Diablo 4 Earth Druid Build Guide: Defiled Ground

This guide for the Druid in Diablo 4 focuses on a post-campaign Endgame Landslide build that functions without too many Aspects, but becomes much more potent with the completed build!

Druid has a good mix of Nature magic, Shapeshifting, and Companion skills at their disposal. This build focuses on both Nature Magic and Companions for its damage.

This Earth Druid build guide assumes you’re at least level 50 and have completed enough of your Renown to have gained the 10 additional Skill Points available.

If you want a great leveling build to reach this point with, try our Druid Leveling Build – A Companion-focused build that breezes through much of the early game. If you want to level up as Druid, at the end of this guide, we have a leveling section showing you how to develop a new character from level 1 with this build.

Build Overview

This build is based around the Subterranean Aspect, released in Update 1.1. It combines the power of Earth Magic for high damage with some assistance from Companions.

Landslide is the build’s primary damage skill, we’ll be casting it manually, as well as through the Subterranean Aspect. Poison Creeper and Wolves will also end up dealing a fair bit of damage, while also enabling a lot of passives and other effects in the process.

On the defensive side of things, we have Earthen Bulwark as our main defensive tool. Our Wolves are also set up to provide us with additional Fortify while still being a good source of extra burst damage.

Skill and Passive Breakdown

In this section, we’ll be talking about each skill we use. This is the whys and hows of how the build works, and then we’ll cover the skill point distribution.

Skills

These are the main skills for the build. We’ll explain what purpose each serves and how they fit the build

Earth Spike

Earth Spike is our Basic Skill, we’ll always hope that we don’t need it too much for resource generation, but is still one of our better Lucky Hit Chance skills outside of our Companions. We take Wild Earth Spike to double-cast this anytime we Immobilize or stun an enemy for more Lucky Hits.

Landslide

Landslide is our Core Skill and main DPS. On top of its base damage, we use this because Primal Landslide synergizes extremely well with both the Subterranean Aspect as well as Petrify. This gives us plenty of easy Critical hits that help the build out a ton.

Earthen Bulwark

Earthen Bulwark is an on-demand Barrier. We’ll be looking to keep it up and active as much as we can. This is why we use both the Earthguard and Meding Stone Aspects to maintain it. It also provides us with a fairly consistent way to have Unstoppable, so long as the barrier doesn’t just disappear.

Poison Creeper

Poison Creeper does fantastic damage on its own; but throw in its Immobilize and Poison effects and it becomes a great way to activate various passives. With the Subterranean Aspect on top of that, it can destroy packs of monsters fairly quickly.

Wolves

Wolves are a great option for the build, as not only do they provide fairly consistent passive Fortify, their active skill also does a high amount of damage. Combined with a Vicious Heart of Moonrage and it becomes a monster of a skill.

Petrify

Petrify is a great setup skill and gives us a powerful Burst window against all enemies without restricting us to a Shapeshifted form of any kind. In combination with Primal Landslide as well as the Subterranean Aspect, we’re able to quickly tear through most foes.

Passives

Here we’re only going to talk about the main passives we absolutely want as well as our Key passive. There are unfortunately a couple we will need to take to get access to these though.

Key Passive – Earthen Might

Earthen Might is a no-brainer for us as we don’t Shapeshift at all and only use Earth and Companions skills. This powerful Key Passive grants our Earth Skills a chance to Restore all of our Spirit AND give us 5 seconds of 100% Critical Strike Chance. While it’s a small base chance of 5%, this can go up to 25% if we Critically Strike an Immobilized or Stunned target.

Wild Impulses

Since our main damage skill is a Core Skill, Wild Impuses is a great pick up. It’ll but Landslide’s initial cost up to 33 Spirit, but gives it a nice bump up in damage. We’ll be able to fix this later with Affixes on our gear.

Predatory Instinct

The Extra Critical Strike Chance against close targets is a nice effect to have, should we be unable to gain Terramotes for Primal Landlside. Almost all of our damage is dealt at close Range, so it’s very benfitical.

Call of the Wild

Call of the Wild increases the damage of our Companion Skills. Two of our Skills are Companion Skills, so why not boost their already high active damage and make them more effective.

Crushing Earth

Crushing Earth grants a solid damage bonus to Earth Skills, as we’ll be able to frequently Immobilize and Stun enemies.

Stone Guard

Stone Guard increases the damage of our Earth Skills while at least 50% of our Max Life is Fortified. Since we’ll constantly be stacking Fortify from Safeguard as well as Ferocious Wolves, we’ll have this up more often than not.

Envenom

With Poison Creeper frequently poisoning larger targets as well as the active that will posion huge groups, there’s no reason to be without this. Earth Skill already has a lot of support for Critical Strikes, so having a bit of extra Critical Strike Damage is always nice.

Defiance

Earth Magic is Nature Magic, and this is just free Elite damage for us as a result. With Elites being the tougher foes to take down in most situations every bit of extra damage we can get helps a ton.

Natural Disaster

While we won’t have access to Vulnerable until we get our Paragon Board going, this will still help once we do. Unfortunately, the build does lack the means to benefit from this consistently beyond that. Thankfully much of our burst is front-loaded anyways

Skill Point Distribution

This is an easy-to-reference table for where we’ll be placing all of our Skill points. These are listed in the order they appear on the skill tree.

Icon	Skill Name	Skill Tree	Points
	Earth Spike	Basic	1
	Enhanced Earth Spike	Basic	1
	Wild Earth Spike	Basic	1
	Landslide	Core	5
	Enhanced Landslide	Core	1
	Primal Landslide	Core	1
	Heart of the Wild	Core	1
	Wild Impulses	Core	3
	Predatory Instinct	Core	3
	Earthen Bulwark	Defensive	1
	Enhanced Earthen Bulwark	Defensive	1
	Innate Earthen Bulwark	Defensive	1
	Poison Creeper	Companion	5
	Enhanced Poison Creeper	Companion	1
	Brutal Poison Creeper	Companion	1
	Wolves	Companion	5
	Enhanced Wolves	Companion	1
	Ferocious Wolves	Companion	1
	Call of the Wild	Companion	3
	Crushing Earth	Wrath	3
	Safeguard	Wrath	1
	Stone Guard	Wrath	3
	Neurotoxin	Wrath	1
	Envenom	Wrath	3
	Petrify	Ultimate	1
	Prime Petrify	Ultimate	1
	Supreme Petrify	Ultimate	1
	Defiance	Ultimate	3
	Natural Disaster	Ultimate	3
	Earthen Might	Key Passive	1

Gearing and Stats

In this section, we’ll cover all the things you’d want to keep an eye out for to enhance the final build. This includes our Recommended Weapons, Spirit Boons, Aspects, and of course, Uniques.

Recommended Weapons

This build prefers a 1H Axe and Totem as its main weapons. The Off-hand is the more important part as you can use any 1H weapon, the Axe just happens to be the most beneficial option.

You could opt for a Staff as well, but that often means dropping an aspect to make it work, and

Ideal Stats

The table below details the ideal stats for our gear, be on the lookout for gear that matches at least three of the four rolls below.

Due to the width of the table, we highly recommend mobile users rotate their devices to view it properly.

Gear	Stat 1	Stat 2	Stat 3	Stat 4
Main-hand	Critical Strike Damage	Critical Strike Damage with Earth Skills	Vulnerable Damage	Core Skill Damage
Off-hand	Cooldown Reduction	Critical Strike Chance	Lucky Hit Chance	Spirit Cost Reduction
Helm	Cooldown Reduction	Maximum Life	Ranks to Poison Creeper	Ranks to Wolves
Chest	Damage Reduction	Damage Reduction while Fortified	Maximum Life	Resistance
Gloves	Critical Strike Chance	Critical Strike Damage with Earth Skills	Ranks to Landslide	Lucky Hit Chance
Pants	Damage Reduction	Damage Reduction while Fortified	Resistance	Maximum Life
Boots	Movement Speed	Spirit Cost Reduction	Resistance	Resistance
Amulet	Cooldown Reduction	Ranks to Crushing Earth	Ranks to Companion Skills	Earth Skill Damage
Rings	Critical Strike Chance	Critical Strike Damage	Critical Strike Damage with Earth Skills	Lucky Hit Chance

Recommended Gems

This build uses Sapphires in Weapons and Armor and Diamonds in Jewelry.

We opt for Sapphires in our Weapons as we’ll be able to crowd control enemies more often than we’ll be able to apply Vulnerable.

We use Sapphires in our Armor, as once we have Earthen Bulwark set up properly, we shouldn’t be in any risk of being Crowd Controlled. Early on you may still want Topaz though until you get Earthen Bulwark to a manageable cooldown length.

We go with Diamonds for Our Jewelry for the Resistance it provides. With Resistance being a great defensive layer, Diamonds ar a great option until you need specific Resistances to round out your gear.

Vampiric Powers

During the Season of Blood, we’ll have access to Vampiric Powers, which allow us to slot up to five unique powers into our Sanguine Circle to increase the power of the build. We’ll include more than the maximum in the selection below to offer alternatives, but they will be listed in order of their relative strength.

Name	Effect	Reason
Anticipation	Reduces Ultimate Skill Cooldown. Ultimate Skill Damage increased for each nearby Enemy afflicted with a DoT.	Having more uptime on Petrify helps the build a ton with both Damage and Sustain.
Metamorphosis	Evading turns us into a cloud of bats, making us Unstoppable during the effect and 4 seconds after. Evading through enemies deals Physical Damage and applies Vampiric Curse.	This give us a very reliable source of Unstoppable to just ignore crowd control. it also allows us to use Tibault’s Will to decent effect.
Domination	Deal increased damage to Stunned, Frozen, Immobilized, or Feared enemies. Injured Non-Elites are executed instead.	This is an okay damage boost, but really help with pushing harder content by providing an easy and guaranteed execute with our main skill.
Resilience	Increases Damage Reduction based on Missing Maximum Life.	This helps the build survive easier in harder content.
Prey on the Weak	Increases Vulnerable Damage. Enemies afflicted with Vampiric Curse	This pairs well with our short range and Metamorphosis for a very consistent damage increase in longer encounters.
Blood Boil	Grants a Guaranteed Overpower after a short time. Core Skills that Overpower spawn Volitile Blood Drops that deal physical Damage in an AoE when collected.	This works well to improve how much Banished Lord’s Talisman improves the build.
Feed the Coven	Companion Attacks have a chance to restore Spirit and increased damage for a short time.	Since we’ll have 2 Vine Creepers and 3 Wolves supporting us, this can net us a bit of passive Spirit generation, which can help a fair bit.

Spirit Boons

For our Spirit Boons, we’ll want to use the Boons listed below to boost the effectiveness of the build. We’ll explain each choice we’re taking and how it helps.

For Deer, We’re taking Wariness. Wariness is a pretty generic damage reduction against Elites, but it’s really the only useful effect we can get from the Deer.

For Eagle, we’re taking just Avaian Wrath. This gives us a multiplicative bonus to our Critical Strike Damage, which we’ll be getting plenty of on an Earth Build.

For Wolf, we’ll be taking Packleader and Calamity. Packleader gives us a chance to reset our Companion Skills and both do huge damage, in large groups Subterranean aspect will often trigger this. Calamity is a strong option here as extending the Crowd Control and Critical Damage Boost of Petrify is going to be great in any situation.

For Snake, we’ll take Calm Before the Storm. This allows our Earth Skills to occasionally reduce the Cooldown of Petrify, allowing us to use it more often. Similar to Calamity, the Subterranean Aspect works exceptionally well with this.

As an alternative to better support using a Banished Lord’s Talisman, we can also drop Wolf’s Calamity in exchange for Snake’s Obsidian Slam, granting a second guaranteed Overpower. We’re sacrificing some duration on Petrify, but that doesn’t set us back as much as swapping away from Calm Before the Storm would.

Aspects

We’ll cover the Aspects that are recommended for maximizing the potential of the build. We’ll also suggest which gear slot you should look to place them in.

Subterranean Aspect

This Aspect is a huge part of the build, boosting the damage of Landslide and also casting it when we active Poison Creeper for huge damage. It’s a great AoE effect that can very easily trigger Lucky Hits for us.

We’ll place this in our Gloves, as it drops fairly uncommonly.

Crashstone Aspect

It’s just not an Earth Build without Crashstone’s huge boost of Critical Strike Damage against Crowd Controlled targets. This synergizes exceptionally well with the build, making the Subterranean Aspect much stronger.

This will be placed in our Amulet to boost its strength, being one of our strongest Offensive Aspects.

Sheperd’s Aspect

Since we’ll have at least 3 companions at any given time, this provides a pretty meaningful improvement to damage. With the Vicious Heart of Moonrage as well as the Aspect of the Stampede, we’ll be able to increase the count of our companions for more damage.

We’ll place this in one of our Weapons.

Aspect of the Aftershock

Aspect of the Aftershock is a great bonus for Landslide, which effectively doubles its damage by having the pillar strike a second time. This results in a massive increase in overall damage.

We’ll place this in one of our Weapons.

Aspect of the Stampede

We use Aspect of the Stampede to not only further boost the effect of the Shepard’s Aspect but also to boost our already powerful companions. Between these two boosts, it’s worth having a slot in the build.

We’ll place this on one of our Rings, since our other offensive slots are filled.

Ballistic Aspect

We’re an Earth Build, and to nobody’s surprise also use Fortify. This improves the damage of Landslide while also boosting the base effect of Earthen Bulwark.

We’ll Slot this into our Helm, letting the other armor pieces be purely defensive.

Aspect of the Umbral

We’re loaded up on Crowd Control, and AoE Crowd Control at that. This helps to alleviate most of our issues with Spirit in combination with Earthen Might, so long as we get a good roll.

This will be placed in our remaining Ring, as Resource Aspects can only be on Rings.

Aspect of Mending Stone

This boosts Earthen Bulwark to not only be more consistent, but also provide us a way to replenish it, helping to keep it active for the full duration.

We’ll place this on our Pants as our Pants tend to be primarily defensive in nature.

Earthguard Aspect

With our heps of Crowd Control, this will allow this aspect to make each activation of Earthen Bulwark to be stronger. With up to 9 seconds of it being active in combination with any gaps in cooldown time, we’ll be able to reliably double the strength of our initial barrier.

We’ll place this in our Chest, as our chest armor tends to be primarily defensive in nature.

Ghostwalker Aspect

Since Earthen Bulwark provides us a very long duration barrier and Unstoppable Effect, Ghostwalker is perfect for getting more speed and utility into the build.

We’ll place this in our Boots, as that’s the best place for Mobility Aspects.

Aspect of Retaliation

The Aspect of Retaliation is a really solid damage boost for the build, given how quickly we can build Fortify and how easily we can maintain it for most situations.

This is an alternative option for one of our Rings. This would replace Aspect of the Umbral, but the build doesn’t suffer many issues with Spirit in the late game, so it cna be a great pick up.

Unique Items

We’re only going to talk about the few that offer the strongest effects on the build. While others help, these are the ones you really want to slot into your build if you get the chance. These will drop starting in Tier 3 content, but decent upgrades for the build once you get them.

Storm’s Companion

Storm’s Companion is strictly optional. Wolves are a big part of our damage and having levels on them can do a lot for us. However, they’re not our main damage, and using these Pants sacrifices one of the main defensive slots we have. Generally, it’s not worth it, but if you want to lean more towards Companions, it can be a fun way to get some extra power.

Airidah’s Inexorable Will

Airidah’s Inexorable Will is a great Unique Ring that pulls enemies in when we use our Ultimate Skill. With most of our damage being a very close-range build, this is a great way to get enemies in range for our burst damage.

Tibault’s Will

Tibault Will is a pair of Unique Pants that grant us increased damage while we’re Unstoppable and for a duration after. Additionally, each time we become (not refresh) Unstoppable, we recover 50 Spirit. These are great to combine with the Metamorphosis Vampiric Power during Season of Blood, but will not be great without it.

Banished Lord’s Talisman

Banished Lord’s Talisman is a Unique Amulet that grants us a Guaranteed Overpower every so often. Combined with Primal Landslide granting Guaranteed Critical Strikes, this can offer an exceptionally powerful damage increase. We can even use the Blood Boil Vampiric Power to make more frequent use of this as well.

Paragon Boards and Glyphs

These two endgame options are part of the Paragon System which is available starting at level 50.

Paragon Boards

Paragon Boards are a feature that becomes available at level 50. These boards allow us to spend the Paragon points we earn for leveling and Renown to strengthen our character. Each of these has a single Glyph Slot to place a glyph of our Choice.

Starter Board

Like all starter board, the Druids offers generic damage and defenses.

As usual, we’ll path up the right side through Prime to our Glyph Node, then continue up the left side through Impel and head to the next board. We’ll come back later to grab Resolve cluster, taking some Dexterity to active the Glyph we’ll place here.

Earthen Devastation

Earthen Devastation offers a lot of Damage Critical Strike Damage bonuses for both Earth Skills and against Crowd Controlled enemies. The Legendary node here increases out Earth Skill damage vs Crowd Controlled enemies, making it a great early pickup.

Rotate this board so Crushing Earth is the closest to the bottom. We’ll path straight up to Earthen Power and our Glyph Node. From here, we’ll head to Resolve and connect to the gate on the right side. Then we’ll head up and around for Earthen Devastation. After this we can grab Oppress and connect to the upper gate as well. From the right gate, we can head straight down to Crushing Earth at any point.

Heightened Malice

Heightened Malice grants a lot of damage to Poisoned Targets, Poison Resist, and Damage Reduction from Poisoned enemies. The Legendary Node grants us a Multiplicative damage bonus when 3 or more nearby enemies are poisoned, improving our mobbing.

We’ll rotate this board so Nature-born is the nearest node to the bottom, and connect it to the top gate of Earthen Devastation. We’ll path directly over to the Glyph Node and pick up Sinking Fangs as well as most of the Dexterity around this Glyph Node. After this we’ll head straight to the right side gate, picking up Overturn in the process. From the Gate, we can also head up to Heightened Malice to pick up that nice bonus, while taking Poison Resilience for the one additional point for the extra life, but not its cluster.

Constricting Tendrils

Constricting Tendrils offers a lot of extra Nature Magic Damage, which is our main damage output. The Legendary node grants all of our Nature Magic a chance to Immobilize and Poison foes, making us less reliant on just the Poison Creeper for Poison and Immobilize.

We’ll rotate this board so the Courage is the closest node to the left side and attach this board to the right gate of Earthen Devastation. We’ll path straight to Devastation before heading up to grab Constricting Tendrils. After this, we’ll head back to near the gate, branch up to our Glyph Node, and pick up Courage and Nature’s Will, pathing through Dexterity nodes for our glyph then head to the top gate.

Ancestral Guidance

Ancestral Guidance offers Basic and Core Skill damage as well as Spirit bonuses. The Legendary node grants us a temporary boost of damage after spending 75 Spirit.

We’ll Rotate this board so that Harmony is closest to the bottom gate and attach this board next to both Heightened Malic and Constricting Tendrils. From the bottom gate, we’ll head up and collect our Glyph Node as well as Harmony. We’ll grab a bit of extra intelligence here to help active the Glyph we’ll place here. From the left side gate, we’ll path up to Ancestral Guidance to complete our Paragon Board, picking up Reclamation for the extra point.

Glyphs

Each of our Paragon Boards has a Glyph Slot, where we can socket one of our Glyphs. These Glyphs provide powerful bonuses that can be leveled up by completing Nightmare Dungeons to increase their power. Below are the Glyphs we recommend and what board to place them on.

Exploit

Exploit boosts our Vulnerable damage for every 5 Dexterity in range. With 25 Dexterity in range, we’ll apply Vulnerable to any foe we hit for three seconds. This ends up being the build’s only source of Vulnerable.

We’ll place this on the Starter Board, as we can activate it fairly easily there after upgrading it.

Human

Human increases all damage we deal while in Human Form for every 5 Willpower in Range. With 40 Willpower in range, we also gain 10% Damage reduction in Human Form. We never leave Human Form, so these will always be active.

We’ll place this in Earthen Devastation as we can easily activate the bonus without much heavy Paragon Point Investment, even before leveling it.

Tectonic

Tectonic Increases your Critical Strike Damage with Earth Skills for every 5 Dexterity allocated in range. With 25 Dexterity allocated in range, we also gain increased Lucky Hit Chance.

We’ll place this in Heightened Malice as we can pick up a ton of Dexterity on this board, making an exceptionally strong option.

Spirit

Spirit increases our Critical Strike Damage for every 5 Dexterity in range. With 25 Dexterity in range, get gain a stacking damage bonus every time we critically strike an enemy.

We’ll place this on Constricting Tendrils as we can easily path through a bunch of dextirty for both effects.

Undaunted

Undaunted boosts our Damage while Fortifed for every 5 Intelligence in range. With 25 Intelligence in range, we gain additional damage reduction based on our Fortify.

We’ll place this on Ancestral Guidance, as the Harmony cluster will help activate this easier.

Leveling Order

If you want to play this build from level 1, the next segment of this build guide is for you. Below you will see the exact leveling order in which you should acquire your skills and passives to maximize damage and overall performance.

Levels	Icon	Skill	Purpose
2-4		Earth Spike	Upgrade to Wild Earth Spike to improve overall Lucky Hit Chance
5-7		Landslide	Upgrade to Primal for synergy with later skills and Aspects
8-10		Earthen Bulwark	Upgrade to Innate Bulwark for Unstoppable and additional damage.
11-13		Predatory Instincts	Critical Strike Chance vs Close.
14-16		Poison Creeper	Upgrade to Brutal for Critical Strike Chance Boost
17-19		Wolves	Upgrade to Ferocious for Fortify.
20-23		Landslide	Max out our Main DPS Skill for more damage
24		Neurotoxin	One point, to reach Envenom later.
25-27		Petrify	Fully upgrade for Critical Strike Damage and Spirit Generation
28-31		Poison Creeper	Max out our AoE Skill for more damage
32-35		Wolves	Max out for a strong Single Target damage option.
36		Earthen Might	Insanely powerful Key passive
37-39		Crushing Earth	Increased damage to Immobilized or Stunned enemies.
40		Safeguard	Earth Skills Fortify on Crit
41-43		Stone Guard	Increased Earth Skill Damage while at least 50% Fortified
44-46		Envenvom	Increased damage to Poisoned enemies.
47-49		Call of the Wild	Increased Companion Skill Damage
Renown		Heart of the Wild	Single Point to reach Wild impulses
Renown		Wild Impulses	Increased Landslide Damage.
Renown		Defiance	Increased Landslide Damage vs Elites.
Renown		Natural Disaster	Increased Landslide Damage vs Vulnerable.

Gameplay Video

Gameplay clip featuring a Nightmare Dungeon Run solo with the “Defiled Earth” Druid Earth Build in Diablo 4.

This concludes our Diablo 4 Druid Build focusing on the Landslide skill. You can find more leveling and endgame Diablo 4 builds here on VULKK.com to try new things with your characters and spice up your gameplay.

To learn how to maximize your damage in Diablo 4, consult with our guide on that topic. Learning how to deal the highest possible damage with your build is crucial to succeeding in the Endgame and highest tiers.