Welcome to the Tornado Druid Endgame Guide for Diablo 4! If you've played Tornado Druid in Diablo 2, you may recall the skill's random pathing making it difficult to hit targets. Fortunately, in this installment, this problem is largely solved by Stormchaser's Aspect. It makes things easy as Tornados rip apart Open World Content and Nightmare Dungeons of any Tier!
Without Tempest Roar and Dire Wolf's Aspect, the final build is not functional. We strongly encourage you to acquire these and other pieces before transitioning to this build.
Once acquired, the gameplay is very beginner-friendly. First, cast a couple Wind Shears to generate some Spirit, then shift into Grizzly Rage and start spamming Tornado. Between Dire Wolf's Aspect, Spirit Generation on Critical Strikes and on Kill from your Paragon Board, and the Lucky Hit procs from Tempest Roar, you should be able to spam the hell out of your Core skill.
Grizzly Rage, Savage Hurricane, Cyclone Armor, and solid Fortify generation provide multiple layers of defense. Blood Howl grants Healing on a short Cooldown and the Tornado Druid has little trouble reaching both the Movement Speed and Attack Speed caps.
With the recent changes to Critical Strikes and Rampaging Werebeast, Perfect Storm prevails as our Key Passive for additional Damage and Spirit generation.
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
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! Helms & Boots can have up to 3 Pacts, Pants can have up to 4, and Chests & Gloves can have up to 5, giving you 20 total Pacts.
Best-in-Slot Vampiric Powers
- Ravenous - As endgame Werewolf builds often approach the 200% movement speed cap, this Power is a no-brainer, amounting to as much as 80% increased Attack Speed when active!
- Anticipation - Since we rely on the combination of Grizzly Rage and Dire Wolf's Aspect to provide massive sources of Spirit Cost Reduction and Movement Speed, uptime on our Ultimate skill is paramount.
- Undying - This build boasts and insane amount of Attack Speed and this Power keeps our health topped off as long as we're attacking.
- Metamorphosis - This Power provides a consistent source of Unstoppable, deals moderate damage, and is the main source of applying Vampiric Curses.
- Sanguine Brace - This Power helps with our otherwise inconsistent Fortify generation and the bonus to Critical Strike Chance is a healthy damage increase.
Alternative Vampiric Powers
- Resilience - An all-around solid defensive option.
- Prey on the Weak - The damage bonus is solid, but when used in conjunction with other Vampiric Powers that can inflict a Curse, this Power provides a steady and reliable source of Vulnerable.
- Accursed Touch - This Power serves as the most consistent way to inflict a Vampiric Curse and may be a best-in-slot Power if the damage from releasing Accursed Souls is worthwhile.
- Infection - The extremely high attack and tick rates of Tornado should result in frequent activations of this Power's damage bonus.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Tornado is your main damage Skill. It can be spammed relentlessly with the prerequisite sources of Spirit Cost Reduction and Sprit Generation.
- Wind Shear serves as a backup source of ranged Spirit generation that provides a small burst of Movement Speed with each enemy it passes through.
- Hurricane provides great utility by slowing enemies, reducing their damage, stacking up Rampaging Werebeast's Critical Strike Damage bonus, and restoring Spirit through Lust for Carnage.
- Grizzly Rage brings ramping Damage over its duration and through Rampaging Werebeast. It also provides Damage Reduction, a short burst of Unstoppable and massive Spirit Cost Reduction and Movement Speed bonuses when paired with Dire Wolf's Aspect. As such, we do everything we can to maximize its uptime.
- Blood Howl's Attack Speed bonus allows us to get out as many Tornados as possible. It also serves as a reliable Heal since its Cooldown resets with kills.
- Cyclone Armor provides passive Damage Reduction that strengthens periodically via Preserving Cyclone Armor. Use its active ability to knock back enemies when you get overwhelmed or to split up overlapping Suppressor Elites.
Passives
- With Tempest Roar, a single point in Toxic Claws enables your Storm Skills to consistently Crowd Control mobs with Neurotoxin and activate Envenom's bonus, while enabling us to benefit from both Damage to and Damage Reduction from Poisoned enemies.
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 for additional defense where we need it most.
- Eagle Spirit: Scythe Talons is preferred when using the Ravenous Vampiric Power, as further bonuses to Attack Speed are quite diminished. If you don't have access to this Power, instead use Swooping Attacks.
- Wolf Spirit: Calamity improves Grizzly Rage uptime, a critical Cooldown for this build.
- Snake Spirit: Calm Before the Storm helps us recover Grizzly Rage's Cooldown more quickly.
Bond with the Eagle Spirit and activate Iron Feather for additional Healing.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Druid Spirit Boons Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
Managing your Resources and Cooldowns is crucial to the success of this build.
Resource Aspect of the Umbral
Used exclusively in the early endgame, Primal Tornado triggers this Aspect on every hit. When you have access to Tempest Roar and Dire Wolf's Aspect, this Aspect and Skill Upgrade are no longer necessary.
Reclamation
This Rare Paragon Node and its Magic Nodes grant you Spirit for every monster you kill.
Lust for Carnage
Since you are constantly hitting enemies with Tornado and Hurricane and have a high base Critical Strike Chance, this Legendary Node provides a massive and fairly reliable source of Spirit sustain.
Cooldown Reduction
Calm Before the Storm reduces the all-important Grizzly Rage cooldown through Lucky Hit Chance. This effect occurs even while Grizzly Rage is active, so make sure to stack up as much Lucky Hit Chance as you can!
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! There are a few boards here, so let's go over when to use them:
- If you've yet to acquire Tempest Roar and Dire Wolf's Aspect, follow the "Human Form" paragon board throughout your leveling progression. This build is considerably weaker in the mid game without these items, so you may want to consider a different build until you acquire them. Use the slider to level with this board!
- Once you have Tempest Roar, use the "Werewolf Form" board for leveling. Use the slider to level with this board!
- The level 100 paragon board pushes key Spirit-generating sources such as Lust for Carnage and Reclamation to later boards in order to prioritize more valuable Rare node bonuses. As such, we don't recommend using this board prior to level 100. This board assumes you have found Tempest Roar.
The switch to Werewolf requires a bit of a respec on the Paragon Board. Stick with the Human-Form Board until you reach level 74 (or level 69 with all Renown completed).
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
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.
Note: There are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last steps in the Paragon progression above. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Undaunted
- Exploit
- Werewolf
- Territorial
- Earth and Sky
Level 21
- Territorial
- Exploit
- Werewolf
- Earth and Sky
- Undaunted
By level 100, we additionally want to have leveled Fang and Claw to at least level 15. This Glyph will replace Undaunted in our final board.
If you intend to challenge Pinnacle Bosses with this build, level Outmatch as well.
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
Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. These are listed in priority order:
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Retaliation in Seaside Descent (Dry Steppes)
- Rapid in Buried Halls (Dry Steppes)
- Umbral in Champion's Demise (Dry Steppes)
- Disobedience in Halls of The Damned (Kehjistan)
- Mending Stone in Sealed Archives (Dry Steppes)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Expectant in Underroot (Scosglen)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Ghostwalker in Broken Bulwark (Scosglen)
- Nighthowler's in Forbidden City (Fractured Peaks)
- Vigorous in Steadfast Barracks (Hawezar)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Stormchaser's: Gamble Totems.
- Accelerating: Gamble Totems.
- Dire Wolf's: Gamble Totems.
- Rampaging Werebeast: Gamble Totems.
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Tempest Roar - Replacing Mending Stone in our Best-in-Slot setup, this Helmet applies both Werewolf and Shapeshifting tags to our Storm Skills, allowing for a wide variety of Paragon and Passive Skill synergies, in addition to enabling us to use our Storm Skills during Grizzly Rage when paired with Dire Wolf's Aspect.
- Mad Wolf's Glee (Speedfarming) - This adds a healthy boost to damage and movement speed at the cost of our Defensive Chest Armor with Disobedience.
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander - Used in the Abattoir of Zir Variant just before the Boss spawn in the hopes of gaining one of: Artillery, Blast Wave, or Conduit Shrine to burst down the Boss.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Setups
Once you have completed the leveling process to 50, 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
- Put Retaliation on your amulet for maximum damage output.
- Expectant and Edgemaster’s can be placed interchangeably on Rings or Gloves.
- Umbral on a Ring provides massive Spirit generation, especially when you find a 3-4 version.
- Put Mending Stone, Might, and Disobedience onto your defensive items.
- Rapid increases the attack speed of Wind Shear, which increases your Spirit generation. Put it on your 2-handed Weapon.
- Ghostwalker provides a nice Movement Speed boost. You have more than 50% uptime on Unstoppable through Earthen Bulwark.
Skills
- For now, we use Primal Tornado as our main damage Skill. It provides a slow on every damage tick, allowing you to generate a ton of Spirit through Umbral. Make sure to be in close range of enemies you want to hit!
- Wind Shear is used to generate Spirit and stack Expectant before we start spamming Tornado. It also provides bonus Movement Speed, a chance to apply Vulnerable, and damage reduction via Might.
- Earthen Bulwark provides a massive Barrier, makes you Unstoppable for its duration, and grants Movement Speed through Ghostwalker. With Mending Stone, you have more than 50% uptime.
- Innate Blood Howl is used to both regenerate Spirit and to Heal. You're able to spam it in heavy density thanks to the cooldown recovery from Enhanced Blood Howl.
- Debilitating Roar generates a chunk of Fortify by itself and through Bolster and heavily mitigates damage from enemies in a screen-wide AoE. You can also use the Slow from Innate Debilitating Roar to quickly proc Umbral's resource generation on all mobs in an area.
- Trample is handy for its mobility and also to regenerate a healthy amount of Spirit in a pinch.
Spirit Boons
While in Human Form, we make use of different Spirit Boons, as we don't benefit from Calm Before the Storm or Calamity
- Deer Spirit: Wariness
- Eagle Spirit: Swooping Attacks
- Wolf Spirit: Bolster
- Snake Spirit: Overload
Bond with the Eagle Spirit and activate Scythe Talons.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- NEVER fight when Grizzly Rage is on cooldown.
- Choose Iron Feather on the Eagle Spirit.
- Forego both Tibault's Will and Mad Wolf's Glee in favor of full defensive Pants/Chest with Vigorous and Disobedience.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
The answer to many questions can be found in the following section.
- Lucky Hit Chance: We rely heavily on Lucky Hit Chance to reduce the cooldown of Grizzly Rage with Calm Before the Storm. It also procs the Spirit generation of Tempest Roar and, in Season 2, Lucky Hit also benefits the Ravenous Vampiric Power.
- Spirit: Dire Wolf's Aspect on your Amulet provides up to 75% Spirit Cost Reduction. The combination of Lust for Carnage, Tempest Roar and Reclamation restores a lot of your Resources. You can add even more Spirit Cost Reduction on your Amulet, Boots and Off-Hand, or Resource Generation on your Rings and Offhand, if you need it.
- Critical Strikes: Stacking Critical Strike Chance on Rings, Gloves, and Totem is valuable to benefit from Rampaging Werebeast's Critical Strike Damage increase and Poisoning enemies with Toxic Claws (which, in turn, activates the Damage bonus from Envenom).
- Vulnerable: We get Vulnerable procs from the Exploit Glyph and Raging Tornado. In Season 2, we can additionally activate and bolster the damage of Vulnerable using the Prey on the Weak Vampiric Power. Though not as powerful as it once was, this multiplier is still fairly convenient to activate.
- Crowd Controls: With the combination of Toxic Claws and Neurotoxin, every Critical Strike slows enemies for 4 seconds. Damage affixes that deal extra damage against Crowd Controlled or Slowed Enemies are a great alternative way to increase your damage output.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
Choosing the right stats for your gear can make or break your build. You won't always find perfect stats (also known as affixes or modifiers) though, and you may need to make a tough choice between two good pieces of equipment. Use the following list of priorities to compare your gear and pick the best.
A quick note on Jewelry gems:
- Equip ONE Royal Topaz and two of either Royal Sapphire, Royal Ruby, or Royal Amethyst depending on the Resistances on your boots.
- Helm: Tempest Roar
- Damage while Shapeshifted
- Critical Strike Damage
- Maximum Spirit
- Poison Resistance
- Chest Armor: Disobedience
- Damage Reduction against Close Enemies
- Damage Reduction against Poisoned Enemies
- Damage Reduction while Fortified
- Damage Reduction against Distant Enemies
- % Total Armor
- Maximum Life
- Willpower
- Gloves: Stormchaser's
- Ranks to Tornado
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Willpower
- Pants: Tibault's Will
- Damage Reduction from Close Enemies
- %Damage
- Maximum Resource
- Potion Capacity
- Boots: Ghostwalker (Seasonal) or Craven (Eternal)
- Movement Speed
- Two of: Fire, Cold, Shadow Resistance
- Spirit Cost Reduction*
- Total Armor while in Werewolf Form
- Dodge Chance
- Willpower
- All Stats
- Amulet: Dire Wolf's
- Ranks to Envenom
- Cooldown Reduction
- Movement Speed
- Spirit Cost Reduction*
- Total Armor while in Werewolf Form
- Damage Reduction from Close Enemies
- Damage Reduction against Poisoned Enemies
- Damage Reduction while Fortified
- Rings: Retaliation & Accelerating
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Critical Strike Chance
- Damage to Distant Enemies
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Life
- Damage to Slowed Enemies
- Vulnerable Damage
- Critical Strike Damage
- Critical Strike Damage with Werewolf Skills
- Main Hand (Axe): Rampaging Werebeast
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Damage to Distant Enemies
- Willpower
- All Stats
- Core Skill Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- Off-Hand: Nighthowler's
- Cooldown Reduction
- Critical Strike Chance
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Damage Reduction against Poisoned Enemies
- Damage Reduction while Fortified
- Resource Generation
- Spirit Cost Reduction
* Spirit Cost Reduction is dropped as a priority stat as we gain access to Dire Wolf's Aspect.
This build benefits the most from the following consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Combatant Fortune, Elixir of Cruelty, Elixir of Fortitude, Elixir of Savagery, Heady Precision Elixir, Elixir of Magic Resist
- Incense: Song of the Mountain or Reddamine Buzz
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 don't you use Mad Wolf's Glee?
Where can I find Tempest Roar?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Dire Wolf's Aspect
Stormchaser's Aspect
Grizzly Rage & Rampaging Werebeast
Hungry for more Guides?
Druid Guides
General Guides
Summary
The Tornado Druid is a ranged powerhouse, pairing incredible AoE-damage with consistent single target damage. The build features extremely high defenses through multiple Legendary Aspects, as well as a ton of stackable Damage Reductions on gear.
Credits
Written by IBoilerUp
Reviewed by McFluffin
