Fire Claws Druid Guide

Fire Claw* is your main Damage Skill. The Druid slaps his enemies one by one with his claws and deals massive Fire Damage. Must be in Werebear or Werewolf form.

Armageddon* is your secondary Damage Skill. The Druid calls up nature to let Fire rain from the sky. This Skill moves around with your Character, dealing damage to monsters hit by the small projectiles. Cast it whenever it runs out to gain AoE-Damage.

Fury* makes 5 Physical Damage attacks on a single target or five hits on five separate targets. It is used to kill Immune to Fire monsters.

* Increased Attack Speed Skills (IAS)
* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)

Werewolf* transforms the Druid into a swift wolf which is required to use Fire Claws. It also provides Attack Speed and Attack Rating.

feral rage* increases your movement speed and grants additional Life Stolen per hit. This improves your overall clear speed and your survivability.

Lycanthropy* increases the duration of your Werewolf-form and provides a massive boost to your Life pool.

Summon Grizzly* summons a bear to fight by your side. He is a great distraction for your enemies!

Heart of Wolverine* summons a spirit that provides an Aura that buffs your team’s Attack Rating and Physical Damage.

Teleport* relocates you to an available space centered at your cursor, crossing over any gaps or walls. It can be used to travel long distances quickly.

* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) The Caster Crafted Amulet should have at least 13% Faster Cast Rate to hit the Breakpoint at 63% FCR.
2) Angelic Wings and Angelic Halo are always used in combination with each other.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter or Budget Variant.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 5

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Infinity, Might

Use a Desert Mercenary with Might Aura to deal with enemies that are immune to your main damage source.
Equip him with Infinity to reduce enemy Resistances and Defense with Conviction Aura, drastically boosting damage.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

General

• Summon Heart of Wolverine before you leave town. Keep it up at all times - It increases your damage output by adding Attack Rating and Physical Damage.
• Transform into the Werewolf-form to travel to your farming spot. Switch to your Weapon Swap with Hustle Phase Blade and hit monsters with Feral Rage until you maxed out its stages and burst of speed is procced. Use Fury if burst of speed hasn't procced yet. Keep these buffs up all the time. Switch back to your Main Weapon Swap.
• When entering your desired farming spot, cast Armageddon and start mauling down your enemies with Fire Claws.

Immunities

• When facing an Immune to Fire monster, switch to fury to attack it. This skill works best if no other monsters are in attack range, as you want to hit them with all 5 hits. This requires you to have a decent Physical Damage Weapon!
• Before you have Flame Rift, if a monster is Immune to both Fire and Physical Damage, simply move on to the next enemies. You can't deal with this combination if it isn't broken by infinity.
• Flame Rift sets the Fire Resistance of Immune to Fire monsters to 95%. With some -x% Enemy Fire Resistance, you can easily melt them.

Late-Game

• Use Teleport from Enigma to travel to your farming spot and jump between Elite Groups. This requires you to switch in and out of your shape-shifting forms because you can't use Teleport while transformed.
• Once you have access to metamorphosis
• Keep your Mercenary on a short leash to make use of his Conviction Aura.
• Optional: Cast Battle Command twice and Battle Orders in your Weapon Swap before engaging in combat. Refresh these buffs as soon as they run out. Buffing Heart of Wolverine this way will increase the strength of their aura, but it often dies quickly, so don't worry about buffing it every time.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate (FCR)

Faster Cast Rate (FCR) speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 68% FCR Breakpoint. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Human-Form

Increased Attack Speed (IAS)

Increased Attack Speed (IAS) speeds up your attack animations. Weapon bases have different IAS breakpoints. Values for recommended weapon options provided below. Consult the d2planner for other bases.

Phase Blade

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR) increases survivability. Aim for the 86% FHR Breakpoint.

werewolf-Form

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary focus is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build is Hardcore viable. If you are unaccustomed to this playstyle, we recommend trying this build on Softcore to gain experience on how to successfully pilot it.