Companion Druid Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Companion Druid Endgame Guide! If you're looking to flood the screen with minions and make short work of endgame Bosses, this build is for you! While Wolves serve as the centerpiece of the build, the area of effect clear from Poison Creeper and Ravens play an integral role, and all Companions buff each other thanks to Shepherd's.
Boasting as many as 18 pets (more if you count those summoned by Ceh), the build shines in single target situations but is limited in speedfarming by its Cooldowns and small area of effect. Season 6 introduces One With Nature, an awesome Companion-focused Key Passive, and the Untamed paragon board, which is teeming with useful bonuses. Also new is Stormcrow's, which improves clear with Ravens, but doesn't make the cut in the Mythic setup.
In Diablo 4, Companions inherit 100% of your character's stats, so scaling things like Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance, and Willpower plays a role. When it comes to multipliers, though, it can get a little tricky to say the least. You can safely assume that bonuses which specifically call out Companions will contribute to their damage. On the other hand, the Werewolf and Storm tags granted by Alpha and Storm's Companion, respectively, are practically cosmetic, and the vast majority of associated multipliers don't benefit Companions.
Petrify is newly working for Companions and is incorporated for its Critical Strike Multiplier. We use a pair of Shapeshifting generator/spenders to evoke Pack Leader and related bonuses like Quickshift, Inner Beast, Ring of Starless Skies, and Ancestral Guidance.
This guide teaches you all about how to reach the endgame in Diablo 4 with the Companion Druid. Let's get started!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Druid Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
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:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Wolves is your primary damage skill and gains a small AoE on its active ability when upgraded with Storm's Companion. Alpha gives them a massive damage boost and Moonrage improves their count.
- Maul supplements Fortify generation and maintains Shapeshifting bonuses from Heightened Senses and Quickshift.
- Shred provides excellent mobility while activating the other half of our Shapeshifting bonuses, as well as Ancestral Guidance and Ring of Starless Skies.
- Poison Creeper is excellent for trash clearing and applying Poison to activate Envenom. The active is dropped in late game setups for Blood Howl to improve Healing and Attack Speed, as well as to leverage Backlash and Vigilance.
- Use Ravens at will for another decent AoE and to improve Critical Strike Chance.
- Petrify stuns enemies in a large AoE and provides a massive Critical Strike multiplier.
Passives
- Call of the Wild is easily our strongest Passive skill.
- Envenom is the clear #2, provided we maintain Poison and have reasonable Critical Strike Chance.
- Our key passive, One With Nature, bolsters our Companion damage and adds to our minion total, buffing Shepherd's.
Skill Rotation
- As you approach a pack, open with Ravens to deal damage in an area and improve Critical Strike Chance.
- Target Elites and other high health targets with your Wolves. With maximum cooldown, the Wolves will recover at least every 2.75 seconds. Continue spamming them on Cooldown, as they deal the most damage.
- Shred into the center of the pack to activate Envenom and Heightened Malice.
- In between Companion casts and packs, regularly alternate between Maul and Shred for a chance to recover Companion cooldowns with Pack Leader and activate and maintain bonuses from Quickshift, Heightened Senses, Inner Beast, Iron Fur, Digitigrade Gait, Ancestral Guidance, and Ring of Starless Skies.
- Leverage Petrify's low Cooldown to inflict Stuns and buff Companion damage in density. It additionally groups mobs together when playing with Airidah's Inexorable Will.
Druid Spirit Boons
Druids can choose 5 out of 16 Passive bonuses (Boons) from 4 different spirits. You have to bond with one of the Spirits in Túr Dúlra to activate two of its Boons. The remaining Spirits can only have one Boon each. Use the following Boons:
Deer Spirit: Wariness
Eagle Spirit: Avian Wrath
Wolf Spirit: Packleader
Snake Spirit: Masochistic
Bond with the Eagle Spirit and activate Swooping Attacks. Iron Feather is an option here for additional toughness.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Druid Spirit Boons Guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.
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.
Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Wilds
- Keeper
- Spirit
- Earth and Sky
- Headhunter
To Level 46
- Wilds
- Spirit
- Headhunter
- Keeper
- Earth and Sky
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels: 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
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 Companion Druid focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Yul + Ceh - The more pets, the merrier right? On a serious note, these don't gain most bonuses that your main Wolves do, but they do provide a Freeze and Vulnerable on hit.
- Tam + Kry - All endgame variants utilize either the periodic grouping effect from Vortex or Airidah's Inexorable Will to concentrate mobs into Wolves' small area of effect.
Alternative choices
As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Gar - The Crit Chance bonus is great, especially early on.
- Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows you to execute at 10% HP. When combined with Xol in your other runeword, it also generates large amounts of offering.
- Mot - Dark Shroud is a strong and affordable defensive option.
- Lith - A surprisingly strong Invocation, provided you can afford to stand still.
- Cem - As a Magic Rune, it's a reasonable choice that you're more likely to find.
- Ur - Though the Offering generated is on the low side, this rune should be easy to acquire and activate frequently.
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.
Mercenaries
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: Raheir
Raheir provides us with passive All Resistance, an area of effect Slow which increases our damage, a 90% damage reduction bubble that also increases damage, and prevents us from getting one shot every 30 seconds thanks to Valiance. Beware that he's not present when playing in groups and make sure you remain resistance capped without him.
- Reinforcement: Varyana
We utilize Varyana's Ancient Harpoons for a periodic grouping effect.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Companion 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
- 2.75 Wolves Cooldown
- 95%+ Chance for Wolves to deal Double Damage
- 80%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 80%+ Attack Speed (including Wolves temper)
- 2500+ Willpower
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 5,000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Companion 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.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Companion 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.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with offensive or utility stats. In this Starter version, you can supplement your Armor with Disobedience over Spirit Bond if necessary.
- The Starter version of this build has most of the core Aspects it uses through endgame and plays largely the same, with a couple of notable exceptions.
- Without Storm's Companion, Wolves have no area of effect on use and will only damage one target at a time. Aim carefully!
- While we drastically improve the uptime of Wolves with Tempers, the other Companions will be available much less frequently without Harlequin Crest. Pack Leader helps mitigate this to an extent.
- For now, Stormcrow's improves clear and inflicts Crowd Control on mobs when we engage.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more Masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but ensure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
- The only real change to this variant is the addition of Storm's Companion, which gives our Wolves amazing stats and a small AoE splash on use, as well a significantly improved chance to activate Pack Leader.
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- Harlequin Crest makes it much easier to hit your Armor cap. It's also the largest source of Cooldown Reduction available in the game, allowing you to spam all Companions and Petrify frequently.
- Depending on the Greater Affix and Masterworking on your Harlequin Crest and the Temper on your Amulet, you may need to sacrifice the Ravens Cooldown Reduction temper on your Ring for an additional roll of Wolves or Companion Cooldown Reduction to reach the minimum cooldown of 2.75 seconds.
- Shroud of False Death is an excellent addition, as its +1 to All Passive skills implicit is a massive offensive and defensive boon. On top of that, its All Stats roll is helpful for capping Critical Strike Chance, Armor, and Resistances and meeting Rare Node requirements in the paragon board. What's more, due to a bug increasing the rank of One With Nature, the chest is currently granting one extra of each type of Companion! Though not nearly as much damage, Tyrael's Might is always worth consideration as you ascend through Torment Tiers to combat the Resistance and Armor penalties. Socket Skulls in your jewelry if you go this route.
- Ring of Starless Skies is a popular choice in many builds for its overstatted Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed rolls. The Resource Cost Reduction allows for much more liberal use of Shred as well.
- Note that Werewolf Attack Speed does not improve Wolves, even with Alpha equipped. We primarily take it to improve the speed of Shred for faster resets. If you prefer, you can take Critical Strike Damage in place of this temper.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- With Shred on the bar and decently high movement speed, there aren't a ton of adjustments to be made.
- Over Stormcrow's, slot Airidah's Inexorable Will for a much larger pull. Change the runes in your helm to include Yom and proc this pull more frequently.
- Attempt to max out Ravens Active size for more AoE coverage if possible. Unlike Wolves, Ravens have the ability to proc Pack Leader themselves.
This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- The Pit Push setup focuses on maximizing the active damage of Wolves at the cost of area of effect coverage and spammability.
- In place of Harlequin Crest, slot Heir of Perdition. In addition to its sizeable multiplier, you also gain a ton of extra Critical Strike Chance, allowing you to instead prioritize Attack Speed in your Spirit Boons and other pieces of gear. However, you need to make up a considerable amount of Armor on your boots and Amulet, and your damage relies almost solely on your ability to reset Wolves with Pack Leader.
- Use Airidah's Inexorable Will to repeatedly pull mobs into Wolves' small area of effect. In the freed up Rune slot, take either Yom to do this more frequently or Ohm to periodically boost your damage.
- Now that the goal is to deal most of your damage with the active of Wolves, extend Petrify's duration with tempers on your Gloves and Boots.
FAQ & Mechanics
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?
What is the best weapon choice?
Mechanics
So, what doesn't work with Companions?
Attack Speed Caps
Stagger
Video Guide
Coming soon!
Summary
- The Companion Druid brings a swarm of allies to the party, and enhances all of their damage with Shepherd's.
- Wolves will destroy most targets and the cooldown will be short. Use it repeatedly on the targets that somehow survive.
- We are very resilient and even have invincible allies to soak up some attacks. Very kind of them.
Credits
Written by IBoilerUp
Reviewed by Danger