repay in kind anything thrown at it. Perfect for tank-focused builds and those who prefer heavier slower hits.

Selecting the Gorilla spirit will grant you the Guardians’ passive, all skills become Gorilla Skills and you’ll deal 100% of your thorns to enemies you hit in addition to generating a barrier equal to 10% of your maximum HP (capped at 40%).

Safe to say just with this bonus alone you’ll become a formidable force, with some absolutely mind-blowing sustain.

But if that’s not enough, many Gorilla skills will also build Resolve, a passive buff that increases your resistance to damage! Each stake of Resolve will reduce damage taken by 20% and is consumed when you’re hit. The default cap for Resolve is 8.

Spiritborn Gorilla Skills

• Rock Splitter (Basic): Rush at a target and clobber enemies in front of you, dealing 15% damage. Your 3rd attack strikes enemies around you, dealing 28% damage.
• Crushing Hand (Core): Smash down next to you with, creating 2 shockwaves on either side that overlap and each deal 25% damage.
• Concussive Stomp (Defensive): Stomp in front of you, releasing a shockwave that deals 15% damage and Knocks Down enemies for 3 seconds.
• Payback (Potency): Smash enemies in front of you, dealing 100% damage. When attacked, you have a 35% chance to reduce Payback’s active Cooldown by 1 second.
• The Protector (Ultimate): The Gorilla Spirit protects an area for 6 seconds, continuously smashing surrounding enemies for 80% damage and granting you Barrier for 15% of your Maximum Life every 1.5 seconds.

Animals Pairings and Spiritborn Gorilla Build Ideas

Each Spirit Guardian type has different overlaps and synergies with the others

For Gorilla, I’m particularly excited by Gorilla + Eagle. this pairing combines the heavy hitting strikes and resilience of the Gorilla with the precision & hyper-agility of the Eagle.

Chart by DonTheCrown

Gorilla skills provide heavy AoE melee damage with many skills providing barriers and Resolve for huge survivability – and you won’t be short of Crowd Control if you’re looking to build into it!

Having the Eagle spirit as our Secondary choice for this build will give us a massive boost to our burst DPS by providing 4% critical hit chance for every four meters we move (this bonus resets 2 seconds after we land a critical hit). This is perfect for something like the Gorilla which is all about that one BIG hit, and as we all know “big number good”!

One particular part of a potential build featuring these two Guardian Spirits would be the synergy between Vortex and well, pretty much any Gorilla Skill!

Vortex sucks enemies in, making it easy to land those heavy-hitting Gorilla skills, Vortex also deals damage which is increased greatly when you have Barrier, something the Gorilla skills generate a lot of!

A natural pairing for Vortex would be Crushing Hand, an AoE skill that deals massive damage to enemies while also generating a ton of barriers. This will not only help us survive those tougher encounters but feed back into Measured Vortex with its increased damage and added crowd control.

Some other great possible combinations to consider would be Gorilla + Jaguar, combining the ferocity and speed of Jaguar with the toughness and power of the Gorilla into a bruiser-type class that’s ready to jump into the thick of it and cause utter mayhem.

Another would be Gorilla + Centipede for maximum survivability, bolstering the already insane amounts of barrier and damage reduction with heavy damage over time and life stealing, resulting in the king of attrition, this coupling could be perfect for pushing the upper limit of content where the enemies are most formidable.

This is only the tip of the iceberg and there are many combinations to consider, and many interesting ways to exploit the awesome bonuses granted by these Guardian Spirits.

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