Welcome to the Shred Druid endgame guide! This build is all about Dashing quickly from enemy to enemy, dealing big Critical Strikes that are further enhanced through Stormclaw's Aspect. It boasts exceptional mobility and clear speed that can rival the fastest builds in the game while also being one of the easiest to play. This build benefits from Uniques but absolutely does not require them to play at a high level, making it new player and Season starter friendly.
The gameplay is straightforward. Use Shred to Dash from enemy to enemy, proccing Stormclaw's every time you land a Critical Strike.
The build also benefits from several other Skills and Passives. Blood Howl provides Spirit and Healing, while Petrify provides burst against bosses and rares or CC when needed. Finally, Wolves, Ravens and Poison Creeper provide us with considerable damage thanks to Shepherd's and the Stampede.
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!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with one of our Druid Leveling Guides. If you are looking for a different Druid playstyle, check out all of our Druid Guides.
Season 3 - Season of the Construct
In Season 3, you obtain the Seneschal Construct through the Season Questline, then collect Governing Stones or Tuning Stones to add attacks and augment them to support your build. Only certain Tuning Stones work with a particular Governing Stone. Look at the bottom of any Tuning Stone tooltip to see if it is compatible with your Construct's currently equipped Stones. Lastly, they can be leveled up by getting duplicates to max out their power. Check out our full Season 3 guide for more information.
Recommended Stones
- Tempest - The fast attack speed and instant damage application make this the best choice for Resource Support.
- Resource Support - This significantly smooths out single target fights by providing passive spirt generation, making it easier to move away from using Grizzly Rage and instead scale massive amounts of damage through Shepherd's.
- Swift Support - Increases the amount of Spirit we gain from Resource Support
- Efficiency Support - This is a big damage boost that will have high uptime in sustained battles, which is when we need it most. Replace this with Evernight if you acquire it.
- Flash of Adrenaline - This is a straight damage multiplier for our build. It's an easy BiS.
- Duration Support - Needed to get permanent uptime on our damage buff from Flash of Adrenaline
- Tactical Support - Also needed for the permanent damage buff
- Safeguard Support - A nice source of Damage Reduction with more than 50% uptime. Replace this with Genesis if you acquire it for a huge damage boost.
Alternative Stones
Many other options are possible to support this build, including different Governing Stones to apply the effects. Feel free to experiment!
Governing Stones
- Protect - Great to increase survivability.
- Reconstruct - Extra Healing if you find yourself needing it.
Tuning Stones
- Mockery Support - Our Construct does not take damage, so any attacks against it are effectively neutralized.
- Breaking Support - This is mostly good as an additional source of Vulnerable
- Slowing Support - Great for keeping enemies in place to make Dashing easier.
- Frigid Support - Another option to keep enemies from moving.
- Electrocution Support - Provides a chance to Stun that indirectly reduces the damage you take.
If you are lucky enough to get either Evernight or Genesis from Uber Malphas, you want to swap them in on your Construct for their powerful effects.
Eternal Realm
Resource Support is required to get out out of a Grizzly Rage setup and allow us to use Shepherd's to increase our damage. On the Eternal Realm you need to account for this by either replacing Petrify with Storm Strike to gain a generator, or switching Shepherd's and the Stampede with the Rampaging Werebeast and Dire Wolf's so you can switch out of pets and into Grizzly Rage.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Shred is our primary damage skill along with providing tremendous mobility. Each Critical Strike procs Stormclaw's Aspect.
- Blood Howl is a solid Heal and Spirit generator that also generates Fortify thanks to Bolster.
- Wolves, Ravens and Poison Creeper provide a ton of damage thanks to Shepherd's and the Stampede. They also provide us with Fortify from Ferocious Wolf Pack and Critical Strike Chance through Brutal Poison Creeper and Enhanced Ravens.
- Petrify is a huge damage buff, especially to Bosses. It also serves as a very strong CC in an emergency.
Passives
- Toxic Claws is how we apply Poison for the 'While Poisoned' effects throughout the build.
- Envenom is a damage multiplier that's numerically higher than most, making it exceptionally powerful.
- Ursine Strength is our Keystone Passive of choice, giving us a substantial damage boost.
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:
We bond with the Eagle to activate its Scythe Talons and Avian Wrath.
- Wariness provides additional damage reduction against the most dangerous enemies
- Scythe Talons provides additional Critical Strike chance that improves healing and damage. If you prefer tankiness, swap this out for Iron Feather.
- Avian Wrath is now a damage multiplier (previously it was additive), making it an easy choice.
- Bolster provides us with a substantial amount of Fortify thanks to the high usage rate of Blood Howl with Enhanced Blood Howl.
- Masochistic is a sizable portion of our Healing.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Druid Spirit Boons Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
Managing your Spirit is crucial to maximizing your damage with this build. We gain Spirit on Kill in the Paragon Board that keeps us moving through large packs. We also use Lust for Carnage to generate Spirit whenever we Critically Strike, making Waxing Gibbous a very appealing option for Speedfarming that smoothes out the rotation considerably. However, the guaranteed Critical Strikes from Waxing Gibbous become far less reliable in challenging content, making it a poor choice. If you aren't using Waxing Gibbous and find that you aren't generating enough Spirit from these two sources, take advantage of Blood Howl's high uptime thanks to Enhanced Blood Howl to gain large amounts of Spirit from Innate Blood Howl. We're also bolstered in Season 3 with Resource Support, allowing us to invest less in Spirit Cost Reduction from other sources.
Cooldown Management is centered around two skills. For Blood Howl, we want to spam it as soon as it comes off cooldown, which in large packs or during speedfarming will be very often thanks to the 1 second cooldown reduction on kill from Enhanced Blood Howl. For Petrify, it's all about using it strategically. Ideally, we save this for tanky enemies (especially bosses), but if you find yourself in a difficult situation, use it to effectively stop the enemies in their tracks. Just don't use this on cooldown or you won't have it when you need it most!
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
This setup prioritizes major Glyphs and Legendary nodes to get the build up and running faster.
We make a later switch to maximize the efficiency of our board. The switch should be made around level 95. Make sure to save up enough gold!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. For some Glyphs, we max our bonuses by allocating every relevant node in range, while on others we take the minimum required for the Additional Bonus only. Because Glyphs at level 15 increase their radius, we need to prioritize leveling them by completing Nightmare Dungeons. After that, we prioritize leveling our strongest glyphs to level 21.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Exploit
- Werewolf
- Territorial
- Spirit
- Fang and Claw
- Undaunted
Level 21
- Fang and Claw
- Territorial
- Exploit
- Werewolf
- Spirit
- Undaunted
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs
Endgame Progression & Variants
When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Many of your Skill choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. These are listed in priority order:
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Vigorous in Steadfast Barracks (Hawezar)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Shepherd's in Bloodsoaked Crag (Dry Steppes)
- Eluding in Caldera Gate (Fractured Peaks)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Stormclaw's in Anica's Claim (Fractured Peaks)
- Aspect of the Umbral in Champion's Demise (Dry Steppes)
- Retaliation in Seaside Descent (Dry Steppes)
- Nighthowler's in Forbidden City (Fractured Peaks)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- the Stampede
- Accelerating
- Metamorphosis
- Juggernaut's
- Blurred Beast
- Find the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Mad Wolf's Glee
- Waxing Gibbous
- Godslayer Crown
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Setups
Once you have completed the leveling guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
Most of our core aspects come from the Codex of Power, so we can start the build with them.
- Shepherd's is the single biggest damage multiplier in the build. Put this on your Amulet for maximum effect.
- Stormclaw's is a substantial DPS gain for the build.
- Use Might in the Body Armor slot until you get Mad Wolf's Glee.
- Nighthowler's fills in until we find an Accelerating and helps make up for some of our low Critical Strike chance at this stage.
- the Umbral provides us with some additional Spirit generation until our Paragon Board sources come online
- Movement Speed on your boots and amulet will significantly increase your leveling and farming speed.
- Try to cap your Resistances quickly to significantly reduce the damage you take.
- Upgrade your weapon when you have the resources. Any other gear can wait until you find better items.
Skills
- We don't generate nearly as much Spirit at this point so swap Petrify with Storm Strike to gain a reliable generator and take Fierce Storm Strike to add a consistent source of Vulnerable.
Gameplay
- Activate Blood Howl for Vigilance just before entering the fight.
- Close the gap and continue spamming Shred. Try to target distant enemies to engage Dash and hit all enemies between you and the target. You can do this on every single use of Shred thanks to Primal Shred.
- During the fight use Blood Howl to keep Vigilance up and generate Spirit.
- Use Poison Creeper on packs or tanky enemies for additional damage from Brutal Poison Creeper and Envenom.
- Use Storm Strike for additional Spirit when needed and for additional Damage Reduction in tough fights.
- Advanced: If an enemy hits hard, use Blood Howl to recover from large hits.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
- Add the Stampede in place of Umbral to get even more damage from Shepherd's. If you find yourself starved for Spirit, hold onto Umbral until your other Spirit generation sources come online.
- Replace Nighthowler's with Accelerating on your Totem.
- Replace Edgemaster’s with the Blurred Beast for considerably more damage when Dashing.
- Start trying to fit as much Damage Reduction, Critical Strike Chance, Cooldown Reduction, and Vulnerable Damage as you can on your gear.
There are no changes to Skill, Boons, or Gameplay.
In this setup, you have access to all Unique items and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them.
Gear
- Waxing Gibbous becomes a legitimate option here. It deals lower single target damage than the Legendary Axe, but in any content where you can kill in 1-2 hits it offers much smoother Spirit Generation from Lust for Carnage. Ultimately, both will be very fast options and come down to personal preference.
- Add Mad Wolf's Glee to significantly increase your speed and damage. If you find yourself taking too much damage from enemies, switch back to the previous chest with Damage Reduction.
- Now it's time to min/max! Focus on getting all of your gear (including Uniques) to 900+ Item level with the right stats and high rolls. Really focus on getting as many sources of Damage Reduction as possible. Spirit Cost Reduction and Critical Strike Chance are also very important for this build. Ironclaw joins them as a priority stat at this point. Use the Occultist to reroll bad affixes or increase the roll of a good affix. Fully upgrade your gear and gems.
Skills
- At this point we should have very good Spirit generation and don't need Storm Strike, so we swap it for Petrify to increase our damage and gain access to more CC.
- We also swap out Abundance and two points in Toxic Claws to pick up Heightened Senses and top off Thick Hide.
Gameplay
- Activate Blood Howl for Vigilance just before entering the fight.
- Close the gap and continue spamming Shred. Try to target distant enemies to engage Dash and hit all enemies between you and the target. You can do this on every single use of Shred thanks to Primal Shred.
- During the fight use Blood Howl to keep Vigilance up and generate Spirit.
- Use Poison Creeper on packs or tanky enemies for additional damage from Brutal Poison Creeper and Envenom.
- Use Petrify on tanky targets (especially bosses) or as an emergency option to Stun everything near you.
- Advanced: If an enemy hits hard, use Blood Howl to recover from large hits.
The Speedfarming setup makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and Nightmare Dungeons below Tier 45. Since all Bosses in the game are not dangerous, this high damage variant is perfect for them as well.
Gear
- We add Godslayer Crown for the extra damage it provides.
- Waxing Gibbous is our best option here due to the quick kill time of lower tier enemies allowing us to maintain the Critical Strike Chance bonus, which smoothes out our Spirit Generation, letting us Shred even more.
- For Gauntlet: Replace defensive options on your boots and amulet for Shrine Buff duration.
There are no changes to Spirit Boons, Gameplay or Paragon Boards in this setup.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Stick to the Damage Reduction Chest Armor over Mad Wolf's Glee
- Consider swapping out Blood Howl with Earthen Bulwark for a source of Unstoppable. You can also place Mending Stone in your Chest Armor over Might.
- Watch out for explosions! Due to the nature of how this build bounces around from enemy to enemy, it is susceptible to jumping back into an explosion.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
The answer to many questions can be found in the following section.
- Shepherd's combined with the Stampede provides a 135% damage multiplier to the build. This is easily your single biggest source of damage.
- Stormclaw's Aspect: This is a sneaky powerful aspect due to double dipping damage scalers. This means it benefits from increasing Shred damage, but can also have its own damage increased through stats like additive and multiplicative damage. With the right gear you hit much harder with this sub skill than from Shred.
- Critical Strikes: Critical Strike Chance is your #1 priority stat. Get as much of this as you can, and try to get above 40% Chance ASAP. Thanks to Efficiency Support, Gear and Passives we have consistently high Critical Strike Chance in this build. If you're using Waxing Gibbous, you have almost permanent 100% Critical Strike Chance on Speedfarming content.
- Vulnerable: Storm Strike allows us to consistently apply Vulnerable to targets thanks to Fierce Storm Strike. We are also guaranteed to apply it the first time we damage an enemy from Exploit. To further smooth things out we apply the debuff through Breaking Support.
- Attack Speed: This build is all about flying around as quickly as possible with Shred and Attack Speed only makes that better. On top of that, it improves our healing through more procs of Masochistic. Our attack speed primarily comes from Gloves, the Paragon Board and Accelerating Aspect.
- Envenom/Festering: We're able to take advantage of both of these large sources of damage thanks to Toxic Claws, which Poisons enemies whenever we deal Critical Strike Damage to them.
- Healing: Our Healing is primarily generated through Masochistic and Enhanced Shred. The high Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed from this build make this an incredible source of sustain. We also get an on-use heal from Blood Howl.
- Armor: A great deal of defenses comes from your Armor. We can build a ton of it thanks to Juggernaut's, Ironclaw / of the Ironclaw and Paragon Nodes.
- Defensive Multipliers: Vigorous provides significant damage reduction and has effectively 100% uptime. We also get several sources of Reduction from our gear. The combined multipliers in this build plus the high armor make it very tanky.
- Venomwall: We can take advantage of this powerful Defensive Multiplier thanks to Toxic Claws, which Poisons enemies whenever we deal Critical Strike Damage to them.
- Fortify: Provides 10% damage reduction while Fortified which can be increased through gear and gems. We gain Fortify passively from Ferocious Wolf Pack as well as from Bolster when we use Blood Howl.
Stat Priorities
Choosing the right stats for your gear can make or break your build. You won't always find perfect stats (also known as affixes or modifiers) though, and you may need to make a tough choice between two good pieces of equipment. Use the following list of priorities to compare your gear and pick the best.
- Helm: Juggernaut's
- Two of: Fire, Cold, Shadow, Poison Resistance
- Total Armor
- Maximum Life
- Cooldown Reduction
- Willpower
- All Stats
- Chest Armor: Mad Wolf's Glee
- Movement Speed
- Damage Reduction from Poisoned Enemies
- Maximum Life
- Damage
- Chest Armor: Might
- Damage Reduction against Close Enemies
- Damage Reduction against Poisoned Enemies
- Damage Reduction while Fortified
- Damage Reduction against Distant Enemies
- Damage Reduction
- Maximum Life
- % Total Armor
- Gloves: Stormclaw's
- Ranks of Shred
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed
- Willpower
- Storm Skill Cooldown Reduction
- Critical Damage with Werewolf Skills
- Dexterity
- Pants: Vigorous
- Damage Reduction against Close Enemies
- Damage Reduction against Poisoned Enemies
- Damage Reduction while Fortified
- Damage Reduction against Distant Enemies
- Damage Reduction
- Maximum Life
- Damage Reduction While Injured
- Boots: Metamorphosis
- Movement Speed
- Two of: Fire, Cold, Shadow, Poison Resistance
- Total Armor while in Werewolf Form
- Fortify Generation
- Willpower
- Dodge Chance
- Amulet: Shepherd's
- Spirit Cost Reduction
- Ranks of the Envenom Passive
- Movement Speed
- Damage Reduction while Fortified
- Damage Reduction From Poisoned
- Damage Reduction From Close
- Total Armor In Werewolf Form
- Damage Reduction
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Rings: the Stampede & Retaliation
- Critical Strike Chance
- Maximum Life
- Resource Generation
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Damage to Poisoned Enemies
- Critical Strike Damage With Werewolf Skills
- Critical Strike Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- Main Hand (Axe): the Blurred Beast
- High Damage per Second
- Willpower
- All Stats
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Core Skill Damage
- Damage to Poisoned
- Vulnerable Damage
- Damage to Crowd Controlled
- Damage to Slowed
- Main Hand (Alternate): Waxing Gibbous
- High Damage per Second
- Critical Strike Damage
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Damage to Injured Enemies
- Life On Kill
- Off-Hand: Accelerating Aspect
- High Damage per Second
- Spirit Cost Reduction
- Critical Strike Chance
- Damage Reduction While Fortified
- Damage Reduction from Poisoned
- Cooldown Reduction
- Willpower
- Fortify Generation
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Magic Resist, Assault Elixir,Elixir of Cruelty, Elixir of Fortitude, Heady Precision Elixir
- Incense: Reddamine Buzz, Song of the Mountain (if not capped), Chorus of War, Soothing Spices
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.
Why not Temerity?
Why Ursine Strength over Lupine Ferocity?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Damage Reduction Vs. Life
Video Guide
Hungry for more Guides?
Druid Guides
General Guides
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 in the game, but can also push Nightmare Dungeons reasonably well.
Credits
Written by McFluffin
Reviewed by IBoilerUp
