Pulverize Druid Leveling Guide (1-50)

Overview

• Druid's leveling can feel a bit slow compared to other classes since they quite heavily depend on their legendary aspects as sources of power. But once you get your hands on these powers and put their builds together, they are quite powerful in the mid-late endgame.
• The basic skill we are going to use is Storm Strike. This gives us consistent Vulnerability and extra damage reduction.
• Pulverize is going to be our core score and our primary damage dealer. This is another source of damage reduction, since enemies hit will deal 20% reduced damage. This build will be quite tanky but will struggle with single-target damage.

Skill Progression

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Spirit Boons:

• In the Deer tree, Wariness gives us 10% reduced damage from Elites and is an incredible option to add some tankiness to the build.
• In the Eagle Tree, we are taking Avian Wrath to give us an additional x30% Critical Strike Damage.
• In the Wolf tree, we are choosing two from this section. The first one is Energize, which gives us a Lucky Hit chance to restore some Spirit. This will help us with our Spirit economy. The next choice is Calamity, which increases the duration of Ultimate Skills by 25%. This helps us maximize our uptime of Grizzly Rage.
• In the Snake tree, we are taking Calm Before the Storm, which gives us Lucky Hit chance to reduce the cooldown of our Ultimate Skill by 2 seconds. Again, this choice is to maximize our Grizzly Rage uptime.

Leveling Aspects (Codex of Power)

These aspects can be grabbed throughout your leveling process and should be thrown on Jewelry slots when leveling.

Offensive:

• Unfortunately for Druid, the offensive options are quite deep into the campaign or are RNG drops. Luckily, this build should be more than strong enough to carry us to this point. In Act 3, we want to go to Seaside Descent and pick up the Aspect of Retaliation which grants us bonus damage based on the amount of Fortify we have. Since this build has a lot of built-in fortify, this will grant us quite a large damage bonus. Once you get this aspect, you should throw it on a jewelry slot.
  

• In Act 5, we get access to two aspects that will really put this build together. The first is the Aspect of the Ursine Horror. This turns Pulverize into an Earth Skill and increases its damage by creating tectonic spikes that deal extra damage over 2 seconds.
  

• Since Pulverize is now a Nature Skill, this is why we put points in Defiance, Natural Disaster, and Resonance. This also allows us to grab points in Crushing Earth, Stone Guard, and Safe Guard. This will give us access to extreme sources of additional power. One tip is to make sure you cast a Storm Strike before Pulverize to ensure you get the bonus from Resonance.
  

• The last aspect we want to grab is also in Act 5 and is called the Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast. This grants us increased duration with Grizzly Rage and provides a substantial increase to our critical strikes.
  

Other Useful Aspects for the Codex

Defensive:

• This build has some great Defensive aspect options and can be picked up as soon as Act 3. The first one is the Aspect of Mending Stone, which can be found in the Sealed Archives in the Dry Steppes. This gives us an increased duration of Earthen Bulwark and allows us to replenish a portion of the active barrier when killing enemies with earth skills (pulverize will be an Earth Skill with Aspect of Ursine Horror).
  

• Another great aspect for this build is the Aspect of Might which can also be found in Act 3. This synergizes very well with Storm Strike and provides 20% Damage Reduction when using a Basic Skill. This aspect alongside the 25% Damage Reduction we already receive will make us extremely tanky.
  

• The last option can be found in Act 4 and provides us with a stacking buff for additional armor called the Aspect of Disobedience. This just adds a ton of extra defense for us, making us extremely hard to kill. Another option could be the Skinwalker’s Aspect which can be found in Act 4 as well. This aspect gives us extra life and Fortify when Shapeshifting between forms.
  

Resource:

• The only resource aspect we can grab is the Aspect of the Changeling’s Debt. This can be found in Act 4 and will give us a huge burst window since it will instantly deal a large percentage of the poison damage inflicted on an enemy when you hit them with a Werebear skill. The idea behind this is that we will use the active for Poison Creeper and then cast Pulverize to consume this poison damage for huge burst damage.
  

Utility:

• Once we have Aspect of the Ursine Horror, there are two aspects that we should pick up beforehand that synergize incredibly well with this build once Pulverize becomes an earth skill. The Aspect of Quicksand causes our earth skills to slow on hit, this allows us to benefit from Crushing Earth and other benefits from ‘damaged to slowed’ or ‘damaged to crowd controlled’ modifiers. This can be found in Act 2 in Feral’s Den and should be picked up early even though we will not utilize it until later in the game.
  

• Another aspect that can be found in Act 2 and will put this build together is the Ballistic Aspect. When fortified, we will gain +2 to all earth skills. This also synergizes with Aspect of the Ursine Horror and should also be grabbed early when you are plowing through the campaign.
  

Other Helpful Aspects

These aspects could help us when leveling. You can equip these if they are on an item better than what you currently have equipped, but when you are ready to replace it, make sure to extract these powers since they will be useful later on in the game.

Offensive:

• Another aspect to look out for is the Shockwave Aspect. This unfortunately can not be found in a dungeon and is an RNG drop, but it will give us even more damage to our Pulverize with some added AoE.
  

Stat Priorities

Gems

Alternative Leveling Guides:

• If you find the Stormchaser’s Aspect, you should level with Tornado. This is probably going to be one of the best leveling builds for Druid. Do remember, it is very cheap to respec, so do not feel like you are stuck and locked into one build.
  

• If you feel like Pulverize is too slow, pick up the Stormclaw’s Aspect in Anica’s Claim in Fractured Peaks. You can respec into Shred and the leveling process may be a bit quicker.