Pulverize Druid Leveling Guide

Diablo 4 Season 2 introduces a new questline to hunt down the Shadow Vampire forces of Lord Zir across Sanctuary. With Lilith's blood still residing within our bodies, the infliction put upon us is harnessed throughout our leveling, granting access to new Vampiric Powers. Completing the seasonal questline, partaking in the seasonal Blood Harvest event and collecting Potent Blood are the main ways of obtaining and empowering these abilities. Check out the full Season 2 Guide from Chewingnom to learn more!

With this in mind, let's look at the top 5 best Vampiric Powers and how they impact this build:

Pulverize is the centerpiece of this build. It deals massive damage in an area around your target location. As a melee ability, you need to get fairly close to your enemies to deal with them. The Spirit costs are pretty high, so make sure that you hit as many targets with it as possible. Fierce Wind Shear increases your Movement speed, which works well with the Vampiric Power Ravenous.

Continue to increase your damage output by maxing out Pulverize. We also grab Heart of the Wild to set ourselves up for the future passives, but for now we're going to unlock more skills. Poison Creeper is the Druid's highest damage ability in the early game, Poisoning and Immobilizing enemies in a massive area of effect around you!

Trample is the only real mobility Skill on the Pulverize Druid. To be able to reach it on the Skill Tree, we double our Poison Creeper damage by taking the Ferocious node, and grab a couple of points in Clarity for some Spirit generation. Now we can acquire Trample and the incredible 40 Spirit per cast through the Savage Trample rune!

In this stage, you gain access to Spirit Boons - the unique class mechanic of the Druid. Check out the Spirit Boon Progression below!

It's time to get some defenses and utility. Earthen Bulwark creates a ring of rocks around you that absorbs a large amount of damage for 3 seconds. You also become Unstoppable thanks to Enhanced Earthen Bulwark, so you can activate it to remove or prevent Crowd Control. With Preserving Earthen Bulwark you gain access to more damage reduction through Fortify.

With the change to Overpower in Season 2, the damage is too high to ignore, so we want to grab Provocation to help generate more procs of Overpower.

Now we can obtain our Ultimate skill, Grizzly Rage. We can in combination obtain the Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast to increase the duration and our damage output while in our Ultimate form!

Ursine Strength is our Key Passive of choice. It increases your damage almost permanently, as you should be Healthy most of the time. To unlock it, you need to place another 4 Skill Points first. Grab Quickshift to increase your damage output and Abundance to assist with Spirit generation. After Ursine Strength we'll finish Abundance and improve our Resistances with Ancestral Fortitude.

We want to maximize our Poison Creeper damage at this point and get the last damage increases to Pulverize through the passive Wild Impulses until we obtain aspects to add Earth skill damage.

After gathering all Renown in Diablo 4, you have 10 extra Skill Points to spend on every character. Your first priority is to spend them toward the leveling progression we've shown above. Once you've reached the end, put them into these nodes to build toward the Pulverize Druid Endgame Build Guide

In order for Pulverize to gain the benefits of Earth skills, you need to imprint Offensive Aspect of the Ursine Horror on your gear.

The Druid Spirit Boons allow you to select a total of 5 Boons from 4 Spirits that act as a Passive buff to your character. You can select 1 Boon per Spirit by default. The 5th Boon can be allocated once ALL Spirit Boons have been unlocked. This requires you to bond with one of the Spirits by interacting with it in Túr Dúlra.

Once you reach level 15, you have to complete a short questline starting in Túr Dúlra, Scosglen. To gain access to the Priority Quest, you first have to defeat the Stronghold of evil forces that has overrun Túr Dúlra. You receive 25 Druidic Spirit Offerings to unlock your first Boon when you complete the questline.

Each Spirit has 4 Boons that are unlocked with 25 Druidic Spirit Offerings each. On 3 of the Spirits, they unlock in a specific order. The outlier is the Snake Spirit - You have to unlock all his Boons simultaneously, meaning you need to collect 100 Druidic Spirit Offerings to gain access to its Boons.

Leveling up in Diablo 4 is similar to most other ARPGs and MMOs - we're at the mercy of what drops. For the most part this means replacing Rares with better Rares all the way up to 50. If you're lucky enough to find some Legendaries or Uniques they can provide a significant power boost (discussed in the next sections). Assuming you don't find any of those, let's look at some key stats to look for along the way:

Hint: Press SHIFT over an item to compare it to what you're wearing!

Always use your highest DPS 2-Handed Weapon available for more damage.

Only upgrade your Weapon at the Blacksmith and fill weapon sockets with Rubies.

Do not upgrade Armor or Jewelry while leveling. Socket Armor with Rubies and Jewelry with Diamond.

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary. For leveling, there are a few aspects that can help us significantly if we have the Gold to imprint them and take the time to unlock them.

Before we end this leveling guide, let's look at some general tips and tricks to remember for all classes and specs!

Compare your Items... Literally. Press Shift over an item in your inventory to compare it to what you're wearing. This makes it easy to determine what is and isn't an upgrade.

Renown is your Friend. While exploring the different zones, take time to gather Renown along the way. It has long-term benefits for your entire account, including more Skill/Paragon points and Potion charges. Renown is gained by activating Waypoints, finding Altars of Lilith, completing Side Quests/Dungeons and rescuing Strongholds.

Be Careful with Gold. A lot of endgame processes, like extracting and imprinting Legendary Aspects, are extremely expensive for a brand-new character. Don't spend all of your Gold along the way!

Don't Imprint Your Weapon. The most critical piece of gear while leveling up is your weapon, which gets replaced constantly. This makes imprinting a Legendary Aspect on it a waste of resources. Instead, put your best offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which can be used for a long time.

Written by Jymnasium
Reviewed by IBoilerUp, Binashole