Shred Druid Endgame Build Guide
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.
The gameplay is straightforward. Use Shred to Dash from enemy to enemy, proccing Stormclaw's every time you land a Critical Strike. Weave in Maul to generate Fortify, maintain Wildheart Hunger, and inflict Vulnerable via Harbinger of Hatred's Volley.
The Shred Druid features two Mythic Uniques, Heir of Perdition 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 brings with it a favorable rework to Xan which, when paired with Moni, allows you to Overpower every 6th hit!
The build also benefits from several other Skills and Passives. Blood Howl provides Healing and a sustainable damage multiplier, while Petrify provides burst damage against Bosses and Rares or CC when needed. Use Earthen Bulwark to break or prevent Crowd Controls. Debilitating Roar is both Offensive and Defensive, inflicting a damage debuff in a massive radius around you while amplifying your damage.
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 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.
Boss Powers
Season 8 is the Season of Belial's Return. It allows you to tap into Boss Powers obtained from World, Event, and Lair Bosses throughout Sanctuary. The new seasonal mechanic, Apparition Incursions, is available at any difficulty level and gives you the opportunity to unlock a subset of these powers very early on. Various Apparition Monsters appear in these special timed events throughout Sanctuary. Defeating these monsters spawns 1 of 10 Apparition Bosses to hunt you down and defeating them grants you their Boss Power. After defeating the first Boss, continue the event for a chance to fight a second Apparition Boss, after which Belial himself joins the fray.
There are 24 Boss Powers available and the first time you defeat one of these Bosses, you claim their power for yourself. Boss Powers each have Main and Modifier effects to boost your build. 13 are available in all difficulties (from Apparition Incursions and World Bosses), while 11 can only be acquired in Torment 1 difficulty or higher from Lair Bosses and Lilith. You can equip 1 Main Power and 3 Modifiers, and all powers can be upgraded up to Rank 20, increasing the potency of both the Main and Modifier effect. You use Spectral Ash to upgrade these powers, dropped from Apparition Incursions and by defeating any Bosses. Boss Powers also scale with your Paragon Level, growing stronger as you progress.
Best-in-Slot Boss Powers
Main Power
- Grigoire's Lightning Square - In testing, this Main Power's Cooldown synchronizes well with the Stealth from Belial's Eye Beams. It also reliably maintains the damage bonus from Harbinger of Hatred's Volley.
Modifiers
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - This modifier is useful for its second line, which grants you a multiplier to Vulnerable enemies.
- Belial's Eye Beams - This modifier mitigates some incoming damage with its Stealth while providing a solid multiplier to Overpowers.
- Sinerat's Flames - The Shred Druid lives and dies by Stormclaw's damage, and this Modifier enhances that damage.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Hatred's Embrace's Haste - A solid Modifier option early on to cap Crit Chance for Stormclaw's.
- Wandering Death's Chest Beam - The execute from this Modifier drastically improves clear speed, but is completely ineffective against Bosses where Shred is at its weakest.
- Ashava's Poison Breath / Avarice's Explosive Ore / Lilith's Wind of Hate - Any of these are serviceable as Main Powers to consistently activate your Modifiers.
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 our damage and defense thanks to Backlash and Vigilance, respectively. It is frequently available in density thanks to Enhanced Blood Howl.
- 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.
Passives
- Toxic Claws is how you apply Poison for Envenom and Heightened Malice.
- 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
- 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 inflict Vulnerable. 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
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 and Scythe Talons are both viable for additional Attack Speed and Critical Strike Chance 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
- Fang and Claw
- Electrocution
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:
- 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.
- 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.
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 us with passive All Resistance, an area of effect Slow which increases our damage, a 90% damage reduction bubble that also increases damage, and prevents us from getting one shot every 30 seconds thanks to Valiance. Beware that he's not present when playing in groups and 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
- 100%+ Critical Strike Chance (including Werewolf)
- 80%+ Attack Speed
- 1000%+ Critical Strike Damage
- 2000+ Willpower
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 15,000+ 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, 70+ 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 won't be up to snuff. So, to start, use Scythe Talons and Poison Creeper to enhance it and apply Poisons in a wide area around you. Its cooldown resets frequently thanks to Pack Leader. Use this often when engaging, as this variant relies on Changeling's Debt.
- 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 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in. Continue using either Juggernaut's or Disobedience if you need additional Armor.
- 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.
- However, 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 in solo play and to allow you to easily cap Critical Strike Chance 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. 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. The stealth is great for moving and setting up between packs. 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 those 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 Debilitating Roar 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. There are just a few priority adjustments to be made for Pit Pushing.
Gear & Skills
- Replace Kry with Qax and Maul with Preserving Cyclone Armor. The additional damage from Qax is essential for pushing, but the swap limits your range and frequency of pulls with Cyclone Armor.
- Swap to Gift of the Stag to prevent locking yourself at 0 Spirit.
- There are no changes to Mercenaries, Paragon or Boss Powers.
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.
We need to use a 2-hander, as the damage multiplier from Stormclaw's is absurdly high. Of the available options, a Staff is preferred for its higher base Attack Speed.
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 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.
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 in the game, but can also push Nightmare Dungeons and the Pit reasonably well.
Credits
Written by IBoilerup
Reviewed by Danger