Hi everyone, I’ve not played druid class before. I’m however planning to make 1 in the very near future since I have a 20/17 spare D torch atm, I just want to know which build is better in 2.4 patch.
I’m playing a new Fire Druid in SP and its stupidly powerful in normal and nightmare. My fear lies in the abundance of fire immunes in Hell mode though.
Some fire skills now have a 50/50 split between phys and fire damage and Armageddon got buffed a lot but is still too inconsistent to really rely on - the meteor splash is still too small and I feel like they need to hit faster to be useful.
What I’ve been hearing is that Beargeddon Druids are good and you can use the A3 Lightning merc which uses static field to help with fire immunes.
Another option would be a A5 frenzy merc with plague.
doesn’t pure fire build has physical damage imbued in 3/5 of the skills on the elemental skill tree? I doubt you will face any trouble with fire immunity. I’m not sure which route to go yet but essentially both builds are caster build and the gears used will be very similar anyway. I’m leaning towards more wind druid atm but fire druid has massive AOE which seems fun to me.
Yes, Boulder, Volcano and Armageddon all have phys damage now so they will benefit from things like amp damage and decrepify curses. It isn’t an even split between phys and fire though, its more like 2/3 fire and 1/3 phys damage, at least on Armageddon.
Still working on my Fire Druid and the AoE is bonkers (level 31, A5 norm atm) and loads of fun- but I’m afraid unbreakable fire immunes may really ruin the fun of this build in Hell. Wind is easier to spec but then you have to deal with the twister/nado pathing.
Not only that. As a Wind Druid I’ve encountered countless physical + cold immune bosses, while I haven’t seen even a single physical + fire immune one; bah, I even use +3 Volcano pelt just to have anything against phys/cold immunes. So, a Fire Druid should have easier with dealing with enemies, at the cost of lacking really powerful Cyclone Armor.
Merc with Lawbringer resolve this issue for windy, even with stoneskin merc will eat undeads and kill any other cold/physical+stoneskin champion.
Fire is tricky in hell, but imo best for lvling.
I would stick to Mausoleum, it’s easy to get there and it’s a85.
1 Like
I have a lvl85(ish) fire druid and I had no issues on hell, except Baal. It takes ages to kill him without GG gear.
Gear:
I used HotO, Rhyme (to save pts from Str that Monarch requires that went to Vita), BK/SoJ, a plain +2 magical amu (did not find any better), Jalal (did not find pelt for fire), Vipermagi and charm-wise usually +life, +mana and resists to have 75 all res. Recently I got a mediocre dudu torch, but the fire build is strong even without one.
Stats:
Enough str to wear the above mentioned gear. Because I did not need 156 str for monarch even on low level I had very high life (I still dont have CtA). Later on around lvl80 you will easily have ~2k life with Oak without CtA.
Vita: all pts that are not for str requirements.
Energy 0, you will have enough mana on your own. At lower level you need an Insight merc, but around lvl70-73 you can even use Obedience or something completely different merc setup. You will need a few charms with mana, but those are quite easy to come by. One column of mana potions is more than enough. Same for healing potions. I used the last two for full rejuv, but I very very hardly needed any.
Dex: I had so much life, I did not need it. Plus I did not use Stormshield/Spirit, so I did not go for high block %.
Skills:
Summons: 1 pt magic on bear, wolves, raven and oak.
Ele: Left side of the tree. I did not max fissure, so my Armageddon last only for like 30 seconds, but at least the rest of the skills will get max synergy bonuses.
Merc:
Lower level I used Act 2 merc with Insight. Later I swapped that for Reaper’s Toll, so even when I encountered a fire/phy immune, the phys immunity usually was broken. I only saw 2-3 elites where I was not able to break the dual immunity and they still died in a minute or so, but you can also skip them.
Higher level I tried the Act 3 merc with dual spirits, vipermagi and shako. It also rocks. So it is mainly about what gear you have for the mercs and which one you prefer using,
Usage:
Bring out summons in town.
Put molten on left click.
Use Armageddon, then switch to Volcano and while you have meteor shower just kill close mobs with Molten and further away/stationary mobs with Volvano.
When killing mobs, position yourself to the lower part of the screen because Armageddon hits in the area mainly above your head. There is a significant clear speed difference between killing mobs on the top and on the bottom part of the screen.
Overall my opinion:
Survivability: 10/10.
Power: 8/10. Sorc overall is still stronger, but much more fragile, too.
Easy-to-use: 10/10. It is so easy to play with it, sometimes it is even boring. 
What can it clear: technically any areas. Baal takes ages to kill, but other than that it is good for any areas.
4 Likes
this actually makes me feel like rolling a fire druid really soon lol… I really like the massive AOEs they have. I’m still trying to get a cheap hoto, enigma and elemental skillers before i start.
If you have all the juicy stuffs before even starting, why even starting? I never understood the lack of patience of many players. For me at least is veeeery satisfying to see how the trash goes to ashes. 
It’s non ladder anyway and I like to have all the good eqs before I start just like how I crafted 3x 15ED MP enigma for my hdin, trapsin and summon necro each XD
Thank you for sharing.
I am looking forward to starting a fire druid and rain down fire from the sky.
2.4 brings so many good options.
This is certainly a “just use quick cast” build. I can understand the reservations on other builds, but continuing to use click with this build is just hindering yourself.
Having now built one, I feel like I can chime in my two cents here.
Running on ladder with the following build
- dual spirits
- skin of the vipermagi
- lore into a +3 Armageddon pelt
- a crappy +1 druid skills ammy
- dual Nagelring
- gold wrap
- and then some yellow gloves/boots with res
- act 1 cold merc with insight, treachery, and wisdom.
Skills - one point into bear and prereqs, left side of fire tree. I haven’t yet maxed firestorm. About halfway there.
I absolutely cruised through hell. Baal took a while, as did Lester and co, and an unfortunate stone skin on the infector of souls took a while, but I was never completely stalled. Armageddon does insane damage, and being able to spam molten boulders at melee combatants means that even fire immunes die rather quickly. Molten boulder actually does more physical than fire for me (granted, firestorm isn’t maxed) and volcano does a fair bit of damage too. I can take him farming in the mausoleum, stony tomb, and cows all with relative ease. Very aesthetically pleasing, and very easy to play.
Survivability - 9/10
Not having cyclone armor hurts a bit, but you still get oak sage and an army of wolves/a bear to tank for you.
Damage - 9/10
All of the trash just evaporates and disappears. Diablo himself doesn’t last very long, meaning the only time you really slow down is against a couple of key fire immunes. Specifically, travincal, chaos pit lords, last Baal wave, and Baal himself will take some time to kill. Everything else melts.
Ease of play - 10/10
You don’t need a lot of endgame gear to make this guy work. Just stack up +skills where you can and cycle through your abilities. Throw out an armageddon, volcano, fissure, throw a boulder, back to fissure, back to volcano, etc. Its incredibly simple and pretty beginner friendly. Some maps (looking at you, city of the damned) are a bit tougher because enemies wedge themselves into small cracks between pillars where a volcano/boulder doesn’t fit, making them much harder to hit, but others, such as maggot lair, become trivially easy. Having a cold, act 1 merc also helps cover immunities with her freezing arrow, making your life even easier.
1 Like
Just a little quick update too, I built a level 87 druid on NL SC with decent gears. I tried both fire and wind builds and my conclusion is that, fire build is more fun but still sub par as compared to wind build. The physical aspect of fire just doesn’t deal enough damage and clears really slowly when there are fire immunes. Whereas, for wind build, there are technically less physical immune as compared to cold, thus wind build is stronger and clears faster than fire build.
My gears are as below
Shako
Hoto / CTA
spirit monarch / Spirit monarch
arachnid
trangs oul claws
sandstorm trek
mara’s
2x sojs
elemental skillers + SC lifers + anni + torch
Merc
Insight eth CV
treachery
Andy’s visage
I dont know…I tried a wind druid recently, he even had a Delirium in a +3nado/+3hurricane hawk helm, but he was nowhere near as quick as the fire dudu. Maybe because I am not good with aiming the nados…?
@Kuz unfortunately windy will work well only with enigma, you need telestomp for nandos, theres no other way.
Fire however is easy going in terms of low gear, you can just use rift volcano and armagg (and run around). While windy must stand by the enemy and spam nandos.
You’re right, but in a nutshell, windy is a better end game build if you’re equally geared, sad truth but truth. It still clears content way faster than a fire build but fire build is 200% aesthetically more pleasing to play.
I have to start over and was thinking the all fire druid…with the sunder charm later hopefully. Is it possible to complete the game in hell with the fire druid?
If you put 1 pt on all summons to have 8 wolves, 1 bear and an Oak, with all the +skills they will be very tanky, except at bosses at lower levels. But the fire dudu is one of the easiest to beat the game. I dont know how good it is for ubers, that is mostly for non-casters with a few exceptions, plus it is missing teleport, but you will have near 100% survivability and a very good clear speed. Not S-tier, some changes still needed for that, but I think it is a solid A-tier class, even in budget gear.
If you dont want to skip fire/phys immune mobs, add a few pts on the dire wolf to increase their cold damage. In worst case your Armageddon will not last for 40-50 seconds, only 20-25.
1 Like
Try this build.
I have personally been playing druid for many years. especially since starting of D2R.
Fire Druid is fun but in hell mode especially Chaos Sanc with tons of fire immune, fire druid is still slow. The only solution now is Sunder Charms.
As for wind druid it might be slightly faster but it wont be as good unless you use decrepify or amplify damage curse. therefore I decided to try out this build.
1 Like