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Since Spiritborn class launched, Thorns build has been a core build, providing reliable damage output for multiple seasons, making it ideal for clearing dungeons or slaying bosses, so that you can have extra chance to farm more Diablo 4 gold.

With the arrival of the new unique item, Balazan's Maxtlatl, in Season 9, Thorns Spiritborn build has become even more powerful thanks to its thorn damage-related properties.

So how can you build on this gear's benefits and optimize your build to more effectively farm bosses and earn resources in Season 9? We'll explain.

The Importance Of Balazan's Maxtlatl

As the core piece of gear that makes Thorns Spiritborn build even more important in Season 9, Balazan's Maxtlatl pants convert your thorn damage into poison damage to nearby enemies, and the poison damage increases with each use of thorns.

From this foundation, you can combine other core Spiritborn skills with reliable gear to create a powerful Thorns and Poison build that deals massive damage to your enemies - in fact, these pants are also the core of other popular Spiritborn builds.

To obtain this item in Season 9, you can complete world events or clear Nightmare dungeons on Torment difficulty, or more specifically, farm the bosses Urivar and Varshan.

Thorns Spiritborn Build In Season 9

After equipping Balazan's Maxtlatl, you must always stand within Mystic Circle when utilizing this build to effectively deal damage.

This is because, when paired with Jaguar Primary Hall, your Mystic Circle will essentially always deal double damage, bringing the total damage output of the entire build to an astonishing level.

In short, in Season 9, the only thing that really matters for this build is Spirit Hall and Paragon board selection; gear and skills should be based on standard configurations. We'll explain this further.

Spirit Hall And Skills

Spirit Hall is a class-specific mechanic for Spiritborn class, allowing you to designate primary and secondary spirit guardians. The primary spirit guardian affects all of your skills, while the secondary spirit guardian grants you additional passive effects.

For Thorns Spiritborn build, Jaguar Primary Spirit Hall is essential. This mechanic transforms all of your skills into Jaguar skills, and each time you deal 15 direct damage to an enemy with a skill, you gain an additional attack.

The secondary Jaguar Spirit Hall increases your maximum Ferocity by 1, and grants an additional Ferocity for each kill or boss damage.

For this reason, the essential Spiritborn skill for this build is Quill Volley. This skill hurls five feathers at enemies, piercing them each time, with each feather dealing 26% damage.

This, combined with the frequent feather and the extra attack opportunities provided by Jaguar Primary Spirit Hall, allows you to rack up significant damage in combat. You can also further enhance Quill Volley in the skill tree.

Other skills worth adding include:

• Toxic Skin
• Ravager
• Armored Hide
• The Hunter
• Vortex

Which Gear Is Worth Equipping?

Besides Balazan's Maxtlatl, the first piece of gear I recommend for this build is Razorplate. This universal chest armor grants you thorns, giving them a 10% chance to deal 100-200% increased damage.

Additionally, you'll need to equip some gear with runes or gems to further enhance their power. Based on this build, we recommend the following gear:

• Balazan's Maxtlatl: Grand Amethyst
• Razorplate: Rune Poc and Que
• Loyalty's Mantle: Rune Ahu and Ohm
• Vehement Brawler's Aspect: Grand Skull or Luminate Eye
• Rebounding Aspect: Grand Skull or Seal of Denial
• Mother's Embrace: Grand Skull or Idol From Below
• Conceited Aspect: Grand Amethyst
• Aspect of Plains Power
• Duelist's Aspect

Available Horadric Spells And Jewels

As the most important seasonal mechanic of Season 9, Horadric Spells and Jewels can provide additional benefits to most builds, provided you choose and equip the ones that best suit your style.

Horadric Spells:

• Catalyst - Celestial Surge (paired with Quill Volley): Awakens an Oracular Rune to pull in all nearby enemies, then causes a chain of stars to randomly strike the area 20 times, dealing damage.
• Infusion - Corrosive Vapor: Enemies struck take 4% poison damage for 320 seconds, with a bonus to poison damage equal to your highest damage type bonus.
• Arcana - Bottled Wind: Summon a Catalyst to grant a barrier equal to 30% of your maximum health for 4 seconds.
• Arcana - Fractured Core: Causes Catalyst to deactivate monster damage resistance auras for 2.5 seconds, but increases the stacking damage you take by 10% during this time.
• Arcana - Reactive Ooze: After activating a Catalyst for 5 seconds, you gain 10% of your maximum resource generation per second.

Horadric Jewels:

• Idol From Below: Increases your primary stat by 6%, your maximum health by 8%, and you are always Unhindered.
• Seal of Denial: When equipped with two or more Arcana from School of Denial, gain a 30% bonus to barrier, fortify, and thorns.
• Luminate Eye: Reduces the cooldown of Catalytic skills by 25%.

How To Choose Skills For Mercenaries?

As you know, mercenaries are a mechanic introduced in Diablo 4 Season 6 that allow you to select two mercenaries to assist you in battle, so they can also be added as part of builds.

The best mercenary build for this build is to have Raheir as your main companion and Varyana as the reinforcement, unlocking the following abilities for each:

Raheir:

• Ground Slam
• Raheir's Aegis
• Bastion
• Inspiration

Varyana:

• Quill Volley
• Bloodthirst

We hope this information helps you accumulate more resources before the end of Season 9 so you can prepare for Season 10, which launches at the end of September! Thank you for reading!

Diablo 4 Season updates typically mean not only more new playstyles to try, but also the opportunity to use your creativity to create even more powerful builds that better suit the current season's mechanics.

The biggest contributors to this are usually the added seasonal powers and unique items granted to each class each season, and Season 10 is no exception.

The seasonal power of this season is Chaos Perks, and the unique items each class receives are:

• Barbarian: Sabre of Tsasgal
• Druid: Kilt of Blackwing
• Necromancer: Gospel of the Devotee
• Rogue: Orphan Maker
• Sorcerer: Galvanic Azurite
• Spiritborn: Hesha e Kesungi

Druid, a class that has been relatively underwhelming for several seasons, is expected to gain additional build crafting possibilities in Season 10 thanks to this new item, giving it a new advantage.

With this in mind, this time we'll introduce Storm Raven Build centered around the new Druid item, Kilt of Blackwing.

Introduction To Kilt Of Blackwing

This new unique item can also be utilized as Chaos Armor in Season 10, so while it's a unique pants item, you can actually equip it in any slot this season.

The most important combat benefits of this item revolve around Raven. In addition to the basic affix effects, it increases the damage dealt by ravens by 60-100%, allows them to transform into alternate forms, activate companion skills, and even has a chance to summon more ravens.

Storm Raven Build Overview

Beyond the benefits provided by the core gear Kilt of Blackwing, to successfully craft and utilize this build, you'll need to farm more XP and Diablo 4 gold to ensure your character's smooth leveling and survival, and try to provide more bonuses to your ravens.

Ravens are essentially a companion skill for Druid, and the core concept of Storm Raven build is to leverage Kilt of Blackwing's Raven buffs, combining them with skills, gear, and other key mechanics to make their effects even more powerful.

What Chaos Perks Are Worthy To Be Added?

As one of the key features of Season 10, Chaos Perks are worth adding to any build. However, the number of perks is enormous, and the power you can equip in a single battle is limited, so you need to choose carefully.

For a Storm Raven build, we recommend prioritizing the following perks:

• Wild Transformations - Legendary: When you transform into a Werewolf, Werebear, or human, you gain bonus damage or damage reduction.
• Purge the Infected - Rare: Your core skills deal a poison equal to 200% of their base damage over 4 seconds. Additionally, they consume 5 additional spirit points to guarantee critical hits.
• Power Siphon - Rare: Your core skills deal 100% increased damage, and your maximum current resource is reduced by 20 over 6 seconds. This reduction stacks but does not refresh.

For this reason, you must ensure your first attack triggers poison, then utilize Raven's Hover to attack more targets. Finally, Power Siphon allows you to deal more damage with your core skills.

Key Druid Skills

If seasonal Chaos perks are the icing on the cake, then skills are the foundation of any build. The first essential element of a Storm Raven build is naturally Ravens. Their abilities include:

• Cooldown: 15 seconds
• Lucky Hit Chance: 45%
• Passive: Allows one Raven to fly overhead, periodically attacking enemies every 2.5 seconds for 31% damage.
• Active: Swarms ravens in a target area, dealing 300% damage to enemies over 6 seconds.

With this, combined with Kilt of Blackwing, your build's damage output is essentially guaranteed. The next skills you should add include:

• Blood Howl: Provides attack speed and bonus damage.
• Cyclone Armor: Provides additional passive non-physical damage reduction.
• Debilitating Roar: Activate this at any time for a damage multiplier and damage reduction.
• Cataclysm: Ensures a constant supply of resources and a source of vulnerability.

Furthermore, you'll want to minimize your ability cooldowns to ensure your build remains effective throughout combat. If your cooldown is full, you can use Cataclysm unlimited times - keeping it active at 100% is key for this build.

What Is The Right Gear?

Besides the core item, Kilt of Blackwing, the key to adding gear to this build is, as we've already mentioned, minimizing your cooldowns as much as possible.

In general, once your Cataclysm cooldown is at 100%, feel free to swap out gear for increased DPS, increased survivability, or whatever bonuses you desire.

For this reason, we recommend prioritizing the following gear:

Shroud of False Death:

• +1 to All Passives
• +160 All Stats
• +333.0% Damage on Next Attack After Entering Stealth
• +800 Maximum Life
• 11.1% Resource Generation

Tassets of the Dawning Sky:

• + [26.0 - 35.0]% Resistance to All Elements
• + [1.5 - 2.5]% Maximum Resistance to All Elements
• + [17.5 - 23.0] Movement Speed
• + [51 - 65] All Stats

Another essential Legendary Aspect is Stormcrow's Aspect, which increases the lightning damage dealt by raven by 60-100%. Raven skill itself deals full damage for half the duration, and stuns enemies within range.

In fact, the gear options for this build are quite extensive. Besides the highly recommended ones listed above, you can freely farm and equip other builds based on your preferences and combat style.

Note that the above crafting plan is based on a trial of content from 2.4.0 PTR. There may be some minor differences after Season 10 officially launches. You'll need to decide how to utilize this build based on future Diablo 4 adjustments.

That's all we've covered. We hope this helps you embark on your Diablo 4 Season 10 journey. Thank you for reading.

Due to varying season mechanics and the effectiveness of new items, the most reliable class options fluctuate between each Diablo 4 season. A class that fell out of favor one season might become a popular choice in the next.

Take Druid, for example. Several nerfs to the game meant few players initially chose it when it launched in Season 9. However, the recent patch has revived its popularity in the middle of Season 9.

After the launch of 2.4.0 PTR, based on current performance, Druids are expected to maintain their dominance in Season 10 and offer multiple reliable builds. This is likely because of the addition of new unique items.

Next, we'll analyze the reasons why Druid has dominated 2.4.0 PTR, focusing on the unique item, Kilt of Blackwing.

Kilt Of Blackwing Overview

This item, an exclusive Druid unique item added to PTR (Season 10), initially has the following base affixes:

• + [733 - 790] Maximum Life
• + [16.0 - 25.0]% Chance for Ravens to deal double damage
• + [2 - 3] to Ravens
• [13.0 - 17.5]% Ravens Cooldown Reduction

Adding to this, these unique pants increase the damage dealt by ravens by 60.0 - 100.0%, allowing you to transform into other forms or activate your companion's abilities, summoning more ravens to attack nearby enemies.

Notably, if you summon ravens with this item, there is a chance to inflict Unkindness for 10 seconds, increasing the number of ravens you can summon to three for the duration.

In the past, when utilizing Companion Druid build, the two key components were ravens and wolves, making up the "companion" portion of the build. While wolves previously received a damage boost through Storm's Companion-specific affixes, ravens never received the same buff.

To address this long-standing shortcoming and to substantially enhance both Druid and related builds, Diablo 4 is adding Kilt of Blackwing to enhance the raven elemental's presence and allow you to deal more damage with these builds.

How To Utilize This Item On PTR?

If you're considering using the new effects provided by Kilt of Blackwing with a Companion Druid build on PTR or in Season 10, you might be concerned that both it and Storm's Companion are unique pants, making them incompatible.

While this would have been a problem in other seasons, Season 10 new Chaos Armor mechanic effectively mitigates this issue - which is why Companion Druid build has existed for so long, while Kilt of Blackwing hasn't been added until now.

Chaos Armor is a more powerful version of the unique armor added in Season 10. One of its features is that all Chaos Armor items can appear in any inventory without specific restrictions, giving you more possibilities for using unique items.

So, in 2.4.0 PTR, you can utilize both items in a single build. For example, in addition to pants, you can also equip Kilt of Blackwing on boots or gloves.

Of course, to obtain these items, you must repeatedly farm the bosses that drop them. Although PTR may provide them directly to you, after Season 10 begins you must obtain unique items and sufficient Diablo 4 gold on your own.

In short, due to the unique nature of Chaos Armor's mechanics, you can equip both unique items as a Druid in Season 10, doubling their effectiveness and making them even more powerful, giving Druids advantages unmatched by other classes both in PTR and in the new season.

As a reminder, all Chaos Armor expected to be available to Druids in Season 10 includes:

Class Exclusives:

• Airidah's Inexorable Will
• Earthbreaker
• Fleshrender
• Greatstaff of the Crone
• Hunter's Zenith
• Kilt of Blackwing
• Malefic Crescent
• Mjölnic Ryng
• Rotting Lightbringer
• Tempest Roar
• The Basilisk
• Vasily's Prayer

General Uniques:

• Banished Lord's Talisman
• Crown of Lucion
• Endurant Faith
• Fists of Fate
• Flickerstep
• Godslayer Crown
• Locran's Talisman
• Mother's Embrace
• Paingorger's Gauntlets
• X'Fal's Corroded Signet

What Druid Builds Can You Utilize In 2.4.0 PTR?

Without a doubt, Companion Druid build is a top priority in PTR and even in Season 10, thanks to the reliable buffs provided by Kilt of Blackwing.

However, assuming no additional significant nerfs are made to Druid after Season 10 officially launches, the following builds will remain reliable:

• Pulverize Druid Build
• Fleshrender Druid Build
• Shred Druid Build

Of course, different builds have different requirements for skills, gear, Spirit Boons, and more, and you'll need to craft them accordingly to maximize their effectiveness.

More importantly, in PTR, you can also farm new enemy types to get seasonal Chaos Powers, which are also an essential part of crafting and utilizing the new builds. You can also enhance your builds by upgrading Chaos Powers.

Overall, if you're aiming for quick dominance as a Druid in 2.4.0 PTR or Season 10, Companion Druid build is the better choice, as the new unique items are specifically designed for that purpose.

Alternatively, you can develop and experiment with a wider range of builds based on Kilt of Blackwing before PTR ends, incorporating your own unique playstyle. If you find some of them work, you can put them to the test before Season 10 launches!

That's all for this introduction. The new unique items obtained by other classes also have significant new uses, if you have time, you can also test them out in 2.4.0 PTR!

Since the game's launch, Diablo 4 has added seasonal powers to almost every season. While their names and specific functions vary, they essentially all provide new combat benefits in a season-specific manner.

Season 10, the final season of 2025, is expected to launch on September 23rd. A month before that, Diablo 4 2.4.0 PTR will be available from August 19th to 26th, allowing you to preview and test the main gameplay of Season 10.

This PTR will allow you to experience the power of Season 10 new Chaos Perks in advance and, combined with them, craft new builds to farm Diablo 4 gold in new dungeons and in-game events in a seasonally specific way.

With this in mind, we'll introduce all Chaos Perks that will appear in the game and their combat effects.

Chaos Perks Overview

Chaos Perks, also known as Chaos Powers, are divided into general and class-specific types based on their stats. They rank on four rarity levels: magic, rare, legendary, and unique.

There are three general powers of each rarity, and every class has one specific Chaos Perk of each rarity, for a total of 36. Regardless of your playable class, you have access to 16 powers.

Equipping Chaos Powers activates their effects without attaching any other items. However, it's important to note that you can only equip one unique power and three non-unique powers per battle, and some perks may offer advantages as well as disadvantages.

However, by choosing perks wisely, they can be used in conjunction with your class skills and gear to craft new builds tailored for Season 10.

How To Obtain And Upgrade Chaos Powers?

In all Season 10 updates, Chaos Rift is a seasonal event. These rifts will randomly appear throughout Diablo 4, including dungeons. Killing the monsters that spawn from these rifts will reward you with Chaos Perks, as well as special rewards like Chaos Armor.

Once you've earned Chaos Perks, you can consume seasonal currency to upgrade them, up to level 10. However, upgrades only increase the inherent stats of your powers and don't grant any additional effects.

The exact currency name and the required amount per level won't be fully known until 2.4.0 PTR or even the release of Season 10. But honestly, this won't ruin your PTR experience.

General Chaos Powers

Here are all 12 general Chaos Powers and their effects, listed below by rarity:

Magic Chaos Perks:

• Invigorating Attacks: Every 5 seconds, your next basic skill generates additional primary resources but deals 30% less damage.
• Accelerating Chaos: When you deal damage to an enemy, you have up to a 10% chance to trigger a Chaotic Burst.
• Unstable Power: Increases damage output by dealing critical hits and overpowering, but the power is unstable.

Rare Chaos Perks:

• Erupting Chaos: Deals more damage with a random Chaotic Burst.
• Power Siphon: Generates additional resources.
• Alternating Alterations: Refunds 50% of your resources when you cast a different core skill, increasing your damage output.

Legendary Chaos Perks:

• Marred Guard: When your health exceeds 50%, you can no longer receive healing, but gain buffs such as elemental resistance and armor.
• Chaotic Cooldowns: When you cast a skill with a cooldown, the cooldown is set to a random value, but the skill deals more damage.
• Crazy Brew: Drinking a healing potion reduces resource consumption and increases your attack speed and movement speed for 4 seconds.

Unique Chaos Perks:

• Chaos Unleashed: Kills stack Chaos for increased damage.
• Brown Over Brains: Gain health, healing, and damage, but also reduce maximum resistance.
• A Beast Cornered: Increases damage by continuously losing health.

Class-Specific Chaos Powers

Specialized powers add benefits to your character based on the characteristics of their class, making them more targeted than generic ones.

Barbarian

• Dual Threat - Magic: Casting a basic skill causes another basic skill to deal 50-80% more damage.
• Raging Chaos - Rare: Enters a frenzy when you're out of health, dealing fire damage and Chaos Burst with your core skill.
• Deafening Chorus - Legendary: Shouts are always active and have a 20-40% increased effectiveness.
• Single-Minded Fury - Unique: Gain multiple benefits if you only equip one Arsenal weapon type.

Druid

• Overabundance - Magic: After generating Spirit above the maximum, your damage is increased by 10-20% over 5 seconds.
• Purge the Infected - Rare: Your core skill inflicts a poison effect equal to 100-200% of its base damage over 4 seconds.
• Wild Transformations - Legendary: After transforming into a new form, you can use a free skill with a 5-second bonus.
• Savagery - Unique: Your companion's skill becomes a core skill, and the companion increases in size.

Necromancer

• Grim Reapers - Magic: Skeleton Warriors can deal damage through Reap in addition to their regular attacks.
• Decimaing Desecration - Rare: Your damage over time effects are enhanced.
• Defile the Dead - Legendary: Consuming each corpse twice triggers a Chaotic Burst, dealing 200-400% Shadow damage.
• Alter the Balance - Unique: Increases the effectiveness of your basic core skill by transforming it into an ultimate skill.

Rogue

• Unpredictable Alchemy - Magic: Each cast of a basic skill infuses you with a random infusion of energy, increasing your skill damage by 20-40%.
• Enervated Strikes - Rare: You no longer passively gain energy, but instead gain a damage buff.
• Chaotic Grenades - Legendary: Allows Stun Grenades to trigger Chaotic Burst, dealing 50-100% physical damage.
• Hit and Run - Unique: For every 15 meters you travel over 5 seconds, your damage increases by 30-50%, stacking.

Sorcerer

• Explosive Combinations - Magic: Casting a basic skill increases the damage of your next core skill by 30-50%, stacking up to 3 times.
• Advanced Techniques - Rare: Your basic core skill levels increase their damage while increasing their mana consumption or cooldown.
• Chaotic Grenades - Legendary: Your spells are empowered, dealing 10-30% more damage, but each spell consumes more mana per second.
• Mana Shield - Unique: Increases your mana regeneration by reducing your maximum health.

Spiritborn

• Alacrity - Magic: Your basic skills gain increased attack speed and dash range.
• Combined Strikes - Rare: Your basic core skills deal bonus damage in a larger area, but have a longer cooldown.
• Back Off! - Legendary: When you cast a skill, nearby enemies take 30% less damage, and all other enemies take 100-200% more damage.
• Convocation of Spirits - Unique: Casting a non-ultimate skill has a chance to summon a spirit of the corresponding type, dealing bonus damage.

That's all for you, but the number of powers and their specific effects are subject to change after 2.4.0 PTR or Season 10 launches, so be sure to stay tuned for any game updates!