Stormclaw Druid Endgame Guide
Last Updated:October 6, 2024|Change Log|FAQ
Below is the Season 4 version of this guide if you'd like to reference it, but it has not been updated for the Vessel of Hatred expansion launch. We hope to revitalize it at our earliest convenience. Thanks for your patience!
This Stormclaw Druid build uses Greatstaff of the Crone to attack with Claw and Storm Strike at the same time. It offers a true melee playstyle with exceptional tankiness that keeps it competitive in the Pit. For other content, this build is practically unkillable while still offering a surprising amount of speed and damage. This build needs Greatstaff of the Crone to function. It cannot be played without it!
This build is very easy to play. The main damage comes from two Basic Skills, which means we don't have to worry about Spirit generation at all. The most challenging part is managing our uptime on Petrify, but even that isn't punishing outside of Nightmare Dungeon pushing.
The build also benefits from several other Skills and Passives. Cyclone Armor provides considerable damage reduction and a knockback for when we get in trouble. Blood Howl is a large Heal and Attack Speed Increase. Hurricane gives us even more damage reduction and allows us to activate Paingorger's Gauntlets consistently in packs. Petrify is a very strong Crowd Control that also provides a huge amount of damage, especially on bosses.
In this guide we teach you all you need to know to be successful with the Stormclaw Druid in Diablo 4. Let's dive into it!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with one of our Druid Leveling Guides. If you are looking for a different Druid playstyle, check out all of our Druid Guides.
Season 4 - Loot Reborn
In Season 4, the Season Theme revolves around helping out the Iron Wolves. Compared to past themes, this one does not offer any borrowed power as the entire game has been redesigned with new itemization and crafting options, increasing player power substantially across the board. Instead, you can gather reputation similar to the Vampire Bounty Board from Season 2 to unlock rewards that supercharge your leveling journey to 100 with extra items, crafting materials and eventually even a Resplendent Spark to craft an uber unique.
We recommend to follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 4 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Claw is our primary damage skill. Greatstaff of the Crone allows it to also cast Storm Strike.
- Trample is our movement ability for Season 4, but it plays a much larger role by proccing the werebear part of Bestial Rampage.
- Petrify provides a huge CC and tons of multiplicative damage. Prime Petrify increases its duration, making it easier to kill enemies before they release from their Stun.
- Blood Howl is a solid Heal with very high uptime that also provides Attack speed through Preserving Blood Howl.
- Poison Creeper provides a source for Paingorger's Gauntlets along with a strong CC and a very large 20% Critical Strike Chance buff.
- Hurricane is an additional way of activating Paingorger's Gauntlets while also providing a source of damage reduction through Savage Hurricane.
Passives
- Toxic Claws is how we apply Poison for the 'While Poisoned' effects throughout the build.
- Envenom is a damage multiplier that's numerically higher than most, making it exceptionally powerful.
- Bestial Rampage is our Keystone Passive of choice. The Attack Speed plus a big damage multiplier is too much to pass up.
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:
- Masochistic is our largest source of Healing.
- Avian Wrath is now a damage multiplier, making it an easy choice.
- Calm Before the Storm gives us a sizable boost to uptime with Petrify.
- Packleader gives us a consistent way to reset the cooldown of Poison Creeper.
- Wariness provides additional damage reduction against the most dangerous enemies.
We bond with the Snake to activate its Masochistic and Calm Before the Storm.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Druid Spirit Boons Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
This build uses Resource Generators as its main damage. This means we never have to worry about managing resources, so we don't have to build for it in our gear or Paragon Board.
Cooldown Management is primarily around Petrify. We want to make sure to have this up when we need it most, with the biggest value coming from Bosses. High HP Rares are also a good use for it as long as you aren't close to reaching the boss. Finally, it can be an exceptionally powerful emergency button when things get scary. Whatever you do, don't just use this on cooldown or you won't have it when it matters most!
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!
Stormclaw's Paragon Board almost completely avoids respeccing, with only a small change of three nodes at the very end.
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Stormclaw's Paragon Board almost completely avoids respeccing, with only a small change of three nodes at the very end.
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.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Electrocution
- Fang and Claw
- Earth and Sky
- Territorial
- Spirit
- Werewolf
Level 21
- Territorial
- Fang and Claw
- Earth and Sky
- Werewolf
- Spirit
- Electrocution
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
Many of your Skill choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Minimum Requirements (Legendary Aspects & Unique items)
- Greatstaff of the Crone
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Rapid in Buried Halls (Dry Steppes)
- Vigorous in Steadfast Barracks (Hawezar)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Ghostwalker in Broken Bulwark (Scosglen)
- Overcharged in Mariner's Refuge (Scosglen)
- Nighthowler's[/d4-affix] in Forbidden City (Fractured Peaks)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Mending Stone in Sealed Archives (Dry Steppes)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Metamorphosis
- Moonrise
- Hectic
- Adaptability
- Undying
- This Unique can be found as a random drop or by killing the appropriate boss
- Paingorger's Gauntlets
- Godslayer Crown
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Setups
Once you have completed the leveling guide, 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
Most of our core aspects come from the Codex of Power, so we can start the build with them.
- Rapid is a substantial DPS and healing improvement for the build.
- Edgemaster’s provides a damage boost that is almost always maxed out in this build.
- Movement Speed on your boots and amulet will significantly increase your leveling and farming speed.
- Upgrade your weapon when you have the resources. Any other gear can wait until you find better items.
Gameplay
- Use Trample and stay in bear form for two seconds to activate Bestial Rampage
- Activate Blood Howl for Fortify and Attack Speed just before entering the fight.
- Cast Hurricane to gain damage reduction from Savage Hurricane (later this will also be used to activate Paingorger's Gauntlets.
- Navigate the pack to get close enough to use Petrify if off Cooldown
- Cast Poison Creeper in the middle of packs to gain Brutal Poison Creeper (later this will also be used to activate Paingorger's Gauntlets when Hurricane is on cooldown).
- Spam Claw, prioritizing Rare/high damage targets.
- During the fight, use Blood Howl on Cooldown to Fortify and keep Vigilance and Preserving Blood Howl up.
- Advanced: If an enemy hits hard, use Blood Howl to recover from large hits.
There are no changes to Skills, Boons or the Paragon Board
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
- At this point, we should be able to farm Paingorger's Gauntlets for a massive DPS and clear boost.
- Adaptability and Moonrise are also huge damage boosts.
- Metamorphosis serves as our source of Unstoppable.
- Undying becomes a great option here for consistent healing. If you find that your healing is sufficient, consider Hectic for a big boost to your cooldown reduction.
- Start trying to fit as much Life, Critical Strike Chance, and Damage to Close Enemies as you can on your gear.
There are no changes to Skills, Boons or the Paragon Board.
In this setup, you have access to all Unique items and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them.
Gear
- While we don't add it due to its relatively extreme rarity, if you happen to acquire a Harlequin Crest this becomes your Best in Slot helmet. The combination of Offensive/Defensive buffs from this item are unrivaled. This is also true for any variants.
- Godslayer Crown is also an option here if you prefer damage over defenses. If you have sufficient healing, replace Undying, otherwise replace Vigorous.
- At this point you should have everything properly set up, so now it's time to min/max! Focus on getting all of your gear (including Uniques) to 925 Item level with the right stats and high rolls. Really focus on getting as many sources of Life, Critical Strike Chance, and Damage to Close Enemies as possible. Use the Occultist to reroll bad affixes or increase the roll of a good affix. Fully upgrade your gear and gems.
There are no changes to Skills, Boons, or the Paragon Board.
The Speedfarming setup makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and Nightmare Dungeons below Tier 45. Since all Bosses in the game are not dangerous, this high damage variant is perfect for them as well.
Gear
- We add Godslayer Crown Damage for the damage it provides.
- Mad Wolf's Glee is also an option here for the Movement Speed, but is actually a DPS loss compared to a chest with a well rolled Willpower affix. This comes down to needs/personal preference.
Passives
- When damage isn't as important as mobility, we can swap Bestial Rampage with Ursine Strength to gain access to Shred as our movement skill over Trample. This also keeps us from needing to stand around in bear form every 15 seconds, further speeding us up.
- We switch Savage Hurricane with Natural Hurricane to gain access to Vulnerable.
There are no changes to Spirit Boons, Gameplay or Paragon Boards in this setup.
In this setup, we sacrifice damage for tankiness and a permanent source of Unstoppable. Recommended for Hardcore and difficult content pushes where damage isn't a mitigating factor.
Gear
- Replace Vigorous on your chest with Symbiotic to get access to Nature's Fury.
- Replace Undying with Mending Stone to get better uptime on Earthen Bulwark. The heal is no longer needed.
- Since Earthen Bulwark provides Unstoppable we no longer need it on our boots. Switch to Ghostwalker for better mobility.
- We also pick up Barrier Generation where we can to further enhance Earthen Bulwark.
Skills
- Replace the points in Hurricane with Earthen Bulwark. Thanks to Nature's Fury, this skill becomes spammable, giving effectively permanent uptime on Unstoppable plus an additional layer of protection through Barrier.
- We don't need Trample here since we can't use Bestial Rampage, so we take Shred instead for the higher mobility.
There are no changes to Boons or the Paragon Board.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Due to the nature of this build it's already well suited for Hardcore. The exceptionally high Damage Reduction along with healing from Masochistic make this build nearly impossible to kill even on low to mid tier Nightmare Dungeons.
- Consider using our tank variant to avoid unlucky deaths from CC.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
The answer to many questions can be found in the following section.
- Paingorger's Gauntlets: We proc this through Hurricane and Poison Creeper, providing a massive damage boost and clear range to the build.
- Critical Strikes: Thanks to our Gear, Passives and Brutal Poison Creeper we have consistently high Critical Strike Chance in this build.
- Critical Strike Damage: This stat used to be very important due to being multiplicative, but since Season two it is now additive and generally weaker than other options. We instead scale Critical Strike damage through multiplicative sources like Envenom, Petrify and Avian Wrath.
- Vulnerable: Our sources of this are through Elemental Exposure and a ring affix, which provides us with plenty of Vulnerable chance to keep it up consistently. This status effect is a damage 20 percent multiplier, but any additional damage we get from gear and Paragon nodes are additive, so we generally don't scale this further.
- Attack Speed: Since our primary damage is from Basic Attacks that don't use Spirit, we don't need to worry about resource management. This means we can spam Claw as fast as possible, making Attack Speed an excellent stat that not only gives us better damage, but also healing through more procs of Masochistic and Undying.
- Envenom/Festering: We're able to take advantage of both of these large sources of damage thanks to Toxic Claws, which Poisons enemies whenever we deal Critical Strike Damage to them.
- Healing: Our Healing is primarily generated through Masochistic and Undying. The Attack Speed from this build makes these solid sources of sustain. We also get an on-use heal from Blood Howl.
- Armor: A great deal of defenses comes from your Armor. We can reach the cap thanks to increased armor on our pants, added armor on boots, and Paragon Nodes.
- Defensive Multipliers: Aspect of Might, Storm Strike and Vigorous Defensive Aspect provide significant damage reduction and have effectively 100% uptime. The combined multipliers in this build plus the high armor make it exceptionally tanky.
- Fortify: Provides 15% damage reduction while Fortified. Unfortunately, there's no obvious path to gaining a source of Fortify in this build. If you want it and feel like you don't need the Poison Creeper resets, you can swap Packleader for Bolster. Alternatively, if you're OK with lower uptime of Petrify you can swap out Calm Before the Storm.
- Hurricane: Thanks to Savage Hurricane we get an additional 20% damage reduction against any enemies affected by Hurricane
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Stat Priorities
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
- >50% Critical Strike Chance (Pre Buffs)
- >75% Attack Speed Bonus
- >40,000 Life
- >400% Damage Vs Close Enemies
- >30% Hurricane Cooldown Reduction
- Armor Capped 9,230
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 30% All Damage Reduction (Pre Legendary Powers)
- >170% Movement Speed
- >800 Willpower
- Helm: Undying or Hectic
- Maximum Life ↑
- Willpower ↑
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Resistance
- ⚒️Max Life ↑
- ⚒️Chance to Stun/Freeze
- Chest Armor: Vigorous
- Maximum Life ↑
- Resistance
- Willpower ↑
- Armor
- ⚒️Max Life ↑
- ⚒️Chance to Stun/Freeze
- Gloves: Paingorger's Gauntlets
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Attack Speed ↑
- All Stats
- Basic Skill Damage
- Pants: Might
- Ranks of Basic Skills ↑
- Maximum Life ↑
- Willpower ↑
- Resistance
- ⚒️Total Armor ↑
- ⚒️Chance to Stun/Freeze
- Boots: Metamorphosis
- Movement Speed ↑
- Resistance
- Armor ↑
- Max Life/Willpower
- ⚒️Movement Speed ↑
- ⚒️Chance to Stun/Freeze
- Amulet: Adaptability
- Ranks of Envenom ↑
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- % Total Armor
- ⚒️Damage To Close Enemies ↑
- ⚒️Movement Speed ↑
- Rings: Moonrise & Rapid
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Chance To Apply Vulnerable (only one)
- Maximum Life (only one) ↑
- Willpower
- ⚒️Damage To Close Enemies ↑
- ⚒️Hurricane Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Weapon (Staff): Greatstaff of the Crone
- Ranks of Claw ↑
- Damage To Close ↑
- Non Physical Damage
- Damage to Crowd Controlled
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Magic Resist, Assault Elixir,Elixir of Cruelty, Elixir of Fortitude, Heady Precision Elixir, Elixir of Combatant Fortune
- Incense: Reddamine Buzz, Song of the Mountain (if not capped), Chorus of War, Soothing Spices
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 not Mad Wolf's Glee?
Why not Melted Heart of Selig?
Video Guide
Coming Soon!
Summary
The Stormclaw Druid is a true tank in every sense of the word, with a level of defense that can rival every other build in the game. The build is one of the easiest to play thanks to a simple rotation and no resource management. It is strongest when pushing Nightmare Dungeons, but does well on all types of content due to its high mobility and solid damage.
Credits
Written by McFluffin
Reviewed by IBoilerUp