Shock Wave Druid Guide

Shock Wave* is the only Skill capable of dealing damage. Its main use comes from its cone-shaped Stun effect. By moving the cursor closer to the Character, the spread of this effect becomes wider.

* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)

Oak Sage* is a minion that flies around randomly, giving you and your party a massive Life boost.

Werebear* allows you to cast Shock Wave as it is restricted to this form. Additionally, it provides you with a huge buff for your Defense Rating.

Lycanthropy* provides you a massive Life boost while shape shifted.

Summon Grizzly* can act as another front line tank, taking some hits for you or your party.

* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

The areas below are well suited for this build to farm efficiently. While this build can also farm other areas, we’ve e areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter Variant.
This Build is not meant for farming anything efficiently. These are the options that you can farm while you are waiting for your friends to come online.

Act 5

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Insight, Holy Freeze

We recommend using the Holy Use a Desert Mercenary with [d2planner-skill]Holy Freeze Aura for its powerful Crowd Control. A Mercenary with Might Aura isn’t used, since we don’t rely on his damage or benefit from the Physical Damage increase.
Equip him with Insight for the high Mana Regeneration provided by Meditation Aura.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

General

• Summon your Oak Sage, Summon Grizzly and all wolves on the Weapon-Swap that has the highest + to Skills. Oak Sage is a rather brittle little thing. Be aware of this and re-summon it as soon as it gets killed.
• Activate Wearbear-form. Now you are ready to Stun everything in range with Shock Wave. Play around with your cursor-placement to find the optimal spread of Shock Wave in each situation.
• Be aware that Super Health Potions have a very low effect compared to your total Life. Rejuvenation Potions become your best friends.

Late-Game

• Only if you don't have a Barbarian with you:
  Start every run by buffing yourself twice with Battle Command and once with Battle Orders. When these buffs run out, deactivate your Wearbear-form to cast them again.
• To Min-Max, re-summon Oak Sage and Summon Grizzly and repeat Battle Command and Battle Orders one more time to boost their Level and Life totals.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate (FCR)

Faster Cast Rate (FCR) speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 63% FCR Breakpoint. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR) increases survivability. Aim for at least the 54% FHR Breakpoint.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary concern is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build can become Hardcore viable with key changes to the Skills, Stat Point allocation, and items. Review the changes below before building this character, as they may differ significantly from the normal build.

Stat Point changes

• Add enough Strength do wear your gear.
• Put enough into Dexterity to achieve maximum Chance to Block (75%)
• Put remaining Stat Points into Vitality.

Item changes

• Equip a Stormshield socketed with an Eld Rune for maximum Chance to Block and Reduced Damage by x%.
• Equip Skin of the Vipermagi socketed with a Jah Rune to make up for the loss of Faster Cast Rate.