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Druid Class Overview

Last Updated:August 5, 2024|Change Log

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.

Female and Male Druid

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

Example gear for the Werewolf Tornado Druid

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 weak 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:

  • While leveling as a Werebear, this is a reliable Spirit generator. Later on it will be replaced by others due to their additional utility.

Core Skills

These skills are primary damage dealers of most Druid builds. They spend a lot of Spirit but deal much higher damage and 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 the Shockwave Offensive Aspect,
  • Can be turned into an Earth Skill with the Offensive Aspect of the Ursine Horror, allowing it to interact with a ton of Passives and Paragon Nodes.

Defensive Skills

These skills significantly boost your defensive capabilities. Utility is part of almost all of them, improving your Druid's capability.

Debilitating Roar

Enhanced Debilitating Roar

Preserving Debilitating Roar

Innate Debilitating Roar

Notes:

  • Hits a more than screen-wide area.
  • When using the Aspect of the Umbral, you can generate a ton of Spirit in one click.
  • When used with the Aspect of the Dark Howl, it can be used in the Dire Wolf form of the Dire Wolf's Aspect.

Companion Skills

Companions are a passive source of damage when using the Legendary Aspect "Shepherd's". They have to be on your skill bar to be active. Apart from this power, they provide you with minor utility.

Wolves

Enhanced Wolf Pack

Brutal Wolf Pack

Ferocious Wolf Pack

Notes:

  • With the Codex of Power Shepherd's Aspect, they can be included in virtually any build.
  • Great single target damage increase, using their active ability while leveling.
  • Each wolf has an individual timer for respawning after dying. This timer is 15 seconds.

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:

  • The only real mobility Skill on the Druid.

Ultimate Skills

These skills have extremely high cooldowns. Use them wisely to get the best use out of each of them. Grizzly Rage sees the most use as it gets you out of any Crowd Control effect, making you Unstoppable for 6 seconds.

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 mentioned is true for all Skills that are Werewolf Skills by nature or transformed into a Werewolf Skill.
  • Fun Fact: If you only have Grizzly Rage on your Skill bar and activate it, you are now unable to do anything but wait till it runs out.

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.

Example of Werewolf Tornado Druid Spirit Boons

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 (1 each)
  • Intelligence: All Resistances (5% per 100), Resource Generation (10% per 100)
  • Willpower: Skill Damage (12.5% per 100), Healing Received (10% per 100), Overpower Damage (25% per 100)
  • Dexterity: Critical Strike Chance (5% per 100), Dodge Chance (2.5% per 100)

Willpower is considered the main attribute as it multiplies all your damage done. Dexterity and Willpower are also useful for their offensive and defensive bonuses, while Intelligence 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, but can be rather squishy at times.
  • 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 resource of choice for Druids. 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 Jymnasium
Reviewed by Echohack, ehtoka

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