What is the best druid build to pick up for Season 1 in Diablo IV? We rank the top 5 most powerful druid builds here to help you get the right starter for your first season in the game!

Diablo 4 Season 1 Druid Build Tier List: Top 5 Best Druid Builds For Leveling & Endgame

We're discussing the dominant Druid builds in Diablo 4 that have significantly outperformed others. These builds have garnered the most popularity and have successfully cleared the toughest content in the game. These contenders represent the strongest Druid builds before the start of Season 1 in Diablo IV. By highlighting them now, we can make a solid comparison once Diablo IV Season 1 commences. This way, we can determine if the strongest builds in Season 1 align closely with the strongest builds from before the start of Diablo IV Season 1.

5 - Lightning Shred Build (B Tier)

The Lightning Shred Build, also known as "bounce bolts," revolves around utilizing the Shred Dash enhancement, which triggers with every hit and provides a significant crit damage multiplier. When combined with the Stormclaw aspect, Shred critical hits generate lightning damage around the target, which can also crit independently. Additionally, the Waxing Gibbous unique weapon ensures that all hits become critical for a few seconds after scoring a kill with Shred. To further enhance the build, the combination of the Grizzly Rage Direwolf aspect and the Rampaging Werebeasts aspect provides an ultimate ability that accumulates a stacking crit damage multiplier, resulting in substantial damage output. 

Considered the fastest speed clearing build for the Druid class, it excels in swiftly clearing equal or slightly higher level content such as farming XP in Nightmare dungeons. The build allows for teleportation to any visible enemy on the screen, effortlessly obliterating weaker mobs encountered in this type of content. Simply holding down the designated red button allows your character to clear everything swiftly and effortlessly.

4 - Poison Shred Build (A Tier)

The Poison Shred Build in Diablo 4 shares some similarities with the previous build, mainly centered around utilizing dashing with shred. However, the focus of Poison Shred is on maximizing poison damage and utilizing Waxing Gibbous to create repeated infinite crit windows for faster pack clearing. This build excels in high-end content due to its superior potential for dealing damage over long fights. Notably, a variation of this build currently holds the record for the fastest Uber Lilith kill time among druids. The single target damage output of this build is incredibly high, and it comes close to achieving the fastest kill time for any class in that challenge boss encounter.

The mechanics behind this build involve incorporating the principles of Lightning Shred while leveraging the Blurred Beast aspect. When performing a dash with shred, the Blurred Beast effect allows for a burst of damage up to 100% of the poison damage already ticking on the enemy. This burst can be further amplified if you have it on an amulet or a two-handed weapon. Importantly, this burst does not consume the poison, allowing both the burst damage and the ongoing tick damage to occur simultaneously. Additionally, the Toxic Clause passive enhances the build by applying a percentage of your damage as an additional poison damage-over-time when you critically strike with a werewolf skill. When you crit with a Blurred Beast shred, it utilizes the existing poison damage to amplify the ticking poison damage even further, applying even more poison and subsequently boosting the damage of the next shred. This creates a continuous cycle of escalating damage on a single target, which is highly potent.

While the Poison Shred Build may be slower than Lightning Shred when clearing lower-level content, its stacking buildup of damage, especially when combined with the Grizzly Rage combo, grants it a significantly higher potential compared to other shred builds.

3 -  Pulverize Shockwave Build (A Tier)

The Pulverize Shockwave Build is a popular and powerful Druid build that gained popularity shortly after the game's launch. Unlike other builds, it doesn't necessarily rely on unique items to be effective, although Visually's Prayer does provide an additional boost. Essentially, this build allows you to remain in barefoot form permanently, granting numerous defensive benefits from various skills in the tree. 

In terms of offense, the build revolves around utilizing Pulverize, which is enhanced by Earth's passives in the skill tree since it counts as an earth skill. Additionally, Pulverize unleashes a shockwave in a line in front of you. By equipping a two-handed weapon, the shockwave's damage can be up to twice as strong as the base damage of Pulverize itself. Moreover, by strategically positioning yourself, you can ensure that a specific target is hit by both the initial slam and the shockwave, resulting in them taking up to 300% of the normal damage. Combining this with Grizzly Rage and Rampaging Werebeast, the build offers a burst window with stacked critical multipliers, enabling you to consistently one-shot formidable enemies. Furthermore, the constant presence of Bear form provides additional tankiness to support your gameplay.

2 - Symbiotic Bulwark Build (S Tier)

The Symbiotic Bulwark Build excels in effortlessly navigating high-end top-tier nightmare dungeons, surpassing any other build in Diablo IV. It offers multiple variations, such as focusing on low life to activate damage reduction while protected by a barrier or utilizing cataclysm to further amplify damage. These builds specifically shine in pushing tier 100 nightmare dungeons, primarily due to an apparent bug involving innate Earth and bulwark skills. Strangely, the defensive skill, when enhanced, inflicts damage that scales with the enemy's level. For instance, it deals significantly more damage to level 150 enemies compared to level 88 enemies, without considering gear, skill points, or Paragon levels. Additionally, by combining the Nature's Fury key passive with the Symbiotic aspect on an amulet, the cooldown of Earth and Bulwark can be constantly reset through basic skill spamming. This results in the build possessing both the strongest offensive capability for high-tier nightmare dungeons, thanks to the peculiar enemy scaling, and an incredibly robust defensive ability. With sufficient ranks and the barrier generation set, casting Earth and Bulwark replenishes your entire life as a barrier, and it can be cast every 2-3 seconds during combat due to the cooldown reset combo at the core of this build. This combination renders you nearly invulnerable while dealing substantial damage. It's important to note that this build is highly specialized and not well-suited for defeating Uber Lilith or clearing lower-level nightmare dungeons, as its true strength lies solely in high-tier nightmare pushing.

1 - Tornado Wolf Build (S Tier)

Tornado Wolf is an impressive synergy combo in the game, offering a dynamic mix of abilities. By combining Grizzly Rage with Rampaging Were Beast and Direwolf, you gain a stacking crit multiplier that increases with each critical hit. Additionally, this combo reduces the spirit cost of core skills, allowing for increased usage. Tornado, as the fastest hitting core skill in the Druid's arsenal, further enhances the combo by delivering multiple hits and benefiting from the crit multiplier. This synergy results in the highest damage potential, as Tornado achieves crits more frequently than other skills. The build also incorporates the Earthen Might key passive, utilizing the Mighty Storm aspect to extend its effect to storm skills. This grants a chance to refill the spirit gauge and guarantees crits for 5 seconds when triggered. Although reliant on fortunate procs, the build remains remarkably powerful even without them. The Toxic Clause passives enhance the effectiveness of crits with Tornado by applying poison through Tempest Roar, which classifies it as a werewolf skill. The Tempest Worker passive further supplements spirit generation through lucky hit chances. Moreover, the build capitalizes on Venom, combining it with crit damage multipliers against poisoned enemies. Elemental Exposure, another passive, provides a lucky hit chance to apply vulnerability to storm skill enemies, amplifying the synergy by stacking crit multipliers on a fast-hitting skill with a high crit chance. 

Notably, the build exhibits surprising durability, benefiting from Cyclone Armor, Savage Hurricane, and gear affixes that boost armor in werewolf form. It has achieved significant milestones, being the first Druid build to clear a tier 100 nightmare dungeon and defeat Uberloth without exploits. Even now, it boasts an impressive kill time of three minutes and 25 seconds against that boss. Its effectiveness remains consistent across equal and high-level content, making it an exceptionally well-rounded build.