The Spiritborn's Centipede spirit allows for powerful poison-based builds in Diablo 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.

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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.

Build Overview

Pros

Cons

  • High AoE and burst damage
  • Damage over time
  • Decent pack-to-pack mobility
  • High item requirements for optimal setup
  • Repetitive playstyle

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 the Poised Touch of Death skill upgrade, Touch of Death will now cost Vigor and have no cooldown, meaning with enough Vigor generation, you can spam this attack.

These effects combine with the Noxious Resonance Key Passive, which causes your Critical Strikes to burst any poison damageon the enemy, dealing damage in the area and removing the poison effect. This works incredibly well with the Insatiable Aspect, which causes Swarms to burst for even more damage when they are replaced early.

The rest of the build seeks to either boost the damage of Touch of Death or 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.

Witch Powers

  • Soul Harvest
  • Decay Augmentation
  • Aura Specialization
  • Aura of Siphoning
  • Aura of Misfortune
  • The Cycle

Occult Gems

  • Moonlight Ward
  • Dust Stone
  • Hungering Void
  • Killing Wind

Skills And Paragon

Skill

Points

Basic

Rock Splitter

1/5

Enhanced Rock Splitter

1/1

Core

Vigorous

3/3

Balanced Exertion

3/3

Focus

Ravager

1/5

Enhanced Ravager

1/1

Measured Ravager

1/1

Mirage

1/3

Focal Point

1/3

Diminishment

3/3

Apex

3/3

Defensive

Armored Hide

1/5

Enhanced Armored Hide

1/1

Adaptable Armored Hide

1/1

Scourge

1/5

Enhanced Scourge

1/1

Adaptable Scourge

1/1

Endurance

1/3

Perserverance

3/3

Antivenom

1/3

Nourishment

3/3

Potency

Touch of Death

5/5

Enhanced Touch of Death

1/1

Poised Touch of Death

1/1

Resilient

3/3

Vehemence

3/3

Potent

3/3

Ravenous

3/3

Oppressive

3/3

Ultimate

The Seeker

5/5

Harmonious Seeker

1/1

Exalted Seeker

1/1

Resolution

3/3

Initiative

1/3

Spiritual Attunement

1/3

Supremacy

3/3

Key Passive

Noxious Resonance

1/1

Once you have your Resource Generation problem solved, you can swap out Rock Splitter for Vortex. You'll still need to have two points put into the Basic Skills category, however.

Spirit Hall Choices

  • Primary: Gorilla
  • Secondary: Jaguar

The Primary Gorilla buff provides excellent damage reduction, and makes all your other skills Gorilla skills, which helps when stacking damage buffs through Tempering.

The secondary Jaguar buff increases your maximum Ferocity, and grants a stack whenever you kill an enemy or damage a boss, letting you maintain it virtually forever.

Paragon Boards And Glyphs

Number

Board

Glyph

Important Nodes

1

Start

Fester

Prime

Tenacity

Skillful

Spiritual

2

Sapping (rotate twice)

Bane

Legendary Node - Sapping

Resilience

Opportunist

Sprightful

Denial

Concentrated

3

Convergence (attach to the top, rotate three times)

Colossal

Legendary Node - Convergence

Spearhead

Skillful

Training

Elementalist

Ruinous

4

Revealing (attach to the left, rotate twice)

Turf

Legendary Node - Revealing

Artifice

Venom Weaver

Grounded

Haven

5

Bitter Medicine (attach to the top)

Canny

Legendary Node - Bitter Medicine

Flash Fire

Gifted

Ambush

Glyph Leveling Priority

  1. Fester
  2. Bane
  3. Colossal
  4. Turf
  5. Canny

As you level up with this build, focus first on unlocking each Paragon Board and 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.

Gear And Stats

Slot

Aspect/Unique

Runes/Gems

Stat Priority

Tempered Affixes

Helm

Harmony of Ebewaka

Poc

Que

  1. Damage Reduction
  2. All Stats
  3. Movement Speed
  4. Ranks to Velocity

Chest

Jacinth Shell

Grand Emerald

Grand Emerald

  1. Damage Reduction while Injured
  2. Total Armor
  3. Armor
  4. Ranks to Endurance

Gloves

Fell Soothsayer's Aspect

  1. Ranks to Core Skills
  2. Attack Speed
  3. Dexterity

Gorilla Damage (Gorilla Finesse)

Lucky Hit: Chance to Slow for 2 seconds (Worldly Fortune)

Pants

Aspect of Binding Morass

Grand Emerald

Grand Emerald

  1. Dexterity
  2. Maximum Life
  3. Armor

Ranks to Auspicious (Spiritborn Endurance)

Vortex Size (Eagle Innovation)

Boots

Yen's Blessing

  1. Resistance to All Elements
  2. Movement Speed
  3. All Stats
  4. Resource Generation

Amulet

Insatiable Aspect

Moonlight Ward

  1. Ranks to Potent
  2. Dexterity
  3. Total Armor
  4. Ranks to Revenous
  5. Attack Speed

Gorilla Damage (Gorilla Finesse)

Ranks to Resilient (Spiritborn Recovery)

Ring 1

Aspect of Unyielding Hits

Dust Stone

  1. Dexterity
  2. Attack Speed
  3. Maximum Life

Gorilla Damage (Gorilla Finesse)

Ranks to Endurance (Fitness Efficiency)

Ring 2

Starlight Aspect

Hungering Void

  1. Dexterity
  2. Attack Speed
  3. Maximum Life

Gorilla Damage (Gorilla Finesse)

Resource Generation (Worldly Stability)

Weapon

Sunstained War-Crozier

Igni

Gar

  1. Chance for Potency Skills to Deal Double Damage
  2. Dexterity
  3. Maximum Life
  4. Ranks to Focus Skills

This build uses a number of Unique items that synergize well with the rest of the build. Harmony of Ebewaka is 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 Shell is an incredibly powerful Unique that quickly recharges your skills, namely Armored Hide, Vortex, Ravager, Scourge, and The Seeker, at the cost of draining your health. However, there is tons 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 effect allows you to occasionally double-up on Armored Hide, Vortex, Ravager, and Scourge, activating both effects at once. This will not only increase survivability, but damage output, too.

Finally, the Sunstained War-Crozier Unique Quarterstaff offers an extremely high damage boost for Touch of Death after using Focus Skills like Ravager and Vortex. Thanks to Jacinth Shell and Yen's Blessing, your skills have very short cooldowns, meaning you can easily spam them to maintain this damage boost.

Mercenaries

Mercenary

Skills

Hired Mercenary - Raheir

Shield Charge

Vanguard

Crater

Iron Wolf's Call

Reinforcement - Varyana

Earth Breaker - linked to Scourge

Playing The Build

The core loop of this build is relatively simple. To start, make sure you keep up Ravager at all times, which should be no problem thanks to Jacinth Shell. UseTouch of Death on every enemy for massive damage, and save 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 to apply Vulnerable and activate the passive effects of Resolution and Supremacy for 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 can pop it in emergencies for a large boost to survivability.

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