Diablo 4 Starter Pack

While Diablo 4 Season 11 made some adjustments to the early game difficulty, your leveling speed will still be quite fast if you kill monsters quickly enough.

Evade Spiritborn build, after several seasons of testing, has proven to be excellent for both leveling and endgame performance, and may be one of the best Spiritborn builds.

Evade Spiritborn Gameplay And Advantages

The core mechanics of Evade Spiritborn build revolve around Eagle Hall ability. Your skill tree should primarily focus on enhancing various damage multipliers. Use Evade to trigger Accelerated Thunderspike effect, unleashing a barrage of feathers at monsters for massive damage.

Evade Spiritborn build has been a Tier S leveling build for several consecutive seasons. It boasts extremely fast movement speed and monster-clearing efficiency, and its gameplay is very simple, and you just need to keep using Evade, and the flying feathers will automatically clear the monsters on the screen.

Impact Of Season 11

A bug in PTR 2.5.0 allowed gear like Loyalty's Mantle to provide double damage bonuses with Eagle Hall, resulting in excessively high damage. If this bug had been fixed, the reachable level in The Pit would have decreased by 10 levels (about level 100). This bug has been fixed in the official patch.

However, the developers also announced a rebalancing of the difficulty of The Tower and The Pit, reducing it by approximately 5-10 levels. Therefore, the actual strength of Evade Spiritborn is not expected to change significantly compared to PTR 2.5.0.

Additionally, the developers announced a 60% reduction in boss health, which will significantly speed up boss fights for this build.

Evade Spiritborn Leveling Build

Gear

• Helm: Aspect of Might (Neo + Qax)
• Chest Armor: Aspect of Layered Wards (Cem + Gar)
• Gloves: Rebounding Aspect
• Pants: Aspect of Disobedience (Emerald + Emerald)
• Boots: Duelist's Aspect
• Amulet: Aspect of Unyielding Hits (Skull)
• Ring 1: Conceited Aspect (Skull)
• Ring 2: Aspect of the Moonrise (Skull)

In the early game, you can freely use your two-handed weapon slot, using any magic, rare, or legendary weapon, focusing primarily on its pure damage to avoid wasting resources on Aspect engravings due to frequent upgrades.

Skils

• Thunderspike: Enhanced Thunderspike and Accelerated Thunderspike
• Crushing Hand: Enhanced Crushing Hand and Advantageous Crushing Hand
• Toxic Skin: Enhanced Toxic Skin and Measured Toxic Skin
• Soar: Enhanced Soar and Replenishing Soar
• Ravager: Enhanced Ravager and Measured Ravager
• Armored Hide: Enhanced Armored Hide and Reinforced Armored Hide
• Primary Spirit: Eagle
• Secondary Spirit: Eagle

From level 1 to 14, you can use basic skills like Stinger, Quill Volley, or Crushing Hand to level up. However, when you reach level 15, you must reset your skills and switch to Evade Spiritborn build.

Evade Spiritborn skill build is relatively flexible, and the overall strength is not significantly affected. Even if you don't have enough skill points, it won't affect your damage much, because skills like Thunderspike and Crushing Hand are mainly used to trigger effects.

Starting with the seasonal quests, unlock the reputation board on Normal difficulty, then equip your pet. Once you reach level 15, switch to Hard difficulty and use Crushing Hand to farm Helltide. Then farm Helltide until the first hour ends, and your character should be around level 30-35.

Then, run Vessel of Hatred Campaign on Normal difficulty until you unlock Kurast Undercity and obtain Runes Cache. Last, depending on your character's strength, continue farming Helltide on Expert or Penitent difficulty until you reach level 50. After that, clear Strongholds on Normal difficulty.

Evade Spiritborn Endgame Build

Gear

• Helm: Loyalty's Mantle (Qax + Cem)
• Chest Armor: Jacinth Shell (Emerald and Emerald)
• Gloves: Fists of Fate
• Pants: Temerity (Emerald and Emerald)
• Boots: Duelist's Aspect
• Weapon: Wushe Nak Pa (Ohm + Bac)
• Amulet: Aspect of Redirected Force (Skull)
• Ring 1: Conceited Aspect
• Ring 2: Aspect of Unyielding Hits (Skull)

In the mid-game, you can Temper your gear to gain damage affixes and reforge other attributes. Then, progress through The Pit to level 10 to unlock Torment I difficulty.

This build doesn't require any specific Diablo 4 items for a smooth transition from early game to endgame content, and you only need 3 items to handle most of the endgame content. One is the core item Loyalty's Mantle obtained by defeating Gregor, and the other is the Wushe Nak Pa and Jacinth Shell obtained by defeating Lord Zir.

Skills

• Armored Hide: Enhanced Armored Hide and Reinforced Armored Hide
• Concussive Stomp: Enhanced Concussive Stomp
• Thunderspike: Enhanced Thunderspike and Accelerated Thunderspike
• Counterattack: Enhanced Counterattack and Reinforced Counterattack
• The Seeker: Harmonious Seeker and Exalted Seeker
• Rock Splitter: no

In endgame gameplay, you almost only need to frequently press the evade key, while other skills mostly provide buffs. For example, Armored Hide skill is only used to trigger Aspect of Unyielding Hits buff.

Spiritborn is one of the strongest classes in Season 11, and Evade Spiritborn is the most stable and safest choice. It can be strong from the start of the season to the end, without worrying about acquiring specific Diablo 4 items, and is arguably the best leveling build in the entire game. If you're not aiming for The Pit rankings, then this can be your best starting build for Season 11.

Diablo 4 Campfire Chat not only announced the changes for Season 11, but also its release date. However, this date is unusual, being two days later than players had predicted.

This is clearly unusual, leading players to speculate that Season 11 might have some surprises in store to counter the challenge from its biggest rival, Path of Exile 2 patch 0.4.0.

Why Is The Release Date Unusual?

Season 11 Release Date

According to Diablo 4's usual practice, the end date of each season pass typically signifies the end of the season. Therefore, according to the original schedule, Season 10 would end on December 9th, which usually means that Season 11 would begin immediately afterward on the 9th.

However, the latest official patch notes and blog indicate that Season 11 will begin at the following times:

• 8:30 PM Pacific Standard Time (PT), Thursday, December 11th
• 11:30 PM Eastern Time (EST), Thursday, December 11th
• 4:30 AM Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), Friday, December 12th
• 5:30 AM Central European Time (CET), Friday, December 12th

The Unusual Reason

Official releases are rarely on Thursdays, and they typically release new seasons on Tuesdays. Furthermore, 8:30 PM EST is an unfavorable time for players worldwide, as it's close to midnight or nighttime in most regions.

This time also means that Diablo IV development team and engineers will probably need to work through the night to ensure a smooth season launch, resulting in additional overtime costs.

Furthermore, Diablo 4's official season updates deliberately avoid clashing with the seasons and leagues of other popular ARPGs.

This timing puts Season 11 very close to the release of its main competitor, Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0. Patch 0.4.0 will be released on December 12th, bringing the new Druid class to Path of Exile series.

The Impact Of The Game Awards

The biggest reason for the two-day delay in Season 11's release is likely The Game Awards ceremony, also scheduled for December 11th, 2025. It's not just an awards ceremony, but also a platform for announcing major game news of the year.

The Game Awards will begin at approximately 7:30 PM Eastern Time / 4:30 PM Pacific Time, and Season 11 will be released a few hours after the awards ceremony.

The developers of Diablo IV have repeatedly hinted at revealing new content at The Game Awards, almost certainly the game's second expansion.

However, expansion announcements shouldn't affect season release dates. Therefore, this deliberate arrangement might suggest that Season 11 itself will include a surprise release linked to the expansion announcement. This content could be revealed at The Game Awards and released a few hours later with the season.

Speculation On The Surprise Release

New Class Paladin

Paladin is an extremely popular class in Diablo series, and its addition would greatly boost its popularity. Furthermore, some players have discovered that one of the cosmetic rewards for Season 11 Battle Pass closely resembles a flail, a classic Paladin weapon, and currently, there is no actual flail weapon type in the game. However, Season 11 already includes a major rework of core combat and stats systems, including elites, game difficulty, capstones, toughness, defense caps, and health potions.

Adding a completely new class without prior community testing or feedback on the public test server is extremely risky and logically illogical. Therefore, while the possibility of a new class is there, it is very small.

Expansion 2

So, is it possible that the official announcement of DLC 2 will be made directly? Generally, expansions, as paid content, require several months of promotion to introduce their features and attract players. It's unlikely they will be released without prior notice, and the official announcement has already stated that the expansion will be delayed until 2026. Therefore, the probability of announcing DLC 2 directly at TGA is very small.

However, Season 11 might release a brand new area connecting to the new expansion. After all, it's been over a year since the last DLC was released, and the official development of DLC 2 should be nearing completion, allowing them to promote it in-game beforehand.

The new area could serve as a prelude to the expansion. For it to be meaningful, the area would need to include side quests, new Diablo 4 items, main story clues, or new exclusive activities—which in itself constitutes a significant update.

While the specific content is unknown, Season 11 has a high probability of including unannounced surprise releases; otherwise, the seemingly illogical release timing of the season cannot be explained.

Other Clues

After the announcement of the first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, Diablo 4 added a free pet system. This proves that the developers have a history of adding free content alongside major announcements.

Furthermore, renowned game journalist Jez Cordon revealed that Diablo IV's content at The Game Awards goes far beyond just one expansion, indicating that there are even more surprises to come.

In any case, these hidden surprises have significantly increased the player community's anticipation for Season 11. What new content awaits us at 2025 TGA.