Shred Druid Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Shred Druid endgame guide! This build is all about dashing quickly from enemy to enemy, dealing massive Critical Strikes that are further enhanced through Stormclaw's Aspect. It boasts exceptional mobility and clear speed that rivals the fastest builds in the game while also being one of the easiest to play. Single target damage, on the other hand, is the clear weakness of this build.
The Shred Druid features three Mythic Uniques: Heir of Perdition, Ring of Starless Skies, and Shroud of False Death, but absolutely does not require them to play at a high level, making it new player and Season starter friendly. Season 8 brought with it a favorable rework to Xan which, when paired with Moni, allows you to Overpower every 6th hit!
Use Shred to Dash from enemy to enemy, proccing Stormclaw's every time you land a Critical Strike. Weave in Maul to generate Fortify and maintain Wildheart Hunger. Blood Howl provides Healing and a sustainable damage multiplier, while Petrify provides burst damage or Crowd Control when needed. Debilitating Roar is both Offensive and Defensive, inflicting a damage debuff in a huge radius around you while amplifying your damage. Use Earthen Bulwark to break or prevent Crowd Controls.
In this guide, we teach you all you need to know to be successful with the Shred Druid in Diablo 4. Let's dive into it!
Check the Build Variants section for an experimental but highly promising Grizzly Rage variant!
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
Cosmic Anomaly - Deals decent damage but is primarily used to evoke your Infusions and Arcana. Bind this to Maul.
Infusion
Corrosive Vapor - Compliments Overload in applying Poison to mobs. Nebulous Extract is a viable alternative.
Arcana
- Bloody Charm - Provides Cosmic Anomaly a sizable execute threshold and increases "Cap 2" Attack Speed when it does.
- Sapping Crux* - Inflicts Vulnerable on enemies.
- Shifting Powder - Allows you to cap Movement Speed very early on.
*If you don't yet have Sapping Crux, or for the sake of consistency, you can opt for a roll of Lucky Hit: Chance to Inflict Vulnerable on Gloves or Rings.
Optional Arcana
- Tranquil Stone Used in the Pit Push variant to improve uptime of Tibault's Will.
- Fractured Core - Disabling Damage Resistance Auras is a huge boon to clear time.
Best-in-Slot Horadric Jewels
- Scornful Light - Improves Stormclaw's echoed damage at the cost of some toughness.
- Willbreaker - A massive multiplier for Physical skills, albeit with limited uptime.
- Idol From Below - Offers a terrific stat line and periodically spawns Elites for additional Pit progression.
- Luminate Eye - Used in the Pit Push variant to minimize Petrify's Cooldown.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Shred is your primary damage skill along with providing tremendous mobility. Each Critical Strike procs Stormclaw's Aspect. With Agile Wolf, you can cast as many as 4 Shreds for the Spirit cost of one.
- Blood Howl is a solid Heal that also amplifies your damage and defense thanks to Backlash and Vigilance, respectively. Cast it immediately before a flurry of Shreds to maintain Innate Blood Howl's bonus.
- Earthen Bulwark is used primarily for its Unstoppable effect or for a burst of Barrier in a pinch.
- Debilitating Roar greatly reduces enemy damage in a screen-wide range while amplifying your own damage. Use it as an opener or in moments of high danger.
- Petrify stuns enemies in a large AoE and provides a massive Critical Strike multiplier.
- Maul is a backup Spirit generator that doubles as an effective way to maintain Wildheart Hunger. In Season 9, it also allows for precise activation of your Catalyst.
Passives
- Envenom is a damage multiplier that's numerically higher than most, making it exceptionally powerful.
- Bestial Rampage is the Key Passive of choice. When paired with Wildheart Hunger, it nearly maxes "Cap 2" attack speed on its own and grants as much as a 90% damage multiplier!
Skill Rotation
Below is an example of a "max damage" rotation. In practice, many weaker foes can be overcome without one or more of these steps, and you may not always have all cooldowns available.
- Shred to get in range, then open with Maul to apply your Infusion and Arcana.
- Cast Debilitating Roar to weaken mobs and bolster your damage.
- Petrify early to completely incapacitate mobs and maximize the value of Supreme Petrify. Note that this refunds the cooldown of Debilitating Roar for a follow-up cast.
- Use Blood Howl, then hold down Shred, aiming to maximize Innate Blood Howl's bonus. As you Shred, Kry groups nearby enemies around you to increase Stormclaw's effect.
- Use either Debilitating Roar or Maul to reapply their debuffs and maintain Wildheart Hunger. When possible, follow this action up with another Blood Howl.
- Use Earthen Bulwark in case of emergency to generate a Barrier or break free from Crowd Controls.
- Spam Blood Howl liberally on Bosses to maintain the Critical Strike Chance bonus from Waxing Gibbous.
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: Calamity
Snake Spirit: Overload
Bond with the Eagle Spirit and activate Iron Feather. Swooping Attacks is viable for additional Attack Speed as needed.
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.
Shred 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
- Outmatch
- Electrocution
- Spirit
- Keeper
- Fang and Claw*
To Level 46
- Spirit
- Keeper
- Outmatch
- Dominate
- Electrocution
*Note that Fang and Claw is exchanged for Dominate in later Paragon Boards. Dominate is the preferred glyph, but holds no value for the Shred Druid until you acquire Xan.
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 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 a 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:
- Ohm - A solid 15% multiplier from War Cry.
- Gar - The Crit Chance bonus is great, especially early on.
- 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!
- Cir - As a Magic Rune, it's a reasonable choice that you're more likely to find.
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, so make sure you remain resistance capped without him.
- Reinforcement: Aldkin
The damage reduction from Field of Languish has high uptime. If your Attack Speed feels lacking, Varyana's Bloodthirst is a solid offensive option.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
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. 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
- 200%+ Attack Speed (Max Cap 1 and 2)
- 1000%+ Critical Strike Damage
- 3000+ Willpower
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 75%
- 10,000+ Life
- 170%+ Movement Speed
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.
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 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.
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, 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.
- Early on, your Critical Strike Chance isn't up to snuff. So, to start, use Scythe Talons.
- At this point, both Bestial Rampage and Lupine Ferocity are reasonable Key Passives.
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 75%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in. Continue using either Juggernaut's or Disobedience if you need additional Armor.
- Obtain Waxing Gibbous from Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint for its awesome stat line and the guaranteed Critical Strikes. Be sure to use Blood Howl liberally on Bosses to maintain this buff.
- If you pick up Mad Wolf's Glee from Echo of Varshan, it's a great midgame chest piece for its Ranks to Werewolf Skills, Maximum Life and Attack Speed bonus.
- The Ancestral variant sticks to Bestial Rampage due to the availability of Wildheart Hunger, found from Lord Zir. Provided you shapeshift frequently, these Boots offer and amazing 50% bonus to Damage and Attack Speed!
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
- Heir of Perdition slots into the helmet for a hefty 60% multiplier and Movement Speed. Harlequin Crest is a strong Defensive option here that will allow you to much more easily cap Armor.
- Shroud of False Death is an excellent addition, as its +1 to All Passive skills implicit is a massive offensive and defensive boon. Waxing Gibbous's Stealth provides an awesome opportunity to leverage its addtive damage bonus. 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. 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.
- Ring of Starless Skies is a very popular choice for its overstatted Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed rolls and insane Unique effect. The double All Resistance implicit is pretty great, too.
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
- Go with Airidah's Inexorable Will, an item which groups mobs together every time you cast Petrify, including casts from Yom! This grouping effect is insane for quickly gathering and dispatching hordes of monsters and affects a larger area than Kry.
- Opt for Trample over Earthen Bulwark to more efficiently move between packs when no target is available.
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.
The Pit Push variant differs considerably from the Mythic version of the build and requires specific, optimized rolls to function effectively. Specifically, this variant aims to maximize Petrify Cooldown Reduction to rapidly reset the Cooldowns of other key Skills. The ideal is to have a Petrify Cooldown of 14 seconds or less to maintain Debilitating Roar on Bosses.
Gear & Skills
- The Pit Push setup opts for Werewolf Attack Speed tempers to cover Cap 2 Attack Speed and switches to Lupine Ferocity in order to fit in Tibault's Will. Go for Armor on Boots and be sure to use Song of the Mountain.
- Replace Kry with Qax and Maul with Preserving Cyclone Armor. The additional damage from Qax is essential for pushing, but necessitates the use of Cyclone Armor to continue grouping mobs for Stormclaw's.
- Crown of Lucion is a slight damage loss compared to Heir of Perdition when you consider the Core Skill ranks, but Crown of Lucion's Cooldown Reduction is imperative.
Amended Skill Rotation
- Petrify to stun enemies and trigger your Catalyst.
- Quickly Cyclone Armor to pull mobs into the range of Cosmic Anomaly before it lands.
- Debilitating Roar
- Blood Howl
- Hold down Shred.
- Repeat as Debilitating Roar falls off, provided you recovered Petrify's Cooldown.
Seasonal Power Adjustments
- Bind Cosmic Anomaly to Petrify.
- Luminate Eye is necessary to reach the intended Cooldown threshold, so give up Idol From Below for it (reluctantly).
- Since Movement speed is less of a priority in Pit Push scenarios, swap Shifting Powder with Tranquil Stone for better uptime on Tibault's Will.
The unexpected, massive buffs to Grizzly Rage and its Aspects led to this new variant. It is admittedly somewhat unsolved, but it looks great on paper. As an example, it's not totally clear that Rabid Bear considers Stormclaw's to be direct damage and converts it. If it does, the Electric Shock cluster doesn't hold much value. Stay tuned for more updates to this section as we learn more.
On the other hand, this variant projects more damage than its predecessors and is significantly easier to play. There is minimal buff management and the pulls are larger and happen automatically.
Gear & Skills
- Change the following Spirit Boons:
- Wariness to Gift of the Stag to recover Spirit without Unsatiated.
- 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 Werewolf Skills on your bar during Grizzly Rage, it changes into Blood Howl when you transform.
- Dire Wolf's, changed to a Utility Aspect, goes on your Boots.
- Stack Companions and switch out Tam for Nagu. This variant needs a mechanism to pull, so pair Nagu with Kry for a max size Vortex every 5 seconds.
- Toxic Claws becomes a priority in the skill tree, Weapon, and Amulet.
- Balance your offensive tempers between Grizzly Rage Duration and Werewolf Attack Speed.
Amended Skill Rotation
- Before entering Grizzly Rage, stack Quickshift either by alternating between Companions and Shred or emotes and Shred (which is faster).
- Enter Grizzly Rage, and be sure to cast Blood Howl at least once to activate Innate Blood Howl. Repeat as needed for healing and Spirit regeneration.
- Other than these steps, simply Shred to your heart's content.
Seasonal Power Adjustments
- Bind Cosmic Anomaly to either Shred or Blood Howl. The former spams anomalies as available, while the latter is a more precise application.
- Poison is pretty well handled in this variant, so you can opt for Nebulous Extract for more defense.
- Willbreaker is no longer relevant, so instead go for Horadric Crest.
Paragon
As this variant does not deal physical damage, Outmatch is swapped for Headhunter. Additionally, Inner Beast is of little value and so can be removed. See below:
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.
Early game, go for a Staff, the fastest 2-Hander, to maximize Stormclaw's multiplier. Once you acquire Ring of Starless Skies, switch to a Dagger to further improve base APS and fit all available multipliers.
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.
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
- 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 .5% per second, essentially requiring a new Shapeshift form every 8-10 seconds in order to maintain the maximum stacks.
- 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 as follows:
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 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, but can also push Nightmare Dungeons and the Pit reasonably well. Shred is at its weakest in single target situations when it can't effectively leverage Stormclaw's Aspect.
Credits
Written by IBoilerUp
Reviewed by Danger