Windy Elemental Druid Guide - Hurricane Tornado Build D2R 2.6

Build Introduction

The Wind Druid is probably the strongest druid class build both for Player vs Monster and Player vs Player. They deal a huge amount of both physical and cold damage, have awesome survivability, and are very versatile. If you can afford an enigma, their teleport speed is on par with sorceresses, and they can easily be utilized for farming, magic finding, Baal or Dia runs, playing on Hardcore, or even PvP. They are viable ladder starters, although endgame gear for them is expensive.

Related Guides

Mercenary Guide | Magic Find Guide | Charms Guide | Quest Rewards Guide | Hardcore Guide | Levelling Guide | Secret Cow Level Guide | Restating and Skilling Guide | Item Upgrade Guide | Cube Recipe Guide |

Gameplay

Attacking skills:

The Windy Druid's main attacking skill is Tornado which deals physical damage, while it also has a high level Hurricane which delivers cold damage. You won't have to worry about immune monsters, the two skills are more than enough to be able to solo any game content. Both skills deliver a great deal of area damage, so you will quickly be able to farm high monster density areas. Single target damage is not super high, but good enough to get rid of any Boss other than the ones in Uber Tristram.

Movement: If you can afford an enigma, Teleporting is the preferred choice for movement. You should also have at least 68% Faster Cast Rate to achieve the 12 frame breakpoint. Make sure to use walking instead of running or Hardcore, so you don't lose any block chance while moving.

Survivability: Wind Druids have great survivability in general. As a caster build, they tend to stay away from monsters. Cyclone Armor is a great defensive skill which can absorb up to 3k damage, and is also a synergy for Tornado and Hurricane. You should have it casted on yourself at all times. Make sure to have 75% all resistances on Hell difficulty! Summons also help with survivability, as they distract enemy monsters. You will also have a high level Oak Sage, which can triple your life. By having a Call to Arms, and casting Battle Orders, having an extremely high 6k life is achievable. The build is a great fit for Hardcore, but if you want to further boost your survivability, you can wear a Raven Frost ring so you never get frozen, have Harlequin Crest Shako as your helm for increased life and physical damage reduction, have a Stormshield for shield for it's physical damage reduction, faster hit recovery and high block chance, jewelry with elemental damage absorption, or utilize a wide variety of gear depending on your preferred areas for gameplay.

Party and Solo play: This build is an awesome party booster. Oak Sage can provide over 200% life to your party, a lot more than any other skill, which at least doubles each party member's survival chances. Your area damage will be decent in a 8 player game, but for Boss kills most likely the party members will do most of the work. Still, if you prefer to play solo, the Wind druids are perfectly capable of quickly farming any game content without issues, the only exception being Uber Tristram, which is still doable if you have a lot of additional resistance on your gear.

Magic Find: As Windy Druids teleport quickly, this build is an awesome choice for Boss runs. They have great equipment choices to boost their magic find. An Ist-ed Shako, Enigma, War traveler, Chance guards, Goldwrap, 6*ist crystal sword as switch weapon, 4*ist monarch as switch shield, amulet with magic find %, rings with magic find% are all viable items for MFing without reducing your damage a lot. Utilize your inventory to further boost your magic find by having Gheed's Fortune and 7% magic find small charms.

Stats

Strength: Put just enough points on it to be able to wear your gear.

Dexterity: Put just enough points on it to be able to wear your gear. If you play hardcore, you can put extra points on dexterity to boost your chance to block up to 75%.

Vitality: Put all remaining points on it.

Energy: Don't put any points on it.

Skills

• 20 points on Hurricane + 1 point on prerequisite skills
• 20 points on Tornado
• 20 points on Cyclone Armor
• 20 point on Oak Sage
• 1 point on Summon Grizzly and +1 point on prerequisite skills
• All remaining points on Twister

Breakpoints - Check out our Druid Breakpoints guide.

Items, Gearing

The listed items are organized by slots.

• The usefulness rating of an item is based on how good it is for farming.
• The price rating reflects the cost of the item (cheaper ones are available after ladder starts as budget options), higher price ratings reflect exponentially higher cost for an item.
• Magic Find ratings are added to items that are good options for MFing.

Adding sockets and improving your items

• If you complete the act5 quest Siege on Harrogath, Larzuk will grant extra socket/sockets to your items. Use the quest to add sockets to your gear and put useful jewels, runes or gems in your item sockets.
• You can also upgrade your unique items from normal to exceptional quality and from exceptional to elite by using Horadric Cube recipes. After upgrading, your armor pieces will have more defense, and your weapon pieces will have more damage. The downside of upgrading is the increased strength/dexterity requirements.

Helm

• Magic Druid helm with + elemental skills - usefulness 3/10, price 1/10
• Lore runeword -usefulness 4/10, price 1/10
• Peasant Crown unique helm - usefulness 5/10, price 2/10
• Harlequin Crest Shako unique helm - Usefulness 7/10, price 6/10, Magic Find 10/10
• Rare Druid helm with +2 to Druid skills and +3 to Tornado and 2 sockets - Usefulness 8/10, price 6-9/10

Amulet

• Any amulet with +1-2 to druid skills- usefulness 4/10, price 1/10
• Mara's Kaleidoscope unique amulet - usefulness 8/10, price 7/10
• Crafted amulet with +2 to druid skills and 20% faster cast rate - usefulness 10/10, price 6-9/10
• Magic amulet with 40-50% to magic find - price 5/10, Magic Find 10/10

Weapon

• Spirit Crystal Sword -usefulness 6/10, price 3/10
• Wizardspike unique weapon - usefulness 6/10, price 4/10
• Heart of the Oak Flail - usefulness 10/10, price 6/10

Shield

• Spirit Monarch - usefulness 10/10, price 3/10

Switch Weapon

• Call to Arms Crystal Sword - usefulness 10/10, price 7/10
• 6*Ist crystal sword - magic find -10/10, switch when killing boss

Switch Shield

• Spirit Monarch - usefulness 10/10, price 3/10
• 4*Ist monarch - magic find 10/10, switch when killing boss

Body Armor

• Stealth runeword - usefulness 5/10, price 2/10
• Rain runeword - usefulness 5/10, price 3/10
• Skin of the Vipermagi unique armor - usefulness 7/10, price 5/10
• Enigma Archon Plate - usefulness 10/10, price 8/10

Belt

• Nightsmoke unique belt - usefulness 4/10, price 2/10
• Crafted belt with +10% faster cast rate - usefulness 6/10, price 3/10
• Arachnid Mesh unique belt - usefulness 10/10, price 6/10
• Goldwrap unique belt - magic find 10/10, price 3/10

Rings

• Rare ring with 10% faster cast rate +resistances and/or +life - usefulness 6-10/10
• Raven Frost unique ring - usefulness 8/10, price 4/10
• Bul Katho's Wedding Band unique ring - usefulness 8/10, price 6/10
• Stone of Jordan unique ring - usefulness 10/10, price 6/10
• Nagelring unique ring - magic find 9/10, price 3/10
• Magic rings with 40% MF - magic find 10/10, price 6/10

Gloves

• Magefist unique gloves - usefulness 10/10, price 3/10
• Chance Guards unique gloves - magic find 10/10, price 3/10

Boots

• Rare boots with 30% faster run and walk, % to faster hit recovery - usefulness 5/10, price 2/10
• Sandstorm Trek unique boots - usefulness 8/10, price 4/10
• Waterwalk unique boots - usefulness 7/10, price 4/10
• War Traveler unique boots - usefulness 6/10, price 5/10, magic find 10/10

Charms

• Any charm with +skill, life, faster hit recovery or faster run and walk - usefulness 4/10, price 1/10
• Annihilus unique small charm - usefulness 10/10, price 8/10
• Hellfire Torch unique large charm - usefulness 10/10, price 6/10
• Magic grand charms with +1 to elemental skills - usefulness 7/10, price 4/10
• Magic grand charms with +1 to elemental skills and +life, +faster hit recovery or +faster run and walk - usefulness 8-10/10, price 5-10/10
• Magic small charms with resistances and life - usefulness 8-10/10, price 6-9/10
• 7% to magic find magic small charms - magic find 10/10, price 3/10
• Gheed's fortune unique grand charm - magic find 10/10, price 4/10

Mercenary

Have a Nightmare Act2 Defensive Mercenary (Holy Freeze aura) to slow down enemy monsters.

Ethereal items don't lose durability if your mercenary wears them, so having ethereal item bases for each gear slot is preferred due to their increased defense on armor items and increased damage on weapons. In many instances ethereal items that are great for mercenaries will be much more expensive than non-ethereal ones.

Mercenary gear:

Helm

• Any 3 socketed helm with 3 perfect diamond to increase mercenary resistances and survivability - usefulness 5/10, price 1/10
• Tal Rasha's set helm - usefulness 6/10, price 3/10
• Vampire Gaze unique helm - usefulness 7/10, price 4/10
• Guillaume's face set helm - usefulness 8/10, price 4/10
• Andariel's Visage unique helm - usefulness 10/10, price 5/10

Weapon

• Insight Ethereal Cryptic Axe to provide you with meditation aura so you never run out of mana - preferably in elite base - usefulness 7/10, price 4/10
• Bonehew unique weapon - usefulness 5/10, price 4/10
• Tomb Reaver unique weapon - usefulness 6/10, price 5/10
• The Reaper's Toll unique weapon - usefulness 8/10, price 6/10
• Infinity Ethereal Cryptic Axe - usefulness 10/10, price 8/10

Body Armor-

• Treachery Archon Plate - usefulness 9/10, price 4/10
• Fortitude Archon Plate - usefulness 10/10, price 7/10

Rpgstash.com will have D2R items in its Ladder selection already on day 1. We will be doing our best to let you buy 2.4 ladder items right at the beginning of the season including the new runewords, so you can climb the ladder rankings as fast as possible!

f you want to get the best items and runewords in the game, check out our D2R Store.