Cataclysm Druid Endgame Build Guide

Requirements for this build to function:

• Airidah's Inexorable Will
• Mjölnic Ryng
• Tempest Roar
• Enough Cataclysm Cooldown to recover it within its duration

Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Skill Passives

• Ursine Strength naturally harmonizes with the Cataclysm Druid due to its fantastic Overpower multiplier and Max Life benefits. Likewise, the Healthy damage bonus is a nice addition as this build prioritizes playing at full health.
• Envenom boosts Critical Strike damage as long as enemies are Poisoned. This damage bonus is achieved rather easily with Tempest Roar and Toxic Claws, enabling our Hurricane to Poison on Critical Strikes.
• Nature's Reach, Electric Shock, and Natural Disaster prompt us to cheat an extra Crowd Control roll on our gloves, provided the Hurricane duration tempers on our other Utility rolls landed well. Priority is given to Immobilize, which synergizes with all 3 Passives.

Skill Rotation

Start of Zone / Mobbing

• As you enter a new zone, alternate between Maul and any non-Werebear skill to begin stacking Quickshift and Heightened Senses, all the while priming your Invocation Runes with Evades and general movement. The goal at this point is to leave both nearly ready to activate without triggering either. Hurricane is a natural component of the Quickshift stacking, so you should have Stormshifter's active by the time your Runes are ready.
• With the Runes set, cast Debilitating Roar, followed by Earthen Bulwark to prep Resonance. Trigger both Xan and Qax simultaneously with an Evade and immediately cast Cataclysm. It's possible for Hurricane to consume Xan when it deals damage, so a quick cast is essential.
• Good news! The hard part is mostly over. Your Cataclysm will trigger Airidah's to pull in the mobs that aren't instantly evaporated and Raheir will follow up with Crater to pack them even more tightly together. Stay on this clump until the majority of mobs become Unstoppable or are cleared, then move forward to start preparing the next pull.
• From this point, you shouldn't need to bother with the Runes for the rest of the zone, but be sure to keep Hurricane active and stay in Werebear form with Maul as often as possible to promote Survival Instincts.
• However, there are still some potential pitfalls with the Runes. In the unlikely event that a cast of Cataclysm lines up with the Provocation granted to you by Shroud of False Death, it will unfortunately override Xan (evidenced by blue damage numbers signifying non-critical Overpowers). Additionally, one or both of your invocation Runes have the potential to fall off if you cast Cataclysm late in its duration. For this reason, it's important to have a generous overlap on its cooldown and to cast it as quickly as you can when it comes off cooldown. If, for either reason, you lose Xan or Qax, you need to let Cataclysm expire and start from the top of this rotation to regain the snapshots.

Bossing

Pit bosses can admittedly prove to be a challenge, and the optimal damage scenarios will take some practice to realize. To maximize single target damage, your goal is to lure the Boss to one of the edges of the arena, then move to a position where you are virtually on top of them. In essence, the aim is to minimize the area that random strikes can land and attempt to concentrate as many of them as possible onto the Boss, bypassing Cataclysm's restriction of hitting the same target just once every .5 seconds. But since the arenas vary in shape, and some bosses drift backwards (Resurrected Malice / Blood Bishop) while others follow you promptly (Scourge of the Land / Den Mother), there's no one-size-fits-all tactic.

Spirit Boons

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

In theory, Electrocution provides a better pair of multipliers than Fang and Claw. But with only Bad Omen available as a means to proc its Secondary Bonus, it can prove inconsistent, especially in density. Feel free to try both.

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 Cataclysm Druid focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Bac + Xan - Capping critical strike chance through gear has a high opportunity cost for the Cataclysm Druid, so this Rune slots perfectly to cover both Critical Strikes and Overpowers.
• Cem + Qax - Provides our Cataclysm with double damage (or more!). Utilize Evade to maintain control over the buff, ensuring that it is not consumed by other skills.

Alternative choices

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

• Kry - Grouping mobs together substantially improves Cataclysm damage, so this is a reasonable addition, even alongside Airidah's.
• Ohm - War Cry provides a modest increase in damage.
• Mot - Enables the Rogue's Dark Shroud, which is a strong and affordable defensive option.
• Lith - A solid alternative to Bac that requires a more stationary playstyle.

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: Subo

Subo's Seeker Passive is excellent for scouting mobs, while Ready At Hand periodically boosts Movement Speed. He also provides a solid Critical Strike multiplier with Opening Fire.

Reinforcement: Raheir

Perhaps even more important than your hired mercenary is the on-demand pixel stack Raheir generates with Crater. Provided your Cataclysm has a duration of 22 seconds or longer, Raheir will consistently condense Airidah's initial pull into an even tighter space while Stunning those mobs in place!

To enable the Cataclysm 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 Cataclysm 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 Cataclysm 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.

How can I trigger Unstoppable?

Druids have only two non-Ultimate sources of Unstoppable. Trample and Earthen Bulwark. If you're not subscribed to their long Cooldown, Metamorphosis is a great alternative to those skills.

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.

Tempest Roar

• With ‍Tempest Roar equipped, ‍Cataclysm becomes a Werewolf Skill and is able to inflict Poison via ‍Toxic Claws. In addition to some Damage Reduction, this interaction enables several multipliers in the build, including ‍Changeling's Debt, ‍Unsatiated, Envenom, Lust for Carnage and ‍Heightened Malice to list a few.
• The act of Shapeshifting into Werewolf activates ‍Quickshift and ‍Heightened Senses.

Mechanics

Snapshotting

As is the case with other Druid builds like Lightning Storm and Hurricane, the Cataclysm Druid is capable of capturing a number of damage bonuses over an extended duration, including but not limited to:

• Xan
• Qax
• Quickshift
• Resonance (triple damage)
• Backlash

However, unlike other Druid builds, Cataclysm can perpetually maintain these buffs under certain conditions. Namely, you must have a Cooldown on Cataclysm that sufficiently undercuts its duration, and you need to be prompt about recasting it when it comes off Cooldown.

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 ‍Cataclysm Druid is a maelstrom of destruction, capable of almost immediately offscreening lesser foes while standing toe-to-toe with the strongest Druid builds in terms of Pit Pushing. The initial snapshot and unintuitive boss mechanics are easy to learn but tough to master. However, the payoff for proper execution is tremendous and catapults the Cataclysm Druid into the upper echelon of Druid builds.

Written by IBoilerUp

Reviewed by Danger