With the release of Diablo IV’s Season of the Malignant and the latest game-changing nerfs to vulnerable damage and damage reduction, Druid players may be left wondering which direction to take their class next. Well, the latest exceptional build taking over the speedfarming ranks is the Lightning Storm Druid. Equipped with the Unique but incredible Tempest Roar helm and Mad Wolf’s Glee chest piece, you’ll be speeding through Nightmare dungeons at a lightning pace.
Required Items: Tempest Roar (Unique), Mad Wolf’s Glee (Unique) and Dire Wolf’s Aspect.
Desired Items to make the build even better: Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast (at least a 4-5 second roll), Aspect of the Umbral (at least a 3-4 Sprit regen roll)
We will begin with the Gear and Aspects as these are the hardest pieces to obtain and are incredibly important to the build. Changing builds can be costly and damaging if you do not have the required materials, gold and items ready. It would be best to farm the gear for this build over the next few play sessions and make sure you have everything ready for changing.
Gear
Here you will find a comprehensive but easily digestible guide to the gear required for this Lightning Storm Druid speedfarming build. Each of the non-unique slots will list the desired rolls in order of importance. Ideally you want as many as possible, but you do not need all of them.
1. Helm: Tempest Roar (Unique)
2. Chest: Mad Wolf’s Glee (Unique)
3. Gauntlets: Ranks to Lightning Storm (ideally 4 ranks, 3 is acceptable), Critical Strike Chance, Lucky Hit Chance, Willpower and Critical Strike Damage with Werewolf Skills.
4. Pants: Damage Reduction From Poisoned, Damage Reduction While Fortified, Damage Reduction against Distant Enemies, Damage Reduction against Close Enemies and Damage Reduction
5. Boots: Movement Speed, Total Armor while in Werewolf Form, Fortify Generation, Dodge Chance From Distant Enemies and Dodge Chance
6. Amulet: Cooldown Reduction, Movement Speed, Ranks to Envenom, Damage Reduction From Poisoned and Damage Reduction While Fortified
7. Rings: Vulnerable Damage, Critical Strike Chance, Lucky Hit Chance, Maximum Life and Critical Strike Damage With Werewolf Skills
8. Main Hand Weapon: This should ideally be a one-handed axe. High Damage per Second, Vulnerable Damage, Willpower, Core Skill Damage, Critical Strike Damage and Critical Strike Damage with Werewolf Skills
9. Off-hand Item: Cooldown Reduction x2 (from the innate stat and a bonus roll), Critical Strike Chance, Damage Reduction From Poisoned, Damage Reduction While Fortify and Lucky Hit Chance
Tempest Roar Unique Helm
Again, these are all perfect scenarios. You will struggle to meet every single criteria exactly, but if you have rolls with 2 or 3 of these main stats on each armour piece, you will be in good stead to make this build. Make sure to check the vendors every hour as their supplies change. You can find incredibly powerful gear here. Similarly, look to complete Helltide events and open Tortured Gift of Mysteries to earn yourself Forgotten Souls, the item required to reroll stats on gear.
Aspects & Gems
As noted earlier, the Dire Wolf’s aspect is only mandatory aspect. This aspect should be placed onto your Amulet to receive the 50% slot bonus. Similarly, but not mandatory, is the Lightning Dancers aspect. This item cannot be selected form the Codex of Power, therefore, it will need to rolled in the world.
Mandatory Dire Wolf’s Aspect
There are four Offensive Aspects to make this build, three of which can be found in the Codex of Power, Aspect of Retaliation, Overcharged Aspect and Rampaging Werebeast Aspect. The final aspect will be the aforementioned Lightning Dancer’s Aspect.
These four aspects should be placed on the following gear pieces in any combination.
1. One-handed Weapon (preferably axe)
2. Off-hand
3. Gloves
4. Ring (either first or second)
Regarding the other pieces, there are more specific aspects needed. Your second ring should have the Aspect of the Umbral equipped, this will increase your spirit regeneration allowing you to cast Lightning Storm for longer.
For the Boot slot, we would look to have the Stormshifter’s Aspect. This can be earned from completing Crusader’s Cathedral in Kehjistan. increasing the rank of you Lightning Storm ability whilst Hurricane is active.
Pants will make use of the Vigorous Aspect, which will give us a flat 10-15% damage reduction while in werewolf form. Given the use of Mad Wolf’s Glee, we are always in werewolf form.
Regarding Gems, we will be looking for the Red health gems on our gear, Skulls for increased armour on our jewellery and Green vulnerable damage gems on out one-hand weapon and off-hand item. Now, if you have all of this or almost all of the gear and aspects, we can move onto the talents that make this build tick.
Royal Gem giving a boost to Vulnerable Damage
Skill Tree
The active skills for the Lightning Storm Druid we will be using are as follows:
1. Lightning Storm, as our Primary DPS spell
2. Wind Shear, as our fill in spirit generator
3. Hurricane, for healing via the Masochistic boon and Lightning Storm ranks
4. Cyclone Armour, for a knockback and defensive buffs
5. Grizzly Rage, providing unstoppable and almost infinite use of Lightning Storm for its duration
6. Blood Howl (or Earthen Bulwark if you want the extra CC break) for the quick heal and spirit increase.
Here is an easy to follow list of how to spend your Skill Points.
Basic Skills
Assign one Rank to Wind Shear and purchase through to Wild Wind Shear.
Core Skills
Purchase 5 ranks of Lightning Storm (you will have more than 5 total depending on your gear, but always spend 5 Skill Points here). Purchase Through to Raging Lightning Storm. Acquire 1 rank of the Heart of the Wild passive and 3 ranks of the connected Wild Impulses passive. Purchase 1 rank of the Predatory Instinct passive and 3 ranks of the Digitigrade Gate Passive.
Defensive Skills
Purchase 1 rank of Cyclone Armour through to Preserving Cyclone Armour and 1 rank of Blood Howl through to Innate Blood Howl. (if you take Earthen Bulwark here, purchase 1 rank and take through till Preserving Earthen Bulwark). Take 1 rank of Ancestral Fortitude and 3 ranks of Vigilance.
Companion Skill
Here we would be looking to take 3 ranks of the passive ability Nature’s Reach.
Wrath Skills
Purchase 1 rank of Hurricane through to Natural Hurricane and 3 ranks of the Passives Elemental Exposure and Endless Tempest. Select 1 Rank in the Neurotoxin and Toxic Claws Passive and 3 ranks of Envenom.
The highly effective Envenom passive
Ultimate Skills
Purchase Grizzly Rage thorough to Supreme Grizzly Rage. Put 3 skill points into the passives Defiance, Circle of Life and Defensive Posture.
Key Passive
Here you want to take the Lupine Ferocity Key Passive as the Tempest Roar Headpiece turns our Lightning Storm ability into a werewolf skill, allowing the massive 70% multiplicative damage output to occur using this skill.
Next we will look into our Spirit boons before moving on to our Paragon Board.
Spirit Boons
Our 5 picks here for the Spirit Boons will relate to damage reduction and keeping us alive in fights. For the Deer Spirit take the Wariness Boon. Of the Eagle Spirit Boons take Scythe Talons. Pick Calamity for the Wolf Spirit Boon, this will be one of out most important as it extends the duration of our Grizzly Rage. Finally, Bond with the Snake Spirit in Túr Dúlra and select both Masochistic and Calm before the Storm. Masochistic, linked with Lupine ferocity, high base crit chance and Scythe Talons will proc lots of healing from your Core attacks. Clam Before the Storm works similarly to Calamity in which its main purpose is to reduce the amount of time that Grizzly Rage is offline.
Paragon Board
Below you will find five images of the five paragon boards required to complete all 225 Paragon Points. Should you not have any of these Glyphs levelled, you should complete them to level 15 for the area boost in the following order.
1. Keeper
2. Fulminate
3. Earth and Sky
4. Exploit
5. Werewolf
Here are the images for the Paragon Board pathing:
Paragon Page one, Werewolf
Here is Page two using the Heightened Malice page with the Keeper Glyph.
Paragon Board Page Two, Keeper.
Here is page three with the Thunderstruck Page and Earth and Sky Glyph.
Paragon board page 3, Earth and Sky Glyph
Below is page 4 Inner Beast with the Exploit Glyph.
Paragon board page 4, Exploit.
Paragon board final page. Equip Lust for Carnage with the Fulminate Glyph.
Paragon board page five, Fulminate Glyph
Tips and Tricks
Making sure you have all of the gear required and aspects is essential to making this build efficient and speedy. However, there are some tricks to know that make this build even better. For example, Lightning Storm has a slower tick rate when the cast button is held versus when pressed repeatedly. In order to output more DPS (damage per second), you should look to begin a fight, hold Lightning Storm until the Storm has reached a large size and then repeatedly press the key to spam the storm whilst at full capacity. This will result in a faster tick rate and a increased DPS deleting large packs of enemies extremely fast.
Secondly, the key to making this Lightning Storm Druid build work is the uptime and cooldown reductions related to Grizzly Rage. Having a fantastic roll on a Rampaging Werebeast Aspect is going to make a huge difference in overall uptime. You can roll this item most efficiently with the Purveyor of Curiosities if you roll for an off-hand item (totem).
Grizzly Rage, which will be modified into a Werewolf Talent
Thirdly, check out these other posts to keep informed on everything Diablo IV:
- The top 10 Deadliest mobs in Diablo IV
- Diablo IV – Endgame Arc Lash Blizzard Hybrid Build guide
- Diablo IV Potions, Elixirs and how to Make Them
Conclusions
Like everything in a live game such as diablo, things change. Whilst this build is incredible in game as of patch 1.1.1, we cannot speak for the upcoming patches. Make sure to keep up with Blizzard’s patch notes for Diablo IV here. As of now, the Lightning Storm Druid is an exceptional speedfarming build that you certainly will not regret giving a shot.
