Diablo 4’s Druid is a class with quite a lot of build diversity and intricacy in its playstyle. The Tornado Druid Build in Diablo 4 is no exception, as it uses a variety of bear, wolf and storm skills to create Fortify, Barriers, movement speed, and trigger lots of procs for your build and playstyle. Here’s a closer look at our Diablo 4 Tornado Druid Build, featuring skills, paragon, and legendary items.

Diablo 4 Tornado Druid Build¶

So, the Diablo 4 Tornado Druid build is a build that will use Tornado as your primary damage spell, which will then synergize with your talents and other passives that are part of your Storm and Nature Magic-themed improvements. You will then look to bolster your strength, defensiveness, and other stats using other skills in the process.

• Basic Skill: Storm Strike > Enhanced Storm Strike > Fierce Storm Strike
• Core Skill: Tornado x5 > Enhanced > Primal Tornado
• Skill 1: Blood Howl > Enhanced > Preserving Blood Howl
• Skill 2: Hurricane x5 > Enhanced > Savage Hurricane
• Skill 3: Rampage > Enhanced > Natural Trample
• Skill 4: Cataclysm > Until you get certain legendaries, then you switch to Grizzly Rage

The basic premise of this build is you use Storm Strike, because that offers a solid Vuln spread to targets relatively easily, and generates the most spirit. It also does lightning damage, which synergizes with your passives, which you can read below.
You then use Tornado, which will lock onto targets and make the skill more reliable to use when you get the Tornado Legendary.

As for your skills, there’s some flexibility here:
Blood Howl is a solid defensive, which will restore your HP, and had the lowest cooldown of all Defensives. It also offers a large attack speed buff, which you can use offensively to spam Storm Strike for Spirit. Its base 20% HP restore is also very hand during Vuln windows. You may use Earth Bulwark if you would prefer some Unstoppable, as getting CC’d is the biggest threat to this build.

Hurricane is a core part of this build for two reasons. The Hurricane passive enhancement is very good for your lightning-themed passives in the tree. Meanwhile, it’s end talent you want that offers a 20% damage reduction to all targets hit with it, meaning it’s a very strong defensive skill.

Rampage is an optional part of this build. However, we think this is very important. The reason for it is that it is a valuable escape tool, that generates fortify. You can also use this to ram a pack of mobs into a surface, stunning them, and then making it even easier for your Tornadoes to lock onto packs and optimize their time dealing damage, since tornadoes still need to turn around to its lock-on target.

As for your final skill, you have two options. Cataclysm works well, thanks to its nature magic, lightning damage working with skulls, and having direct synergy with the talent that extends Hurricane and Cataclysms.It also makes proccing the lightning themed passives in the build very easy to accomplish, which makes your single target bossing when it gets going very easy to use.

Spirit Boons:¶

• Avians Wrath: 30% crit damage
• Wariness: 10% less damage from Elites
• Calamity: Extend the duration of Ultimate skills by 25%
• Calm before the Storm: Lucky Hit Nature Magic Skills have up to 10% chance to reduce the Cooldown of your Ultimate kill by 2 seconds.
• 5th: Either Scythe Talons for bonus crit for the crit amp scaling, or Overload, for more Lucky Hit and Lightning Damage procs for AOE cleave.

Passives:¶

• Core Passive 1: Heart of the Wild - Maximum Spirit increased by 3.
• Core Passive 2: Wild Impulses x3 - Your Core skills cost 9% more, but deal 15% more damage.
• Core Passive 3: Abundance x3 - Basic skills generate 18% more spirit. This equates to about 2.52 Spirit, but the game rounds down, giving you 2 Spirit more per attack, which is nice over a long fight.
• Core Passive 4: Predatory Instincts x3 - Critical Strike chance against Close enemies is increased by 6%
• Defensive Passive 1: Ancestral Fortitude x1 - Increase your Non-=-Physical Resistances by 5%
• Defensive Passive 2: Vigilance x3 - You gain a 15% Damage Reduction for 6 seconds after using a Defensive Skill.
• Wrath Passive 1: Elemental Exposure x1 - Lucky Hit: Your Storm Skills have up to a 10% chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 1.0 seconds.
• Wrath Passive 2: Endless Tempest x1: Hurricane and Cataclysm duration increased by 5%
• Wrath Passive 3: Bad Omen x3: Lucky Hit: Up to a 30% chance when dealing damage to a Vulnerable, Immobilized, or Stunned enemy that a Lightning Bolt also hits, dealing 55% of your attack power in nature magic damage.
• Wrath Passive 4: Electric Shock: Lucky Hit: Dealing Lightning Damage to enemies has up to a 15% chance to Immobilize for 3 seconds. If the target is already Immobilized, the lightning damage dealt to them is increased by 18% instead, - Direct synergy with your Hurricane and Storm Strike spam procs.
• Ultimate Passive 1: Defiance x3: Nature Magic Skills deal 125 increased damage to Elites.
• Ultimate Passive 2: Circle of Life x3: Nature Magic Skills that consume Spirit heal you for 5% of Maximum Life.
• Ultimate Passive 3: Resonance x3: Nature Magic Skills deal 6% increased damage. - The other parts of this passive have no benefit to you.
• Capstone: Perfect Storm - 15% increased damage to Vuln, Immobilized, or Stunned enemies - IE always with Storm Strike’s proccing for Vuln and Immobilize.

Stat Priority, Gems and Malignant Hearts¶

1. Vuln Damage
2. Crit Chance
3. Crit Strike Damage
4. Lucky Hit modifiers
5. Spirit Reduction
6. Damage in general
7. Defensiveness options

As for Gems, you want:

• Emeralds for Weapons, as they grant Crit damage to Vuln enemies. Easy scaling with lightning vulnerability and Exploit Glyph.
• Skulls in Jewelrry for Armor upgrades.
• Sapphire for Armor for Damage reduction while Fortified, presuming you have Temerity.

With Season 1, you now get access to Malignant Hearts, which offer a variety of bonuses. For the Diablo 4 Tornado Druid Build, you will want at least one of the following, depending on your needs at the time:

• Inexorable Force - You will want Grizzly Rage, so, this allows you to pull enemies closer to you, making tornado movement even easier for better damage uptime.
• The Unconstrained Beast - Grizzly Rage has unstoppable, so this can grant a free CC escape if you find yourself caught.
• The Dark Dance - Tornados are fairly safe, so, you can empower your Tornados at the cost of Life, especially if you have Temerity.

Legendary Effects & Uniques¶

This build will require a few legendary effect to work, with one absolutely necessary, with another two very much preferred to complete the build, but is not exactly needed, as they are tied behind the Unique Helmet, Tempest Roar. These three are:

• Stormchaser’s Aspect - Tornadoes now lock onto targets, from 1-6 targets. You want the three targets on the Necklace, which brings it to 5, or 6 on a two-handed weapon. It is a random drop chance, so you must get lucky and farm it.
• Aspect of Rampaging Werebeast: The duration of Grizzly Rage is increased by 1-5 seconds. Additionally, Critical Strikes while Grizzly Rage is active increases your Crit Strike Damage by 10% for the duration.
• Dire Wolf’s Aspect: Grizzly Rage now Shapeshifts you into a Dire !Werewolf. As a Dire !Werewolf, you gain movement speed instead of damage, and between 30-50% spirit reduction bonus. In addition, kills heal you for 10% of your maximum life.

The idea behind these three legendary effects is that you need the Tornado one to get the build working. The better your lock on value, the better your Tornadoes are art not randomly spinning away from foes. This makes your build great for pack clearing, and staying on top of the boss by not paining away from them, getting as much damage as possible out of your Tornadoes.

As for the Grizzly Rage-themed legendary effects, these are very strong with this Diablo 4 Druid Tornado Build. The reason why is that our ten-second Hurricane can proc crits very fast for us, ramping our total crit damage up, while the Spirit cost reduction also allows our Tornadoes to be flung out more, also ramping our crit chance procs even higher for more crit damage. When you consider that Grizzly Rage is active for a minimum of 14-19 seconds, depending on Werebeast rolls, and then with your Spirit Boons on top, you can get around 20 seconds from your Ultimate in best case scenario. That’s a lot of time to ramp your critical strike chance, damage, and spam tornadoes in.

There’s also Tempest Roar: Unique Helmet that turns Storm skills into !Werewolf Skills. You absolutely need this for the Storm Skills to work in your Dire !Werewolf form, meaning Grizzly Rage does not work if you don’t have this equipped. The other nice bit is that you get Lucky Hit which has a chance to allow you Storm Skills to grant 4 Spirit, which is nice since Tornado can attack several times, granting a lot of Spirit regen, as will Hurricane. Temerity is a decent unique, as it will allow you better defensives with Barrier generation.

Now you have some other options to play with:

• Aspect of Might - 20% damage reduction with Basic Attacks. So that 40% damage reduction while Hurricane is active - very tanky indeed.
• Temerity - unique pants that, when you heal for more HP than you Max, it converts into a Barrier. This is nice for Blood Howl, and the healing from packs while you have Grizzly Rage active., but its not needed per say.
• Wind Striker Aspect - You can fish for a lot of crits with this build, so, these help with your mobility, but again, are not entirely needed since you have Trample.
• Mother’s Embrace: This Unique you get by completing the campaign. Use this unique, as when you have a 5-target Tornado lock on, you get 40% spirit refunded, which means even more spirit to spam.
• Aspect of Disobedience - More armor modifiers for melee combat defensiveness.
• Runeworker’s Conduit - Crit Strikes with Storm Skills that you cast charge the air around you for 1-2 seconds, causing a lightning Bolt to hit an enemy in the area periodically. Duration can be extended by Critical Strike Chance.
• Overcharged Aspect: Lucky Hit: Chance when dealing lightning damage to overload the target for 3 seconds, causing direct damage to pulse, dealing additional damage to surrounding enemies.

Paragon and Glyphs for the Diablo 4 Druid Tornado Build¶

Below are some suggested Glyphs for you to use for your Diablo 4 Druid Tornado build, followed by the most ideal spot you can place them in, presuming you are 6 boards deep, level 100, and have level 20 Glyphs. While you’re leveling, you will still need to swap some glyphs around to different builds, since some grant better value on the starting board, but then getter better value elsewhere. It’s something to be mindful of as you progress naturally.

Exploit: Additional bonus grants the user the ability to mass trigger Vuln on an enemy every 20 seconds when its hit for the first time. This is great for your Capstone damage bonus. It is best used on the Constricting Tendrils Board.

Spirit: Core Skills deal increased Crit Strike. The additional bonus increases the damage an enemy takes by you by 2% scaling upwards, for 20 seconds. Again, this synergizes with the Grizzly Rage window and the crit ramping you get from that Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast. You want to use this on the Heightened Malice board.

!Werewolf: Increases damage while in !Werewolf form. Additional bonus grants 10% damage reduction while in werewolf form. It also synergizes with Rampaging Werebeast too. If you get the unique helmet that turns storm skills into werewolf skills, then this means your storm skills benefit from this bonus. You can use this on your starting board when you get the helmet.

Electrocute: Paragon nodes nearby gain within-range gain bonuses to their lightning damage and damage reduction modifiers. An additional bonus: Your Lightning Damage has an increased chance to critically strike enemies who are Stunned, immobilized, or Frozen. Use this later on when you have other boards filled with lots of Paragon nodes, as this is largely a Stagger and AOE Perk.

Earth and Sky: Grants bonuses to magic nodes nearby. Additional bonus grants Nature Magic Skills to damage CC and Vulnerable enemies more. Another passive one you can place later on when you get in range of magic nodes on alter boards as it is only a minor passive buff.

Here is a list of the legendary perks you want to grab for your build:

• Constricting Tendrils: Lucky Hit: Nature Magic Skills have up to 15% chance to entangle enemies with Vines, immobilizing them for 2 seconds and Poisoning them.
• Heightened Malice: While there are 3 or more Poisoned enemies, Nearby, you deal 4% increased damage. Huge AOE buff after you get Constricting Tendrils. This is not too necessary if you want to skip the legendary perk, and b-line the glyph slot and go to the next board.
• Ancestral Guidance: After spending 75 Spirit, you deal 30% increased damage for 5 seconds. - Huge must have!
• Thunderstruck: Storm Skills deal 30% increased Critical Strike damage against Vulnerable or Immobilized enemies. Again this is a very valuable ultimate perk you need, thanks to the free Vuln procs and ramping crit in your ultimate 20 seconds window.