Earth Spike Druid Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Earth Spike Druid Endgame Build Guide! This Basic skill build leverages the Seismic-shift Aspect and the Grizzly Rage Ultimate to decimate enemies along its narrow area of effect.
Proper positioning and targeting are key for the Earth Spike Druid. Though Seismic-shift does dramatically improve AoE, this build is still somewhat limited in its coverage compared to other Druid builds. Kiting away from enemies to funnel them into a line is crucial for maximizing DPS. This concept is further amplified in Season 9 with the introduction of your Catalyst, Disintegrate, which draws a line between itself and your character when spawned. By aiming beyond your primary target(s), you can tether Disintegrate across the entire pack, inflicting Vulnerable and executing mobs as you do. As a secondary benefit, aiming beyond mobs gives the opportunity for a second or even third hit against enemies with larger hitboxes.
Besides playing around your Catalyst and maximizing hits, the Earth Spike Druid is relatively straightforward. It employs the full suite of Companions to boost Nagu, and aside from situationally boosting your Critical Strike Chance with Enhanced Ravens, you don't need to use any of their active abilities. Simply make sure your Quickshift is fully stacked before entering Grizzly Rage, spam Debilitating Roar on cooldown, and keep firing Earth Spikes.
The Earth Spike Druid boasts solid single target and respectable Pit Pushing potential, especially with proper execution. However, its ability to speedfarm suffers due to its limited AoE. In this guide, we teach you all you need to know to be successful with the Earth Spike Druid in Diablo 4. Let's dive into it!
Note that several items introduced or changed post-PTR are not currently in our database and cannot be displayed:
- The Starter Variant uses the Willbreaker Horadric Jewel before transitioning to Grizzly Rage.
These will be implemented as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!
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
The Season 9 theme is the Sins of the Horadrim. This season allows you to craft unique Horadric Spells using three different components: a Catalyst, an Infusion, and three Arcana. You earn Catalysts and Infusions through the Seasonal Questline, and Arcana can be found while exploring Nightmare Dungeons. You choose a Skill as the trigger for your Horadric Spell. Once in Torment I or higher, Horadric Jewels can be crafted, which replace the Gems in your Jewelry, adding additional power to your build.
Endgame Horadric Spell
Catalyst
Disintegrate - As long as you position the enemy between yourself and Disintegrate, this Catalyst reliably applies its effects to the target. Bind this to Earth Spike.
Infusion
Corrosive Vapor - When paired with Elemental Brand, every hit of Earth Spike applies Poison to enemies.
Arcana
- Bloody Charm - Provides Disintegrate a sizable execute threshold.
- Sapping Crux - Inflicts Vulnerable on enemies for an extended duration when you drag Disintegrate's tether across them.
- Shifting Powder - Allows you to cap Movement Speed very early on.
Optional Arcana
- Fractured Core - Used in the Pit Push variant, disabling Damage Resistance Auras is a huge boon to clear time.
Best-in-Slot Horadric Jewels
- Idol From Below - Offers a terrific stat line and periodically spawns Elites for additional Pit progression.
- Elemental Brand - With Corrosive Vapor, enables each Earth Spike to inflict Poison, allowing for very consistent application. If you feel Rabid Bear and Poison Creeper do a good enough job, swap this with Horadric Crest and change your Infusion to Nebulous Extract for a ton of extra defense.
- Scornful Light - For the purpose of this Jewel, "Elemental Damage" includes Poison, making it an effective multiplier with Rabid Bear.
- Willbreaker - Prior to obtaining Vasily's Prayer and transitioning to Grizzly Rage, this Jewel functions as a massive multiplier for Physical skills, albeit with limited uptime. Use it in place of Scornful Light.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Earth Spike is a Basic skill and your main damage ability. Seismic-shift improves its damage pattern and overall DPS, while Shard of Verathiel and Adaptability each provide significant multipliers. Aim Earth Spike behind your primary target to improve the chances for multiple hits and to activate Disintegrate in a favorable position.
- Grizzly Rage is your endgame Ultimate of choice. Vasily's Prayer enables you to use Earth Spike and other Earth skills during Grizzly Rage. Maintaining its uptime is crucial for both damage and defense, so employ Rampaging Werebeast, Calamity, and Grizzly Rage duration tempers to that end.
- Debilitating Roar provides a short burst of damage and damage reduction. Use it liberally.
- The Companion skills offer a little utility between Ravens' Critical Strike Chance and Wolves keeping targets at range to promote Nature's Reach. However, their primary function is to promote Nagu and you rarely, if ever, need to use their active components.
- Cyclone Armor is a cheeky choice. Its passive damage reduction persists into Grizzly Rage as long as it is on your Human form skill bar, but since you can only have Werebear Skills on your bar during Grizzly Rage, it changes into Debilitating Roar when you transform.
Passives
- Ursine Strength is the Key Passive of choice, both for the added toughness and to synergize with the build's many guaranteed Overpowers.
- One of these sources comes from Provocation.
- Envenom provides a massive Critical Strike Damage bonus to Poisoned enemies.
Skill Rotation
- When you first enter a zone and before entering Grizzly Rage, alternate between Earth Spike and a Companion skill to stack Quickshift. For a faster, sweatier stack, you can also use an emote to return to Human form between each Earth Spike.
- Once in Grizzly Rage, simply spam Earth Spike beyond your intended target to create a Disintegrate pillar behind them. Use Debilitating Roar practically on cooldown, or hold it for the right moment if you sense danger.
- On Bosses and tough Elites, and if your Crit Chance warrants it, you can also weave in Ravens' active ability to marginally improve Critical Strike Chance in an area.
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: Gift of the Stag
Eagle Spirit: Avian Wrath
Wolf Spirit: Calamity
Snake Spirit: Obsidian Slam
Bond with the Eagle Spirit and activate Scythe Talons. Swooping Attacks is a viable alternative to bridge gaps in Attack Speed.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Druid Class Overview.
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.
Earth Spike Druid Endgame Paragon
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
- Dominate
- Spirit
- Earth and Sky
- Keeper
- Headhunter
To Level 46
- Earth and Sky
- Dominate
- Spirit
- Keeper
- Headhunter
- Earth and Sky is a priority to level and slots on the Earthen Devastation for one primary reason: by the ultra late-game, Crushing Earth grants an insane amount of Damage to Crowd Controlled enemies, allowing you to use progressively fewer Tempers to maximize the Legendary Node.
Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.
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 Earth Spike Druid focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Nagu + Ohm - Provides a consistent 15% multiplier from War Cry.
- Ahu + Xan - Xan adds another Overpower source to a build that thrives on that synergy. Ahu is one of the best accelerants for these Overpowers given this build's many hits.
Alternative choices
As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Kry - Pair this with Nagu for a maximum size Vortex, which is awesome for grouping mobs together. This does minimize the potential of Nature's Reach, however.
- Xal - Another great pairing with Nagu, Xal grants a persistent 40% bonus to maximum HP.
- Gar - The Crit Chance bonus is great, especially early on.
- Jah - Provides an amazing movement ability for speedfarming.
- Bac - Very effective at generating offering in speedfarm scenarios.
- Lith - A surprisingly strong Invocation, provided you can afford to stand still.
- Cir - Not the best for generating offering, but usually available early on.
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 you with passive All Resistance, an area of effect Slow which increases your damage, a 90% damage reduction bubble that also increases damage, and prevents you 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: Aldkin
Defensively, opt for Aldkin's Field of Languish to minimize damage. Offensively, go for Varyana's Bloodthirst for a periodic Attack Speed bonus.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Earth Spike Druid to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does not indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. 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
- 100% Critical Strike Chance (including Earth)
- 100%+ "Cap 1" Attack Speed
- 250% Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
- 3500+ Willpower
- 200+ Maximum Spirit
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 75%
- >10,000 Life
- 65%+ Grizzly Rage Duration
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Earth Spike 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 Earth Spike 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
- Note that this midgame skill tree differs quite a bit from the endgame setups. Without access to Vasily's Prayer, Earth Spike cannot be used during Grizzly Rage. Instead, employ Petrify for a periodic Critical Strike Damage bonus and to reset all skill cooldowns. Blood Howl provides a short-lived but high-uptime Attack Speed bonus, while Earthen Bulwark grants extended Unstoppable when paired with Mending Stone. Use Trample for additional mobility or as an emergency source of Unstoppable should your shield break. A Staff is preferable for now, and you want to utilize a different Ritual Rune than Nagu.
- One key issue to highlight is in the Paragon Board. Because this variant does not have access to Vasily's Prayer or Shard of Verathiel, it cannot leverage either Survival Instincts or Ancestral Guidance. You can still utilize the first half of the board effectively with this setup, but the intent is that you graduate into the Ancestral variant before this becomes a concern. Make it a priority to farm Echo of Varshan (for Vasily's Prayer) and Infernal Hordes (for Shard of Verathiel) early into your Torment progression.
- Don't overspend resources on non-Ancestral gear, especially when it comes to Masterworking. This gear will eventually be replaced entirely.
- 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, 75+ 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 variant, Might can be exchanged for Disobedience or Juggernaut's if you still need additional Armor.
- From the time you reach Earthen Devastation in your Paragon Board, be mindful of your Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies bonus. The target for this stat is 250%, and your personal value will depend on the nodes taken on this board, your Offensive Tempers, and the level of your Earth and Sky glyph. Over time, you'll be able to exchange Offensive tempers from Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies to Earth Critical Strike Chance or Grizzly Rage Duration.
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 be sure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 75%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
- Once you've acquired the Core Uniques for this build, you can transition to what is essentially the final version, with a skill tree, playstyle, and paragon board identical to those described in the main sections of this guide. The addition of Mythic Uniques from this point are more build-enhancing than build-enabling.
- Insatiable Fury is a powerhouse Unique for the Earth Spike Druid and is nearly on par to its eventual Mythic replacement. The stat line is amazing, but doesn't really warrant any gameplay changes. Acquire this Body Armour from Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint.
- Grizzly Rage Duration becomes a priority temper but is unfortunately in direct opposition to Earth Critical Strike Chance. Strive to improve your base Critical Strike Chance where possible and only take as much Earth Critical Strike Chance as necessary to cap.
- From the time you reach Earthen Devastation in your Paragon Board, be mindful of your Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies bonus. The target for this stat is 250%, and your personal value will depend on the nodes taken on this board, your Offensive Tempers, and the level of your Earth and Sky glyph. Over time, you'll be able to exchange Offensive tempers from Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies to Earth Critical Strike Chance or Grizzly Rage Duration.
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
- Ring of Starless Skies is a very popular choice in many builds for its overstatted Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed rolls and insane Unique effect. The Resource Cost Reduction allows you to spam Earth Spike more liberally.
- As mentioned in the Ancestral section, Shroud of False Death and Insatiable Fury are about even with each other both Defensively and Offensively, and it's not a big deal if you don't have the Mythic. However, the former's extra rank to Passive Skills (particularly Provocation and Ancestral Fortitude) sets it apart, and the All Stats roll is helpful for capping Critical Strike Chance, Armor, and Resistances, as well as activating Rare Node bonuses in the Paragon board. Though not nearly as much damage, Tyrael's Might is always worth consideration as you ascend through Torment Tiers to combat the Resistance penalties.
- Grizzly Rage Duration is a priority temper but is unfortunately in direct opposition to Earth Critical Strike Chance. Strive to improve your base Critical Strike Chance where possible and only take as much Earth Critical Strike Chance as necessary to cap.
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
- The Mythic variant is relatively well-suited for Open World content. You can make some minor adjustments to improve movement by replacing Poison Creeper with Trample and Ahu-Xan with Bac-Jah. Without all 6 companions, Ohm has downtime, and you're better off with either Kry or Xal.
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
There are just a few small adjustments from the Mythic variant:
- As Movement Speed is less of a priority while Pit Pushing, swap Shifting Powder for Fractured Core to improve clear time.
- The Pit Push variant assumes you use all available consumables: either Elixir of Fortitude II or Elixir of Advantage II, Blessed Guide, Reddamine Buzz, and, most importantly, Soothing Spices. Since the Mythic variant caps Armor and Resistance without any Consumables, you can free up some points on the Heightened Malice Paragon Board by removing Denial, as displayed in the last step of the Paragon progression.
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.
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.
Prime Grizzly Rage allows for practically permanent Unstoppable in this build. Apart from this, Druids have only two non-Ultimate sources of Unstoppable: Trample and Earthen Bulwark. If you're not subscribed to any of these, Metamorphosis is a great alternative to those skills.
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 incense instead of offensive ones.
Mechanics
Shard of Verathiel is a vitally important Unique for the Earth Spike Druid. Every stat on this Sword is useful, with the Basic Attack Speed roll contributing to a separate Attack Speed cap ("Cap 2"). Moreover, the added Spirit cost enables multipliers from Ring of Starless Skies and Ancestral Guidance.
Reworked in Season 9, this Resource Aspect now scales off of Maximum Resource, dictating several decisions throughout the build. Rolls of Maximum Resource are relevant on both Shard of Verathiel and your Totem, Gift of the Stag functions as a multiplier, and the Ancestral Guidance Paragon Board is prioritized, in part, for the additional Spirit provided by the Reclamation Rare Node.
While all the exact mechanics are much more nuanced, there are two separate Attack Speed Bonus caps of +100% that apply to all builds for a total potential of +200%. For Druids, these two caps are distributed in the following way:
Cap 1
- Gear rolls
- Paragon nodes
- Elixirs
- Nimble
- Wild's Call
- Moonrise
- Artillery Shrine
- Wolves Attack Speed (Tempering)
Cap 2
- Accelerating
- Rapid
- Preserving Blood Howl
- Bestial Rampage
- Enhanced Shred
- Werewolf Attack Speed (Tempering)
- Earth Skill Attack Speed
- Basic Attack Speed (Gear Affix)
Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.
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.
Summary
The Earth Spike Druid excels in Boss battles and other small skirmishes, while being somewhat limited in its AoE and speedfarming potential. Once you acquire the build's core Uniques, its playstyle is among the simplest for Druids. By leveraging Grizzly Rage and stacking health, it's tanky enough to stand in the middle of the fight and continue dishing out damage, but prefers to stay at range to leverage Nature's Reach. Proper positioning and targeting are paramount, enabling you to hit more enemies along its narrow area of effect and potentially allowing for multiple hits against larger enemies.
Credits
Written by IBoilerUp
Reviewed by Danger