Druid Class Overview
Last Updated:October 15, 2024|Changelog
The Druid is a staple class in the Diablo franchise and returns for glory in Diablo 4. They use the forces of nature to lay waste to the spawns of hell. This overview covers their Strengths & Weaknesses, Skills, Passives, Legendaries and much more. Let's jump in and learn about the true god of nature!
Class Identity
The Druid calls up nature to destroy evil with wild storms, surrounding rocks or shapeshifting into a Werewolf or Werebear. With help from Sanctuaries' wildlife, the spawns of hell crumble before you! While defensively strong in either shapeshifting form, the Druid becomes rather squishy when casting nature spells in human form. With few mobility options, the Druid has to be positioned wisely during fights. They have a well-rounded set of skills for both melee and ranged combat, mainly dealing Physical, Lightning, and Poison damage. Their abilities are fueled by Spirit which is generated by using Basic Skills.
Strengths
- High burst damage. Most Core Skills are impactful but they also require a large amount of Spirit. Throwing as many of them as possible after filling up your Spirit to the maximum is your best bet for dealing tons of damage.
- Versatile. With melee and ranged Core Skills, the Druid has a wide range of options to get rid of your enemies. From blanketing enemies with Tornados from a distance to getting up close and personal to slice them up like Wolverine, the choice is yours!
- Defensive Utility. The Druid has many ways to get out of sticky situations. Becoming Unstoppable (Immune to Crowd Control effects), healing for a large percentage of your maximum Life, and building up Fortify are some of the many forms of utility he brings to the table.
Weaknesses
- Druids rely on positioning. To make use of the high burst damage potential, the Druid needs to be in control of the situation. Keep your positioning in mind at all times to keep yourself safe and your damage output high.
- Druids are very immobile. The Druid lacks natural mobility skills that are specifically designed to reposition him. Two skills can be used for this purpose, but they are either clunky because they require an enemy as target (Shred) or have a very long cooldown (Trample).
Equipment
The Druid either uses a Two-Handed Weapon (Staff, Axe, Mace, Polearm) or a combination of a Totem (Off-Hand) and a One-Handed Weapon (Axe, Mace, 1-H Sword, Dagger).
While only using a Two-Handed Weapon, the Druid does pack quite the punch on each individual hit. Legendary Aspects are much more powerful, which often offsets the downside of a slower attack speed. Using a Totem allows you to use two Legendary Aspects and increases the utility of your Druid by reducing cooldowns, reducing Spirit costs, and more.
Druid Item Slots:
Armor
Helm
Chest Armor
Gloves
Pants
Boots
Jewelry
Amulet
Ring (x2)
Weapons
Two-Handed Weapon
- OR -
One-Handed Weapon + Totem
Check out our Legendary Aspects and Codex of Power Overview or our Uniques Overview to learn more about which items the Druid has access to.
Skills & Passives
Skill points are unlocked by level-ups and the Renown system. As you spend more points, you unlock more and more categories of skills. Each active skill can be leveled up to 5 times or more with items, increasing their power (usually +10% of the base value) or reducing their cooldown by 5% with each additional rank. After unlocking a skill, you can enhance it with another point and then choose one out of two upgrades to specialize it further.
In addition, there are passives found all over the tree, attached as optional choices to certain skill clusters. They grant small bonuses to damage, defense or utility under certain conditions and help to round out your build by shifting it further in the direction you want to take. All passives have 3 ranks and usually scale linearly.
Check out our Skill Tree Overview to learn more details.
Basic Skills
These skills are weaker at baseline and are used to generate Spirit. Depending on your build, your Basic Skills apply a number of different buffs to your Druid or debuffs to your enemies. When you run out of Spirit, they can be used to deal the final blow to small or already weakened enemies.
Maul
Enhanced Maul
Wild Maul
Fierce Maul
Notes:
- Maul is the Werebear Basic Skill and the only one that innately generates Fortify. It can be augmented with Fevered Mauling.
Core Skills
These skills are primary damage dealers of most Druid builds. They spend a lot of Spirit but deal much higher damage and typically hit more targets than Basic Skills. In addition, Core Skills can be amplified by multiple Legendary effects.
Pulverize
Enhanced Pulverize
Primal Pulverize
Raging Pulverize
Notes:
- The regular hit overlaps with the effect of Shockwave.
- Can be turned into an Earth Skill with Ursine Horror, allowing it to interact with a ton of Passives and Paragon Nodes.
Defensive Skills
These skills significantly boost your defensive capabilities. Each is accompanied by a unique Utility function.
Debilitating Roar
Enhanced Debilitating Roar
Preserving Debilitating Roar
Innate Debilitating Roar
Notes:
- Hits a more than screen-wide area.
- As a Shout skill, its Cooldown is reduced by Bold Chieftain's.
- When used with the Aspect of the Dark Howl, it Immobilizes Poisoned enemies and becomes a Werewolf Skill.
Companion Skills
Companions are an alternative source of damage and pair best with the likes of Shepherd's, Stampede, Spirit Bond, and One With Nature. They have to be on your skill bar to use their active.
Wolves
Enhanced Wolf Pack
Brutal Wolf Pack
Ferocious Wolf Pack
Notes:
- Great single target damage but lacking in area of effect.
- Augmented and significantly enhanced by Alpha and Storm's Companion.
Wrath Skills
These skills are medium cooldown skills that deal damage in a large area. Except for Trample, use them whenever they are ready to cast to increase your overall damage output. Activate Trample to get out of any Crowd Control effect!
Trample
Enhanced Trample
Natural Trample
Savage Trample
Notes:
- A true mobility Skill, its most often used for its innate Unstoppable effect.
Ultimate Skills
These skills have extremely high cooldowns, which can be decreased by additional point investment, Calm Before the Storm, or items such as Airidah's Inexorable Will. Use them wisely!
Grizzly Rage
Prime Grizzly Rage
Supreme Grizzly Rage
Notes:
- While in Grizzly form you can only use the Werebear Skills on your Skill bar. This includes any Skills that are converted to Werebear Skills.
- When used with the Dire Wolf's Aspect, the above is true for all Skills that are Werewolf Skills by nature or transformed into a Werewolf Skill.
- Rampaging Werebeast increases the maximum duration and improves Critical Strike Damage over that duration to a maximum.
Key Passives
These passives are located at the very bottom of the Skill Tree. They are extremely powerful and define the overall playstyle of your build. Similar to Ultimate Skills, only one of them can be chosen!
Ursine Strength
Notes:
- Any Skill can benefit from the damage increase.
Unique Class Mechanic - Spirit Boons
The Spirit Boons is the unique Druid class mechanic in Diablo 4. They are a set of 16 Boons of which you can choose 5. The chosen Boons act as additional Passives, creating some unique playstyle opportunities.
Check out our Druid Spirit Boons post for more details on this system.
Attributes
The four core attributes provide the following to the Druid:
- Strength: Armor (+.2 per point)
- Intelligence: All Resistances (2% per 100), Resource Generation (3% per 100)
- Willpower: Skill Damage (12.5% per 100), Healing Received (7.5% per 100), Overpower Damage (25% per 100)
- Dexterity: Critical Strike Chance (2% per 100), Dodge Chance (.6% per 100)
Willpower is considered the main attribute as it multiplies all your damage done. Dexterity and Intelligence are also useful for their offensive and defensive bonuses, while Strength does next to nothing. Some items can roll bonuses to attributes and later on Paragon boards allow stacking the right stats for your character. In addition, you may find hidden Altars of Lilith in the open world that unlock a permanent bonus for all of your characters.
Check out our Stat Overview to learn more.
Summary
- The Druid class is well-rounded, tanky class that relies on good positioning.
- Forces of Nature will be your friend in all battles ahead.
- They deal mostly Physical damage, but also have Lightning and Poison at their disposal.
- Spirit is the Druid's primary resource. Once you manage to reduce your skills resource costs, this becomes negligible.
- Make sure to compare the benefits of a Two-Handed Weapon vs a One-Handed Weapon and a Totem. The best choice is not always obvious!
- Choose the Spirit Boons that work best with your build. They are fairly generic, so the choice should not be difficult.
Credits
Written by IBoilerUp, Jymnasium
Reviewed by Echohack, ehtoka