Welcome to the Support Druid Endgame Guide, our first dedicated support guide for Diablo 4! This build is overflowing with defensive and utility options for group play, as well as a handful of offensive choices that aren't to be overlooked.
Though the buff management and gear requirements may take some time to navigate, the payoff is well worth it. This build is fully capable of enabling its party to clear the most difficult endgame content, including Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons and the Echoes of Lilith encounter!
Start battles by enabling personal defensive buffs, including Damage Reduction bonuses from Storm Strike and Might. Gain Unstoppable and Barrier from Earthen Bulwark as you make your approach. Once in range, inflict a massive Slow and Damage Reduction debuff on monsters with Debilitating Roar while bolstering your party's damage with Blood Howl and Nighthowler's Aspect. If all else fails, use Petrify to push for damage or buy yourself time to escape.
We utilize the Nature's Fury Key Passive to maintain our personal defenses, replenishing the bonuses from Earthen Bulwark with Symbiotic Aspect and casts of Storm Strike. This 1-2 punch makes and keeps us tanky!
Offensive Buffs
- Vulnerable (Exploit, Storm Strike)
- +10% Critical Strike Chance (Blood Howl)
- +15% increased Attack Speed (Blood Howl)
Defensive Buffs
- x70% less enemy damage dealt (Debilitating Roar)
- 19% damage reduction (Cyclone Armor)
- 30% Max Life Heal (Blood Howl)
Crowd Controls
- 65% Slow (Debilitating Roar)
- Maximum Duration Stun (Petrify)
- Knock Back (Cyclone Armor)
Extremely Durable ✔
Not Unique Dependent ✔
Potent Defensive and CC Buffs ✔
Tier 100 and Uber Lilith Capable ✔
❌ Reliant on Party Play
❌ Lots of Buttons to Press
❌ Limited Offensive Buffs
❌ High Gear Requirement
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Tornado Druid Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Druid playstyle, check out all of our Druid Guides.
Season 2 - Season of Blood
Diablo 4 Season 2 introduces a new questline to hunt down the Shadow Vampire forces of Lord Zir across Sanctuary. With Lilith's blood still residing within our bodies, the infliction put upon us is harnessed throughout our leveling, granting access to new Vampiric Powers. Completing the seasonal questline, partaking in the seasonal Blood Harvest event and collecting Potent Blood are the main ways of obtaining and empowering these abilities. Check out the full Season 2 Guide from Chewingnom to learn more!
How it works
- There are 22 Vampiric Powers, separated into 2 different types:
- 15 Minor Vampiric Powers - Require 1 to 3 Pacts to be activated.
- 7 Major Vampiric Powers - Require 6 Pacts to be activated.
- There are 3 different types of Pacts:
- Ferocity Pact
have a Crown icon. - Divinity Pacts
have a Chalice icon. - Eternity Pacts
have a Skull icon.
- Ferocity Pact
- Pacts can roll only on Armor pieces (Helm, Chest Armor, Gloves, Pants, Boots).
- Helms & Boots can have up to 3 Pacts, Pants can have up to 4, Chest & Gloves can have up to 5. This gives you 20 Pacts max!
- You can use Cleansing Acid - All to remove all Pacts from a piece of Armor and place new Standalone Pacts to meet your Powers requirements to activate. Cleansing Acid can be altered at the Alchemists to target 1 of the 3 Pacts only.
- Once you have equipped the right Pact Armor pieces, you can activate Vampiric Powers in the Sanguine Circle through the character screen. Powers require varying amounts of different types of Pacts, pay attention.
- You can use Potent Blood acquired from Blood Seekers to upgrade your Vampiric Powers from Level 1 to Level 3.
With this in mind, let's look at the top 5 best Vampiric Powers and how they impact this build:
Best-in-Slot Vampiric Powers
- Hectic - Cooldown reduction is everything to this build and this power has it in spades.
- Anticipation - Higher uptime on Petrify is always welcome, especially when you add Airidah's Inexorable Will.
- Ravenous - The increased attack speed granted by this Power effectively reduces cooldowns even further when used alongside the Symbiotic Aspect
- Resilience - A solid defensive option that helps us better act as the frontline for our party.
- Undying - A reliable source of additional healing (be sure to swap this power out on the Injured variant)
Alternative Vampiric Powers
- Prey on the Weak - Though all characters can inflict Vampiric Curses this season, taking this Power along with the next one frees up Vampiric Power slots for your party.
- Accursed Touch - Simply by engaging monsters we can inflict Vampiric Curse on mobs and more consistently inflict Vulnerable.
- Metamorphosis - An alternative but slightly worse way to apply Vampiric Curse and Vulnerable to monsters. This build is not lacking in sources of Unstoppable
- Domination - You have a handful of ways to inflict both Stuns and Immobilizes in this build, granting you an execute. Unfortunately, this is only effective against weaker foes.
Skill Tree
Active Skills
- Debilitating Roar is the star of the show. Use it to inflict a 70% Damage Dealt debuff and a 65% Slow to mobs in a colossal AoE. Although the damage reduction duration is not scalable, you can achieve nearly permanent uptime on the Slow with high investment in Cooldown Reduction and Crowd Control Duration.
- Blood Howl provides a sizeable heal and increases your Attack Speed by 15%. With Nighthowler's Aspect, these effects also apply to allies along with a Critical Strike Chance bonus.
- Cyclone Armor grants passive Non-Physical Damage Reduction that intensifies periodically via Preserving Cyclone Armor. When paired with Cyclonic Force, these bonuses affect allies and also apply to Physical Damage. Cyclone Armor Knocks Back nearby enemies when activated.
- Petrify provides a max duration Stun in a large AoE. Use it to engage, escape, or buy yourself time to resurrect fallen teammates.
- Storm Strike gives personal damage reduction on hit and through Might when cast. It also serves as a reliable source of Vulnerable.
- Earthen Bulwark Fortifies for a portion of your life on cast and protects your Fortified status with a hefty Barrier. We bolster its uptime through Mending Stone and the combination of Nature's Fury and Symbiotic Aspect.
Passives
Our passives are primarily used for personal defenses:
- Ancestral Fortitude and Vigilance are practically permanent defensive bonuses. Heightened Senses and Iron Fur temporarily provide additional damage reduction when we use our Shapeshifting skills.
- Defensive Posture, Nature's Resolve, and Natural Fortitude bolster our Fortify status.
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: Iron Feather
- Wolf Spirit: Bolster
- Snake Spirit: Calm Before the Storm
Bond with the Wolf Spirit and activate Calamity.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Druid Spirit Boons Guide.
Paragon Board
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
- Poise
- Protector
- Exploit
- Undaunted
- Human
- Territorial
Level 21
- Poise
- Protector
- Exploit
- Undaunted
- Territorial
- Human
Note that four of our Glyphs add only damage beyond level 15. After increasing the radius of all Glyphs and leveling Poise and Protector to 21, feel free to continue leveling these generally useful Glyphs or prioritize any others you may need.
There are a total of 225 Paragon Points. Starting with level 50 you gain 4 Paragon Points per level, plus 20 from Renown, and 4 from Altars of Lilith.
Gameplay
- As you approach mobs, cast Earthen Bulwark to gain Unstoppable and its Barrier. When you reach the mobs, maintain Storm Strike's Damage Reduction bonus by casting it at least once every 3 seconds, while simultaneously refreshing Earthen Bulwark as you recover its Cooldown.
- From a distance, cast your first Debilitating Roar to Slow and drastically reduce enemy damage. The range of this skill is wider than most monitors display, so you rarely need to encroach on enemies to debuff them. Continue casting this skill on Cooldown throughout the encounter.
- As your party's DPS members begin to attack, buff them with the offensive bonuses from Blood Howl. Enhanced Blood Howl grants this skill Cooldown Recovery with each kill, including party members' kills, enabling you to spam it every 3 seconds in high density to maintain the effect of Nighthowler's Aspect.
- Against Elites, when you need to escape, or if you need to sneak into a pack to resurrect your allies, utilize Petrify's astounding stun duration. This skill has a long Cooldown which can be recovered to some extent by Calm Before the Storm and Hectic. But we can't sustain its effect permanently, so use this Cooldown wisely!
Cooldown & Crowd Control Management
Cooldown Management
As mentioned at the top of this guide, maximizing Debilitating Roar's massive Slow and Damage Reduction is the main feature of this build. This is only possible with considerable investment in Ranks of Debilitating Roar, Cooldown Reduction, and Crowd Control Duration on gear.
Earthen Bulwark's Cooldown has a chance to be recovered by casts of Storm Strike with the synergy of Nature's Fury and the Symbiotic Aspect. This allows for high uptime on Unstoppable, Fortify, and Barrier.
Blood Howl's Cooldown is reduced by your party's kills, resulting in nearly maximum uptime of your offensive buffs in heavy density.
Petrify is your Get-Out-of-Jail Free card, but its relatively high Cooldown dictates that we use it judiciously.
Crowd Control Duration
Smiting Aspect, Exploiter's Aspect, and Calamity
Despite its tooltip, Smiting Aspect provides an additive bonus to Crowd Control Duration. Still, it's the largest source of Crowd Control Duration in this build. Keep in mind that you must be Healthy to gain the relevant bonus. Exploiter's Aspect is another nice bonus to the stat that is not roll dependent. Combined with affixes on our Helmet and Totem, we achieve nearly double the duration on Debilitating Roar's Slow and Petrify! Calamity provides a multiplicative bonus to the duration of Petrify.
Unstoppable Monsters
After being subjected to 10 consecutive seconds of "Hard" Crowd Control (freeze, immobilize, stun, etc.), regular monsters become Unstoppable for 10 seconds. For Elites, it only takes 5 seconds of "Hard" Crowd Control to activate this effect, decaying after about 8 seconds. "Soft" Crowd Controls, such as Innate Debilitating Roar's Slow, build up this immunity at about 1/5 the rate. Before provoking Unstoppable, you can leave the monsters to rest for a short time to let this buildup toward CC immunity decay.
It's important that we avoid activating this inherent ability in mobs because during that time we will be unable to apply fresh Crowd Controls or benefit from Crowd Controlled damage bonuses. With this in mind, it's worth looking over the Crowd Control effects available across your party to minimize the chances of this effect occurring. Some builds need to inflict their own Crowd Control effects to be effective, such as Barbarian's Challenging Shout. So, depending on your party composition, you may opt to substitute Preserving Debilitating Roar or shorten Petrify's duration further by removing Calamity or other sources of Crowd Control Duration on gear.
Note that the 4-second Damage Reduction from Debilitating Roar still applies to Unstoppable monsters.
Aspects & Requirements
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 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!
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Aspect of Cyclonic Force in Collapsed Vault (Kehjistan)
- Nighthowler's Aspect in Forbidden City (Fractured Peaks)
- Aspect of Mending Stone in Sealed Archives (Dry Steppes)
- Rapid Aspect in Buried Halls (Dry Steppes)
- Aspect of Retribution in Abandoned Mineworks (Kehjistan - Injured variant)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, through the Tree of Whispers, or gambling with Obols:
- Exploiter's Aspect
- Smiting Aspect
- Symbiotic Aspect
- Aspect of Might
- Aspect of Audacity (Injured Variant)
- Ghostwalker Aspect (Speedfarming variant)
- Stat Requirements
- Cooldown Reduction: 33%+ from Totem, Amulet, and Helmet
- Crowd Control Duration: 85%+ between Totem, Helmet, Smiting Aspect and Exploiter's Aspect
- +Ranks to Debilitating Roar: 7 from Amulet and Chest Armor
- Find the following Unique items by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides. Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with obols!
- Fleshrender
- Airidah's Inexorable Will
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
The answer to many questions can be found in the following section.
Build Scaling
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
- Debilitating Roar: There are few skills in the game that rival the Damage Reduction debuff from Debilitating Roar. We build around its more-than-screen-wide AoE by investing in +Ranks to Debilitating Roar and Cooldown Reduction.
- Cyclone Armor: grants you a passive non-Physical Damage Reduction bonus, which is augmented to affect allies and also apply to Physical Damage with Cyclonic Force.
- Healing: You Heal yourself and allies by using Blood Howl with the Nighthowler's Aspect. You can cast this in quick succession when fighting a dense pack thanks to Enhanced Blood Howl benefitting from party kills.
- Armor: Since you don't need to deal damage, your Paragon board and gear affixes are stacked with Armor. This keeps us survivable in even the toughest of situations.
- Fortify: Between Bolster, Defensive Posture, Nature's Resolve, Natural Fortitude, and the Fortify granted by Preserving Earthen Bulwark, you have little trouble maintaining your Fortified status. This makes bonuses to Damage Reduction While Fortified very valuable.
- Unstoppable: Earthen Bulwark provides Unstoppable for its duration. Reset its cooldown by attacking with Storm Strike and using the Nature's Fury Key Passive along with Symbiotic Aspect.
- Barrier: Earthen Bulwark also grants a Barrier which helps protect your Fortified status. Refresh this barrier as often as you're able and consider scaling its effectiveness with Barrier Generation on Rings or Helmet.
- Storm Strike and Might: Hitting with Storm Strike while engaged with enemies grants a 15% Damage Reduction Bonus.
Stat Priorities & Gear Options
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 Rubies or Royal Diamonds (Injured Variant)
- Weapon / Off-Hand: Royal Skulls or None (Injured Variant)
- Jewelry: Royal Diamonds
This build benefits greatly from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Heady Iron Barb Elixir, Elixir of Fortitude, Heady Acrobatics Elixir, Elixir of Death Evasion, Elixir of Combatant Fortune
- Incense: Song of the Mountain or Reddamine Buzz
Refer to the table below to see the best rolls for every slot ranked in order of importance.
-When playing the Injured variant or with a party member that inflicts Poison, move the corresponding stat highlighted in Green up a tier.
-Likewise, when playing the Injured variant, the corresponding stats highlighted in Red become mandatory.
If you are running the Default setup with no Poison in your party, ignore these highlighted stats as priorities.
| SLOT | ASPECT | STAT PRIORITY |
| Weapon (Best-in-Slot) | Fleshrender | Weapon Type: Mace 1. Damage While Shapeshifted 2. Damage to Poisoned Enemies 3. Damage While Healthy 4. +Ranks to Defensive Skills |
| Weapon (Alternate) | One of: Rapid Nighthowler's Smiting Aspect Retribution | Weapon Type: Any 1-H 1. Willpower 2. All Stats 3. Lucky Hit: Chance to Execute Injured Non-Elites 4. Any |
| Off-Hand | One of: Rapid Nighthowler's Smiting Aspect | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Crowd Control Duration 3. Damage Reduction While Fortified 4. Lucky Hit Chance 5. Damage Reduction from Enemies That Are Poisoned 6. All Stats 7. Basic Skill Attack Speed 8. Barrier Generation |
| Helm | One of: Disobedience Mending Stone Cyclonic Force | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Crowd Control Duration 3. Maximum Life 4. % Total Armor 5. Willpower 6. All Stats 7. Basic Skill Attack Speed 8. Barrier Generation |
| Chest | One of: Disobedience Mending Stone Cyclonic Force | 1. +Ranks to Debilitating Roar 2. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 3. Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies 4. Damage Reduction While Fortified 5. Damage Reduction from Enemies That Are Poisoned 6. % Total Armor 7. Damage Reduction 8. Maximum Life 9. +Ranks to Cyclone Armor 10. Barrier Generation |
| Gloves | One of: Rapid Nighthowler's Smiting Aspect | 1. Attack Speed 2. Lucky Hit Chance 3. Willpower 4. All Stats 5. Strength |
| Pants | One of: Disobedience Mending Stone Cyclonic Force | Implicit: Potion Grants Barrier 1.Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 2. Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies 3. Damage Reduction While Fortified 4. % Total Armor 5. Damage Reduction from Enemies That Are Poisoned 6. Damage Reduction While Injured 7. Damage Reduction 8. Maximum Life 9. Dodge Chance |
| Boots | One of: Exploiter's or Ghostwalker (Speedfarming) | Implicit: Max Evade Charges 1. Movement Speed 2. Willpower 3. All Stats 4. % Dodge Chance 5. % Dodge Chance Against Distant Enemies 6. Damage Reduction While Injured 7. Total Armor while in Werewolf Form |
| Amulet | Symbiotic | 1. +Ranks to All Defensive Skills 2. Cooldown Reduction 3.Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 4. Damage Reduction While Fortified 5. Damage Reduction from Enemies That Are Poisoned 6. Damage Reduction While Injured 7. Crowd Control Duration 8. % Total Armor |
| Ring 1 | One of: Rapid Nighthowler's Smiting Aspect | 1. Maximum Life 2. Barrier Generation 3. Lucky Hit Chance 4. Fortify Generation |
| Ring 2 | One of: Rapid Nighthowler's Smiting Aspect | 1. Maximum Life 2. Barrier Generation 3. Lucky Hit Chance 4. Fortify Generation |
Endgame Variants
You can optimize your build further for certain endgame activities, such as Speedfarming, Nightmare Dungeon Pushing, etc. As this build is intended for party play, the variants listed below additionally depend on your party's composition.
(Poison DPS)
The Injured Support Druid trades utility, ease of play, and lower gear requirements for the ability to face tank all but the most difficult content. Depending on your party composition and target content, this may be desirable even when weighing the downsides. This changes quite a bit about the build:
Gear
- Damage Reduction While Injured becomes top priority on our defensive pieces. Similarly, Barrier Generation is newly prioritized on Helmet, Chest Armor, and Offhand to bolster the strength of Earthen Bulwark. Ranks to Earthen Bulwark pushes this even further.
- Damage Reduction While Fortified does not apply to Barriers, as we don't take damage to our Fortified life with a Barrier active. Consequently, this stat is dropped as a priority on Amulet, Chest, and Pants. If you have a party member that consistently inflicts Poison, Damage Reduction from Poison can be used in place of %Armor on Pants and in place of Lucky Hit Chance on Offhand.
- Socket Royal Diamonds instead of Royal Rubies in your armor pieces to further bolster Barrier generation.
- Smiting is swapped out with Audacity on our Gloves, since we can't benefit from Smiting's Crowd Control Duration bonus while Injured
- Since you can't Heal with Blood Howl either, Nighthowler's is exchanged for Retribution.
- Remove the Skulls from your weapon and offhand. Unfortunately, there is no suitable replacement for these gems, but we can't Heal from the Life on Kill or we risk losing the Injured status.
Skills
Remove:
- Preserving Blood Howl (3 Points)
Add:
- Savage Hurricane (3 Points)
Gameplay
- Before you engage with content, go to the overworld and let mobs attack you until you are at 35% or less HP, incurring the Injured status. Repeat this step if you inadvertently heal or die, as it is necessary to benefit from the powerful Damage Reduction values that accompany this status.
- Protecting your limited life pool with Earthen Bulwark's Barrier is paramount, as you can't heal. Make sure to regularly cast Storm Strike in and out of mobs' range to activate Symbiotic Aspect and reduce Earthen Bulwark's cooldown.
- Use Hurricane when approaching monsters to reduce their damage dealt and have a chance to inflict Vulnerable. The cooldown of Hurricane has a chance to be reduced by your repeated casts of Earthen Bulwark thanks to Symbiotic.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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?
What are some builds that synergize with this one?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Unstoppable Monsters
Injured Status and Barrier
Video Guide
Coming Soon
Hungry for more Guides?
Druid Guides
General Guides
Summary
The Support Druid provides an excellent blend of offensive, defensive, and utility buffs while establishing a stalwart frontline. With proper gearing and coordination, it weakens mobs considerably by alternating between Debilitating Roar and Petrify, while buffing party members with Cyclone Armor and Blood Howl.
Credits
Written by IBoilerUp
Reviewed by McFluffin
