Druid is still awesome in Diablo 4. What can you expect to play this Druid? Is it the same as Diablo 2? Is the same as in other ARPGs that you may or may not have been playing? Let’s take a quick look.

What Is The Druid?

First of all, the identity of the Druid can shift basically on your build. You can be a shapeshifter and you can specialize in Werewolves or Werebear abilities. In Diablo 4, the Druid doesn’t maintain its shapeshift a hundred percent of the time, at least not by default by just pressing it and having it. 

There are ways to alter that and manipulate that in different ways. Each specific shapeshift ability keeps you in that form for the remainder of the animation. Now, that doesn’t really mean much at lower levels. However, later on, you will unlock passives that will make it matter how long you stay in a specific form, which is actually pretty cool.

Another form of Druids that you can play is the caster slash Elementalist and slash Mage. Not really. You will be casting a lot of Storm, Earth and Wind abilities and no longer Fire abilities like in Diablo 2. But that’s okay. Because the Earth, Storm and Wind are actually pretty cool and you have a lot of iconic abilities making a return. 

There’s also the Summoner, which is a kind of like sub-specialization because there’s not really a specialization in summary. You have Summoner skills. You have your pets that you might have seen.

However, you’ll have your Wolves and Vine and Ravens, which are pretty cool. You can optimize them a little, but they won’t become the core of your build style and, of course, you can also be a hybrid. You can pick in between these and make a mishmash and create a really fun custom build that you can play with depending on what you need as you level up.

With this, Druid does have some of the highest versatility in terms of play cell or what you want to do. Whether you play solo or whether you play with your friends, you can be a beefy bear tank. You can be a fast wolf or you can sit in the back and catch your spells like a proper sorcerer. 

Basic Skills

What are the actual abilities?

The way that the Druid functions is pretty similar to all the other classes. You have building abilities that build or at least fill your downtime with damage when your resource is filling up.

But as far as Druid is concerned, you actually build Spirit by using abilities like Maul for Werebears’ Claw, for Werewolves’ Earth, Storm and Wind abilities, for the specific casting choice that you may have chosen. And these will generate Spirit, which is your resource and your meta if you want to call it that way.

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Core Skills

You will use this mainly on your finishers or consumers or however where you want to use them. The game calls them core abilities: Pulverize for Bear when you slam the ground really hard, Shred for wolves when you shred enemies to death and, of course, for the spell casting abilities.

You have Landslide, Tornado and Lightning Storm. Some of these abilities have different play styles versus Lightning Storm has a really neat interaction with how you use it and how it functions, while the other ones are very straightforward.

Wrath Skills

On top of this, you will have big cooldowns, which for Druid are called Wrath Skills, obviously, one for each style of playstyle gameplay. 

Trample will be the Werebear ability where you just charge into an area to deal damage and knock enemies away. And if you knock him into a wall, they get stunned, which makes it for really cool gameplay when you want to use your surrounding to your advantage. And of course, on top of the damage, add some crowd control.

Rabies is for the Werewolves and you essentially spread poison on everybody and it deals with damage over time and you can essentially use this for a Werewolf build.

Hurricane is obviously the storm of version of it, which is pretty reminiscent of Diablo 2.

And Boulder, which is also a kind of reminiscent of Diablo 2. Except in Diablo 2, it was a Fire ability. Now, it is an Earth ability. 

Ultimate Skills

You will get ultimate as you level up and ultimates again cater to the specific playstyle. By the way, if you want to level up faster, using your Diablo 4 Gold will be a good choice.

Grizzly Rage is for the Werebear when you become a big bear. This skill can deal a lot of damage and you stay in that bear for its duration. You can only use bear abilities. The longer you stay here by optimizing with its upgrades and stuff, you can extend the duration. And this goes on further into skill tree to be further augmented by multiple other passives.

Lacerate will be for the Werewolf where you like zip around and just a Lacerate target, which makes you insolvable for the duration, or at least that’s what we’ve been able to notice. It’s pretty cool. It is on a long cooldown though and maybe not as flashy or meaty as Grizzly Rage.

Cataclysm is the elemental storm slash wind ability. It is probably a replacement of the old Armageddon that we had in Diablo 2. 

Petrify is the Earth one, which is a very cool ability where you encase your targets into stone and they take more crit damage or crit chance. 

Companion Skills

Let’s not forget the companions that I mentioned Wolves, Ravens and Vine.

Wolves: You don’t have to summon one at a time, but you can’t order them to jump on the target and attack it. Obviously, you can increase their damage with four passives as well. 

You have the Ravens, also that you are familiar with from Diablo 2 and the carrion Vine (Vine Creeper). Their function is slightly different from their Diablo 2 counterparts, depending on the upgrades that you take for them.

Defensive Skills

Of course, you will be tackling the forces of hell. With some proper defensives, there are quite a few options.

Cyclone Armor is one of your first ones and it offers some non-physical damage reduction passively and you get to push stuff away from you to kind of keep you safe in that caster form away from enemies and just slap them with spells.

Earthen Bulwark is probably the most iconic one that we’ve been able to test and probably the best one so far just absorbs damage. Debilitating Roar makes you roar from your bear form and then just make everybody deal all a lot less damage to you.

Blood Howl will be the Werewolf one where it actually heals you, so each of these individual defensive abilities does something specific for their themed playstyle. You can even have more than one literally and combine them to become even bulkier and even tankier because you might need it.

Passive Skills

Last but not least, the kind of cater ends round up all the play cells that you might encounter as a Diablo 4 Druid. You have a lot of passives, which I’m not going to go over all of them. 

But the main idea of these passes on top of them, giving you more damage, giving you more spiritual generation from your spells, giving you shape-shift buffs for staying in the form longer than I mentioned. For instance, for Werebear form giving you passive companion damage as well tankiness damage reduction, lucky hit, chant, influence and all of that stuff will round up a proper build once you decide which path to take. 

Druid is a very fun and very visually meaty and satisfying class to play whether you go full caster and just bring down the storm on your enemies or go into a big beast form. Whatever the choice may be - whether it’s a Werebear or a Werewolf, you will have a lot of fun and it’s my personal favorite class in Diablo 4.