Stone Burst 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

• Firebat Servants - This another Eldritch power that could replace Wave of Woe and provide delayed Stunned on stubborn enemies.
• 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 enables multiple powerful synergies from our Witchcraft Powers by granting Vulnerable the Eldritch tag. This means that, every second, it benefits from Purging Touch and Decay Augmentation!
• Toadling's Wish - Bolstering the effects of Soul Harvest and Decay Augmentation is extremely powerful.
• Friend of the Bog - Great overall providing Willpower boost, Life, and the ability move Unhindered through enemies.

Alternate Occult Gems

• Killing Wind - A straightforward 25% movement speed and 15% Critical Strike Chance when you have at least 3 Eldritch powers slotted.
• Hungering Void - Proves a way to pull mobs together and requires you to fit an Aura Power.

Skill Rotation

• Cast Cataclysm.
• Tap Stone Burst repeatedly to unleash its powerful AoE, making sure to hit as many Poisoned enemies as possible. Continue tapping Stone Burst as your main damage dealer.
• Claw or Shred to maintain Shapeshifting Bonuses, especially Wildheart Hunger.
• Cast Debilitating Roar or Cyclone Armor when there are too many enemies around.

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. The Stone Burst Duid focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Igni + ‍Wat - ‍Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows you to execute enemies at 10% HP. When combined with ‍Xol in your other Runeword, it also generates large amounts of offering.
• Xol + Zec - This allows you to maintain 100% uptime on Cataclysm

Alternative choices

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

• Lith - Strong Ritual that forces you to stand still.
• Bac - Another good Ritual, especially for speed farming.
• Gar - The Crit Chance bonus is great, especially early on.
• Mot - Dark Shroud is a strong and affordable defensive option.
• Yul - Another good rune to generate offering by using skills with cooldowns.

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 provides you with increased Movement Speed as you gain Massacre Stacks. Remember that Massacre stacks reset if you have not killed any enemies after 7 seconds. She also provides Attack Speed and even more Attack Speed when she activates ‍Bloodthirst.

• Reinforcement: Raheir

Choose Bastion for a surge of Damage Reduction when you need it most.

To enable the Stone Burst 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 Stone Burst 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 Stone Burst 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.

How can I trigger Unstoppable?

You can replace Cyclone Armor with Trample to gain Unstoppable. However you stack Crowd Control Impairment Reduction with Advantageous Beast and Unrestrained to reduce your time Crowd Controlled.

What is the best weapon choice?

Use a One-Handed Weapon and Totem. Try to get a Dagger, which benefits from higher base Attack Speed. The reason you use One-Handed Weapon is because of Stone of Vehemen Totem, is needed to maximize your Stone Burst damage, leaving One-Handed Weapons as your only option.

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

Vasily's Prayer

• With Vasily's Prayer equipped, your Earth skills also count as Werebear skills, granting up to 5% Fortify of your maximum health with every cast. While the helm offers a significant defensive boost with Armor, Life, and Willpower, its real value lies in its synergy with Shapeshifting. By turning Earth skills into Werebear skills, you unlock powerful bonuses like Quickshift for increased damage after Shapeshifting, Heightened Senses for additional survivability, Defensive Posture for reduced damage, and Survival Instincts for a huge damage multiplier. Additionally, equipping this helm allows you to switch your key passive to Bestial Rampage, increasing your damage and attack speed after Shapeshifting.

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.

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.

The Stone Burst Druid is a powerful, burst-damage specialist that excels at taking down groups of enemies with high AoE damage. With strong Earth abilities and Shapeshifting bonuses, this build provides a balanced combination of damage and survivability.

• Tap Stone Burst to unleash continuous AoE damage, taking advantage of Raging Stone Burst for increased damage.
• Maintain Constant uptime on your Ultimate Skills to maximize damage and Spirit.
• Maintain your Shapeshifting bonuses with Shred.

Written by thomasdatrain

Reviewed by IBoilerup