Diablo IV: Guide to the "Poison Blast" Build for the Soulbinder!

With the recent update for Diablo IV: The Wrath of Hatred expansion, a brand-new class, the Soulbinder, has made its grand entrance. True to Blizzard's tradition, new classes are typically quite powerful right from the start. Just a few days post-launch, various Soulbinder builds have already climbed to the top tier. In a previous guide, I shared a high-mobility build centered around the Leopard Claw Assault. Today, we’ll continue exploring gear options and shift our focus towards a late-game build: the Poison Blast. This build boasts impressive survivability and mobility while delivering astonishing damage output.

For our core setup, we rely on three key items: the Kaepellek Staff, the Harmonious of Eberwacca, and the Ring of Midnight Sun. These items transform our core skills into foundational ones while maximizing our vitality cap to amplify our critical strike damage. However, the damage from the Claw Assault paired with the essential skill "Talent Tempo" might fall short after Pain Level Two. Therefore, we opted to switch to "Death's Touch," unlocking the passive "Steady Death's Touch" to convert it into a core skill. Just like the Four Kings always have a fifth member, this additional core skill, although not originally listed, hits like a ghost and achieves sky-high damage when paired with the right gear attributes.

Combat Strategy

The combat approach mirrors the previously mentioned Claw Assault build in its simplicity. Activate the Raider skill and use "Death's Touch" to charge directly at enemies. Alternatively, we can initiate with the Hunter skill, jumping into groups of monsters, then following up with "Counterattack," "Armor Hide," and then chaining "Death's Touch" for damage output.

Skill Point Allocation

For our basic skills, we invest 2 points purely as a transition since we won't be using the original basic skills; feel free to allocate these points to any other appealing skills. In the core skills section, we focus on "Death's Touch," so we won’t allocate points to active skills here but will max out all passive skills. As for focus skills, we allocate one point to Raider for mobility and vitality recovery, and one to Focus, maxing out the latter's advanced options.

Defense Skills

The Soulbinder's defensive skills are all highly effective and diverse. We choose to unlock "Armor Hide," "Counterattack," and "Insect Assault," adding them to our skill bar. For passives, the "Tenacious" damage reduction is quite practical, so we invest one point to unlock and then max it out.

Potential Skills

"Death's Touch," our primary damage skill, is located here, and we max it out while also filling "Fierce" and "Furious Strike" in the Leopard tree, along with "Heated." We also max out "Greed" and "Domination." For passive skills, with the exception of the six points in the Leopard tree, you can adjust based on your needs. Lastly, the ultimate skill "Hunter" is incredibly powerful, and we fully invest in the passives "Determined," "Soul Synchronization," and "Exceptional."

Key Passive Skills

The "Toxic Resonance" passive is crucial for the Poison Blast build. Not only does it accelerate our critical damage output, but the additional critical damage boost should not be underestimated.

Recommended Soul Chambers

For the main chamber, we suggest "Giant," which adds a new skill tag to "Death's Touch," enhancing survivability. For the secondary chamber, "Leopard" synergizes well with the unique helmet "Harmonious of Eberwacca," providing an additional skill tag to "Death's Touch" for maximal damage increase, while also ensuring a stable accumulation of Fury stacks.

Glyph Choices and Peak Node Recommendations

Post-expansion, the peak node design has seen some intuitive changes. You only need to select the required four legendary nodes and five glyphs, adjusting the routing points based on your character's current needs. Recommended glyphs include: "Disaster," "Spirit," "Might," and "Cunning." For peak nodes, we choose four that maximize our damage output: "Reveal," "Gather," "Restore," and "Fighter." Their functions are as follows:

Gear and Affix Recommendations

For the two-handed weapon, the critical strike effect of the Kaepellek Staff is paramount, with the priority even exceeding that of ancient items. The optimal affix is a double-hit chance on core skills. For the helmet, similar to the weapon, the effect of "Harmonious of Eberwacca," which boosts damage by 30%, is crucial. As for the ring, aim for a mana recovery effect exceeding 47%, ideally around 50%. Other essential attributes to stack include armor (aim for 5,000 during combat), resistance (maintain at least 70% based on current difficulty), attack speed, resource generation, base damage, agility, maximum life, and strength.

Recommended Mercenary Compositions

For the mercenary setup, primarily utilize Rahail, with Sobor as backup. Skills can be allocated according to the following methods.