Quick Links
The Spiritborn’s Centipede spirit allows for powerful poison-based builds inDiablo 4. One build in particular focuses on the high damage-over-time effect provided by Touch of Death that pairs incredibly well with the Insatiable Aspect to trigger massive explosions.
The Touch of Death Centipede build is strong not only for Uber bosses, but pushing higher Pit Tiers and other endgame content besides. Below, we’ll take an in-depth look at this build, including skills, Paragon points, gear, and the current seasonal mechanic, Witch Powers.
Touch of Death is the main skill of this build, which will be enhanced and modified to create massive blasts of poison AoEs with a single button press. In its default state, Touch of Death hits an enemy and infects them with a high amount of poison damage. Then, when either the enemy dies or the poison expires, a Swarm will hatch and seek out additional enemies.
With thePoised Touch of Deathskill upgrade, Touch of Death will nowcost Vigor and have no cooldown, meaning with enough Vigor generation, you canspam this attack.
These effects combine with theNoxious Resonance Key Passive, which causes yourCritical Strikes to burst any poison damageon the enemy, dealing damage in the area and removing the poison effect. This works incredibly well with theInsatiable Aspect, which causes Swarms to burst for even more damage when they are replaced early.
The rest of the build seeks to eitherboost the damage of Touch of Deathor provide powerful defensive tools. Because the Touch of Death, Noxious Resonance, and Insatiable Aspect package is so tight, the core of the build is relatively easy to set up. However, for the optimal setup, you’ll need quite a few other items, which we’ll take a look at further below.
Season Mechanic
The Season 7 mechanic is Witchcraft Powers, which allow you to slot powerful active and passive buffs into your build. You can choose between five Magic Witch Powers and one Unique Witch Power, which will be unlocked as you rank up the Witch’s Coven.
You’ll also be able to take advantage of Occult Gems, which are slotted into gem slots. These always provide 160 Armor and +8 percent Resistance to All Elements, but also have an additional unique effect.
Here are the Witch Powers and Occult Gems we recommend for this build.
1/5
1/1
3/3
1/3
5/5
Noxious Resonance
Once you have your Resource Generation problem solved, you canswap out Rock Splitter for Vortex. You’ll still need to have two points put into the Basic Skills category, however.
Spirit Hall Choices
ThePrimary Gorilla buffprovidesexcellent damage reduction, and makes all your other skills Gorilla skills, which helps when stacking damage buffs through Tempering.
Thesecondary Jaguar buffincreases your maximum Ferocity, andgrants a stack whenever you kill an enemy or damage a boss, letting you maintain it virtually forever.
1
2
Sapping (rotate twice)
3
Convergence (attach to the top, rotate three times)
4
Revealing (attach to the left, rotate twice)
5
Bitter Medicine (attach to the top)
Ambush
Glyph Leveling Priority
As you level up with this build,focus first on unlocking each Paragon Boardand any close Rare or Legendary nodes. Once you have the important nodes unlocked, you can go back in through each board and min/max, focusing on fulfilling Glyph bonuses and stat requirements.
Lucky Hit: Chance to Slow for 2 seconds (Worldly Fortune)
Gar
This build uses a number of Unique items that synergize well with the rest of the build.Harmony of Ebewakais a staple in many Spiritborn builds, as you gain more value the more types of Spirits you use, and most builds use at least three.
In a similar vein,Jacinth Shellis an incredibly powerful Unique thatquickly recharges your skills, namely Armored Hide, Vortex, Ravager, Scourge, and The Seeker, at the cost of draining your health. However, there istons of health regeneration and restoration baked into the rest of the build, thanks to synergistic effects from Centipede skills, so you won’t have to worry about this downside.
Yen’s Blessing’sUnique effectallows you to occasionallydouble-up on Armored Hide, Vortex, Ravager, and Scourge, activating both effects at once. This will not onlyincrease survivability, but damage output, too.
Finally, theSunstained War-CrozierUnique Quarterstaff offers an extremelyhigh damage boost for Touch of Deathafter using Focus Skills likeRavager and Vortex. Thanks to Jacinth Shell and Yen’s Blessing, your skills have very short cooldowns, meaning you can easilyspam them to maintain this damage boost.
Earth Breaker - linked to Scourge
Playing The Build
The core loop of this build is relatively simple. To start, ensure you keep up Ravager at all times, which should be no problem thanks to Jacinth Shell.UseTouch of Death on every enemyfor massive damage, andsave Scourge for larger packs and to gain Vigor back in a pinch.
Your Ultimate, The Seeker, should also be used in between uses of Touch of Death toapply Vulnerable and activate the passive effects of Resolution and Supremacyfor even more damage.
Ravager will let you teleport to the nearest enemy with Touch of Death, giving the build some much-needed mobility. Outside of that, make use of your dodge for a quick movement speed boost, or your mount if possible.
Armored Hide’s passive effect provides high damage reduction, but you canpop it in emergenciesfor a large boost to survivability.
