Lightning Storm Druid Endgame Build 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 - This Power can be used to gain a sizeable Attack Speed increase when combined with Witching Hour, however, the more Attack Speed you have the weaker the impact of this Power.
• Aura of Siphoning An alternative option to Aura of Misfortune, allowing you to Poison nearby enemies and heal yourself. Replace Overload with Iron Feather if you opt for this Aura effect.

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

• Witching Hour - This Gem enables powerful damage multipliers from your Witchcraft Powers by granting Lightning Storm the Eldritch tag, on a very short Cooldown.
• Moonlight Ward - Grants you straightforward defenses as Damage Reduction and Maximum Resistance to All Elements based on your Unique Witchcraft Power rank.
• Killing Wind - Offers a good amount of Critical Strike Chance and Movement Speed for simply having three Eldritch Powers.

Alternate Occult Gems

• Heart of Anima + Toadling's Wish + Wicked Pact - These Gems are available early on and increase the potency of your Witchcraft Powers. As you work towards unlocking higher tier Occult Gems and Witchcraft Powers, utilize the specific Gem that corresponds with your unlocked Witchcraft Powers, Eldritch, Psyche or Growth & Decay to increase their lethality.
• Hungering Void - Another way, albeit not as effective, of pulling monsters together. A decent choice if you do not have access to Kry.

Skill Passives

• Bestial Rampage is a two-part passive, requiring both Shapeshifting forms to receive the full benefit. Werewolf form is attained when using Tempest Roar andLightning Storm, and Maul rounds out our Werebear needs.
• Envenom is our largest passive multiplier. It boosts Critical Strike Damage against Poisoned enemies. In Season 7 Poisoning is achieved rather easily with Overload or Witchcraft Powers, enabling our Lightning Storm to deal bonus Critical Strike Damage to Poisoned enemies.
• Quickshift, Electric Shock and Nature's Reach provide considerable damage bonuses that synergize with our build. Vigilance and Heightened Senses help keep us alive.

Skill Rotation

1. Begin by stacking your Shapeshifting bonuses (Wildheart Hunger, Quickshift, Heightened Senses, etc.) by alternating between Lightning Storm and Maul.
2. Once fully stacked, cast Cataclysm for bonus damage and recast it as it comes off Cooldown.
3. Cast Maul frequently in-between Lightning Storm casts to maintain your Shapeshifting buffs.
4. Cast Blood Howl as often as possible to receive the bonuses from Vigilance and Backlash, ensuring you cast it before Lightning Storm to make use of Innate Blood Howl's damage buff. Note that when you have Innate Blood Howl active it is best to keep channeling Lightning Storm and delay your Maul a few seconds to maximize the damage buff. Weave in Cyclone Armor if Blood Howl is on Cooldown.
5. Use Earthen Bulwark if you predict a big hit or for Unstoppable.

If you're having trouble surviving while channeling Lightning Storm, engage fights using Earthen Bulwark and disengage when monsters become Unstoppable. Ideally, you want to move from pack to pack casting Lightning Storm and pulling monsters towards you with Kry. Against Bosses deal damage from a distance. In situations where you run out of Spirit and cannot cast Lightning Storm, use Maul for a few hits to recover Spirit.

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

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 Lightning Storm Druid focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Igni + Wat - Decrepify helps stagger Bosses, provides Damage Reduction and Executes enemies at 10% HP. When combined with Xol in your other Runeword it also generates large amounts of Offering.
• Xol + Kry - Vortex is used to group up enemies. Lightning Storm deals considerably more damage when enemies are grouped up, as our lightning strikes miss less often and each strike can hit multiple enemies if they are close enough together.

Alternative choices

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

• Jah - Teleport is a fantastic mobility tool when paired with Xol, helping you traverse content quicker. It is possible to pair this Rune with other Offering Runes, though your uptime will vary.
• Ohm - War Cry offers a respectable damage bonus for a moderate duration.
• Bac / Lith - While not as potent, both are good Offering alternatives to Igni, especially Lith.
• Xal - Aids with survivability.
• Mot - Enables the Rogue's Dark Shroud, which is a strong defensive option.

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 additional Resistance to All Elements and a means to surviving big hits in Valiance. His upgrades Ground Slam and Bastion round out our defenses nicely, while Inspiration allows us to leverage his Mercenary Skills for damage.

Reinforcement: Aldkin

The Lightning Storm Druid uses Field of Languish when casting Lightning Storm for extra Slows and Damage Reduction while standing still.

To enable the Lightning Storm 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 Lightning Storm 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 Lightning Storm 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.

Why 2H Staff over 2H Polearm? What about Dagger + Totem?

Retaliation is a gigantic damage multiplier for this build. As such, we get the most damage out of using a 2-hand weapon over a 1-hand weapon + totem and the added benefit of slotting Runes into our weapon, freeing up our armor slots for more Willpower.

Use a 2H Polearm early on when you lack additive damage for its intrinsic Vulnerable damage. As you acquire more sources of additive damage from your gear and Paragon, swap to a 2H Staff as it is a faster casting weapon.

Why is Maximum Life prioritized on weapon/gear?

Maximum Life is essential to any build's survival. In the case of this build, it uses a large amount of Uniques, which negatively impact your total Maximum Life. Since Maximum Life nodes in your Paragon are % based, it is important to ensure that the Life value on your gear is as high as possible for the highest payoff.

Additionally, builds revolving around the Druid's Werewolf form are notorious for having weak defenses and contrary to the Werebear, have difficulty surviving against enemies that don't die instantly. While more Willpower is always welcome, in this case, the marginal damage increases do not outweigh the loss of Life and survivability that come thereafter.

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.

What can I do for better Spirit recovery?

In the early game you may occasionally starve on resources before you get Shapeshifting synergies online. It is recommended you invest in Spirit per second while you look for a Tempest Roar. Alternatively, utilize Gift of the Stag or Energize, or you can replace a support skill like Earthen Bulwark with Savage Trample/Innate Blood Howl for nice bursts of Spirit.

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

Wildheart Hunger

With these unique boots equipped, Shapeshifting adds a stack of Wildheart. Each stack of Wildheart increases the bonuses of your Bestial Rampage by 5%[+]. These stacks are additive, resulting in up to 50[x] damage and 50% Attack Speed bonuses. 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.

Attack Speed Caps

• 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
• Artillery Shrine
• Swooping Attacks

Cap 2

• Werewolf Attack Speed Affix
• Preserving Blood Howl
• Bestial Rampage
• Wildheart Hunger
• Accelerating

For a more detailed explanation, read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.

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 ‍Lightning Storm Druid is an excellent build with incredible speed and clear. It can dive deep into Nightmare Dungeons and the Pit. Late endgame, the build can be played smoothly without the use of a generator making it a highly efficient and enjoyable farming build.

• Maul plays a major role in maintaining this build's damage multipliers, ensure you are casting it often to activate your Shapeshifting/Werebear bonuses.
• Utilize Kry for big pulls when attacking packs.
• Acquire Tempest Roar as early as possible to enable all the Shapeshifting synergies.

Written by Danger

Reviewed by IBoilerUp