Shred – Druid Build Guide for Diablo 4 (Season 11)

Build Introduction

The Shred Druid dashes and rips into the foes of Sanctuary, every strike echoing the ferocity of a werewolf under the moonlit sky. Gather and destroy enemies with powerful Shred and cleave bursts of lightning with your Stormclaw’s Aspect.

This is a Dire Wolf’s Aspect Grizzly Rage Shred that will play smoothly in both farm and push content.

Just starting on your Druid adventure? Try out the Shred Leveling Build and swap to this one at Level 60.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

The following Legendary Aspects and Unique Items are required for build functionality to get started on the Shred Druid:

Required Uniques

Waxing Gibbous

Required Aspects

Stormclaw’s Aspect

Aspect of the Blurred Beast

Dire Wolf’s Aspect

Get more info on the Uniques supporting this build in the Uniques section.

Quick Navigation

This guide covers everything necessary to get started on the Shred Druid, including Skill Tree points, Paragon, Gearing, and Seasonal updates. Jump to the sections you’re looking for here.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Skill Bar for Shred Druid

Grizzly Rage Poison Creeper Blood Howl Cyclone Armor Maul Shred

Eternal players complete Renown events in each zone for additional Skill Points, while Seasonal Players engage with the Season Journey and Rank for these Skill points.

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.

In push content, Swooping Attacks can be exchanged for Iron Feather or Masochistic for extra defense.

Druid’s primary resource is Spirit. See the Spirit Management Section on how to keep casting!

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Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

Check these sections for all important Shred 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 an Optional 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	Aspect	Unique/Legendary Aspect Power
Weapon	Unique – Waxing Gibbous	Killing an enemy with Shred grants Stealth for 2 seconds. Breaking Stealth with an attack grants guaranteed Critical Strikes for 1-4 seconds.
Totem	Aspect of the Blurred Beast	Shred deals 55-75% more damage, and Shred’s first dash lands up to 4 additional strikes based on distance travelled.
Helm	Mythic – Heir of Perdition Vigorous Aspect	Give in to hatred and earn Lilith’s Favor, increasing your damage dealt by 60%. Slaughter enemies to briefly steal Lilith’s Favor from Nearby allies.
Chest	Mythic – Shroud of False Death Unique – Mad Wolf’s Glee Juggernaut’s Aspect	If you haven’t attacked in the last 2 seconds, gain Stealth and 40% Movement Speed.
Gloves	Stormclaw’s Aspect	Critical Strikes with Shred deal 40-60% of the damage dealt as Lightning damage to the target and surrounding enemies.
Pants	Dire Wolf’s Aspect	Grizzly Rage is now a Werewolf Skill and Shapeshifts you into a Dire Werewolf. Dire Werewolves gain 20-40% Movement Speed and 20-40% Spirit Cost Reduction instead of Damage Reduction. In addition, kills Heal you for 10% of your Maximum Life.
Boots	Aspect of the Agile Wolf	Shred gains a 4th dash attack that hits all surrounding enemies, deals 20-60% increased damage, and Knocks Down enemies for 2 seconds.
Amulet	Aspect of the Rabid Bear	Deal 40-80% more Poison Damage. While Shapeshifted, your direct damage is converted into Poison damage.
Ring 1	Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast	Critical Strikes while in Grizzly Rage increases your damage by 3% for 60 seconds, up to 120%.
Ring 2	Mythic – Ring of Starless Skies Aspect of the Unsatiated	Spending your Primary Resource reduces the Resource cost of your Skills and increases your damage by 10% for 3 seconds, up to 50%.

To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.

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Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

Each line of affixes is listed in order of importance, with some alternatives given. The bolded affixes are the most important targets for Greater Affixes and Masterwork Critical Increases. Check the Tempering guide and Masterworking guide for more details about these topics.

Slot	Gearing Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Weapon – Waxing Gibbous	Critical Strike Damage Blood Howl Grants Stealth for 1-4 seconds Ranks to Shred Ranks to Toxic Claws
1 Handed Dagger	Willpower Max Life Chance to Restore Resource Critical Strike Damage	Werewolf Augments – Chance for Shred to Deal Double Damage
Totem	Cooldown Reduction Willpower Lucky Hit Chance Chance to Heal Chance to Restore Resource	Werewolf Augments – Chance for Shred to Deal Double Damage
Helm – Heir of Perdition	Critical Strike Chance Lucky Hit Chance Movement Speed Ranks in Core Skills
Helm – Legendary Aspect	Willpower Max Life Cooldown Reduction Armor	Shapeshifting Endurance – Blood Howl Cooldown Reduction Worldly Fortune – Lucky Hit Chance
Chest – Shroud of False Death	All Stats Maximum Life Damage on Next Attack After Entering Stealth Resource Generation
Chest – Mad Wolf’s Glee	Max Life Werewolf Attack Speed Lupine Ferocity’s Damage Bonus Ranks to Digitigrade Gait
Chest – Legendary Aspect	Willpower Max Life Spirit Per Second Armor	Shapeshifting Endurance – Blood Howl Cooldown Reduction
Gloves – Legendary Aspect	Ranks to Shred Attack Speed Willpower Max Life	Shapeshifting Finesse – Grizzly Rage Duration
Pants	Armor Willpower Max Life Dodge Chance	Worldly Endurance – Total Armor%
Boots – Legendary Aspect	Implicit: Attacks Reduce Evade’s Cooldown By 1.5 Seconds Willpower Movement Speed Max Life Spirit Per Second	Druid Motion – Movement Speed
Amulet – Legendary Aspect	Willpower% Ranks to Envenom Ranks to Toxic Claws Ranks to Quickshift Armor%	Shapeshifting Finesse – Grizzly Rage Duration OR Ultimate Efficiency —  Druid – Grizzly Rage Cooldown Reduction
Ring – Ring of Starless Skies	Attack Speed Critical Strike Chance Lucky Hit Chance Ranks to Core Skills
Rings – Legendary Aspect	Attack Speed Willpower Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable Max Life	Shapeshifting Finesse – Grizzly Rage Duration OR Ultimate Efficiency —  Druid – Grizzly Rage Cooldown Reduction

After gearing, look at progression systems like Paragon next.

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Uniques and Mythic Uniques

The Shred Druid uses the following Unique items:

• Waxing Gibbous gives strong coverage of full Critical Strike Chance, which allows the player to gear other affixes. Ranks in Toxic Claws with Aspect of the Rabid Bear turning all damage into Poison type offers a multiplier that is particularly strong, and can set Waxing Gibbous above a 2h or dagger/totem setup.

• (Before Mythic) Mad Wolf’s Glee is an excellent offensive Unique Item that gives high ranks to Werewolf Skills.

Mythic Unique Items

• Ring of Starless Skies is a powerful Resource Cost Reduction tool and damage multiplier, and can be useful for making gameplay smoother.

• Heir of Perdition has Strong Gear Affixes and a steady damage multiplier. The multiplier can be stolen occasionally from others who also use this helm for a higher damage multiplier.

• Shroud of False Death gives +1 rank to all Skill Passives, which means several bonuses to Damage Multipliers, Damage Reductions, Resistances, Fortify, Healing and Critical Strike Chance. The All Stats is a significant contributor to activating Paragon Rare Node Bonuses.

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Gems and Runewords

The following are the recommended Gem and Runeword setups for the Shred Druid.

Gems

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Grand Emerald for Critical Strike Damage	Grand Sapphire for Willpower	Grand Diamond for All Resistance

Runewords

Use these Runeword combinations for the Shred Druid, placed in Armor slots.

Runeword Combination	Runeword Effects
Moni Xan	Moni – Gain: 100 Offering. Cast 2 Mobility Skills. Xan – 300 Offering. Your next attack will cause your hits to be a guaranteed Critical Strike and Overpower for 0.35 seconds. Overflow: Increased Duration
Igni Zec	Igni – Gain: 25 Offering. Stores Offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a Non-Basic Skill to gain the stored Offering. Zec – Requires: 100 Offering. (Overflow: Further Reduced Cooldown). Cooldown: 1 seconds. Reduce your active Ultimate Cooldown by 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.

Shred is a fast attack and has the Mobility Tag, meaning Moni will work as a trigger, giving high volumes of Critical Overpowers with Xan.

Zec along with Calm Before the Storm will help minimize Grizzly Rage downtime.

Other combinations can also work well; adjust to the content you are running. These may include:

• Push – Qax can be used as a strong multiplier, replacing Zec, but make sure you have no Spirit issues.
• Early Gearing – While leveling and gearing before legendary Runes become accessible, many Magic and Rare runewords, such as Gar for Critical Strike Chance, will be viable.

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Paragon Board

The following are the preferred Glyphs, Boards, and pathing recommended for making the most of the Shred 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 a stricter pathing to take almost 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 give additional additive bonuses, especially within the Glyph areas.

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 its 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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Season 11 Mechanics

Divine Gifts

Earn Corrupted Essences by defeating the Lesser Evils in their associated content. These Essences can be transformed into Divine Gifts by Hadriel. Divine Gifts have three aspects.

1. Increased reward in the associated content
2. A purified effect
3. A corrupted effect

Slotting an Essence into the Purified slot grants double drop rewards and a boon, while slotting an Essence into the Corrupted slot grants normal drop rewards and a curse. Upgrade these gifts by engaging with their content. Leveling these Gifts increases the drop rewards while the boon and curse stay the same.

Here is a general setup for Divine Gifts:

Helltides – Duriel

• Purified: Essence of Pain – Briefly gain maximum Barrier after becoming Injured, every 20 seconds.
• Corrupted: Essence of Squallor

World Bosses – Azmodan

• Purified: Essence of Sin – Gain 20% increased Armor.
• Corrupted: Essence of Hellfire

Kurast Undercity – Andariel

• Purified: Essence of Anguish – Gain 30% Movement Speed.
• Corrupted: Essence of Screams
• Note: If you are already move speed capped or need extra defense, swap the Andariel Gifts for a 20% Resistance boost to defense.

Belial – The Pit

• Purified: Essence of Lies – Fortify for 1% of your Maximum Life a second.
• Corrupted: Essence of Shadows

These Gifts can be freely swapped based on desired rewards. For example, swap the Belial Gifts to earn more gold while in the Pit.

Sanctification

Hadriel offers a final gamble to empower items. Use the Heavenly Forge to Sanctify the item, imbuing the item with heavenly power.

Sanctifying is the final change for an item. After Sanctifying the item, it cannot be upgraded, masterworked, tempered, or otherwise altered, including its Aspect. Runes and Gems can still be swapped.

Options that can happen include:

• Apply a bonus Legendary power
• Improve an Affix into a Greater Affix
• Add a bonus Affix from a pool of special Sanctification affixes
• Replace an existing Affix with a random Sanctification affix
• Add a random amount (5-25) of bonus Quality

Some of the jackpot desirable Sanctifications include +Ranks to All Skills, useful Affixes like Critical Strike Chance, or Offensive Generic Legendary Aspects. The potential Quality Increases will be especially strong on a weapon, increasing its DPS. Other options can ruin your item, such as replacing a necessary existing affix.

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.

The following Mercenary options are recommended for the Shred Druid:

Main Mercenary – Varyana, the Berserker

• Skills: Cleave, Hysteria, Bloodthirst, Bloodlust

Reinforcement – Raheir, the Shieldbearer

• Reinforcement Ability – Crater
• Opportunity – Shred

Hysteria and Bloodlust will both give strong Attack Speed bonuses. Other setups are valid, such as Subo’s Cover Fire and minimap target tracking as high quality of life, or Raheir if you need more Armor or Resistance.

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

1. Prebuild stacks of Quickshift by alternating Maul and Shred.
2. Shred to approach enemies.
3. Activate Grizzly Rage to enter Dire Werewolf Form.
4. Blood Howl to trigger Stealth, activating the Critical Strike bonus for Waxing Gibbous.
5. Poison Creeper to apply Poisoned Condition and Immobilize to grouped enemies as nececssary.
6. Cast Shred on enemies.

Cyclone Armor will not be available for Active Use during Grizzly Rage but you still benefit from its Passive effect.

Maul does not need to hit a target for Werebear Shapeshifting buffs. Make sure you’re familiar with your Force Hold keybind to easily Maul in place.

Skills, Support, and Synergies

The Shred Druid groups and dashes into enemies for strong damage. Shred is a high mobility skill that is efficient for killing and then moving on.

• Stormclaw’s Aspect causes a secondary hit of splashed damage when Shred Critically Strikes.
• If used, Waxing Gibbous will give full Critical Strike Chance, guaranteeing Stormclaw’s Aspect to deal its splash damage.

Primal Shred is taken for the extra Dash mobility and the blanket Critical Strike Damage buff for all attacks with Shred. For farm and speed content, it is the simple choice.

Supporting Skills

• Blood Howl gives attack speed, healing, and Stealth when used with Waxing Gibbous. With Waxing Gibbous and Shroud of False Death benefiting from Stealth, this means strong bursts of Shred damage.
• Cyclone Armor is mostly taken for its passive defense boost, which is active even during Grizzly Rage.
• Poison Creeper applies the Poisoned Condition to enemies, activating useful passives like Envenom.
• Maul is useful for prebuilding shapeshifting buffs like Quickshift. This is a flex skill that could be exchanged for other useful things, like Natural Rabies to help spread Poisoned Condition.

Grizzly Rage

This build uses Grizzly Rage as its Ultimate Skill. With Dire Wolf’s Aspect, we become the Dire Werewolf.

Dire Werewolf Grizzly Rage grants Unstoppable for its duration, grants movement speed and healing on kill, and a large damage buff. With Aspect of the Rabid Bear, our damage type for all attacks becomes Poison, which helps unify several multipliers like Toxic Claws. Thanks to Aspect of the Rabid Bear, enemies will be periodically Poisoned via a passive spread of Rabies for multipliers like Envenom.

Grizzly Rage’s cooldown cannot be reduced while Grizzly Rage is active. Any Skill not tuned to Grizzly Rage, such as Earth or Storm Skills, will be unavailable while Grizzly Rage is active. Some still give benefits, such as the passive defense of Cyclone Armor.

Only one point is invested into Grizzly Rage to be functional, and further points only reduce the cooldown.

Grizzly Rage has a capped duration, but we gain or extend Grizzly Rage duration with:

• Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast gives up to 10 seconds of extra duration.
• Offensive Tempers on gear give more duration on Grizzly Rage.
• If Spirit is managed, Energize can be swapped for Calamity Spirit Boon.

Calm before the Storm Spirit Boon and Zec will help minimize Grizzly Rage downtime.

If this is not sufficient to maintain Grizzly Rage for most of the time or your downtime becomes too disruptive, consider one or more of the following options:

• Exchange Energize Spirit Boon for Calamity Spirit Boon.
• Focus Greater Affixes towards Cooldown Reduction on Totem or other slots.

Key Passive

Lupine Ferocity is our Key Passive, giving frequent Critical Strikes and a strong Critical Strike Damage multiplier.

Spirit Management

We have several sources of Spirit Cost Reduction and Spirit Generation that make Spirit not a difficult issue to manage for this build.

• Gift of the Stag Spirit Boon gives 10 Spirit Per Second.
• The Wolf’s Energize Spirit Boon gives Lucky Hit to Restore Spirit.
• Dire Wolf’s Aspect gives Spirit Cost Reduction during Grizzly Rage.
• Lust for Carnage Critical Strikes grant resource.
• Ancestral Guidance nodes for Spirit on Kill and Max Spirit.
• Aspect of the Unsatiated granting Spirit on Critical Strike. With Waxing Gibbous, that’s all attacks while the Critical Strike Chance buff is active.

In Early Gearing and Leveling, consider doing the following for Spirit Generation and Management:

• Use the Gar rune to increase Critical Strike Chance, increasing Aspect of the Unsatiated trigger chance.
• Use the Wolf’s Energize Spirit Boon.
• Adjust Gear affixes: Chance to restore resource on Weapon, Resource Generation on Rings, Resource Temper Manuals on Jewelry, or Spirit Per Second on Helm, Chest, or Boots can all be helpful.
• Worst case in early leveling and gearing, use Maul as a Basic Attack Builder. Replace Debilitating Roar or Hurricane. Maul can be useful for upkeeping Werebear Shapeshifting buffs as well.

Controller vs Keyboard and Mouse

The Shred Druid can play smoother on a controller. When held, Shred can auto-move to the nearest enemies or continue direction if no enemies are in range. The Dashes from casts of Shred auto-aim to the nearest enemy. A keyboard and Mouse can offer better control, allowing you to choose targets to Dash to. Both options are valid. Keyboard and Mouse can also access the auto-aim behavior by going into ESC -> Options -> Gameplay, and changing Skill Toggle Behavior to Toggle All.

Elixirs, Incense, and Health Potions

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

• Craft Elixir of Advantage II for Attack Speed and Lucky Hit bonuses.
• 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.
  • Core Stat – Blessed Guide for Willpower.
  • Resistance – Soothing Spices for All Resist, All Resist Maximum, and Armor.

Season 11 Updates

Note that there are lots of sweeping changes to defensive systems, gearing, masterworking, tempering, and season journey. Don’t be afraid to take a couple of extra defensive choices over previous seasons to keep things smooth.

The change to Grizzly Rage means it is stronger while up, but we have to deal with downtime. We still take it for the many benefits, including long-term Unstoppable, favorable aspects, the strong multiplier, and defensive bumps.

The following list details the important changes in the Season 11 Patch Updates that are specific to the Shred Druid. For general Season 11 information, check out our Season 11 Hub.

Itemization:

• Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast
  • Previous: The duration of Grizzly Rage is increased by 3-10 seconds. In addition, Critical Strikes while Grizzly Rage is active increase your Critical Strike Damage by 10% for the duration, up to maximum of 200%.
  • Now: Critical Strikes while in Grizzly Rage increases your damage by 3% for 60 seconds, up to 120%.
• Aspect of the Rabid Bear (Bear)
  • Previous: While Grizzly Rage is active, your direct damage is converted into Poison damage, you deal 40-80% more Poison damage, and you passively spread Rabies.
  • Now: Deal 40-80% more Poison Damage. While Shapeshifted, your direct damage is converted into Poison damage.

Skills and Stats:

• Energize Spirit Boon now restores 100 spirit instead of fully restoring Spirit.
• Grizzly Rage:
  • Stacking duration is no longer a part of the ability, and Cooldown doesn’t start until the ability ends.
  • Stacking Damage per second removed and Damage Bonus increased to 60%.
  • Skill Ranks of Grizzly Rage now grant bonus damage instead of reducing Cooldown.
  • Cooldown reduced from 50 to 35 seconds.
  • Duration increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
  • Damage Reduction increased from 20% to 30%.
  • Rank 5:
    • Previous: You gain 30%[+] increased Armor while Grizzly Rage is active.
    • Now: Cooldown reduced by 10 seconds.
• Supreme Grizzly Rage – Fortify per second reduced from 8% to 2% of Maximum Life.
• Defensive Posture:
  • Previous: Increases the amount of Fortify you gain from all sources by 5% and you gain 3% Damage Reduction while Fortified.
  • Now: Increases the amount of Fortify you gain from all sources by 5%.
• Natural Fortitude – Fortify reduced from 2% to .2% of Maximum Life.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the description for Grizzly Rage didn’t properly display the damage increase for adding additional skill points.

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Changelog

• 6 December, 2025: Updated for Patch 2.5 and Season 11.
• 27 September, 2025: Adjusted recommended Chaos Perks.
• 21 September, 2025: Updated for Patch 2.4 and Season 10. Seasonal Players, please note that the Season 10 Mechanics section has setups that include the seasonal Chaos Armors.
• 6 July, 2025: Updated recommendations for Arcana, Runes, and updated information based on the change to how Grizzly Rage can now progress cooldown while active.
• 27 June, 2025: Updated for Season 9 Patch 2.3. Significant changes to Boons, Skill Tree, and Gearing with the changes to Grizzly Rage and Toxic Claws.
• 30 April, 2025: Adjusted Boss Power recommendations and backup Rune recommendations.
• 24 April, 2025: Updated to the new unified format for Season 8 Patch 2.2 changes.
• 3 March, 2025: small 2.1.3 changes to Occult gem recommendations and updates for the change to Waxing Gibbous.
• 19 January, 2025: Updated for Season 7 and Patch 2.1 updates. Two-tab paragon board introduced.
• 15 October, 2024: Updated for the new onsite Paragon Tool.
• 27 September, 2024: Updated for Season 6. Changes to Paragon, Skill Tree, Skill Bar, and recommended Uniques.
• 7 August, 2024: Updated for post-launch of season 5. Small updates to Tempering recommendations. Improved readability and clarified case use and explanation for Waxing Gibbous.
• 3 August, 2024: Significant changes to Skills and Paragon to adjust for season 5, the change to Shepherd’s Aspect, and the introduction of the Mjölnic Ryng.
• 17 June, 2024: Updated for mid-season patch 1.4.3.
• May 15, 2024: Small changes in gear affixes to adjust for season launch changes from PTR.
• 3 May 2024: Guide reworked for the significant 1.4.0 changes to gearing and for season 4 speculative changes. Format changed to frontload basic build information and offer extra information and options afterwards.
• 8 March 2024: Guide created, fully replacing the previous guide.
  • Ownership transferred.
  • Adjusted Gear, Skills, and Paragon sections to hit defensive stats targets and improve overall damage output.
  • Improved readability, explanations, and options.