Soul Splinters Guide for Diablo 4 Season 15

Soul Splinters Quick Summary:

• Soul Splinters are Season 15 Jewelry gems that provide a powerful bonus alongside a meaningful drawback
• You can equip up to three Soul Splinters at once, making their interactions an important part of buildcrafting
• Season 15 has eight different Soul Splinters across Magic, Rare, Legendary, and Unique rarities
• Matching Splinters can be upgraded through Amalgamation in the Horadric Cube, so lower-rarity duplicates are worth keeping
• The right Splinter depends heavily on which drawback your build can ignore or compensate for, rather than one option being universally best

Wanna start a season on a high note instead of painfully farming for the needed gear? Check out our Diablo 4 Season Starter Bundle.

 

 

 

Diablo 4 Soul Splinters Overview

Soul Splinters are special socketable gems added in Diablo 4 Season 15, Season of Hell’s Legacy. You put them into jewelry, and unlike regular gems, they don’t just give you a resistance bonus. Every Soul Splinter has a strong extra effect with a drawback attached to it. You can have up to three Soul Splinters equipped across your Jewelry slots, which means the devs continue the trend of making your jewelry extremely powerful and important for your build. Blizzard has eight of them for Season 15, themed around demons and artifacts from throughout Diablo history, including Andariel, Duriel, Lilith, Skarn, and the Black Soulstone. The way you handle these Soul Splinters is by choosing the downside that won’t break your build. A simple example would be a build that generates more Resource than it can even spend. It doesn’t care much about Anguish making Skills more expensive cause well, it has no Resource dumps. A DoT build that barely uses Critical Strikes just shrugs off Hellfire’s -100% Critical Strike Chance. On the other hand, putting Hellfire into a Crit build would pretty much be self-sabotage. It’s not quantum physics. You’ll get how it works quite fast. Soul Splinters come in four rarities:

• Magic
• Rare
• Legendary
• Unique

One of the changes from the PTR. Devs originally tested Common Soul Splinters as well, but in the final Season 15, there are only Magic through Unique. The exact numerical effects below come from the 3.2.0 PTR. The final Season 15 update keeps the same eight Splinters and doesn’t list any numerical rebalance for them in the 3.2.1 launch notes, but beware of balancing changes when some Soul Splinters turn out to be a bit too good for their tradeoff.

All Diablo 4 Soul Splinters

Without a long introduction, here are all Diablo 4 Soul Splinters and what their Unique versions do:

Soul Splinter	Unique Bonus	Drawback	Best For
Splinter of Anguish	+35% Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed	+30% Primary Resource Costs	Crit/Attack Speed builds
Splinter of Sin	+40%[x] Maximum Life	-30% Maximum Primary Resource	Builds that struggle with survival
Splinter of Lies	+100% Gold and Crafting Material Drop Rate, +25% Bonus XP	Permanently Weakened and Vulnerable	Low Torment farming
Splinter of the Black Soulstone	Each Soul gives +5%[x] damage for 15 sec	Each Soul also gives +0.5% damage taken	Speedfarming/Echoing Hatred
Splinter of Pain	+40% Damage Reduction	-30% Movement Speed	Survivability if you have the ability to dash often
Splinter of the Mother	Unhindered; touching enemies makes them Vulnerable for 10 sec	Stunned for 4 sec after touching 250 enemies	Mobile/melee builds. Honestly not worth it unless paired with something that clears the stun
Splinter of Hellfire	+100%[x] damage	-100% Critical Strike Chance	Non-Crit/DoT builds
Splinter of Damnation	Killing an Elite pack raises Monster Power by 1 for 25 sec	No drawback cause you already make the game harder for yourself	If last Torment isn’t enough of a challenge, plus you want higher Mythic Unique drops

The majority of these also give you a Resistance bonus, cause otherwise it wouldn’t be worth it. Anguish gives Fire Resistance, Sin gives Lightning, Lies gives Cold, Pain gives Poison, Mother gives Physical, and Damnation gives Shadow Resistance. Black Soulstone is the exception and gives All Stats instead. Let’s break down each Splinter in detail.

Splinter of Anguish

Anguish is a Unique rarity Splinter. It’s one of the easiest offensive Splinters to fit into most builds. At Unique rarity, you get:

• +35% Critical Strike Chance
• +35% Attack Speed
• +4,375 Fire Resistance
• +30% Primary Resource Costs

That’s a pretty hefty amount of Crit and Attack Speed from one socket. The drawback is also very harsh, though. Every Resource-spending Skill becomes 30% more expensive, and that penalty stays at 30% no matter the rarity. Only use this if you have no trouble generating your Primary Resource, or your build doesn’t spend it. If you’re constantly running dry without Anguish, adding it will make your life so much harder.

Splinter of Sin

Sin trades Resource capacity for HP. Its Maximum Life bonus scales from 10% to 40%[x], while your Maximum Primary Resource is always reduced by 30%. Obviously, it’s best used with builds that regenerate Resource quickly but don’t have a huge maximum pool. Forty percent multiplicative Maximum Life is nothing to scoff at. Just don’t use it blindly on some build akin to Whirlwind Barb, where damage or mechanics scale with Maximum Resource. Losing almost a third of that stat can stagnate your progress way more than extra life.

Splinter of Lies

This Splinter will not give you any big bonuses to stats and is only good for farming lower difficulty content. For instance, if you can safely farm Torment X, you can go to Torment IX pretty safely. If your build already has everything it needs to function properly, but maybe not the best rolls, I’d argue you can stay on the same difficulty level without much problem. Stats at Unique rarity:

• +100% Gold Drop Rate
• +100% Crafting Material Drop Rate
• +25% Bonus XP
• Permanently Weakened
• Permanently Vulnerable

That’s a huge farming boost, but being permanently Vulnerable is pretty nasty. If enemies barely scratch you, take the free XP and materials. If you’re pushing content where one hit from a trash mob takes most of your HP, maybe don’t voluntarily make yourself easier to kill.

Splinter of the Black Soulstone

Black Soulstone is, in my opinion, the strongest Splinter out of all of them to use in Speedfarming and in Helltides. Every enemy you kill gives you a Soul for 15 seconds. At Unique rarity, each active Soul gives:

• +5%[x] damage
• +0.5% damage taken

The stacks don’t refresh. Every Soul has its own 15-second duration. The maximum Soul stack is unknown yet, but I’d say it’s probably gonna be either 5 or 10. In a huge pack, this ramps up very fast. Ten Souls already means +50% multiplicative damage at the cost of +5% damage taken. Against Echo of Mephisto or Lilith? It’s just gonna take up a slot. Black Soulstone is much more appealing for dense Nightmare Dungeons, Waking Nightmares, and similar content than Echo farming.

Splinter of Pain

Pain is quite straightforward: 40% Damage Reduction for -30% Movement Speed. That’s one hell of a defensive bonus, pun not intended, but I hate moving slowly in Diablo, so whether I’d use it depends entirely on the class, not even the build. If you can rely on Teleport, Charge, Dash, or another reliable movement skill with short downtime, you can get away with it. If your movement skill is purely for dodging out of an AoE attack, it’s gonna feel terrible. Note that Splinter of Pain has a combo interaction with Splinter of Mother. The latter makes you Unhindered, so Splinter of Pain’s downside is completely negated. Devs already fixed an interaction where Pain could slow you even while Splinter of the Mother made you Unhindered, so you’re good to go now.

Splinter of the Mother

As I just mentioned, Mother makes you Unhindered, and any enemy you physically touch becomes Vulnerable for 10 seconds. The downside is really punishing. At Unique quality, after touching 250 enemies, you Stun yourself for four seconds. Lower-quality versions trigger the Stun even sooner, at 100 / 150 / 200 contacts. This works better on builds that are already flying through enemy packs. Melee and movement-heavy builds can spread Vulnerable just by existing. While Vulnerability raises your damage by 20% and, in this case, doesn’t require any skill to be used, the tradeoff on greater difficulties means that you’ll 100% die. So yeah, don’t use it if you have no way to counter the stun.

Splinter of Hellfire

Hellfire is one of the most clearly build-defining Splinters. At Unique level of a Splinter, you get +100%[x] damage. The tradeoff is that you lose 100% Critical Strike Chance. For most builds that dominated the meta for a long time by utilizing high crit chance, that’s bad. It seems to me that with this Splinter, devs aim to create a wider build variety. For some damage-over-time builds on Spiritborn or Necromancer, or just anything else that doesn’t rely on Critical Strikes, this will work like a charm. Even then, check the rest of your build first. Maybe your main damage doesn’t Crit, but a Resource proc, cooldown mechanic, passive, or another important effect depends on Critical Strikes. If losing Crit does nothing important to your build, though, getting up to 100% multiplicative damage from one Splinter is like a birthday cake for your character.

Splinter of Damnation

Damnation is a fun one. It’s basically a risk-reward gem. Killing an Elite pack increases Monster Power by 1 for:

• 10 seconds at Magic
• 15 seconds at Rare
• 20 seconds at Legendary
• 25 seconds at Unique

While that’s all that the tooltip for it tells us, it’s gonna work really well in Undercity and will likely become the main way to farm Mythic Uniques. I think. I’m not quite sure if it’s gonna work the same way I imagine it.

How to Get Soul Splinters

Devs confirm that Soul Splinters drop during Season 15, but they haven’t published a proper loot table yet. The final Season of Hell’s Legacy announcement doesn’t say that you need to farm this dungeon five times and get Anguish. What we do know is:

• Soul Splinters drop as Magic, Rare, Legendary, and Unique
• You want duplicate Splinters because you can combine lower rarities
• The Horadric Cube lets you upgrade matching Splinters through Amalgamation

Season 15 also has Splinters of Evil from Diablo, Baal, and Mephisto. Despite the devs choosing almost the same name for two systems, those aren’t the same as Soul Splinters, don’t get confused. Splinters of Evil are seasonal progression powers tied to the Prime Evils, while the Soul Splinters in this guide go into your Jewelry. Once the season is live and I know a way to farm Soul Splinters reliably, that’ll be the first part of this guide that I’ll update.

 

 

How to Upgrade Soul Splinters

You upgrade Soul Splinters through Amalgamation in the Horadric Cube. The requirement for it to work is that the Splinters need to be:

• The same type
• The same rarity

Amalgamation then combines them into the next rarity tier. So Magic becomes Rare, Rare becomes Legendary, and Legendary eventually becomes Unique. What devs haven’t specified in the announcement is the exact number of matching Soul Splinters required per upgrade. The Cube’s Amalgamation system can combine supported consumables, socketables, and dungeon keys, but the exact input depends on the item. Don’t salvage, throw away, or ignore lower-rarity Soul Splinters early in the season. Rarity is more important than usual here because Splinter drawbacks don’t get lower when you upgrade them. For example:

Splinter	Magic Bonus	Unique Bonus	Drawback at Both
Anguish	+15% Crit / Attack Speed	+35% Crit / Attack Speed	+30% Resource Costs
Sin	+10%[x] Life	+40%[x] Life	-30% Max Resource
Pain	+10% DR	+40% DR	-30% Movement Speed
Hellfire	+40%[x] Damage	+100%[x] Damage	-100% Crit Chance

You get the idea. Unique Soul Splinters are much better, and lower rarities offer some significant drawbacks, to the point where I don’t see any reason to use a Magic Splinter. 

Best Soul Splinters in Diablo 4 Season 15

Listen, I’m not gonna make an S-to-D tier list, at least for now, even though I play quite a fair share of Diablo 4. It’s hard to theorize now when we don’t have the concrete nerfs and buffs for Charm and equipment bonuses. Soul Splinters are way too dependent on what downside your build can ignore. I certainly can give you a basic break down of the best Soul Splinters in Diablo 4 Season 15:

Build Type	Best Soul Splinter
Crit Builds	Splinter of Anguish
Attack Speed Builds	Splinter of Anguish
DoT/Non-Crit Builds	Splinter of Hellfire
Maximum Survivability	Splinter of Pain
More Maximum Life	Splinter of Sin
XP/Gold/Material Farming	Splinter of Lies
Dense Mob Clearing	Black Soulstone
Mobile/Melee Builds	Splinter of the Mother
Difficulty Pushing	Splinter of Damnation

Anguish looks like the best generic offensive choice. Crit Chance plus Attack Speed can fit a great number of builds, on condition that they can handle the higher Resource costs. Hellfire has the biggest potential to turn out broken and be a build-defining thing for a few days after the season starts. One hundred percent multiplicative damage is ridiculous if your build can throw Critical Strike Chance in the trash. Pain would be my safe defensive choice. Forty percent Damage Reduction is massive, and some builds just don’t need high movement speed. Splinter of Lies is a pure farming gem. There’s no reason to bring it into the hardest content just to suffer, but for the brain-dead, after-work farming, +100% Gold and materials alongside bonus XP is perfect. Black Soulstone has the biggest potential in content where you can find tons of enemies, though I want to see how many Souls players can realistically maintain before calling it one of the best overall.

 

 

Best Soul Splinter Combinations

Since these Soul Splinters aren’t used separately from each other and you can equip three of them, picking combinations is where buildcrafting gets more interesting. Some of the Soul Splinter combos that come to mind are:

• Anguish + Black Soulstone + Pain: Crit Chance and Attack Speed from Anguish, stacking damage from Black Soulstone, and up to 40% Damage Reduction from Pain to compensate for the extra damage Black Soulstone makes you take. The downsides are higher Resource costs and slower movement. If your class can fix or ignore both, this combo is crazy
• Hellfire + Pain + Sin: Hellfire gives you the huge multiplicative damage bonus, Pain gives Damage Reduction, and Sin gives another large defensive layer through Maximum Life. The downsides are huge: no Crit, lower Movement Speed, and lower Maximum Resource. I wonder if there’s a build that can either ignore or compensate for these debuffs, but if you can, this creates a build that plays completely differently from a typical meta.
• Lies + Black Soulstone + Anguish: Lies gives more XP, materials, and Gold. Black Soulstone rewards you for constantly killing dense packs. Anguish helps you mow those packs down faster. Would I take this into content that can kill me? Absolutely not. Lies already keeps you Vulnerable, and Black Soulstone makes you take even more damage as Souls stack. But for easy content that you can speedfarm, why not?
• Mother + Pain + Black Soulstone: Mother’s Unhindered ignores Pain’s movement speed penalty. Then Black Soulstone fits naturally because Mother wants you moving through big packs anyway. You’re touching enemies to apply Vulnerable, killing them, and turning those kills into Black Soulstone damage stacks. If you get an item that makes you Unstoppable as well, this combo has no downsides.

I’m quite certain that I missed some crazier combo ideas that will only be revealed with the release of the patch, but for now I can safely say that these are the combos most people will use.

F.A.Q