Boulder Druid Endgame Guide

Season 7 is the Season of Witchcraft. It features two separate borrowed power mechanics in the forms of Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems. Both Seasonal mechanics are unlocked and improved by new NPCs found at the Tree of Whispers after collecting resources from Headhunt Zones, Seasonal areas similar to Helltide that appear across Sanctuary.

There are 25 Witchcraft Powers, 6 of which can be equipped at a time. Each Power belongs to one of three Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, and Psyche), tags that promote synergies within themselves and with Occult Gems. Each School has a single Unique Witchcraft Power, only one of which can be equipped at a time. These Unique Powers max out and gain an additional effect at rank 5, while the other Powers max at rank 20 and gain their bonus effects at various levels. To unlock and improve Witchcraft Powers, defeat Headrotten or complete Whispers within the Headhunt Zones to collect Restless Rot. Lost Powers are an exception, requiring you to randomly encounter a Forgotten Altar in Dungeons to unlock them.

Best-in-Slot Witchcraft Powers

Alternate Witchcraft Powers

• Breath of the Coven - Breath is a solid alternative to Force of Will for those Boulder Druids seeking to boost their Attack Speed. We use a ton of powers that synergize with it!

Rarely, Headrotten Bosses appear with a still-attached Fugitive Head stolen from the Tree of Whispers. Slay these enemies and return the Heads to Gelena to unlock and upgrade Occult Gems. These Gems are socketable in Jewelry and each provide +160 Armor and +8% Resistance to All Elements. More importantly, each Occult Gem grants a unique effect that synergizes with your equipped Witchcraft Powers to provide a variety of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility-based bonuses.

Best-in-Slot Occult Gems

• Friend of the Bog - Great overall providing Willpower boost, Life, and the ability move Unhindered through enemies.
• Elder Sigil - This is a straightforward damage multiplier for this build that is activated by Hex of Shattering applying Hex to enemies. Note that Boulder is a still a Wrath skill even with Metamorphic Stone imprinted on our item.
• Phantom String - A straightforward damage multiplier for this build. Note that Hex of Shattering allows us to Hex enemies.

Alternate Occult Gems

• Hungering Void - Another way to pull mobs together. It's less effective than Airidah's.

Skill Rotation

• Start by using Hurricane to activate your AoE damage and prepare for the fight.
• Follow up with Cataclysm or Petrify for Damage Buff and Spirit Generation.
• Cast Blood Howl for Attack Speed and the damage buff from Backlash.
• Begin using Boulder to knock back enemies and control the battlefield, stacking up to 10 Boulder at once. Thanks to your weapon temper, you won’t need to cast it 10 times to reach full potential. Boulder icon on our Skill Bar displays how many Boulders are active.
• Use Shred to stick to enemies as your Boulder knocks them around, keeping up the pressure and dealing consistent damage when using Mjölnic Ryng/Speedfarming version.
• Alternatively Claw for back up Spirit Generation if you are using Ring of Starless Skies version.
• Alternate between casting Boulder in Werebear form and Shred/Claw in Werewolf form to maintain Wildheart Hunger.

Druid Specialization

Use the slider to see the 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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

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 Boulder Druid focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Igni + Qax - To maximize your Overpower damage with this combo you must time it with Hunter's Zenith, Provocation, or Obsidian Slam.
• Bac + Xal - Gives you 20% Life which helps with Overpower Damage.

Alternative choices

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

• Jah - This replaces Evade with Teleport granting greater travel distance and Unstoppable.
• Tam - A good alternative to Bac for Bestial version because of the higher Attack Speed allows use to generate offering fairly quick.
• Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows an execute at 10% HP, can be combined with Xol in your other Runeword to generate large amounts of offering.
• Yom - Petrify grants Spirit when activated and Supreme Petrify applies the Critical Damage Multiplier. This allows for constant uptime on enemies.
• Que - if you invest 2 Skill Points to reach Enhanced Earthen Bulwark then you will have Unstoppable and a huge Barrier without the need for Earthen Bulwark on your Skill Bar.
• Gar - To reach 100% crit more reliably early on.
• Xan - This gives you another source of Overpower for Boulder.

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: Varyana

Cleave with Hysteria along with Bloodthirst and Bloodlust provides up to 25% Attack Speed, allowing you to active Hunter's Zenith's Overpower and reach 10 Boulders even faster!

• Reinforcement: Raheir

Raheir's Bastion is a great escape valve from high pressure situations.

To enable the Boulder Druid to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.

Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Boulder Druid, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.

This section is designed to guide your Boulder Druid from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.

Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.

What can I do to improve survivability?

The build works really well when you decimate everything in seconds, but may get overwhelmed if fights are long against high level monsters. There are several adjustments you can make when you have trouble with more difficult content:

• Check if your Armor & Resists are capped.
• Use defensive consumables.
• Roll Maximum Life instead of offensive stats on as many pieces as possible.
• Kite enemies when they become Unstoppable.
• Invest additional points into Circle of Life for Healing.

How can I trigger Unstoppable?

Our main source will come from investing 2 Skill points to reach Enhanced Earthen Bulwark that provides Unstoppable. Alternatively, take Metamorphosis aspect on your Boots for T1 Starter and Mythic Ursine.

What is the best weapon choice?

We need to use a Two-Handed Weapon, as the damage multiplier from Retaliation is absurdly high. Of the available options, a Two-Handed Mace would provide a slight advantage over other Two-Handed Weapons because of Overpower damage. Remember to go for the Two-Handed Weapon with better Affix rolls.

Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?

Generally hardcore and softcore share the same builds. Outside of being more prudent in your gameplay, you can also tweak the setup slightly to raise your survivability:

• Focus more on Armor & Resists, making sure that they are always capped especially as you transition into higher torment difficulties.
• Focus more on maximum life rolls, for example replacing DPS stats like main attributes, attack speed, critical strike chance and additive increased damage rolls. Also masterwork life more than normal if no other crucial stats have priority.
• Focus on adding defensive skills, passives and paragon nodes first as you level up.
• Play on a slightly lower difficulty than normal, don't push into difficult territory. As long as you can deal with all enemies swiftly, they can't retaliate.
• Include a source of Unstoppable if possible to get out of crowd controls.
• Use defensive elixirs and incenses instead of offensive ones.

Mechanics

Vasily's Prayer

• With Vasily's Prayer equipped, your Earth skills also count as Werebear skills, granting up to 5% Fortify of your maximum health with every cast. While the helm offers a significant defensive boost with Armor, Life, and Willpower, its real value lies in its synergy with Shapeshifting. By turning Earth skills into Werebear skills, you unlock powerful bonuses like Quickshift for increased damage after Shapeshifting, Heightened Senses for additional survivability, Iron Fur for reduced damage, and Survival Instincts for a huge damage muliplier. Additionally, equipping this helm allows you to switch your key passive to Bestial Rampage, increasing your damage and attack speed after Shapeshifting.

Wildheart Hunger

• With these unique boots equipped, Shapeshifting adds a stack of Wildheart, which is visible on your buff bar. Each stack of Wildheart increases the bonuses of your Bestial Rampage by 5%. These stacks are additive, resulting in up to 50x damage and 50% Attack Speed from these boots alone! However, the stacks decrease at 2%+ per second, essentially requiring a new Shapeshift form every 2-3 seconds in order to maintain the maximum stacks.

Stagger

Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects and instead take Stagger Damage when hit by one. The amount of stagger damage dealt depends on the type of CC and is proportional to its duration. After being hit by a CC effect, the Boss will temporarily take less Stagger Damage from a CC of the same type.

Effectively, this means that when you're just spamming one type of CC you don't need to spam any more of it than what you need to keep a normal enemy permanently CC-d. To stagger the Boss quickly you need to use as many different types of CC as possible. After the Boss is staggered it gains a certain amount of stacking Stagger Damage Reduction for the rest of the fight:

• After 1st Stagger: 20%
• After 2nd Stagger: 40%
• After 3rd Stagger: 60%
• After 4th Stagger: 90%

Bosses naturally regain 1% of their Stagger HP every second and when that regen is combined with 90% Stagger Damage Reduction it becomes borderline impossible to Stagger the Boss again unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.

The Boulder Druid build focuses on high AoE damage and battlefield control using Dolmen Stone and Metamorphic Stone. By combining Shapeshifting synergies from Vasily's Prayer with powerful Spirit management tools, this build delivers devastating damage while maintaining excellent survivability.

• Maximize Boulder Damage: Use the Dolmen Stone and Metamorphic Stone to increase the damage of Boulder. Maintain 10 Boulders at a time with the help of your weapon temper to efficiently control enemies and deal massive AoE damage. Boulder icon on our Skill Bar displays how many Boulders are active.
• Spirit Management: Generate Spirit using Claw, and aim to acquire Mylonic Ryng for infinite Spirit when Cataclysm is active, allowing you to spam your abilities without downtime.
  Alternatively Energize and Lucky Hit Chance: Gain Primary Resource affix on your Two-Handed Weapon will be our main source of Spirit with the Ring of Starless Skies version.
• Shapeshifting Synergies: Equip Vasily's Prayer to transform your Earth skills into Werebear skills, unlocking Shapeshifting synergies like Quickshift, Survival Instincts, Bestial Rampage or Ursine Strength for increased Damage and Survivability.

Written by thomasdatrain

Reviewed by IBoilerUp