Shred 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

• Shaken Soul - It's not too much trouble to apply Vulnerable with a Lucky Hit roll, but this Power does provide consistency in that department while adding to the Eldritch Power count.
• Aura Specialization - The bonus Critical Strike Multiplier is highly desirable, but you need to give up 2 Witchcraft Powers to incorporate this and an Aura.

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 periodically grants Shred the Eldritch tag. This means that, every second, it benefits from Purging Touch's multiplier!
• Phantom String - A straightforward damage multiplier for this build. Note that you need a Hex to activate it.
• Killing Wind - A solid way to round out Movement Speed and Critical Strike Chance.

Alternate Occult Gems

• Friend of the Bog - The set of bonuses this Gem provides is excellent, but fitting in a three Growth & Decay Power and maintaining Witching Hour is harder than it sounds.
• Hungering Void - Another way to pull mobs together. It's less effective than Kry or Airidah's, though, and requires you to fit an Aura.

Skill Rotation

• Start at range with either Debilitating Roar or Petrify to weaken or incapacitate enemies while bolstering your damage. Save the other Cooldown to use in a defensive manner after the first expires.
• Use Shred to leap into the pack and apply Poison. Continue spamming Shred on nearby targets while weaving in Maul to maintain Wildheart Hunger stacks and accelerate Hunter's Zenith Overpowers. As you do, Kry will group nearby enemies around you to increase damage with Stormclaw's.
• Blood Howl on Cooldown to Heal, increase damage, and maintain both Vigilance and Backlash.
• Use Earthen Bulwark in case of emergency to generate a Barrier or break free from Crowd Controls.

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. Shred Druid focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Tam + Kry - The pull effect of Vortex is amazing for grouping mobs and improving clear with Stormclaw's!
• Moni + Xan - Overpowers are, well, overpowered, and getting an extra source of them is very potent.

Alternative choices

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

• Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows an execute at 10% HP. It is combined with Xol in your other Runeword to generate large amounts of offering.
• Ohm - Though heavily nerfed, War Cry remains a popular choice.
• Gar - The Crit Chance bonus is great, especially early on.
• Mot - Dark Shroud is a strong and affordable defensive option.
• Bac - Since this is one of the most mobile builds in the game, Bac is great for generating Offering.
• Lith - A surprisingly strong Invocation, provided you can afford to stand still. Note that dashing with Shred does not count as moving!
• Cem - As a Magic Rune, it's a reasonable choice that you're more likely to find.

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: Varyana

She offers a Massacre bonus to close any gaps in Movement Speed, but we hire her primarily for the massive Attack Speed bonuses provided by Hysteria, Bloodthirst, and Bloodlust.

• Reinforcement: Raheir

Bastion is a great reinforcement ability that gives you brief periods of virtual immunity.

To enable the Shred 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 Shred 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 Shred 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.

What is the best weapon choice?

We need to use a 2-hander, as the damage multiplier from Stormclaw's is absurdly high. Of the available options, a 2-handed Polearm provides the most consistently applicable bonus, provided you have a roll of Lucky Hit: Change to Inflict Vulnerable somewhere.

How can I trigger Unstoppable?

Druids have only two non-Ultimate sources of Unstoppable: Trample and Earthen Bulwark. If you're not subscribed to either, 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.

Mechanics

Wildheart Hunger

• With these unique boots equipped, Shapeshifting adds a stack of Wildheart, which is visible on your buff bar. Each stack of Wildheart increases the bonuses of your Bestial Rampage by 5%. These stacks are additive, resulting in up to 50x damage and 50% Attack Speed from these boots alone! 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
• 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.

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.

Coming soon!

The Shred Werewolf is easily one of the fastest builds in the game, flying around the battlefield as it Dashes from enemy pack to pack. It is one of the best Speedfarming builds in the game, but can also push Nightmare Dungeons and the Pit reasonably well.

Written by IBoilerup

Reviewed by Thomasdatrain