Tornado Druid Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Tornado Druid Endgame Guide! A classic amongst the Druid's builds, the Tornado Druid is a flexible caster capable of harnessing nature's wrath to unleash devastating Tornadoes on demons and fiends alike!
At its core, Tornado is an unpredictable Core Skill that wanders the battlefield aimlessly. However, by utilizing the Stormchaser's aspect, you can reduce the randomness of its movements and direct it towards enemies for reliable damage output. Unfortunately, Stormchaser's is a drop/gamble-only aspect, and your mileage with this build will heavily depend on whether or not you can find this aspect early on.
A Storm build is incomplete without the inclusion of Tempest Roar, and the Tornado Druid is no exception to that rule. This Unique converts Tornado into a Werewolf Skill, enabling it to use Werewolf-specific damage multipliers in the form of Lust for Carnage, Unsatiated and Changeling's Debt. Additionally, Runes play a big role in this build. Specifically, the Tornado Druid utilizes Kry to pull in Elites and smaller monsters. This mechanic ensures your Tornado spends less time traveling and more time inflicting damage to multiple monsters simultaneously. The Ultimate Skill of choice is Cataclysm because it reduces your Spirit costs and boasts an attractive damage multiplier when paired with Mjölnic Ryng.
The Tornado Druid also makes use of Wildheart Hunger, which offers significant Attack Speed and damage boosts via the Bestial Rampage Key Passive. This build uses three Defensive Skill to reliably activate Vigilance and Backlash. Earthen Bulwark is particularly significant as it provides Unstoppable and Barrier.
This guide will teach you all you need to know to be successful with the Tornado Druid. Let's dive in!
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 - Is activated effortlessly by Tornado, featuring a short Cooldown which helps you reliably maintain uptime on your Modifiers.
Modifiers
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - This Modifier offers a generic Vulnerable damage multiplier, while also granting you the ability to inflict Vulnerable on nearby enemies.
- Blackmailer's Sabotage - The Tornado Druid has extremely high Fortify generation and the additional Barrier this Modifier provides improves your survivability.
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - There's only a handful of Modifiers that work with this build, and this is one of them. Temper Crowd Control Duration on your gear to maximize this Vulnerable damage multiplier.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Hatred's Embrace's Haste - Grants a large amount of Critical Strike Chance based on your Shadow Resistance bonus, perfect for helping you reach 100% Critical Strike Chance early on.
- Outlaw Sharpshooter's Eye - A serviceable damage multiplier, provided you play at a distance.
- Lord Zir's Blood Pool / Ashava's Poison Breath / Lilith's Wind of Hate - Are all good alternative Main Boss Powers that activate your Modifiers consistently.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Maul Shapeshifts you into Werebear form. Use Maul every 5-10 seconds in-between your Tornado casts to refresh your Wildheart Hunger bonuses and receive Fortify from Skinwalker's.
- Tornado is your main damage ability. Unlock Raging Tornado for permanent Vulnerable uptime. Focus on casting your Tornado in melee range to make the most of its short duration.
- Earthen Bulwark acts as your main source of Unstoppable and grants Barrier.
- Cyclone Armor is a cost-effective source of Damage Reduction, with the upside of activating Backlash and Vigilance.
- Blood Howl provides you with a sizeable damage multiplier and extra healing. Cast it before Tornado for additional damage as you maintain the Werewolf form thanks to Tempest Roar. Enhanced Blood Howl ensures you can cast this skill frequently to double down on your Vigilance and Backlash uptime.
- Cataclysm offers a superb damage multiplier and reduces Tornado's Spirit cost to 0 when paired with Mjölnic Ryng. Utilize Calm Before the Storm and additional Cataclysm Cooldown Reduction Tempers to ensure it's always active.
Skill Passives
- Bestial Rampage serves as your Key Passive. It consists of two components, Werebear and Werewolf, requiring both Shapeshifting forms to fully capitalize on its bonuses. Tempest Roar transforms Tornado into a Werewolf Skill, while Maul Shapeshifts you into Werebear.
- Envenom is your most significant damage Passive. It increases your Critical Strike Damage against Poisoned enemies. This damage bonus is achieved with minimal effort by using Overload, which enables your Tornado to inflict Poisoning damage.
- Quickshift, Feral Aptitude and Backlash are all great offensive bonuses to have, while Heightened Senses, Vigilance and Circle of Life contribute to your survival.
Skill Rotation
- Stack your Shapeshifting bonuses by alternating between Maul and Tornado.
- Activate Cataclysm as often as possible to take advantage of Mjölnic Ryng's damage multiplier and Spirit cost reduction.
- Cast Tornado to activate your Runes, specifically Kry, which groups up enemies in melee range for easy removal.
- Ensure you are casting Maul every 5-10 seconds in-between your Tornadoes to maintain your Shapeshifting buffs.
- Use Blood Howl as often as possible to receive the bonuses from Vigilance and Backlash, casting it before Tornado to make use of Innate Blood Howl's damage buff.
- Note that when you have Innate Blood Howl active it is best to keep casting Tornado and delay your Maul a few more seconds to maximize the damage buff.
- Cast Cyclone Armor if Blood Howl is on Cooldown as a backup way to activate Vigilance and Backlash.
- Activate Earthen Bulwark if you expect to get hit by a big attack or to grant yourself Unstoppable.
If you run out of Spirit and cannot cast Tornado use Maul to recuperate your Spirit.
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: Calm Before the Storm
Bond with the Snake Spirit and activate Overload.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Druid Class Overview.
Paragon & Glyphs
Follow the appropriate Paragon setup based on whether or not you have access to Tempest Roar.
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.
Tornado Druid Starter Paragon
Tornado Druid Endgame Paragon
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
To Level 15
- Spirit
- Earth and Sky
- Outmatch
- Poise
- Headhunter
- Fang and Claw
To Level 46
- Outmatch
- Spirit
- Fang and Claw
- Earth and Sky
- Headhunter
Poise is a placeholder Glyph. Only invest XP into it if you are playing the Human version of Tornado. Do NOT over-invest XP into it as it will be replaced with Fang and Claw when you acquire Tempest Roar.
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 Tornado Druid focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Igni + Wat - Decrepify helps stagger Bosses, provides Damage Reduction and Executes enemies at 10% HP. When combined with Xol in your other Runeword, it also generates large amounts of Offering.
- Xol + Kry - Vortex enables you to group up monsters, which in turn improves the reliability of Tornado and increases its total damage potential.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Tam / Bac / Lith - Are all great alternatives for generating Offering, but simply aren't used because of Igni's superior Offering generation.
- Jah - Teleport is a great skill all around and is especially used in the Speedfarming variant for faster clearing speeds. Pair it with Bac or any other available Ritual Rune.
- Ohm - War Cry offers a respectable damage bonus for a moderate duration.
- Xal - Aids with survivability.
- Gar - Provides a large chunk of Critical Strike Chance. Great option early on.
- Mot - Enables the Rogue's Dark Shroud, which is a strong defensive option.
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: Varyana
She offers you a substantial amount of Attack Speed and Movement Speed with her abilities Bloodthirst and Massacre respectively. Note that the Massacre bonus goes away after 7 seconds of not killing enemies.
- Reinforcement: Raheir
Bastion serves as a safety net, boasting an impressive 90% Damage Reduction and applies Unstoppable.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Tornado 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
- 5+ Envenom Ranks
- 80%+ Critical Strike Chance (including Storm)
- 40%+ Attack Speed
- A total of 300% from Damage vs. Close/Distant
- 2700+ Willpower
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 9,000+ Life
- 180%+ Movement Speed
- 7+ Heightened Senses Ranks
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the endgame with the Tornado 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 Tornado 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.
- Besides Retaliation and Stormchaser's, the Human variant of Tornado Druid lacks impactful aspects.
- Make sure to take advantage of Inner Calm and Conceited via Earthen Bulwark, Poise and Blackmailer's Sabotage to optimize your damage output.
- Leverage Petrify against Elites and Bosses, but be careful to not apply too much CC to Elites and make them Unstoppable.
- Calm Before the Storm is used to reduce your Ultimate Skill Cooldown.
- Early on you might struggle with Tornado's Spirit costs. To optimize your performance, ensure your gear is equipped with Spirit per second affixes and select Gift of the Stag and Energize as your Boons.
- Additionally, leverage Resource Cost Reduction and Imprint Resource Aspects, such as Umbral's, for their Spirit generation.
- At the start of your journey prioritize your resources. Imprint sparingly, don't exhaust your on resources rerolling perfect gear as it is very likely to get replaced later on.
- Focus on the major power increases from Paragons and Glyphs until you begin collecting Uniques.
- Upon reaching Thunderstruck in your Paragon Board, be mindful of your Damage to Close and Damage to Distant bonus.
- The target for this stat is 300%, and your personal value will depend on the nodes taken on this board and your socketed Outmatch Glyph level.
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.
- Tempest Roar is your first major upgrade. This Unique can be found by defeating Duriel, King of Maggots or Andariel. It converts your Tornado into a Werewolf Skill, providing a new range of damage multipliers and Attack Speed bonuses that you can utilize to increase your lethality.
- It additionally provides you access to Lust for Carnage, which serves as your main method of generating Spirit in the endgame.
- Wildheart Hunger is the powerhouse of the build and drops from Lord Zir. It provides you with a significant increase in both Attack Speed and damage; however, the drawback is that you must Maul every 5-10 seconds to preserve its stacks. Mjölnic Ryng is also available to earn by defeating this boss, granting a colossal damage multiplier.
- Mad Wolf's Glee drops from Echo of Varshan, granting Tornado additional skill ranks when paired with Tempest Roar, and also offers Attack Speed and Movement Speed.
- Overall a solid Unique, but it gets replaced with Shroud of False Death later on.
- Upon reaching Thunderstruck in your Paragon Board, be mindful of your Damage to Close and Damage to Distant bonus.
- The target for this stat is 300%, and your personal value will depend on the nodes taken on this board and your socketed Outmatch Glyph level.
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
- With its +1 ranks to all passive abilities, the Shroud of False Death delivers a considerable boost to your damage and defense. It also comes with the added utility of granting Invisibility and Movement Speed via its effect.
- Ring of Starless Skies boasts a phenomenal amount of Attack Speed and Critical Strike Chance, both stats vitally important to your build. Furthermore, the Mythic effect mitigates the drawbacks associated with Wild Impulses, while also providing you with a considerable damage multiplier. Prioritize crafting this Mythic first.
- Tyrael's Might is a solid consideration if you're looking to solve resistances early and boast a very defensive setup. In this case, make sure to swap the excess Resistances on your gear to Maximum Life or Armor.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers.
Gear & Skills
- If you are looking to traverse through content quicker, optimize your setup with the following:
- Igni + Kry and Bac + Jah. This combination of Runes grants you the Sorcerer's Teleport which is a fantastic Mobility Skill, and maintains high uptime on mob grouping thanks to Kry.
- Replace Cyclone Armor with Shred and dash to your enemies as part of your gameplay loop.
- Additionally, exchange Earthen Bulwark for Trample. This skill makes you Unstoppable and is best used to chain your other Mobility Skills together.
The Grizzly Rage Tornado Druid leverages Xol + Xan for periodic bursts of guaranteed Critical Strikes and Overpower damage. Igni + Wat are your other Runes, granting you Decrepify. This skill is especially important since it is used alongside Xol to activate Xan often, while also granting you Damage Reduction and Executing low health enemies.
Gear & Skills
Skills
- Before entering Grizzly Rage, alternate between Maul and Tornado to max out Quickshift.
- Your other Storm Skills, Cyclone Armor & Hurricane, provide various benefits:
- Cyclone Armor offers a considerable amount of Damage Reduction via Cyclonic Force, and is essential in grouping up enemies with its upgrade Preserving Cyclone Armor.
- Likewise, Hurricane is used to mitigate enemy damage, and enables Stormshifter's additional Ranks.
- Blood Howl grants you Fortify and damage, thanks to Bolster and Innate Blood Howl respectively.
- Grizzly Rage Duration becomes a priority Temper but is unfortunately in direct opposition to Werewolf Attack Speed. If you want to cheat in more duration than presented above, trade in some Werewolf Attack Speed.
Skill Rotation
- Stack Quickshift.
- Cast Grizzly Rage.
- Use Cyclone Armor often to group up enemies, and cast Hurricane as it comes off Cooldown to enable Stormshifter's.
- While in Grizzly Rage, activate Blood Howl for Fortify via Bolster.
- Blood Howl also grants you an additional damage multiplier in Innate Blood Howl.
- Kill enemies with Tornado.
Boss Powers and Mercenaries
Paragon
Grizzly Rage Tornado Druid Paragon
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.
Retaliation is a gigantic damage multiplier for this build. As such, you get the most damage out of a Two-Handed Weapon over a One-Handed Weapon + Totem setup, and the added benefit of slotting Runes into your weapon which frees up your Armor slots for more Willpower.
Use the Two-Handed Polearm early on when you lack additive damage for its intrinsic Vulnerable damage. As you acquire more sources of additive damage from your gear and Paragon, swap to a Two-Handed Staff as it is a faster attacking Weapon.
The Grizzly Rage variant uses a One-Handed Weapon + Totem setup because it requires an additional Legendary Aspect.
Maximum Life is essential to any build's survival. In the case of this build, it uses a large amount of Uniques, which negatively impact your total Maximum Life. Since Maximum Life nodes in your Paragon are % based, it is important to ensure that the Life value on your gear is as high as possible for the highest payoff.
Additionally, builds revolving around the Druid's Werewolf form are notorious for having weak defenses, and contrary to the Werebear, have difficulty surviving against enemies that don't die instantly. While more Willpower is always welcome, in this case, the marginal damage increases do not outweigh the loss of Life and survivability that come thereafter.
Druids have only two non-Ultimate sources of Unstoppable. Trample and Earthen Bulwark. If you're not subscribed to their long Cooldown, Metamorphosis is a great alternative to those skills.
In the early game you may occasionally starve on resources before you get Shapeshifting synergies online. It is recommended you invest in Spirit per second while you look for a Tempest Roar. Alternatively, utilize Gift of the Stag or Energize, or you can replace a support skill like Earthen Bulwark with Savage Trample for Spirit. Additionally, make sure to imprint Resource Aspects such as Umbral and/or Vocalized Empowerment.
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 incense instead of offensive ones.
Mechanics
With these unique boots equipped, Shapeshifting adds a stack of Wildheart. Each stack of Wildheart increases the bonuses of your Bestial Rampage by 5%[+]. These stacks are additive, resulting in up to 50[x] damage and 50% Attack Speed bonuses. However, the stacks decrease at 0.5%[+] per second, essentially requiring a new Shapeshift form every 5-10 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
- Artillery Shrine
- Swooping Attacks
Cap 2
- Werewolf Attack Speed Affix
- Preserving Blood Howl
- Bestial Rampage
- Wildheart Hunger
- Accelerating
For a more detailed explanation, 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 Tornado Druid is a fun and dynamic build that focuses on grouping monsters to make the most of Tornado's randomness. While not exactly a powerhouse, the Tornado Druid is one of the smoothest and most satisfying builds to play.
- Acquire Tempest Roar as early as possible to enable Werewolf Shapeshifting synergies.
- Utilize Kry to group up monsters as you damage them with Tornado.
- Shapeshift using Maul in-between your Tornado casts to maintain your Fortify and Shapeshifting damage bonuses.
Credits
Written by Danger
Reviewed by IBoilerUp