I will show you the best Lightning Shred Druid build in Diablo 4. So, at the start, I will explain how to play this class. Then look into the best skills, paragon setup, what gems and caged hearts are the most overpowered. Lastly, I will tell you what exact gear to farm and use, then you would get the highest damage.

This build is all about dashing quickly from enemy to enemy, dealing big critical strikes that are further enhanced through the Stormclaw's Aspect. This setup has exceptional mobility and clearing speed, and that’s why it is one of the fastest builds in the game.

It will benefit from Uniques but absolutely does not require them to play at a high level, which makes this build new player and season starter-friendly. However, it will become even more devastating in the endgame content. Don't forget to bring enough Diablo 4 Gold with you while playing.

Leveling Build

Let’s move over to the druid special class bonus and the druid spirits. Allow you to select a total of 5 categories from 4 spirits that act as a passive buff to your character.

For your first 25 Spirit offerings, I recommend activating the Wolf Spirit, the Packleader.

Then, when you collect 25 more Spirit offerings, activate it on the Eagle Spirit, the Scythe Talons.

Afterwards, save up to 100 more spirits and spend them on the Snake Spirit, activating the Massacres.

Next, pick up 75 more spirits and unlock the Deer Spirit, the Vines.

Lastly, collect your last 175 spirit offerings to unlock the remaining categories and bond with the Eagle Spirit, activating the Swooping Attack.

As far as your gear goes, leveling up in Diablo 4 is similar to most other MMOs. For the most part, this will mean that you have to constantly replace one rare Diablo 4 Item with a better one all the way up to level 50. Generally, you want to use a two-handed weapon which has the highest damage numbers. Then the others are:

• Weapon: You want to get preferably a staff with core skill damage, vulnerable damage, and a socket.
• Armor: Typically granting defensive and utility stats, except gloves, which will offer offense.
• Helmet: Try to get poison creeper rings, life, cooldown reduction, and willpower.
• Chest: Get damage reduction, life, willpower, and armor.
• Gloves: Get shred ranks, critical strike chance, and attack speed.
• Pants: Get damage reduction, life, willpower, and armor.
• Boots: Get movement speed, spirit cost reduction, and willpower.
• Jewelry: Specifically your amulet, get movement speed, spirit cost reduction, companion skill ranks, and damage increase.
• Rings: Get critical strike chance, damage to close enemies, and life.

Don’t forget to not upgrade armor or Jewelry while leveling. Only socket armor with rubies, Jewerly with skulls, weapons with sapphires, and save the rest of your upgrades for your level 50 build.

Overall, for your leveling build, I recommend just enjoying each skill and getting used to the Druid gameplay. So, Shred, Storm Strike, and Poison Creep are your main damage skills. Then, Blood Howl and Debilitating Roar are your main defensive skills. Use them when you take a lot of damage or just to protect yourself.

Endgame Build

Let's move over to the second part where I will show you your endgame druid build. By this point, you should be familiar with the Lightning Shred playstyle, what gear stats you should look out for. As I did the most explaining at the start, I will just show you the best setup that you want to use. I personally tested multiple setups, and this one was the best one.

First of all, for your skills, we want to use Shred, Grizzly Rage, Hurricane, Blood Howl, Storm Strike, and Cyclone Armor. For your special bonus Spirits, like we discussed in the leveling build guide, get the Varese, Sight Talons, Swooping Attack, Calamity, and Masochistic.

As for your gear, we already discussed what stats to look out for, but if you're purely looking for the best of the best gear, then here it is:

• Tempest Roar Helmet
• Vigorous Primal Breastplate (Chest Armor)
• Primal Gauntlets of the Rampaging Werebeast (Gloves)
• Primal Chausses of Disobedience (Pants)
• Stormshifter's Primal Sabatons (Boots)
• Stormclaw's Necklace (Amulet)
• Dire Wolves' Band (First Ring)
• Band of Retaliation (Second Ring)
• Edgemaster's Octopian Edge (Weapon)
• Accelerating Aspect (Off-hand)

Caged Hearts

Then, for your gems, socket in weapons with emeralds and armor pieces with rubies.

For your first heart, get the Caged Heart of the Barber because the enemy groups have low HP, so this will cause them to instantly explode, and this damage increase from the heart is just way too overpowered not to use.

For the second heart, get the Caged Heart of the Revenge because getting free 20% damage reduction is again very op as well, and this is the best in slot heart for the druid class.

Lastly, get the Caged Heart of the Prudent Heart because when you pull massive amounts of mob groups, you can sometimes get one-shotted, especially if you play in hardcore mode. So, getting the protection of this heart while using the Barber at the same time will allow you to farm a lot of mob groups very quickly and without taking almost any significant damage.

Skill Tree

Moving forwards and then let’s talk about skill tree. If you just came from the leveling build, then this is very similar, so just copy these exact upgrades in no particular order. Remember that by gathering all the Renown in the game, you will get 10 extra skill points.

Paragon System

Finally, we have the paragon system.

At the first 25 points: We use the starting board and for our glyph select, Exploit.

At around 64 points: We get the last of Carnage board and for the glyph select, Werewolf.

At around 80 points: This time, we only select the Ancestral Guidance board.

At around 120 points: You need to select the Heighten Malice board and equip the Fang and Claw Glyph.

At around 150 points: We want to get the Thunderstruck board and select the Territorial Glyph.

At around 197 points: Get the Inner Beast board, and for the glyph select, Spirit.

Gameplay

Let’s take a closer look at each kill in the gameplay. First of all, at the beginning of the fight, we want to activate the Blood Howl or Cyclone Armor skills. Then, afterward, we want to spam the Shred skill. I would recommend trying to target distant and enclosed enemies so your dash and hit skills would connect between all enemies. This will enable us to fly between mob groups and do massive amounts of AOE damage.

During the fight, rotate between using the Blood Howl and Cyclone Armor to keep the Vigilance passive up. Before engaging in the big monster groups, use the Hurricane skill. Lastly, for any additional spirit or for damage reduction if needed, use the Storm Strike. At the start of the rotation, use Blood Howl and Cyclone Armor because they will make us stronger and activate the Vigilance passive, which will give us plus 5% extra damage.

From here, spam our main damage skill called The Shred. This skill will transform us into a wolf that does massive amounts of damage in three attacks. Each attack will increase its damage even more. By the way, we want to keep on using Blood Howl or Cyclone Armor every 6 seconds so we will get the plus 5% extra damage 24/7. Lastly, to finish our rotation, in between spamming werewolf or activating the damage buff, we want to finish the rotation with the Hurricane or Storm Strike to gain additional spirits or just to increase our damage even more.

In this guide, I’m going to show you a very unusual build that really smashes the Diablo 4 Abattoir of Zir Dungeon - the HotA Whirlwind Hybrid.

Before we start, I’d like to briefly explain why we are combining these two skills.

We are going to use Earthstriker’s Aspect. And since Whirlwind can’t overpower, we will always overpower with HotA. We’ll also be very stable because we’ll be carrying the Melted Heart of Selig.

Skill Tree

But first things first, I’ll show you the skill tree and explain the most important things.

In Whirlwind, 1 point is enough, but the upgrade is important for us to generate Fury.

With the Furious Hammer of the Ancients, we knock out the damage, so 5 points here. The more Fury, the more damage. So, we will collect maximum Fury in the paragon system and on the Diablo 4 Items.

Then, we play Tactical Rallying Cry and Tactical Challenging Shout, each at 1.

Power War Cry is also at 1.

The passive skills we use are:

• Guttural Yell (Rank 3)
• Booming Voice (Rank 3)
• Aggressive Resistance (Rank 3)
• Prolific Fury (Rank 3)
• Pit Fighter (Rank 3)

The ultimate is Supreme Wrath of the Berserker. And in addition to Invigorating Fury, we also play Furious Impulse here. We’ll be switching weapons very often and benefit from any Fury generation.

Warllop and Brute Force are, of course, also fantastic for HotA.

The central passive skill is Unbridled Rage.

It is important that we execute Whirlwind with the one-handed weapons, so the weapons change with the attack every time. Hammer of the Ancients always hits with the mace. The Expertise is a two-handed axe.

Paragon System

In my paragon system, the glyph Ire is on the starting board.

Then comes Bone Breaker with a glyph Crusher. On that board, we get a lot of overpower damage. And the legendary node regularly overpowers our attacks.

I have the Dominate on the Blood Rage board. The legendary note is very strong because it’s a multiplier. So, we prefer Berserking damage on the items and also in the paragon system to increase the bonus.

We also go for the board Carnage, and here we use the new glyph, Tears of Blood.

The last part is Warbringer, because here we get a lot of Maximum Fury and also 45 by a legendary note. Here I have played a glyph Wrath.

In total, we only have 4 boards plus the starting board.

As a variant, you could also save a few points and attach Decimator to the top of the second board just to take the legendary node.

Vampiric Powers

Briefly, the vampiric powers we use are:

• Ravenous, which gives attack speed
• Blood Boil, which gives additional overpower hits
• Metamorphosis, which is a must-have because it’s a stun breaker.
• Pray on the Weak, which makes enemies vulnerable
• Resilience, which gives you a little more stability when injured

Items

Of course, good equipment is also very important.

Harlequin Crest is, of course, the best. Otherwise, you should pick a helmet with life, armor, and cooldown.

For a defensive chest, pick Warlord Plate of Disobedience with Aspect of Disobedience.

For gloves, pick Edgemaster’s Bonewave Gauntlets with attack speed, crit chance, HotA skills, and resources for lucky hits. I have put Edgemaster’s Aspect here.

Tibault’s Will is also mandatory for generating Fury on evade.

And on the shoes, we want movement speed, cost reduction, and resistances. So, pick Relentless Berserker’s Archon Greaves.

On the weapons (Earthstriker’s Penitent Hammer), we prioritize strength, all stats, overpower damage, and berserking damage.

In the two-handed weapon (Rootfist of Ancestral Force), we play Earthstriker’s Aspect.

In the one-handed weapons (Crag Hammer of Limitless Rage), I have Ancestral Force and Limitless Rage.

In addition, there is definitely The Grandfather and a Ring of Red Furor.

On the other ring, I play Bold Chieftain’s Loop. Here, we want crit chance, max Fury, and resource generation.

Last but not least, pick the Melted Heart of Selig.

Gameplay

The play style is straightforward: whirl a bit, and then strike with HotA. So, in having a good rhythm, every fourth or fifth hit with a hammer will overpower. Because the Whirlwind can’t overpower.

A few monsters are also enough to keep up Fury while whirling. And if you run out, you can easily recharge by evading.

The boss fights at the end of the Abattoir of Zir are sometimes difficult because you quickly lose your Fury, so you have to move skillfully and use your shots wisely.

Have fun with this build, take care, and may the loot and Diablo 4 Gold be with you.

Midwinter Blight Event has come to Diablo 4 Season 2, so I want to go over everything you need to know about this event to farm all the currencies and get all of the new rewards.

How To Start This Event?

To start off, you're going to be going to Gillian in Kyovashad, who's going to start off this event for you and the entirety of this event is going to take place within the Fractured Peaks.

After you talk to him, you're primarily just going to be going and farming new enemies, new events, and the new boss of the Midwinter Blight.

New Currencies

While killing all of these new enemies and taking part in the new event, you'll be getting new seasonal specific currencies, the lowest of which are Blighted Fragments, which will be dropped from any of the new event enemies.

Then, you'll be finding these Elite totems spread throughout the zone called Frigid Husks and those will drop you the next tier up of currencies called Lost Heirlooms. Also, there will commonly be enemies trapped inside these Frigid Husks, so you'll commonly find loot Goblins after you kill the Frigid Husk. You can also kill them for more loot.

Then, you'll also be able to take part in the random World Events in the Fractured Peaks. A lot of them will be themed around this new seasonal event, and some of these new seasonal events will also spawn the new boss of the event called the Red Cloaked Horror at the end of that event. And killing the Red Cloaked Horror will get you the Red-Cloaked Trophy, which is the highest tier of the new currencies.

Midwinter Proofs

So, after you've farmed up some of these currencies, you're going to go back to Kyovashad and you're going to go back next to Gillian. And right next to Gillian, there's going to be a table where you turn in these new currencies for Midwinter Proofs.

Midwinter Proofs are what you spend with Gillian to buy all of the new event cosmetics, potions, and other Diablo 4 Items. So, when you turn in Blighted Fragments, which are from all the normal enemies, you turn in 300 of those for 1 proof.

When you kill Frigid Husks and get their lost heirlooms, you turn in 30 of those for 1 proof and then, you turn in 1 of the Red-Cloaked Trophies for 1 proof.

Midwinter Square Upgraded

As you're turning in these currencies for Midwinter Proofs, you're also going to be leveling up the tribute that's also located at the same table that you're turning in these currencies.

There will be an arrow you can click that brings up a new reward window similar to the reward track that's present at the Blood Harvest Events. And there's going to be 3 different tiers and every tier you get through from turning in these currencies is going to give you some Diablo 4 Gold and then a bag with a bunch of currencies and other rewards in it.

Once you get to Tier 3 of this reward track, you're going to unlock some additional elements to the event. So, after you've spent probably around an hour farming a bunch of these currencies and turning them in for Midwinter Proofs, you should be able to get to Tier 3.

Once you've gotten to Tier 3, this seasonal area where Gillian is at and where the table is at will also change up and have more decorations and the totem in the middle will also be fully built and you'll be able to click on that totem any time you come here. That gives you around a 5 minute buff that just gives you increased damage to any of the new enemy in this event.

But you'll also unlock the ability to get new bags from completing Nightmare Dungeons. So, any Nightmare Dungeon in the game you complete after you've gotten to Tier 3 will now also give you a bag of currencies for this seasonal event.

Then, past that, you’re just farming the same things you’ve been farming. You’re going to the open world of Fractured Peaks. You’re doing the events, killing the enemies, killing all those Frigid Husks, getting a bunch of loot, and getting all the currencies for the event.

Also, whenever you face the Red Cloaked Horror, he drops 3+ legendary or unique items. He does seem to have a decent chance of dropping unique items unless I just got very lucky. So, doing those events that spawn the Red Cloaked Horror is going to be one of the main things you want to search for.

Fruitful Rewards

But that brings us to all of the rewards for this event because Gillian is also a vendor where you can use those Midwinter Proofs to get a bunch of different items.

Now, there’s going to be a bunch of different cosmetics you can get for all the different classes.

• A back piece for every single class that’s 50 proofs
• 8 different weapon cosmetics that are 20 proofs a piece
• Mount cosmetics
• A new offensive legendary aspect specific to this event
• 2 different bags with gold and random items

Then, you can also buy Gillian’s Brew, which is only 1 Midwinter Proof. Gillian’s Brew is a new potion that’s very strong. It increases your max life and lucky at chance by 15%. Also, it gives you increased experience by 15% instead of 5%. So, if you have any characters you want to level up, this brew is going to be insane for leveling because this is a multiplicative experience increase.

With this and an incense popped on any of your other characters, you’re going to be getting 20% increased experience that’s multiplied by your World Tier experience. This is very good for leveling, but this potion is also really good for max level, especially if you’re a build that wants more lucky hit. Using this potion, even in the Diablo 4 Abattoir of Zir Dungeon is going to be very good.

If you want to progress steadily in Diablo 4, crafting and upgrading materials are an integral part of the action RPG. Players must craft and upgrade weapons and equipment to face challenging enemies throughout the game.

Diablo 4 also has a crafting and upgrading system that requires specific resources. The more you play the game, the more upgrade materials you find, and Veiled Crystals are among them.

Veiled Crystals neither cause nor absorb any damage. If it does anything, it’s that they’re a raw material. You’ll need tons of Veiled Crystals to take your offensive and defensive gear to the next level. You will need these materials whenever you decide to upgrade your gear in the game.

If you’re not careful enough, you may run out of Veiled Crystals. After all, they are not infinite in the game. You need to use them strategically. Thankfully, they’re not hard to find, and you’ll need some extra equipment that you no longer use.

If you’re looking for Veiled Crystals in Diablo 4, browse our guide to get the information you need.

How To Get More Veiled Crystals?

Veiled Crystals are obtained by salvaging rare equipment at Blacksmith. Ideally, every piece of rare gear you salvage has a chance to reward you with Veiled Crystals. But not all rare items drop Veiled Crystals when salvaged.

Some players claim that clearing dungeons often drops more Veiled Crystals as a reward, but the entire process seems to be random. Your best bet is to kill as many enemies as possible and complete missions to get more Veiled Crystals. Of course, killing tougher opponents will give you a better chance of finding these rare weapons and armor.

You can also earn Veiled Crystals by salvaging legendary gear. Over time, you’ll discover countless rare items worth salvaging before you start breaking down legendary gear. By selling these excess rare items, you can earn a decent amount of extra Diablo 4 Gold.

As you level up, rare gear becomes fairly common through normal drops from enemies or treasure chests. To make rare gear more common, just play a higher World Tier.

In Veteran Tier, even rare equipment is common. Especially after level 30, you can find it in almost every encounter. Do these activities regularly and you’ll soon have many rare items in your game inventory.

After getting the rare equipment, you need to take it to Blacksmith. There, the final recycling option is to dismantle all rare gear in your inventory. This won’t touch anything you’ve equipped, but it will clear your inventory of rare weapons and armor, turning them into Veiled Crystals.

How To Use Veiled Crystals?

Once you’ve locked down your favorite gear, it’s important to upgrade them occasionally. This is when you need these Veiled Crystals. And as you upgrade a piece of equipment, the demand increases.

Players can use Veiled Crystals to upgrade rare and legendary gear at Blacksmith. You can do this as long as you have enough resources and credits. Each item can be greatly enhanced based on its rarity.

When upgrading rare equipment, these rare materials are not required for the first two levels, but are required for the third level upgrade. In addition to simple upgrades, many other upgrades to rare and legendary gear require Veiled Crystals.

Placing Aspects on rare and legendary equipment requires multiple Veiled Crystals. Occultist can also change the personal attributes of equipment, and requires additional Veiled Crystals to do this.

This is the best way to use this Veiled Crystals. Doing so will ensure your build remains strong enough to handle all challenges.

Each upgrade requires multiple Veiled Crystals to complete, making them a very important material for late-game gear adjustments. While rare gear is fairly easy to find in the game, it’s important to start salvaging them as soon as possible to stock up on Veiled Crystals.

Diablo 4’s second season Season of Blood significantly changes how Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable Damage, and Overpower Damage work in the game.

Here’s what it looks like and how you can benefit from it.

On a very surface level and without going too much into detail, the six multiplicative damage buckets consist of your:

• Base Damage, in relation to your Core Stat, Weapon, and Base Skill Damage
• Additive Damage bonuses, marked by the plus sign [+%]
• Multiplicative bonuses from uniques, aspects, paragon nodes, and glyphs, noticeable by the x [x%]
• Critical Strike Damage
• Vulnerable Damage
• Overpower Damage

With the start of Season 2, these three damage buckets now have fixed multipliers (Critical Strike Damage x50%/Vulnerable Damage x20%/ and Overpower Damage x50%), depending on your current life percentage, with their damage related bonus affixes on your gear becoming additive.

Until now, focusing on these three damage affixes on your gear was indispensable to stay competitive and deal the most damage possible while disregarding steps from any other buckets that could have event eventually enabled a wider build variety.

As you have probably noticed, this often meant that the best-in-slot stats for Diablo 4 Items, like weapons, rings, and gloves, should always have carried at least one of these crit and vulnerable stats. If you didn’t know about this before, don’t worry, this won’t be necessary anymore.

This stats prioritization implicitly limited the possibility of exploring other viable builds with additive damage bonuses or stats, like attack speed, lucky hit chance, damage overtime effects, and more.

For this reason and to enable players to explore builds beyond the critical, vulnerable, and overpower concepts, all three damage buckets have been adjusted and cap as shown before.

Let’s recap again quickly. Damage to vulnerable will always deal 20% multiplicative bonus damage. Critical damage will always be a 50% multiplicative bonus damage. And overpowered damage will deal up to 50% multiplicative bonus damage, depending on your current life percentage.

These are fixed multipliers and do not depend on your gear anymore more, meaning you could have 0% crit, vulnerable, and overpower damage affixes on your gear or Paragon Boards while still benefiting from these multiplicative bonuses to their full extent.

On the contrary, stack these attributes like you might have done before. For example, with 150% Critical Strike Damage and 200% Vulnerable Damage will still apply the same multiplicative bonuses, namely 50% Critical Strike Damage and 20% Vulnerable Damage, resulting in a maximum multiplicative damage bonus of 80%.

In short, the multiplicative damage buckets (Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable Damage and Overpower Damage) will stay relevant and valuable if your build easily allows you to trigger them, but not at all cost anymore. What you need to know, though, is that if you want to make a powerful build, you’ll need to have plenty of Diablo 4 Gold.

As alternative build combinations without critically striking, vulnerable marks or overpowering can eventually outperform them. Their equivalent damage affixes on gear and Paragon Boards also remain useful if you have effects that can scale and benefit from them.

But to also reiterate on that, they will be treated as additive damage bonuses now and not directly contribute to their equivalent damage buckets any longer.

Although this change decreases the overall damage output, as shown in the example, the monster scaling has also been adjusted so that the noticeable impact should be comparably low to what this drastic change initially looks like.

In addition, the multiplicative bonuses will increasingly focus on any bonus damage from your items, aspects, and updated paragon nodes, including new glyphs, focusing even more on providing multiplicative bonuses to the existing additive bonuses.

You can see this with the examples with multiplicative ultimate skill bonus damage on the new No Witnesses legendary paragon node and multiplicative conjuration skill bonus damage based on other bonus damage stats for the new Elemental Summoner legendary node.

I’ve recently made some tweaks to my own Pulverize Druid build to make it more aggressive and have better survivability.

Pulverize is Druid’s strongest and best skill in Diablo 4 Season of Blood. Season 2 has Vampiric Powers that enhance this setting’s Skill Tree and Paragon Board.

This build can become unstoppable in a variety of ways: regain health when dealing with damage, gain guaranteed crushing hits, insane critical hits, and more. With it, you will clear Uber Lilith and Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons easily. And with new updates to Skill Tree and Paragon Board, it gets even better.

Not only is this build capable of meeting endgame requirements, but it’s equally amazing against Helltide, Blood Harvest, Seasonal Bosses, and more. With Overpower, we can one hit or kill them with very few hits.

But we mentioned that almost all Pulverize builds are very similar, and they will all primarily use most of the same Diablo 4 items. So a lot of times these builds will be very similar. So here we’re mainly talking about the skill tree and the standard tree, and what changes in my build made it better.

Skill Tree

Let’s take a look at the skill tree first. For skills, it uses Trample, Pulverize, Debilitating Roar, Wind Shear, Petrify and Ursine Strength. It doesn't even require any Unique gear, which is very beneficial for players on a budget with Diablo 4 Gold.

Pulverize is your damage skill. ‍It combined Umbral and Quicksand to produce some Spirit. Try to hit as many targets as possible with it!

Wind Shear will generate Spirit within a certain range and provide Movement Speed, a source of Vulnerable, and Damage Reduction when using Aspect of Might.

‍Petrify stuns affected enemies and provides a massive critical damage multiplier for its duration. It has a high cooldown, making it useful against bosses and tough elites.

‍‍‍‍Blood Howl provides reliable treatment. This treatment is often available at high densities due to Enhanced Blood Howl. It also restores a moderate amount of Spirit and generates Fortify via Enhanced Blood Howl.

Debilitating Roar reduces enemy damage across the screen and can also trigger Aspect of the Umbral through its slowdown.

Trample is your primary movement skill. When activated, it also breaks Crowd Control effect and restores Spirit.

Ursine Strength is a key passive option to increase our damage, especially since this build has many guaranteed Overpowers. Two of these sources of overpowers come from our skill tree, namely Provocation and ‍Enhanced Pulverize.

Paragon Board

We need to upgrade our glyph to activate its perks with surrounding nodes. For some glyphs, we maximize our bonus by assigning every relevant node in the range. On other glyphs, we only use the minimum value required for the additional bonus.

Since level 15 glyphs increase their damage radius, we can prioritize completing Nightmare Dungeons to upgrade them. After that, we prioritized upgrading the strongest glyphs to level 21.

Werebear Armor

Werebear form has an 85% reduction in armor value compared to regular armor. 43% if we transform into human form. So let’s go back to Paragon Board and we’ll delete this node,

If I go into Paragon Board again and delete the actual 50 armor nodes I have, it’s much smaller than the 83% enhanced Werebear Armor nodes we have. So I also lost 1%. But when I enter human form, I drop to 42%. So, in this case, the actual armor nodes are even more valuable than the rare nodes.

We take this rare node to enhance Willpower to unlock glyph slots and move some points to other places. This will give us the biggest overall boost and maximum damage output without really affecting our survivability. Because when we are in humanoid form we lose 1%. And the reality of this build is that you only want to be in humanoid form for a brief period.

Pulverize Druid serves as a ranged powerhouse that combines incredible AOE damage with powerful defense. Dig deep into Nightmare Dungeons with this wide range of play styles. However, unless you focus on overwhelming power and multiple rare unique skills, a single target can feel overwhelming.

Today I’m going to be bringing you a Poison Rogue build, which I’ve named Poison Black Hole Rogue build. This build has super fast attack speed, is tanky, and fun! You can use it from level 1 all the way to the endgame.

We should note that this tutorial is suitable for players with certain gaming experience and sufficient budget for Diablo 4 Gold. If the response is good, I will do a more beginner-friendly in-depth explanation of this build and each category and subcategory. Let’s get started now!

Skill Tree

This Skill Tree includes earned Renown points, so if you don’t have enough points, check your reward progress.

Basic Skills: For Puncture, Enhanced Puncture and Fundamental Puncture, I used 1 point each.

Core Skills: Invest 1 point each in Improved Twisting Blades and Master Sturdy.

Agility Skills: Used 1 point for Dash and Master Weapon Mastery.

Subterfuge Skills: I used 1 point each for Poison Trap, Countering Poison Trap, Exploit and Malice to get more poison damage. Because after you get Countering Poison Trap, your Poison Imbuement time has a 30% chance of being reset immediately. And thanks to Enhanced Poison Trap’s knockdown effect, you take less damage.

Imbueable Skills: It is very important to master skills such as Poison Imbuement, Blended Poison Imbuement and Deadly Venom. Among them, I spent 3 points on Alchemical Advantage and 2 points on Debilitating Toxins.

Ultimate Skills: In this build, we will be using ‍Death Trap. In the passive part, I got Alchemist’s Fortune, Innervation, and Second Wind. I used 1 point on Adrenaline Rush and Haste.

Key Passives Skills: In this build, we will use Momentum. For the last Specialization, we need to be ready to reset the skill and reduce the cooldown of Death Trap.

Item Setting

For Diablo 4 item selection for this Poison Black Hole Rogue build, the priority is as follows:

• Helm: Aspect of Stolen Vigor
• Chest Armor: Aspect of Might
• Gloves: Aspect of Pestilent Points
• Pants: Aspect of The Protector
• Boots: Penitent Greaves
• Rings: X’Fal’s Corroded Signet and Bladedancer’s Aspect
• Amulet: Aspect Of Disobedience
• Crossbow: Accelerating Aspect
• Sword: Aspect of Bursting Venoms and Aspect of Corruption

In this build, you will get extra poison damage due to equipped Aspect of Pestilent Points. Aspect of Bursting Venoms, Countering Poison Trap, and Preparation will reset Poison Imbuement, causing a large amount of stable poison damage. In addition, Jewels, Paragon Board effects, and Aspect of Corruption will also increase your damage.

Paragon Board

We create Paragon Board based on level 15 Rare Glyphs. Glyphs used on each board are:

• First Board: Devious
• Second Board: Canny on Cheap Shot
• Third Board: Efficacy on No Witnesses
• Fourth Board: Turf on Tricks of the Trade
• Fifth Board: Versatility on Leyrana’s Instinct
• Sixth Board: Control on Eldritch Bounty
• Seventh Board: Bane on Deadly Ambush

Vampiric Power

Undying for viability, Ravenous for attack speed, combined with Hectic, allows you to make more use of your Poison Imbuement. in addition. Flowing Veins can use Vampiric Curse on mobs, and combined with Accursed Touch, can cause more poison damage to enemies.

How To Play Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon?

This build is really easy to play. Use Poison Trap in conjunction with Death Trap, and mobs will be pulled to the center of Death Trap, while Poison Trap will knock them down. Using Puncture and Twisting Blades continuously and making sure to keep using Poison Imbuement without a cooldown will help you clear everything quickly.

If Poison Imbuement is on cooldown, use Death Trap to reset it. Don’t forget to keep track of the cooldowns on Poison Imbuement and Death Trap. They will reset soon. I hope you enjoyed this build guide and found it helpful or interesting, and have a nice day!

Are you tired of dying every 2 seconds? Are you sick of following builds and are not fulfilling what they’re saying?

Here, I’m going to be showing you a unique combo that is so overpowered. It will carry you to the endgame content. Any character that you play as in Diablo 4 Season 2 is going to benefit from this unique combo.

Andariel’s Visage

The first unique that we’re going to be talking about is Andariel’s Visage.

This Diablo 4 Item is an Uber Unique. If you need this unique, you just need a farm Duriel until it drops. This unique gives you more points into your stats, attack speed, life steal, poison resistance.

The main perk on this unique is that when you get a lucky hit, you have up to a 20% chance to trigger a Poison Nova that applies poison damage over 5 seconds.

The main reason we’re going to be using this unique right here is because of the life steal. Life steal works in the way that when you damage an enemy, you get some life back for the damage that you caused. And this is going to be huge when we combine it with our other unique.

But I’m going to show you how the life steal works right now.

Life Steal Test

All you need to do is to go over to a bunch of enemies and let them hit you. You will lose health in the process. But when you damage the enemies, your health is going back up.

This is huge for the endgame because when you’re in the endgame dungeons, you’re going to be getting attacked a lot and you’re going to be losing health very fast. But if you’re able to deal a lot of damage back, you’ll be getting that health back very quickly.

Temerity

The next unique that we’re going to be talking about is Temerity.

When you get Temerity, you’ll be getting a portion drop rate increase. You’ll also be getting an increase in the healing you receive. You’ll be getting a chance to recover more of your health. You’ll also be getting maximum life. And then, the main part is that when you heal beyond 100% life, you’ll be getting a barrier up to 80% for the next 8 seconds.

Barrier Test

All I have to do is go out into the wilderness and all I have to do is heal with my potions and I will get a barrier. So, this barrier is going to stay up for the next 8 seconds or until the barrier is destroyed.

Combo Test

Now that you have Andariel’s Visage and you also have Temerity, you’re going to be able to get barriers non-stop.

I have both of them equipped right now. All I have to do is go over to an enemy. When I hit them, I get the barrier straight away, and it just keeps applying to itself over and over.

If you are doing Nightmare Dungeons more than likely, you’re going to be taking more damage and your life is going to be going down faster. But if you’re able to do a lot of damage back and you’re able to hit multiple enemies at a time, you will be getting your life back and you will be getting these barriers very often.

AOE builds are very good for this unique combo because the more enemies you hit, the more damage you’re going to be doing, the more life you’ll be getting back, and the more barriers you will be getting. So, the likes of a Whirlwind Barbarian, a Trampleslide Druid or even a Twisting Blades Rogue, would be perfect for this. But no matter what build you make, you need to have plenty of Diablo 4 Gold.

With this combo, you can basically do any of the Overworld content and any events (such as Blood Harvest & Helltides). It’s very easy with this combo. You can also fight any of the bosses solo or in groups with this combo, and you will literally never die.

Also Read: How To Farm Uber Duriel & Uber Uniques Quickly In Diablo 4 Season 2?

Nightmare Dungeon Test

Now, you must be wondering how does this unique combo work in Nightmare Dungeons more so 90 + Nightmare Dungeons.

I will say the uniques definitely help out with your survivability like you will be able to tank a lot of damage because of these uniques.

My one issue is that in Season 2, a lot of the Nightmare Dungeons have a lot of on hit enemies, meaning that once they hit you, your health is completely gone and you will die.

This means that if you’re not paying attention to what’s happening on your screen and you don’t dodge or react in time, you will get one-shotted. No matter how much health and how much armor, you will get one-shotted.

When you’re using this build or any other build that’s out there, there will be times where you just die from not reacting or from complete BS. But realistically, it’s not. The build will get you through the Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons. But, unless you’re able to react in time or you know what situation you’re getting yourself into, you more than likely will end up dying.

But the thing is, with this unique combo, it will help you with your survivability, which hopefully helps you do more than you can already do. With a Necromancer, I’m able to do Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon with complete ease. But with the Druid, I was struggling.

The highest I was able to do without this unique combo was Tier 80. With this unique combo, it got me from 80 all the way up to Tier 100.

So, it definitely helped me with my survivability and I would highly recommend if you can get Andariel’s Visage. It’s an Uber Unique. But if you can get it, do try this combo. It does help the more obsolete builds become more relevant when you’re playing.

There’s a lot of fun builds out there and the Trampleslide build for the Druid is definitely my favorite one and it does help it do endgame content.

So, try out your other builds and maybe you will enjoy them more!

Most players have been having fun with the newly released Season 2 of Diablo 4, where one of the few endgame goals is summoning and killing Duriel for a chance for an extremely rare Diablo 4 Item, such as Uber Unique item. In order to get to Duriel though, players need to complete several steps. One of them involves gathering Living Steel from Helltides. 

Unfortunately, Helltides have been largely unchanged in Season 2, and players are voicing their complaints about it being too grindy, time restrictive and boring. 

So, in this guide, I’ll try my very best to guide you though the optimal way of farming Helltide, with many practical tips that you can use to make your Living Steel grind easier and faster. 

Before Entering The Helltide

When you enter the Helltide, you have to look at 2 things immediately: which zone is affected by the Helltide and how much time do you have until the top of the hour? 

The first question is important because the zone determines to number of Living Steel chests present at any given time. If the affected zone is Kehjistan, then there are 3 Living Steel chests, in any other case, there are 2 chests present on the map. 

The second thing, the time until the top of the hour, determines how much time you have until the chests change positions. In case you didn’t know, both the Living Steel chests and the Mystery chests disappear at the top of the hour, and respawn at different locations. 

For example, if the Helltide starts at 11:15 in a zone that is not Kehjistan, meaning we have 45 minutes until 12:00 to open 2 Living Steel chests, and then another 15 minutes until the Helltide ends, to open 2 more of them. These mechanisms are really important to understand, because your entire strategy revolves around them.  

Tips About Finding Helltide Events

Next, you should try to find an area in the Helltide, where 2 or 3 events are relatively close to each other. In order to maximize your Aberrant Cinder collection rate, you should do an event, and then move to check if another event is up. But you shouldn’t just rush between event locations. You should kill all the packs of monsters that are on the way. 

So, ideally, you should be moving between events and killing all monsters in between them. In case an event is not up, don’t wait for it to come back, always continue moving. 

To check for the locations of the events, I suggest using D4armory. You should be doing as many events as possible, and during the events, you should maximize the number of monsters spawned, and not the fastest possible completion. Because this way you can collect a lot of Diablo 4 Gold and XP. These are very important resources.

For example, on the Jar of Souls or the Blood collection events, you can get a lot more Aberrant Cinders if you only complete the objectives towards the end of the timer. So, try to maximize mob spawns instead of completion.  

It is possible to reset an event by relogging and changing the world tier, or teleporting to town and back. I do not recommend using this method. Because it doesn’t always work, and you can waste a lot of time by relogging or teleporting instead of actual farming.  

Also Read: S Tier Chain Lightning Build Can Dominate Diablo 4 Season 2!

Tips About Collecting Cinders

While you are collecting Cinders, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Number 1: do not open intractable objects. In general, they are not worth the time and don’t contain much useful stuff. There are only two exceptions to this: objects that have the red glow around them - these contain several Aberrant Cinders, which makes them worth opening. You should also click on Fiend Roses for both the crafting materials and the Cinders. 

Number 2: group up if you can. Collecting Cinders is much faster in a group. And even if you’re not, you can get Cinders from mobs that other players kill near your location. 

Number 3: do not die. This might be trivial, but dying is something that seriously sets you back by making you lose half of your cinders. Therefore, you should build your character in a way that minimizes the chance of death. 

Once you’re closing the top of the hour, you should look up the locations of the Living Steel chests. I suggest the map on D4armory to this as well. Make sure to start going for the chests with enough time, because there is a possibility that you get the bug affecting Living Steel chests where the chest simply does not appear for you. 

For example, you may encounter this situation, that is, D4armory may have told you where a certain chest is, but you did not find it. The way to fix this is to either log in and log out, or teleport to town and back to the location of the chest. You may have to try these solutions multiple times in order to make the chest appear, and this takes a relatively long time. So, calculate this into your route. 

Once you have opened the chests before the top of the hour, go back to the original farming method of completing events and killing monsters in between them. 

One additional thing to note is that you should unlock the Seaonal Blessing, the Urn of Helltides. Because it makes Living Steel chests have a small chance of containing 5 instead of 3 pieces of Living Steel. 

Lastly, when you have enough Cinders to open all the remaining chests on the map, go for them. Altogether, the maximum Living Steel you can collect from a Helltide ranges from 6 to 18. 6 being the worst-case scenario where there are 2 chests and the Helltide starts and ends at the top of the hour and there is no chest respawn, and 18 being the best-case scenario with a Kehjistan Helltide a good respawn timing. 

Here I want to introduce you to a very tanky Ball Lightning Sorcerer build using Temerity, Chill and Chain Lightning Enchant. This is a tank build that can clear consistently, and even the explosions from Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon won’t kill you easily.

In Patch 1.2, Ball Lightning’s damage per tick has been reduced, while it has increased the tick rate so that the total damage remains the same. The patch notes claim this is just a change to the tooltip. But the in-game behavior has also been changed to match. So, keep in mind that they will probably fix Ball Lightning during the season.

Scaling Damage

Now, what about Ball Lightning’s damage scaling? It increases the tick rate of Ball Lightning through Enhanced Ball Lightning. Vampiric Powers Ravenous maximizes movement speed and attack speed.

Mana Issues

Spam Ball Lightning also has mana issues. It can be solved by picking up Crackling Energy generated. You can generate a lot of Crackling Energy from Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning.

In addition, Focus Ring has “Resource Generation”, as well as “Maximum Mana” for helmets and Aspect of Concentration. If you haven’t taken damage in the last 2 seconds, it increased your mana regeneration by 40% - 50%.

As long as barriers do not collapse, this aspect is valid. This means that mana regeneration is almost always 1.5x higher. We don’t even need Prodigy’s Aspect. It solved the mana problem.

Frost Bolt Enchant

Next, why is Frost Bolt Enchant needed? This is due to a total reduction of nearly 40% in damage to cold enemies in Paragon. Glyph level 15 Chain Lightning Enchant can also inflict cold on distant enemies. That’s why I chose Frost Bolt Enchant.

Legendary Aspects

We also need to scale the damage via Legendary Aspects. What’s unusual about Ball Lightning is Elementalist’s Aspect and Accelerating Aspect. Among them, Chain Lightning Enchant can trigger Accelerating Aspect. Elementalist’s Aspect is also easy to activate when the mana is over 100 because there is a lot of Crackling Energy.

Alternatively, if you have enough Diablo 4 Gold budget, you can also use Esu’s Heirloom to increase your critical hit chance. It also has synergy with Vampiric Powers Ravenous, as it can convert movement speed into an increased critical rate. It increased movement speed by 75% after dodging, and you can increase movement speed to 200% cap.

Defense

For the defense part, this build can easily achieve 70% of all resistance. Paragon supplements Fire, Lightning and Cold, which can naturally reach 70%.

The ring’s sub-status should be Poison or Shadow. But it’s okay if not. Then the target armor value is above 13500. To increase armor value, always add the option “+Total Armor” to every rare piece of equipment, and amulets are no exception. You can achieve 13500 armor by equipping the highest level Diablo 4 items possible.

The rest of the time, you need to add long-range and short-range damage reduction. Damage reduction takes priority over armor. After that you need to add Distance DR and Close DR. It also stores all damage reduction via Vyr’s Mastery and Mage-Lord’s Aspect.

We also need Sanguine Brace’s damage reduction. In terms of recovery, Temerity will generate enchantments, and Undying will quickly restore the enchantment so that the enchantment will not be cut off.

Paragon Board

Finally, I will explain a little about this Paragon Board. Currently, this build equips items with chief power, but may lack resistance. If you don’t have enough resistance, change the partial Paragon node to 1.5% of the total resistance. Or, add intelligence to focus. Intelligence can also give you a little more resistance.

Outro

This concludes this tank Ball Lightning Sorcerer build guide. I think a lot of Ball Lightning builds in other guides ignore tank ability. With this build, you can easily pass NMD100. Of course, you can also quickly defeat Uber Lilith with this build. Good luck!