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Rake Jaguar Spiritborn Leveling Guide

Season 6 - Season of HatredLeveling

Last Updated:October 11, 2024|Change Log

The Rake Spiritborn Leveling Guide utilizes all of the Jaguar tools available to the Spiritborn class to streamline your leveling experience! This is a fast paced melee build that sets you up nicely for endgame. Your main skill, Rake, is an explosive cleave attack providing both great single target and AoE damage all while generating Ferocity.

The Spiritborn's spirit hall Eagle (primary) gives it access to the strongest leveling ability, a massive, auto-aim AoE projectile attack every time you use evade. You don't unlock this ability until level 15, so you use Rake until then. The Jaguar secondary gives you easy access to Ferocity for extra attack speed and Invasive Rushing Claw cooldown resets.

Rake's main damage aspect for leveling is Wild Claws, which is a dungeon aspect from the new Nahantu region. Wild Claws counts as a second cast of Rake which doubles your resource generation from things like Advantageous Rake. For survivability use a combination of ‍Accursed Touch and the ‍Vital Strikes Key Passive. This unlocks damage, healing and resource generation.

Combining these is important because Vital Strikes does not remove the vulnerable applied by Accursed Touch, allowing you to generate insane amounts of life and resources. That means less time spent having to use your basic skills for Vigor and more time blasting with Rake!

Rake Jaguar Spiritborn Leveling Setup
Note

This build guide takes you up to level 60 and gets you started for the early Endgame on Torment 1 difficulty. If you're looking for in-depth Endgame guides, check out our Spiritborn Guides section!

Pros
  • Highly Mobile
  • Easy Aspects
  • Clears All Content
Cons
  • Vulnerable Uptime
  • Small AoE
  • Melee Range

Check out our Leveling Builds Tier List to see how this build compares to others.

Season Theme

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:

  • Seething Opal of Equipment
  • Seething Opal of Gold
  • Seething Opal of Materials
  • Seething Opal of Torment
  • Seething Opal of Socketables

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.

Skills & Gameplay

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

Level 1-25

In order to unlock your core skills, you have to first select a basic skill. Pick Thunderspike because, in addition to generating resources for your core skills, it also casts each time you evade. Next up is Rake, your main damage source. This is an AoE exploding cleave attack that generates Ferocity and reduces the cooldown of your skills. The more resources you generate the more you can spam Rake, dealing massive damage and maximizing uptime on you cooldowns.

You take mobility and utility skills to fill the remainder of the skill bar. Soar for mobility and to apply vulnerable. Ravager for large dps bursts and to grant minimum Ferocity stacks. Rushing Claw for more mobility skill.

Finally, your ultimate skill, The Hunter, which summons a Spirit Jaguar to fight by your side, dealing massive damage. It overcaps your Ferocity stacks and has a chance to reset its own cooldown.

Rake Jaguar Spiritborn Skills

Early Skill Rotation

Your main source of DPS, until you unlock the Spirit Hall is Rake. The idea is to spam Rake as much as possible, generating resources through Vital Strikes and other passives. Until you have a reliable source of vulnerable, resource generation is tight and you need to fill the gaps with your basic skill. Passives like Vigorous and Velocity help a lot here, try to look out for helpful resource affixes like Umbral, Adaptability and Starlight.

Spirit Hall

At level 15, you can unlock your class mechanic called Spirit Hall. This is the strongest tool that the spiritborn has at their disposal and can actually carry you all of the way to T1. There you choose one out of the four spirit guardians for both the primary and secondary slots. For leveling, you select Eagle (primary) and Jaguar (secondary). The Eagle primary Spirit Hall is your main source of damage until you get starter gear for endgame. Every time you evade you create massive amounts of auto-aimed AoE projectiles. Your gear and skills center around reducing the cooldown of your evade as much as possible. Thunderspike reduces the cooldown, and finding boots with attacking reduces evade cooldown is a massive boost to your early leveling damage. The Jaguar secondary gives you easy access to Ferocity for extra attack speed and Invasive Rushing Claw cooldown resets.

Speed & Damage

Rushing Claw is a staple for early Spiritborn mobility. Use it whenever you can to go from pack to pack or close the distance to your target. Soar is used for the early game to increase your mobility further. Lastly, Ravager is an amazing secondary damage source that applies extra hits to all targets you hit with any ability, making it easy to trigger Jaguar or take out smaller enemies with a single hit of Rake.

Key Passive

Vital Strikes is our key passive of choice for leveling. On top of a great damage boost it also solves resource and life recovery once you can reliably apply Vulnerable.

Final Journey to Level 60

As you make your way to level 60 you pick up various offensive and defensive passives. Check out the skills progression above to see where to put your points as you go, but leveling is a fluid situation and your priorities may shift based on what gear you have found thus far.

Accursed Touch Swap

Once you acquire Accursed Touch, you can make multiple swaps in your setup because this aspect's Vulnerable effect cannot be removed by Vital Strikes.

Check out our Renown Guide to unlock all your additional Skill Points efficiently. 

Spirit Hall

Primary: ‍Eagle allows your Evade to deal damage and apply Vulnerable, helping out with resource generation from ‍Vital Strikes.

Secondary: ‍Jaguar provides you with easy access to Ferocity for more Attack Speed and further synergies down the line.

Rake Jaguar Spiritborn Spirit Hall

Unlocking the Spirit Hall

Once you reach level 15, you have to complete a short questline starting in Gea Kul, Kehjistan. A Priority Quest leads you there to help out Tarka. After a few stops outside of town you have to enter the Sacred Hunting Grounds and defeat the Spirit Beast. While inside this dungeon you have to use the emote wheel at two separate stops, once for "Help", once for "Thanks" in order to progress. The boss fight is relatively long and difficult for low level characters, so it's recommended to do this quest on normal. After finishing the quest your secondary Spirit Hall unlocks automatically at level 30.

Learn more details in our full Spiritborn Spirit Hall Guide.

Gear & Stat Priorities

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

To get started as a Rake Jaguar Spiritborn, focus the most on upgrading your weapon as its damage is the base for all further damage calculations. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you get the right ones. For example, % Damage, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful.

Tip: For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easy time.

1-60 Leveling
T1 Starter

Read more about itemization in our Beginner Articles about Damage, Defense and Stats.

Legendaries & Uniques

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.

For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if you have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.

Must-have Dungeon unlocks

  1. Wild Claws (Hierophant Pyre - Nahantu)

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

  1. Haste (Seething Underpass - Nahantu)
  2. Disobedience (Hals of the Damned - Kehjistan)
  3. Fell Soothsayer's (Ularian Sepulcher - Nahantu)
  4. Might (Dark Ravine - Dry Steppes)

Other useful Aspects (drop/gamble)

  1. Accursed Touch
  2. Redirected Force
  3. Plains Power
  4. Duelist's
  5. Interdiction
  6. Endurance
  7. Adaptability

What to Gamble

OffensiveGloves
DefensiveHelm, Chest, Pants
Utility, MobilityBoots
ResourceRings

Great Uniques for this build

  1. Loyalty's Mantle
  2. Harmony of Ebewaka
  3. Rod of Kepeleke
  4. Ring of the Midnight Sun
  5. Peacemonger's Signet
  6. Razorplate
  7. Wound Drinker

Jackpot Drops

As you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can massively amplify your power and speed up the leveling by switching to another build. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:

Build-defining Aspects

  • Moonrise & Adaptability (enables Rock Splitter and Thrash Endgame Builds)

Build-defining Uniques

  1. Sepazontec (enables Rock Splitter and Thrash Endgame Builds)
  2. Jacinth Shell (amplifies multiple Endgame Builds)

Learn more details in our articles covering the Codex of Power and Unique Items.

Runes

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Rake Jaguar Spiritborn focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

  • Tam + Ohm - You achieve moderate uptime of War Cry granting increased damage.
  • Lith + Que - Casts Earthen Bulwark granting a large barrier for defense and more damage with Viscous Shield

Alternative choices

As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

  • Poc - You continuously gain and spend tons of Vigor, so this is an easy activator
  • Vex - The extra skill ranks help by increasing damage
  • Xal - For extra defense
  • Gar - To reach 100% crit more reliably
  • Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger and defense. It s executes enemies at 10% HP and can be combined with Xol in your other Runeword to generate large amounts of offering
  • Yom - Petrify is a massive damage multiplier, especially against bosses

Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.

Mercenaries

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.

Hired: Raheir

He provides us with Fortify, Stuns, some extra damage, more resistances and prevents us from getting oneshot every 30 seconds thanks to Valiance. Beware that he's not present when playing in groups and make sure you remain resistance cap without him.

Reinforcement: Subo

Choose Trip Mines to knock enemies down when you cast Rake.

Rake Jaguar Spiritborn Mercenaries

Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.

How To Level

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.

Campaign Leveling
Seasonal / Alt Leveling
Tips & Tricks
Speedrun Route

Campaign Leveling

  • For your first character in Diablo 4, completing the Campaign provides all the background lore information but is not necessary.
    • The Campaign is the slowest way to level, but it's worth experiencing the Campaign and Diablo 4's storyline at least once.
    • To play Seasonal Content you need to have completed or skipped the Campaign.
    • If your account is below Rank 4 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
      • This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
    • After finishing the campaign, you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
    • Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 40.

Seasonal / Alt Leveling

  • Complete the Seasonal Questline in order to progress your Seasonal Journey to unlock additional Legendary Aspects and work on your Seasonal Powers.
  • If your account is below Rank 4 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
    • This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
  • Complete the Dungeons needed for any Legendary Aspects from your Codex of Power.
  • From level 1-60 you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
  • Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 40.
  • If you're playing an Alt, make sure to use Tempers and Leveling Caches crafted from the Alchemist to speed up your progression.
  • Find the most efficient way of leveling your character in detail with our Speed Leveling Guide.

Tips and Tricks

  • Don't Imprint Your Weapon
    • It is a better idea to put your best Offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which will usually not be replaced as often as your Weapon.
  • Compare Your Items
    • Press Shift to activate item comparison. Use this build guide's Stat Priorities section to identify potential upgrades.
  • Choose an Easy Difficulty
    • Ideally, start on Hard difficulty for the extra XP modifier, then try to go higher when it's way too easy. If that slows you down noticeably, it's better to stay on a lower difficulty.
  • Use Your Materials
    • There's no point in holding on to your gold or materials for later. Use everything to speed up your journey to 60. If you're twinking, make sure to craft the Allowance Caches from the Alchemist at level 20 and if available, equip your Mythic Uniques at level 35 to make the leveling a breeze.

Speedrun Route

  • If you're looking to min/max your time spent on the way to 60 instead of following a generic guideline, you need to use a specific strategy.
  • This usually includes farming certain activities up to a specified level and then switching to other tasks while gathering XP in high density areas and pushing the difficulty as high as you can.
  • We update this strategy seasonally in our Speed Leveling Guide.

Endgame Transition

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

As you approach level 60 with the Rake Jaguar Spiritborn, you unlock higher item power gear that represents a massive jump in character power. This is a good time to refresh your setup with new tempers and imprints.

At level 60, Paragon Levels and The Pit unlock. Work towards Tier 20 to enter Torment 1, where the Endgame begins. Focus on overcapping your Armor (1000+) and Resistances (70%+) as you receive some penalties to your character's stats:

  • -250 Armor per Torment difficulty
  • -25% All Resistances per Torment difficulty

At this point, your setup should look roughly like this before you dive into min/maxing with Uniques, Mythics & Masterworking. With better gear, more levels and Glyphs, you can push further and eventually unlock higher difficulties for increased rewards.

This step marks the end of the leveling guide. Below is the Paragon setup to get you started in Torment difficulty, but ideally, you should now transition towards the endgame version of this build or choose another of your liking.

Rake Jaguar Spiritborn Starter Setup

Paragon & Glyphs

!
Important

Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.

Use the slider to see progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.

Rake Jaguar Spiritborn Paragon
Tip

Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

To Level 15

  1. Ritual
  2. Spirit
  3. Colossal
  4. Fitness
  5. Headhunter

To Level 46

  1. Ritual
  2. Spirit
  3. Colossal
  4. Fitness
  5. Headhunter

There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.

Video Guide

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

Summary

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn
  • The Rake Jaguar Spiritborn is a fast-paced, easy to play leveling build that scales very well into endgame.
  • With Vital Strikes unlocked, focus on multiple sources of Vulnerable until you get Accursed Touch.
  • Stack critical strike chance, attack speed & defenses on your gear.
  • Jump from pack to pack cleaving down foes with your explosive Rake strikes and Spirit Jaguar companion.

Credits

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Rake Jaguar Spiritborn

Written by Lucky Luciano

Reviewed by Wudijo

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