If you’re looking to play a Druid, and want a build that provides incredible burst while being tanky, then you may consider the Werebear form as your go-to option. To play a Diablo 4 Druid Werebear build effectively, you will need to focus on Fortify while also learning to kite early to maintain your Fortify and Healthy status. All in all, you will be treating your Fortify bonuses and Healthy as if it’s a resource in themselves, which will be the core of your damage and your defense at the same time.

The reason for its is because the Werebear Core Skill, Pulverize, will grant guaranted Overpower at certain points, meaning this Core Skill has a very high damage ceiling wehn it goes, off, and especially if it crits! If you like the idea of being a tanky juggernaut, bursting enemies with its sheer mass, then this Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Pulverize build is for you.

Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Pulverize Build: Skills and Passives¶

The core of your skills will look as follows, followed by the recommended skill nodes you want to use.

• Basic Skill: Maul or Earth Spike You are using the Basic skill for Fortify farm, so you can use either, depending if you want ranged or melee, but Earth Spike is typically the play once you get Vasily’s Prayer, a unique item that almost seem to be guaranteed dropped in WT3 in the early 50s range.
• Core Skill: Pulverize - Slam the ground around you for AOE damage. Enhanced grant Overpower for how many seconds you remain healthy. Raging Pulverize - Enemies hit with Overpower Pulverize are stunned.
• ** Skill 1: Earthen Bulwark** - Grants a Barrier to help with shielding, with later upgrades used to grant Fortify.
• Skill 2: Demoralizing Roar - Use this it lower the damage of enemies, grant yourself Fortify, which makes it easier to keep your Fortify buffs and keep those earth skill passives activated.
• Skill 3: Trample - Turn into a Werebear and trample in a direction, knocking back enemies. Enemies who collide with a structure are stunned for three seconds and take additional damage. You also want Enhanced Trample for more bonus single and AOE damage, and Natural trample for extra Fortify.
• Skill 4: Grizzly Rage - For ten seconds, gain 20% bonus damage, 20% damage reduction, and your damage bonus increases for 3% each second while in this form. Kills extend the duration for 1 second for up to 10 additional seconds. Prime Grizzly Rage grants Unstoppable, and supreme grants more fortify per second grizzly rage is active.

The general idea behind the build is that the Werebear Druid build is all about getting Fortify. Fortify will make you incredibly tanky on top of your large health pool, allowing you to maintain the Healthy bonuses. In addition, Your Life pool and Fortify will combine to boost the Overpower damage, which is a damage type that scales with the skill’s damage, alongside Life and Fortify, meaning you will gain your burst damage via your tanky HP and Fortify stats. This will be your main DPS boost window, making the build work.

The three skills you want to support the build is the Earthern Bulwark, Demoralizing Roar, and Trample. These three skills all generate Fortify, while either granting you a Barrier to shield incoming damage, lower the enemy’s attack power, so they deal less damage, or grant movement speed, and potentially some CC if you manage to fling enemies into a wall.

The final skill you want is the Grizzly Rage, which is your primary boss-killing tool. This will increase your damage drastically, and that will also scale your skill damage, which will improve your overpower damage. The added damage reduction means your Fortify likely isn’t going to break either. All in all, its a huge overpower buff for your Pulv’s Healthy synergy.

You’ll find that with this build, you will be incredibly tanky, rarely die, and deal heavy burst damage, while also being very handy for group party combat if you want to play a tank role for your friend group or guild.

Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Pulverize Build: Passives¶

As for the passives, you will want to invest in

• Defensive Posture and Nature’s Resolve, which are passives in the ultimate tree. These two passives have six nodes, which grant bonus fortify. Defensive Posture increases the Fortify you gain from all sources by percentages, while Nature’s resolve grants small chance to gain a small amount of fortify when you are hit. These are decent tools for building your fortify higher and also generating more through passive combat.
• Mending + Provocation: You want one point in Mending so you can get Provocation, which grants guaranteed to overpower while your remain in Werebear from for 30 seconds. Considering all your skills are bear form, this should be free guaranteed burst for your build, especially for your Maul and Trample
• Capstone: Ursine Strength - Gain 20% additional maximum life while in Werebear form and for three seconds after leaving bear form. While you’re Healthy, deal 20% increased damage.

Your Capstone is very important; you must get it as soon as you spend your 34th skill point. This capstone grants 20% max life, which is huge for buffing how much life you can lose before you lose your Healthy buff. Not to mention more life scales with Overpower, your primary damage tool on your Pulv core skill. You also get 20% damage bonus while Healthy, meaning if you can keep your Healthy and Fortify status up, you will be borderline dealing 20% more damage at all times. It is a huge buff to the build.

The other important thing is that you also want to take passive points into earth-themed passives. The reason for this is because of the of a legendary called Aspect of the Ursine Horror. This is a key legendary, as it turns your Pulverize into an earth skill.This allows it to benefit from damage modifiers from the earth skill, which is important, as there is a lot of synergy between Earth passives, Fortify, and Overpower, further adding to the Pulv damage ceiling.

So, the earth passives you want to get, and only when you get that aspect are:

• Crushing Earth: Earth Skills deal 5% increased damage to Slowed, Stunned, Immobilized or Knocked Back Enemies, per talent point invested, up to 15%. - Scales with your Pulv stun and you Trample knock back / stun.
• Stoneguard: When you have Fortify for over 50% of your Life, your Earth skills gain 4% damage, per talent point invested, up to 12%. - Another free damage boost to Pulv.
• Safeguard - Crits add more Fortify - Generally a nice improvement as another source of free Fortify without thinking about it.

As you can see, this entire build just keeps ramping the modifiers of your Pulv’s total damage, allowing it to scale the more your Healthy, Fortified, and with other modifiers. So, when the stars align for CC’d mobs with everything else on top, you do some serious Pulving, and Overpowering damage when those guaranteed moments come in.

Spirit Boon Companion Buffs¶

The Druid’s unique system is that of the Animal spirit boons. As you progress through the story, you will get called to do side quests to grant you spirit boon buffs, which are permanent passive buffs to your character. You can take one passive bonuses from each animal, and when you’ve got four, you can get a fifth one, and select any perk from any animal to be the fifth.

• Stag: Wariness - Take 10% reduced damage from Elites
• Eagle: Scythe Talons - 5% increased crit strike chance or Avian Wrath for 30% crit damage, if you find you’re crittin often enough anyway.
• Snake: Obsidian Slam - Kills stack, and when it reaches its max, the next Earth Skill will Overpower. It means Pulverize Overpowers, if you have set it to be an Earth Skill via your legendary effects.
• Wolf: Calamity - Extends the duration of Ultimate Skills by 25%.
• Fifth - Calm before the Storm: Lucky Hit: Nature Magic Skills have up to a 105 Chance to reduce you ultimate CD by 2 seconds.

Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Build: Stats¶

The main thing you want on your gear are the following stats

• Improved damage: Core Skills, Werebear Skills are both equally good.
• Overpower damage
• Crit chance
• Crit Damage
• Healthy bonuses
• Willpower and Strength - Strength grants armor, while Willpower grants increased healing received and overpower damage. You need a lot of willpower to make the healing received noticeable, but, you need a lot less to increase overpower damage,
• Life - You need lots of life before you can start seeing noticeable effects from percentage Fortify boosts, but, life is generally decent and makes your Healthy window last longer.

As for gems:

• Appropriate leveled Sapphire for damage reduction while Fortified
• Emerald in weapons for Vulnerable enemies, as it scales with Exploit very well.
• Skulls for jewelry for armor, or you can opt for Diamonds for elemental resistance.

Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Leveling Build in Season 1¶

With Season 1, you now get access to Malignant Hearts, which offer a variety of bonuses. For the Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Pulverize Build, you will want some of the following:

• Inexorable Force - Pulls distant enemies to you while you’re in Grizzly Rage. It makes grouping annoying ranged enemies easier for better Pulv hits.
• The Unconstrained Beast - Free unstoppable when you get CC’d.
• The Lionheart - Heal while you have Barrier from Earthen Bulwark or from Temerity.
• Prudent Heart - Temporary immunity when you take more than 20% of your total Life in a single hit.

Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Build: Legendaries & Uniques¶

Below is a list of legendaries you can get for your build, depending on luck, aspects available and more. Adjust your build as appropriate, as there are more legendaries and uniques than there are slots available on your character.

• Aspect of Rampaging Werebeast: Duration of Grizzly Rage is increased by 1 seconds. In addition, critical strikes while grizzly rage is activated increase your crit damage by 10% for your remaining duration.
• Aspect of Retaliation: Your Core Skills deal up to 20% increased damage based on your percent health fortified.
• Aspect of the Ursine Horror: Your pulverize is now also an Earth Skill. After casting Pulverize, tectonic spikes continue to deal damage over two seconds.
• Mangled Aspect: Gain spirit when you are struck as a Werebear.
• Ballistic Aspect: When you have Fortified Life, your earth skills gain +3. - Only use this legendary if you have Ursine Horror, which greatly improves your Pulverize skill.
• Insatiable Fury - A unique item that drops from world tier 3 onwards randomly. This grant you Werebear skills +2 ranks, which adds even more damage scaling from your attack power for Pulv, and Maul too. This is your grand prize unique piece of gear, but, you don’t need it to get it working.
• Vasily’s Prayer - A unique helmet that turns Earth Skills into Werebear Skills.
• Shockwave Aspect - Pulverize creates a shockwave that travels forward, dealing a percentage amount of its damage.
• Aspect of Mending Stone - Duration of Earthen Bulwark is increased by 6 seconds. In addition, killing an enemy with Earth Skills replenishes x of your active Earthen Bulwark’s Barrier.
• Aspect of Trampled Earth - Trample now casts Landslide. Trample is also a nature and earth skill.
• Aspect of Aftershock - Landslide’s earth pillars each strike a second time. - use this is you happen to have Trampled Earth, otherwise ignore this.
• Aspect of Disobedience - Grants bonus armor when you deal any from of damage. - Armor buff that scales very well when you mass pull and doe AOE effects with trample and pulv effects.
• Crashstone Aspect - Earth Skills deal more crit damage to crowd controlled enemies. Its not necessary, but if you want to do more earth focus skills, then its okay.

Paragon Board & Glyphs for the Druid Pulverize Build in Diablo 4¶

• Stating Board - Exploit: You need this because Werebear doesn’t get Vulnerable, and so, this helps spread Vuln in your Pulverize’s shockwaves, which is great for when you can cast multiple Pulverizes. You’ll move this to another board later on, and replace it with Werebear when you get to your third Glyph slot.
• Ancestral Guidance - Werebear Glyph: Standard Damage increase while in bear, which you will always be in, thanks to Vasily’s Prayer and Insatiable Fury. You want to move Undaunted Glyph here later on when you have better stats, but, for now, getting flat Werebear damage here is good.
• Survival Instincts - Exploit goes here when you reach this board.
• Constructing Tendrils - Spirit: Core Skills deal increased Crit. This has synergy with Overpower crits for the huge damage windows your Pulv guaranteed Overpowers have. This board has the best in range Dex nodes, so thats why you use this here.
• Earthen Devastation - Earth and Sky: Lots of Magic Nodes around here for your earth themed kit, and its a nice nature magic damage proc against CC’d and Vuln targets, which your build does both, thanks to Earth Spike and Pulv stuns, with your Exploit’s Vulnerability.
• Your final option to look for another board, and place a generic Glyph in, or to spend remainder paragon points on other nodes on the boards you have already unlocked. The latter is likely more optimal, but, at this point its preferential, as you already have your must haves.

This concludes the Diablo 4 Druid Werebear Build. You now know how the build works, how tanky you get, and how that tankyness equals more damage. Once again, this is a slow playstyle, but, when you get those tanky stats rolling, and get into the level 25-35 range, this build will begin to slap damage out while your defensive stat pool will be unmatchable.

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