This Stormclaw Druid build uses Greatstaff of the Crone to attack with Claw and Storm Strike at the same time. It offers a true melee playstyle with exceptional tankiness that keeps it competitive even in high Nightmare Dungeons. For other content, this build is practically unkillable while still offering a surprising amount of speed and damage. This build needs Greatstaff of the Crone to function. It cannot be played without it!
This build is very easy to play. The main damage comes from two Basic Skills, which means we don't have to worry about Spirit generation at all. The most challenging part is managing our uptime on Petrify, but even that isn't punishing outside of Nightmare Dungeon pushing.
The build also benefits from several other Skills and Passives. Cyclone Armor provides considerable damage reduction and a knockback for when we get in trouble. Blood Howl is a large Heal and Attack Speed Increase. Poison Creeper allows us to activate Paingorger's Gauntlets consistently in packs. Petrify is a very strong Crowd Control that also provides a huge amount of damage, especially on bosses.
In this guide we teach you all you need to know to be successful with the Stormclaw 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, plus the ability to use Arcing Support, make this the best choice to apply the critical strike damage from Efficiency Support.
- Arcing Support - Helps the construct to hit even more enemies and maximize Efficiency Support
- Fortify Support - Stormclaw isn't terrible at building Fortify, but it's also not great. This supplements what we already get from Bolster. If you acquire Evernight use it here instead.
- Efficiency Support - This is a significant damage boost that has almost 100% uptime.
- 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 - A solid source of healing to supplement Masochistic
- Gyrate - Another option for applying debuffs to enemies. Pair it with Initiative Support
Tuning Stones
- Initiative Support - If using Gyrate, take this to increase the Construct's mobility.
- Gripping Support - Great for grouping enemies together.
- Slowing Support - Great for keeping enemies grouped.
- Frigid Support - Another option to keep enemies from escaping.
- Breaking Support - Helps to keep up Vulnerable and remove Barrier from enemies in Nightmare Dungeons or monsters like Knights and the Butcher.
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
The build doesn't change in a significant way between Seasonal and Eternal game modes. You may be a bit weaker, slower, squishier or your Construct may not deal some additional damage, but the build is designed to work without it.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Claw is our primary damage skill. Greatstaff of the Crone allows it to also cast Storm Strike
- Shred is used for mobility with Primal Shred and also helps to proc Paingorger's Gauntlets when Poison Creeper and Cyclone Armor are down.
- Petrify provides a huge CC and tons of multiplicative damage. Prime Petrify increases its duration, making it easier to kill enemies before they release from their Stun.
- Blood Howl is a solid Heal with very high uptime that also provides Attack speed through Preserving Blood Howl and Fortify through Bolster.
- Cyclone Armor provides multiple sources of Damage Reduction plus a Knockback.
- Poison Creeper is our primary way of activating Paingorger's Gauntlets while also providing a source of Critical Strike Chance through Brutal Poison Creeper.
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.
- Lupine Ferocity is our Keystone Passive of choice. It provides less raw damage than Ursine Strength would, but the additional Critical Strikes help with Packleader and Packleader, two very important Boons for our build.
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:
- Masochistic is our largest source of Healing.
- Avian Wrath is now a damage multiplier, making it an easy choice.
- Packleader gives us the ability to reset our Poison Creeper to get more consistency with Paingorger's Gauntlets.
- Bolster single handedly allows us to maintain high levels of Fortify.
- Wariness provides additional damage reduction against the most dangerous enemies.
We bond with the Wolf to activate its Bolster and Packleader.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Druid Spirit Boons Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
This build uses Resource Generators as its main damage. This means we never have to worry about managing resources, so we don't have to build for it in our gear or Paragon Board.
Cooldown Management is primarily around Petrify. We want to make sure to have this up when we need it most, with the biggest value coming from Bosses. High HP Rares are also a good use for it as long as you aren't close to reaching the boss. Finally, it can be an exceptionally powerful emergency button when things get scary. Whatever you do, don't just use this on cooldown or you won't have it when it matters 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!
Stormclaw's Paragon Board almost completely avoids respeccing, with only a small change of three nodes at the very end.
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Stormclaw's Paragon Board almost completely avoids respeccing, with only a small change of three nodes at the very end.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default; this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Electrocution
- Fang and Claw
- Earth and Sky
- Territorial
- Spirit
- Werewolf
Level 21
- Territorial
- Fang and Claw
- Earth and Sky
- Werewolf
- Spirit
- Electrocution
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. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Minimum Requirements (Legendary Aspects & Unique items)
- Greatstaff of the Crone
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Rapid in Buried Halls (Dry Steppes)
- Vigorous in Steadfast Barracks (Hawezar)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Ghostwalker in Broken Bulwark (Scosglen)
- Overcharged in Mariner's Refuge (Scosglen)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Unlock this Aspect in the Seasonal Journey
- Adaptability
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Metamorphosis
- Nature's Savagery
- Juggernaut's
- Moonrise
- Hectic
- This Unique can be found as a random drop or by killing the appropriate boss
- Paingorger's Gauntlets
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.
- Adaptability (TEMP) is a massive damage boost. You receive this from the Seasonal Journey so prioritize reaching it. Place this in the Amulet spot for maximum effect.
- Rapid is a substantial DPS and healing improvement for the build.
- Edgemaster’s provides a damage boost that is almost always maxed out in this build.
- Movement Speed on your boots and amulet will significantly increase your leveling and farming speed.
- Upgrade your weapon when you have the resources. Any other gear can wait until you find better items.
Gameplay
- Activate Blood Howl for Fortify and Attack Speed just before entering the fight.
- Close the gap with Shred and use Petrify if off Cooldown
- Cast Poison Creeper in the center of the pack of enemies to activate both Brutal Poison Creeper and Paingorger's Gauntlets
- Spam Claw, prioritizing Rare/high damage targets.
- During the fight, use Blood Howl on Cooldown to Fortify and keep Vigilance and Preserving Blood Howl up.
- Use Poison Creeper every 3 seconds if available. If not, use Cyclone Armor. Both of these skills activate Paingorger's Gauntlets.
- Use Shred every 5 seconds to activate Accelerating.
- If you find yourself in a tough situation with too many enemies nearby and you can't Evade or Shred your way out, you can also use Cyclone Armor to Knockback and Slow the enemies, buying yourself an escape route.
- Advanced: If an enemy hits hard, use Blood Howl to recover from large hits.
There are no changes to Skills, Boons or the Paragon Board
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
- Start trying to fit as much Damage Reduction, Critical Strike Chance, and Lucky Hit Chance as you can on your gear.
Skills
Now that we have Mighty Storm's we can take advantage of Earthen Might for a big DPS boost.
There are no changes to Boons or the Paragon Board.
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
- Add Paingorger's Gauntlets for a massive increase to clear speed.
- While we don't add it due to its relatively extreme rarity, if you happen to acquire a Harlequin Crest this becomes your Best in Slot helmet. The combination of Offensive/Defensive buffs from this item are unrivaled. This is also true for any variants.
- At this point you should have everything properly set up, so 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. Lucky Hit Chance is 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.
There are no changes to Passives, Boons, or the Paragon Board.
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 and Mad Wolf's Glee for the extra Damage and Movement Speed they provide. If you find that this is too drastic a reduction in defenses, remove Mad Wolf's Glee for your standard Chest .
- For Gauntlet: Replace defensive options on your boots and amulet for Shrine Buff duration.
Passives
- The only change here is we switch Fierce Storm Strike with Wild Storm Strike and Savage Hurricane with Natural Hurricane to shift our Vulnerable procs and open up more clear.
There are no changes to Spirit Boons, Gameplay or Paragon Boards in this setup.
This build is capable of defeating the Echoes of Lilith encounter. As of 1.2, she's become much easier to take on, and we'll make a few priority optimizations to skip large portions of the fight. See below.
Gear
- This setup is mostly identical to Speedfarming/Bossing with the addition of Flickerstep for more Petrify uptime. Since her attacks are all either 1 shots or inconsequential we have no need to build defenses. Instead, we want to burn her down quickly to skip dangerous portions of the fight.
- We switch our Bolster Boon with Calamity to increase our damage window.
Skills
- Swap Cyclone Armor with Ravens
- Replace points in the defensive passives (Vigilance,Ancestral Fortitude and our Fortify nodes) with more damage from Defiance, Resonance and Charged Atmosphere.
- Swap Savage Hurricane for Natural Hurricane to further improve our Vulnerable uptime.
Gameplay
- Open the fight by waiting for her to drop down, then use Petrify to further boost your damage before opening up with Claw.
- Best case scenario, your opening attack will leave her with less than 1/3 of her life before she summons adds Evade into her landing zone as she drops down and open up again, hoping to deal enough damage to end phase 1.
- Repeat Step 1 at the beginning of phase 2, aiming to get Lilith below 80% HP before she spawns boils around the arena. If successful, you won't have to dodge the boils or their fireballs for the duration of phase 2, making this phase much easier. From there, the fight is a DPS check until she destroys all corners of the arena.
- After all platforms are destroyed, Lilith will teleport to the center of the arena. Burn her down to end the fight.
In this setup, we sacrifice damage for tankiness and a permanent source of Unstoppable. Recommended for Hardcore, difficult content pushes, or players who want to avoid being CC'd and don't mind giving up some clear speed to get it.
Gear
- Replace Accelerating with Nature's Savagery and add Symbiotic to your chest to get access to Nature's Fury.
- Switch to Ghostwalker on your boots.
Skills
Replace the points in Shred with Earthen Bulwark. Thanks to Nature's Fury, this skill becomes spammable, giving effectively permanent uptime on Unstoppable plus an additional layer of protection through Barrier.
There are no changes to Boons or the Paragon Board.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Due to the nature of this build it's already well suited for Hardcore. The exceptionally high Damage Reduction along with healing from Masochistic make this build nearly impossible to kill even on low to mid tier Nightmare Dungeons.
- Consider using our tank variant to avoid unlucky deaths from CC.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
The answer to many questions can be found in the following section.
- Paingorger's Gauntlets (TEMP): We proc this through Hurricane and Shred, providing a massive damage boost and clear range to the build.
- Critical Strikes: Thanks to our Gear, Passives and Earthen Might we have consistently high Critical Strike Chance in this build.
- Critical Strike Damage: This stat used to be very important due to being multiplicative, but since Season two it is now additive and generally weaker than other options. We instead scale Critical Strike damage through multiplicative sources like Envenom and Petrify.
- Vulnerable: Storm Strike allows us to consistently apply Vulnerable to targets thanks to Fierce Storm Strike. This status effect is a damage 20 percent multiplier, but any additional damage we get from gear and Paragon nodes are additive, so we generally don't scale this further.
- Attack Speed: Since our primary damage is from Basic Attacks that don't use Spirit, we don't need to worry about resource management. This means we can spam Claw as fast as possible, making Attack Speed an excellent stat that not only gives us better damage, but also healing through more procs of Masochistic. Our attack speed comes from Gloves, the Paragon Board, and Rapid 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. The Attack Speed from this build makes this a solid source of sustain. We also get an on-use heal from Blood Howl as well as a passive source from Reconstruct.
- Armor: A great deal of defenses comes from your Armor. We can build a ton of it thanks to Ironclaw / of the Ironclaw and Paragon Nodes.
- Defensive Multipliers: Aspect of Might, Storm Strike and Vigorous Defensive Aspect provide significant damage reduction and have 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 exceptionally 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 from Bolster when we use a Defensive skill.
- Cyclone Armor: provides free 10% Non-Physical Damage Reduction while also giving us an additional 30% every 10 seconds from Preserving Cyclone Armor. Since the 2 second period only procs on taking damage, we often have this up at the start of a fight when the danger is highest.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Stat Priorities
There are many stats and status effects that generate on gear, but many are not important for your build. Some stats may block others from rolling or only appear on certain gear slots. See below for a general breakdown as well as a per slot priority list in the list.
Put in the following Gems into your gear:
- Helmet / Body Armor / Pants: Royal Ruby
- Weapon / Off-Hand: Royal Topaz
- Jewelry: Use 1 Royal Topaz and then 2 of whatever Resistance you haven't capped with your gear affixes.
- Helm: Hectic
- One of Fire, Cold, Shadow, Poison Resistance
- Cooldown Reduction
- Maximum Life
- Basic Skill Attack Speed
- Willpower
- Chest Armor: Juggernaut's
- Damage Reduction From Poisoned
- Damage Reduction From Close
- Damage Reduction From Distant
- Damage Reduction While Fortified
- Damage Reduction
- Willpower
- Maximum Life
- Gloves: Paingorger's Gauntlets
- Critical Strike Chance
- Basic Skill Attack Speed
- Basic Skill Damage
- All Stats
- Gloves (Alternative): Edgemaster’s
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Willpower
- All Stats
- Pants: Might
- Damage Reduction From Poisoned
- Damage Reduction From Close
- Damage Reduction From Distant
- Damage Reduction While Fortified
- Damage Reduction While Injured
- Damage Reduction
- Maximum Life
- Boots: Metamorphosis
- Movement Speed
- Two of: Fire, Cold, Shadow, Poison Resistance
- Total Armor while in Werewolf Form
- Damage Reduction While Injured
- Willpower
- Dodge Chance
- Amulet: Rapid
- Ranks of the Envenom Passive
- Movement Speed
- Cooldown Reduction
- Damage Reduction From Poisoned
- Damage Reduction From Close
- Armor in Werewolf Form
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Damage Reduction while Fortified
- Rings: Moonrise & Adaptability
- Damage To Close Enemies
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Maximum Life
- Critical Strike Chance
- Damage To Distant Enemies
- Critical Strike Damage
- Damage to Poisoned Enemies
- Weapon (Staff): Greatstaff of the Crone
- Ranks To Claw
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Damage To Crowd Controlled
- Non-Physical Damage
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, Elixir of Combatant Fortune
- 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 Mad Wolf's Glee?
Why not Temerity?
Why not Melted Heart of Selig?
Why not Low Life?
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 Stormclaw Druid is a true tank in every sense of the word, with a level of defense that can rival every other build in the game. The build is one of the easiest to play thanks to a simple rotation and no resource management. It is strongest when pushing Nightmare Dungeons, but does well on all types of content due to its high mobility and solid damage.
Credits
Written by McFluffin
Reviewed by IBoilerUp