Fleshrender – Druid Build for Diablo 4 (Season 9)

Build introduction

The Fleshrender Druid devastates Nearby Poisoned enemies by using Defensive Skills for a large burst of Poison damage. The Fleshrender Druid is back and strong because of a few interactions:

• The Petrify Rank 5 effect resets the cooldown on all other skills, including the Defensive Skills that trigger the Fleshrender effect.
• The Xan rune gives easy uptime to Critically Overpower all damage sources.

The Fleshrender Druid is sometimes called the Singing, Roaring or Shout Druid. This version of the Fleshrender Druid is less sing-y, and will primarily use Earthen Bulwark and Cyclone Armor as its Defensive Skill triggers, with Debilitating Roar and Blood Howl as buff maintenance secondary skill triggers.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

The following Unique Items are required for build functionality to get started on the Fleshrender Druid:

Required Uniques

Fleshrender

Airidah’s Inexorable Will

Vasily’s Prayer

Further, you will want your Petrify cooldown to be below 10 seconds for the smoothest play. This is done with Airidah’s Inexorable Will, tempers on Amulet and Jewelry, and other sources. Check out the Petrify Cooldown Management section for more information.

This build uses Runewords as a key mechanism for significant damage output multipliers. The ZanXan combination gives high uptime on Critical Overpowers for all damage, including the damage triggers from Fleshrender. Access to Runewords requires the Vessel of Hatred expansion. This is an Eternal-friendly build.

Quick Navigation

This guide covers everything necessary to get started on your Fleshrender Druid adventure, including Skill Tree points, Paragon, Gearing, and Seasonal updates. Navigate straight to hot topics here:

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Earthen BulwarkCyclone ArmorDebilitating RoarBlood HowlPetrifyStorm Strike

There’s several flex options for Skilling that can change based on the content, like speedfarming or pit-pushing. Check the Variant Options section to optimize for your content.

If you are missing skill points, complete Renown events in each zone. See how these Skills play in the Rotation and Playstyle section.

Druid Class Mechanic – Spirit Boons

Druids unlock powerful Spirit Boon passives, giving offerings to the animal spirits to receive their Blessing. Once fully unlocked, activate the final Boon by Spirit Bonding with one of the four animal spirits to take two passives from that row.

Check the Variant Options section for more ways to fit your preferred playstyle.

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Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

Check these sections for all important Fleshrender Druid gearing considerations to improve the power of your character in the endgame.

Legendary Aspects

Gear slots with multiple options are listed in recommended priority. Any slot with a non-required Mythic Unique or Unique Item will include a valid alternative legendary power to use while still leveling and gearing. Combine these with the right stat priorities.

Slot	Gem	Aspect	Unique/Legendary Aspect Power
1 Handed Mace	Grand Ruby	Fleshrender	Casting a Defensive Skill deals damage to Nearby Poisoned enemies, increased by 50% for every 100 Willpower you have.
Totem	Grand Ruby	Aspect of the Changeling’s Debt	You deal 25-65% increased damage while hitting a Poisoned enemy as a Werebear or a Crowd Controlled enemy as a Werewolf.
Helm	Zan Xan	Vasily’s Prayer	Your Earth Skills are now also Werebear Skills and Fortify you for 2-5% of your Maximum Health.
Chest	Yul Qax	Shroud of False Death Insatiable Fury	If you haven’t dealt damage in the last 2 seconds, gain Stealth and 40% Movement Speed.
Gloves		Fists of Fate Aspect of Creeping Death	Your attacks randomly deal 1% to 200-300% of their normal damage.
Pants	Grand Sapphire	Tibault’s Will	You deal 10-20% increased damage while Unstoppable and for 5 seconds after. When you become Unstoppable, gain 50 of your Primary Resource.
Boots		Flickerstep	Each enemy you Evade through reduces your active Ultimate Cooldown by 2-4 seconds, up to 10 seconds.
Amulet	Grand Diamond	Aspect of Natural Balance	Casting a Storm Skill grants your Earth Skills 50-70% Critical Strike Damage for 4 seconds. Casting a Earth Skill increases the Critical Strike Chance of Storm Skills by 10-15% for 4 seconds.
Ring 1	Grand Diamond	Airidah’s Inexorable Will	Casting an Ultimate Skill Pulls in Distant enemies, dealing Physical damage to them and increasing by 10% for every 1 point of Willpower you have. This effect repeats once more 5 seconds later.
Ring 2	Grand Diamond	Vehement Brawler’s Aspect	Casting an Ultimate Skill increases your damage by 10-30% for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill Ranks.

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Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

Each line of affixes is listed in order of importance, and some alternatives are given. The bolded affixes are the most important targets for Masterworking upgrades. Unique Items cannot be Tempered, but can be Masterworked.  Check the Tempering guide and Masterworking guide for more details about these topics.

Slot	Gear Affixes	Tempering Manual Affixes
Unique 1 Handed Mace Fleshrender	Willpower Ranks to Backlash Defensive Cooldown Reduction Ranks to Defensive Skills
Totem – Legendary Aspect	Willpower Maximum Life Cooldown Reduction Luck Hit Chance	Elemental Surge — Night – Chance to Deal Poison Damage Earth Finesse – Earth Lucky Hit Chance OR Worldly Finesse – Overpower Damage
Unique Helm Vasily’s Prayer	Maximum Life Willpower% Ranks to Defensive Posture Armor
Mythic Chest Shroud of False Death	All Stats Maximum Life Damage on Next Attack After Entering Stealth Resource Generation
Unique Chest Insatiable Fury	Maximum Life Ursine Strength’s Bonuses Ranks to Iron Fur Werebear Overpower Damage
Unique Gloves Fists of Fate	Lucky Hit Chance Critical Strike Chance Attack Speed Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable for 3 Seconds
Gloves – Legendary Aspect	Willpower Maximum Life Attack Speed Resistance to All Elements	Nature Magic Innovation – Cyclone Armor Active Size Earth Finesse – Earth Lucky Hit Chance OR Worldly Finesse – Overpower Damage
Unique Pants Tibault’s Will	All Stats Maximum Life Maximum Resource Damage Reduction while Unstoppable
Unique Boots Flickerstep	Movement Speed Lightning Resistance Damage Reduction from Close Enemies Ultimate Damage
Amulet – Legendary Aspect	Willpower% Ranks to Envenom Ranks to Toxic Claws Ranks to Quickshift	Ultimate Efficiency —  Druid – Petrify Cooldown Earth Finesse – Earth Lucky Hit Chance OR Worldly Finesse – Overpower Damage
Unique Ring Airidah’s Inexorable Will	Willpower Damage to Close Enemies Lucky Hit Chance Ultimate Skill Cooldown Reduction
Ring – Legendary Aspect	Willpower Maximum Life Attack Speed Resistance to All Elements	Ultimate Efficiency —  Druid – Petrify Cooldown Earth Finesse – Earth Lucky Hit Chance OR Worldly Finesse – Overpower Damage

There is, unfortunately, not a high-value Weapon Augment slot, so the Poison Damage Lucky Hit is taken. This will not apply Poisoned Condition to enemies.

The offensive temper slot has a valid choice between:

• Slightly more Earth Lucky Hit from hits of Innate Earthen Bulwark to trigger Lucky Hit triggers like Sinister Tendrils. This is good value for using Calm Before the Storm Spirit Boon
• Topend damage from minor additive pool additions like Overpower Damage.

Cooldown Reduction to Petrify is high value. Try to target Greater Affix on the Airidah’s Inexorable Will and Mastercraft as available until Petrify is below 10 second cooldown.

Attack Speed is a minor gain in faster spell queueing for your Skills.

Critical Strike Chance is covered by the Xan Runeword, and will not need gear affix investment.

After gearing, look at progression systems like Paragon next.

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Uniques and Mythic Uniques

The following Unique Items are required, recommended, or optional for the Fleshrender Druid:

• Fleshrender is the primary source of damage for this build, doing a burst of damage to Poisoned Enemies after using a Defensive Skill.

• Vasily’s Prayer makes Earth Skills into Werebear skills. This includes Petrify and Earthen Bulwark. This also means the Fleshrender burst triggered from Earthen Bulwark has both the Earth and Werebear tags for damage multipliers.

• Insatiable Fury has strong gearing affixes and gives Skill Ranks to all Werebear Skills. With Vasily’s Prayer, this includes Earth Skills and Well.

• Fists of Fate gives easy Vulnerability application, a moderate damage multiplier average, and is a large source of Lucky Hit. Lucky Hit is a large boost for effects like Sinister Tendrils Poison application, and for Lucky Hits like Calm Before The Storm spirit boon.
  • Legendary Gloves are a valid choice as well. Aspect of Creeping Death is a moderate multiplier that can help get through mobbing or speedrunning can be selected. If legendary gloves with high Greater Affixes and strong mastercraft to Willpower can be found, it can be better than Fists of Fate. There are some other aspect options that would help better with Bossing, such as Conceited Aspect.

• Tibault’s Will is a strong damage multiplier, and its effect will constantly be active thanks to Enhanced Earthen Bulwark.

• Flickerstep gives Ultimate Cooldown Reduction when evading through enemies. This can either be essential for maintaining the Rotation rhythm in push content, or less than useful in speed content where things are dying too fast, or during bosses when Petrify Cooldown is already taken care of. The Damage Reduction while Close is a strong category of defense that can protect your Overpower’s Life and Fortify.

• Airidah’s Inexorable Will is the primary source of high Ultimate Cooldown Reduction% for Petrify, and grips in enemies on and after Ultimate cast. Getting Greater Affix in the Ultimate Cooldown Reduction can be the biggest difference in function for this build.

Mythic Unique Items

• Shroud of False Death As with nearly all druids builds, Shroud is a strong Mythic Unique item, granting +1 in all Skill Passives and decent Gearing Affixes. The boost to Skill Passives means gains in damage multipliers, damage reduction, fortify, and various utility.

Check our Unique Item Target-farming guide for information on where to find everything you need.

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Gems and Runewords

The following are the recommended Gem and Runeword setups for the Landslide Druid:

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Grand Ruby for Overpower Damage	Grand Sapphire For increased Willpower	Grand Diamond For All Resistances

Horadric Jewels

Seasonal Players can use these Horadric Jewels, placed in jewelry gear slots. Check out the Horadric Spell section for all available options.

Jewel	Description
Scornful Light	You deal 20% and take 10% more Elemental damage.
Idol From Below	You gain 6% primary stat, 6% maximum life and you are always Unhindered. However, you will be hunted in Sanctuary’s darkest places by Jewel Guardians who were entombed to protect this relic.
Elemental Brand	Your Catalytic Skill deals 33% damage of your Infusion’s element over 3 seconds. Lucky Hit: Dealing damage of your Infusion’s element has up to a 33% chance to trigger its secondary effect.

Runewords

Use these Runeword combinations for the Fleshrender Druid, placed into Armor Slots.

Runeword Combination	Effects
Zan Xan	Zan – Gain: 150 Offering. Cast an Ultimate Skill. Xan – 300 Offering. Overflow: Increased Duration. Your next attack will cause your hits to be a guaranteed Critical Strike and Overpower for 0.35 seconds.
Yul Qax	Yul – Gain: 50 Offering. Cast a Skill with a Cooldown. Qax – Requires: 400 offering. Overflow: Further Increased Damage. Cooldown: 1 second. Casting a Skill other than a Basic or Defensive spends all of your Primary Resource to increase your damage up to 100% for 1 second.

Runewords use a conditional Rune of Ritual to generate Offering. The Offering is consumed by the Rune of Invocation to trigger its effect. Runes replace Gems in gear with two sockets. Up to two sets of Runeword Pairs can be placed at a time.

Xan will provide a high volume of periodic Critical Overpowers. Qax will give a strong periodic damage multiplier.

Situationally Ahu can be a better trigger than Yul; it will be better during Mobbing but worse during Bossing.

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Paragon Board

The following are the preferred Glyphs, Boards, and pathing recommended for making the most of the Fleshrender Druid.

The road to max Paragon is long. The above Paragon tabs show the following:

• The BASE SETUP tab spends 50 fewer points than the max 328 points, taking stricter pathing to take all most all Legendary, Rare and Magic Nodes, and activates all Glyph Nodes with their secondary effects.
• The FULL SETUP tab completes the paragon board in its final form, filling in the rest of the board to get the rest of the desired Magic and Rare Nodes, filling out Glyph additives, and then spending the rest of the points on Willpower to scale Fleshrender.

Glyphs have two significant breakpoint increases. At Level 15, the glyph grows in radius and gains a special effect. At Level 46, the glyph grows to max radius and gains a strong conditional damage multiplier.

Glyphs are placed as if they are at least Level 15+ in radius. Total Boards placed are now limited to a max of 5; the Starter Board and four Class Boards. Rotate boards as necessary.

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Horadric Spell (Season 9)

Season 9: Sins of the Horadrim offers seasonal Powers accessed from a Powers tab on the character Sheet and Horadric Jewels placed into Jewelry slots to augment these Powers.

The Horadric Catalyst is equipped to a Skill on the Skill Bar, triggered on the Skill’s use. One Infusion adds effects and modifies the damage type of the Catalyst, and three Arcana enhance the Catalyst or provide extra effects on Catalyst trigger.

The Horadric Catalyst is equipped to a Skill on the Skill Bar, triggered on the Skill’s use. One Infusion adds effects and modifies the damage type of the Catalyst, and three Arcana enhance the Catalyst or provide extra effects on Catalyst trigger.

Pushing

Type	Power	Description
Catalyst, Attached to Earthen Bulwark	Astral Pillar	Shape an Ethereal Column that Taunts for 3.0 seconds. Piercing waves flow from it and deal damage, until you create another one or move too far away.
Infusion	Corrosive Vapor	Your Spell Catalyst now deals Poison and or Poisoning damage. Bonus: Enemies damaged by it take Poisoning damage over 4 seconds. This effect can only happen on each enemy every 3 seconds. While equipped, your Poison Damage Bonus is equal to that of your highest Damage Type Bonus. Rank 5: Deactivates monster Vampiric effects for 5 seconds.
Arcana	Fractured Core	Denial – Your Catalyst deactivates monster Damage Resistance Aura effects for 2.5 seconds, but you take 10% more stacking damage for the same time (+0.5 each rank).
Arcana	Potent Alloy	Denial – Your Catalyst destroys enemy Barriers and Knocks them Down for 1.0 seconds after the removal (+0.8 each rank).
Arcana	Bloody Charm	Denial – Your Catalyst gains a specialized Execute effect for non-Boss enemies with 10% or less Life. (+2% each rank). Astral Pillar: Will launch additional waves towards Executable non-Boss enemies to Execute them.

Most Catalysts are functional and can be played by preference. Other setups can work outside push content, such as:

• (Speedfarm) Propulsion with Floaty Bobble, Gleaming Conduit and Bloody Charm blinks to enemies, and grants movement speed on execute.

Horadric Jewels

Use these Jewels, placed in jewelry gear slots, to enhance the Horadric Spell:

Jewel	Description
Scornful Light	You deal 20% and take 10% more Elemental damage.
Idol From Below	You gain 6% primary stat, 6% maximum life and you are always Unhindered. However, you will be hunted in Sanctuary’s darkest places by Jewel Guardians who were entombed to protect this relic.
Elemental Brand	Your Catalytic Skill deals 33% damage of your Infusion’s element over 3 seconds. Lucky Hit: Dealing damage of your Infusion’s element has up to a 33% chance to trigger its secondary effect.

There are some situationally useful Jewels to consider:

• (Cooldown) In Early Gearing while you still need better Petrify cooldown, use Luminate Eye, with your Catalyst affixed to Petrify. Replaces Elemental Brand.
• (Qol) While Idol From Below is powerful, If the Jeweled Guardians are bothersome, replace it with another like Myriad Stone or Luminate Eye.

Mercenaries

Once unlocked, Mercenaries are followers that aid the Player in combat. A main mercenary is chosen to fight alongside you, granting strong buffs or perks, and a secondary Mercenary is chosen to periodically Reinforce you under a chosen Opportunity condition.

Main Mercenary – Subo, the Drunken Archer

• Skills: Wire Trap, Ready At Hand, Cover Fire, Opening Fire

Reinforcement – Raheir, the Shieldbearer

• Reinforcement Ability – Crater
• Opportunity – Petrify

Subo’s Opening Fire Critical Strike Damage debuff is a strong damage gain. The minimap target tracking is high quality of life on top. Other Mercenaries are usable, such as if you need additional defenses like Armor or All Resistance from Raheir.

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

The primary damage cycle for the Fleshrender Druid is:

1. Petrify to Stun, apply the Critical Strike Damage debuff and grip in enemies with Airidah’s Inexorable Will.
2. Cyclone Armor to debuff enemies, apply the Poison via Overload Boon, and to trigger Fleshrender.
3. Earthen Bulwark for Barrier, Unstoppable, and to Trigger Fleshrender
4. Evade Through Enemies with Flickerstep to reset Petrify, as needed.

Buff Maintenance:

Debilitating Roar and Blood Howl are secondary Skills to used for Buff Maintenance:

• Debilitating Roar applies a damage dealt buff on yourself and damage taken debuff on enemies. Cycle this into your cast rotation at least every 4 seconds.
• Blood Howl gives an attack speed bonus and a boost to Toxic Claws. Cycle this in at least every 8 seconds.

Why Earthen Bulwark and Cyclone Armor over Debilitating Roar and Blood Howl?

• Earthen Bulwark has the more favorable Earth + Werebear tags, and has a damage trigger for Lucky Hits with Innate Earthen Bulwark.
• Cyclone Armor applies Poison with Overload Boon and has a damage trigger for Lucky Hits.
• Debilitating Roar has a favorable Werebear tag, but no damage trigger and has a longer spellqueue to activate.
• Blood Howl has no damage trigger, and no favorable damage Tags.

Storm Strike is the lowest filler, to apply Poisoned condition to enemies or trigger Lucky Hits.

Skills, Support and Synergies

Fleshrender is the primary source of damage for this build. Defensive Skills used on Nearby Poisoned enemies trigger its damage. The Fleshrender damage is Poison type, and scales with generic modifiers, with Willpower, and with tags of the attached Defensive Skill. For example, Fleshrender bursts from Earthen Bulwark will have the Earth Tag, and with Vasily’s Prayer, the Werebear tag as well. This makes the Fleshrender damage benefit from passives like Resonance.

The Defensive Skills used in the primary cycle are Earthen Bulwark and Cyclone Armor:

• Earthen Bulwark is an Earth and Werebear (thanks to Vasily’s Prayer) Skill that gives Barrier, Unstoppable, and a damage trigger with Innate Earthen Bulwark.
• Cyclone Armor is a Storm skill that thanks to Overload spirit boon, applies the Poisoned condition to enemies.

Both of these two skills have damage instances attached, which is useful for Lucky Hit triggers like Sinister Tendrils. They are also faster casts than Debilitating Roar, which makes them the preferred primary cycle Defensive Skills.

Petrify is our Ultimate Skill. It stuns, grips in enemies, grants Spirit, applies a Critical Strike Damage debuff, and resets all other Skills’ cooldowns. Its Rank 5 effect to reset other Skills is a significant enabler for the Fleshrender damage cycle.

What is Nearby

Fleshrender deals Poison typed damage to Nearby Poisoned enemies. Unlike Close, which is melee range and a bit farther, Nearby is a much larger range that will be just about the radius of a standard monitor. You can get a feel for the distance at the training dummies if desired. It is about the distance from the dummies to the doorway of the training room.

Applying Poisoning

The Poisoned Condition is necessary for Fleshrender to deal its damage against a target. How much Poisoning value is not important, just that the enemy is Poisoned. Not all Poison sources apply Poisoning damage over time. We apply Poisoning with:

• Overload Spirit Boon causes our Storm tagged damage like from Cyclone Armor to apply Poison.
• Sinister Tendrils is a Lucky Hit chance to apply Poisoning damage over time to enemies.
• Any Seasonal powers that apply a Poisoning Damage Over Time. For Season 9, that includes our Horadric Spell with the Poison Infusion. The Horadric Jewel Elemental Brand with a Catalyst attached to Petrify will make applying Poison largely free for seasonal players.

Key Passive

The Key Passive for standard play with Fleshrender is Ursine Strength. The health, overpower damage, and damage multipliers are well-suited to the high uptime on Werebear form and near-constant Overpower coverage with the ZanXan Runeword. Werebear uptime is maintained from casts of Petrify and Earthen Bulwark with Vasily’s Prayer.

In Speedfarm or other trivial content, Nature’s Fury can be a strong play. The extra triggers of Cataclysm from Petrify casts will apply Poisoned to enemies in a wider coverage.

Petrify Cooldown Management

Petrify resets the cooldowns on our other skills at Rank 5. The more we can reset Petrify the smoother our gameplay. We reduce the Cooldown in a few ways:

• Skill ranks in Petrify reduce cooldown, such as from Skill Points or from Vehement Brawler’s Aspect.
• Kills on enemies affected by Petrify reduce the cooldown by one second. In trivial content, this is notable while in push it is insignificant.
• Hitting a Boss with Petrify reduces Petrify by 10 seconds. This means if our Petrify cd is close to or below 10 seconds, Bossing will not require Flickerstep evades to reset its cooldown.
• Calm Before the Storm is a lucky hit reducing Petrify cooldown.
• Ultimate Cooldown Reduction from Airidah’s Inexorable Will. Greater Affixing this can be the largest source of Cooldown Reduction for Petrify.
• Tempers for Cooldown Reduction – Petrify on Jewelry Slots
• Flickerstep reduces Ultimate Cooldown when Evading through enemies. This will be variably useful depending on content and how long enemies are living.

Other optional sources can help reduce Petrify Cooldown, such as:

• If used, the Seasonal Horadric Jewel Luminate Eye grants high Cooldown Reduction to the attached Skill. This can be useful in early gearing.
• If used, Stormshifter’s Aspect with Hurricane grants skill ranks to Petrify.

Variant Options

Petrify, Cyclone Armor and Innate Earthen Bulwark are locked in as part of your Primary Gameplay Cycle.

However, there’s a few ways to play this to suit your playstyle preference or attack tempo.

Both passives of Cyclone Armor are valid to use. Preserving Cyclone Armor pulls in enemies and gives a defensive boost, while Innate Cyclone Armor slows and applies a damage taken debuff. While Innate is taken by default, if you find it disruptive then try out Preserving.

Debilitating Roar and Blood Howl are buff maintenance and redundancy skills when you missed or are working on a Petrify Reset. Debilitating Roar is also a tidy Damage Reduction to enemies and Damage Taken Debuff against enemies, and maintains Werebear form so is not a large loss to use. Blood Howl can provide attack speed, toxic claws boosts, and werewolf form boosts to things like Heightened Senses.

The final Skill is fully flexible. Either it can just be ignored in favor of having more skill points to move around into damage multipliers or used as filler for various gameplay modifiers. You can try out the following Skills and their adjustments as you prefer for playstyle:

• Storm Strike can be basic filler to help jumpstart poisoning and applying Vulnerable to enemies.
  • The glove slot can flex to Aspect of Impending Deluge if you have a well itemized Legendary Gloves.

• Poison Creeper can be another easy way to apply Poisoning, and can allow us to flex off the Overload Boon into Calm Before the Storm.
  • Swap Overload Boon into Calm Before the Storm
  • Use Poison Creeper with Subterranean Aspect on the gloves to help trigger Lucky Hits like Calm Before the Storm and Sinister Tendrils.
  • Put 1 Rank in Landslide, and take Enhanced Landslide and Raging Landslide. More pillars is more Lucky Hit chances.
• Hurricane can be used as a maintainable Storm Skill to apply Poisoning to enemies and to trigger Lucky Hits. It can also provide a high Damage Reduction or grant ranks to Petrify via Stormshifter’s Aspect, giving some more Cooldown Reduction.
  • Swap Avian Wrath to Calm Before the Storm
  • Use Stormshifter’s Aspect on Legendary Boots. Gear for Willpower, Max Life, and Movement Speed. Temper for Hurricane Duration and Movement Speed. Mastercraft the Willpower or Max Life.
  • Temper Nature Magic Innovation – Hurricane Duration on available Utility Slots.
• Primal Shred can be used as a Mobility tool.

There’s also the option to take no non-essential skills and just play with the three locked in skills in a three button playstyle. Feel free to try it out, it can be the easier playstyle depending on the content and the level of your gear. Spare Skill Points can go to Defensive Posture and Vigilance.

Some other small Spirit Boon flexes are available depending on content. The Deer and Wolf boons are all relatively low value; you could for example take Prickleskin for Wariness for a bit more damage, or Advantageous Beast for speedfarm. Then the Wolf could take Calamity for a bit more Petrify Duration when there is intermittent downtime in a run.

Speedfarming

For Speed Content, try out one or more of the following:

• Replace Qax with Jah for more Mobility.
• Use Advantageous Beast Spirit Boon if movement speed is not capped.
• Use Primal Shred as your filler Skill for Mobility.
• Replace Ursine Strength with Nature’s Fury. The triggered Cataclysm from casts of Petrify will apply Overload Spirit Boon Poisoning in a larger reach.
• Seasonal: Most Catalysts are functional and can be played by preference. Other setups can work outside push content, such as Propulsion with Floaty Bobble blinks for speedfarm.

Managing Fleshrender APM

This build is a high actions per minute build. It is incredibly spammy both in Skill casts of your Petrify -> Cyclone Armor -> Earthen Bulwark cycle and in your Evading through Enemies with Flickerstep during mobbing phase of Pit push. This is a constant tempo of actions that lasts through the entire run of your content.

Repetitive Stress Injury and Carpal Tunnel are real, and this build may be demanding depending how you play it. If there’s any issues with hand pain, please consider some of the following:

• Relook at your Skills on the Skill Bar and how they are placed. A 123 flow might be easier on your hands than another setup.
• Relook at keybinds. Mouse Buttons, different triggers on controller or even Scrollwheel may be better binds.
• For PC, the Numlock trick from d3 still works for autocasting abilities
  • Secondary Bind your skills to Numlock 1-4
  • Have Numlock set to on.
  • Press and hold the skills you want to autocast, and turn Numlock off while still hodling those skills
  • Release these keys and the skills should autocast whenever they are off cooldown and you are out of town
• Be wary, as other helpful tech like Mouse or Keyboard Macros to turbocast or sequence cast off one hotkey or for Console, controller turbo settings, may violate TOS for gameplay automation. Definitely avoid those.

Elixirs, Incense, and Health Potions

The Alchemist offers helpful consumables at the cost of foraged materials found throughout Sanctuary.

• For Elixirs, craft either:
  • (Offense) Elixir of Advantage II for Attack Speed and Lucky Hit Chance.
  • (Defense) Elixir of Fortitude II for Max Life.
• One of each Incense Category can be used, for a total of three active Incenses at a time. In priority:
  • Defensive – Reddamine Buzz for Max Life, or Song of the Mountain if you need the Armor, up to 1000 armor cap.
  • Core Stat – Blessed Guide for Willpower.
  • Resistance – Soothing Spices for All Resist, All Resist Maximum, and Armor.
• Upgrade your Potion as you level, increasing the instant healing of the potion!

Season 9 Updates

Fleshrender is back and much smoother than previous versions. Resetting cooldowns on our skills is easier, and gameplay loop like applying Poisoned condition is easy peasy.

However, it is also hit hard by the Overpower scaling nerfs. This is likely still a meta build for Druid, but the gap will not be as wide as suspected on the PTR.

The following list details the important changes in the Season 9 Patch Updates that are specific to the Fleshrender Druid. For general Season 9 information, check out our Season 9 Hub.

Itemization:

• Overpower bonus scaling is removed.
• Overpower additive on gear affixes and tempers is reduced.

Skills and Stats:

• Storm Strike After chaining, Storm Strike will now chain back to old targets after running out of new options to chain to.
• Toxic Claws New Effect – Now: You deal 5/10/15% increased Poison damage. This is doubled while in Werewolf form and for 8 seconds after leaving it.
• Innate Debilitating Roar – Damage bonus increased from 15% to 25%.
• Enhanced Debilitating Roar – Fortify amount increased from 22% to 30%.
• Vigilance – Damage Reduction reduced from 7/14/21% to 5/10/15%.
• Ursine Strength
  • Previously: Gain 30% additional Maximum Life while in Werebear form and for 3 seconds after leaving Werebear form. While Healthy, deal 15% increased damage, and 70% increased Overpower damage.
  • Now: Gain 30% Maximum Life, 20% more damage, and a 100% Overpower bonus while in Werebear form and for 8 seconds after leaving it.

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Changelog

27 June, 2025: Build created for Season 9 and Patch 2.3.