Rabbit and Steel: Druid Build Guide

Druid is the most versatile class in terms of positioning for DPS:

Unlike any of the other classes, who need to either get aligned with the boss (Defender, Spellsword, Sniper, Bruiser), stay at a certain distance from the boss (Assassin, Heavyblade, Dancer, Ancient), or stay relatively still for seconds on end (Wizard), Druid can maintain her DPS no matter where she is on the field.

Her defensive, unlike everyone else except Heavyblade and to some extent Defender, does not contribute to your damage output in any way unless you buy upgrades.

Because of these, she’s also arguably the safest to play. (Granted, if Defensives are left completely unused, the safest is definitely Assassin, but that’s out of the scope of this guide.)

Just like the other classes, this comes with cons – for one, without the right upgrades, Druid’s Secondary can barely hit moving bosses, and she doesn’t have much in the way of targeted Area of Effect damage.

While an extensive knowledge about the items that appear in the game is great for builds, generally, you’ll only need to know a few things about items for DPS. Items can:

1. Buff damage of a skill directly.
2. Apply damage on usage of a skill.
3. Apply damage when a skill hits.
4. Apply a buff/debuff when a condition is met.
5. Affect/reset cooldowns.
6. Other

Where other is everything else that are more niche or affect your build in different ways.

Generally speaking, you’ll be wanting items that synergise with your skills rather than other items – the reason for this being consistency. You will always have the 4 skills you have, and the chances of you getting a skill you want is 20% every shop, per skill.

However, to get synergy between items that do not directly affect your skills, you typically need to roll specific items. This does not mean that they’re bad by any means, but such items just tend to rely on luck more often.

Good examples of this are taking items like Crown of Storms, (When a % chance succeeds, deal 200 damage to all enemies), Storm Petticoat (Deal 250 damage to all enemies when you gain invulnerability), or Mimick Rabbitfoot (Become significantly luckier) on Druid. Do they have their uses? Absolutely, but you’ll need to roll or have already rolled the proper items for them.

While Desert Earrings (Every time you gain a buff, gain another random buff for 5 seconds.), for instance, synergises excellently with Aquamarine Bracelet (Every 12 seconds, gain a random buff for 10 seconds.), Redwhite Ribbon (You deal 5% more damage. Buffs you place last 50% longer.), and Shrinemaiden’s Kosode (When you have a buff, your movement speed increases significantly and you deal 25% more damage.), that’s 2-4 very specific items you’ll need to roll. Granted, it is fun to play with, and if you manage to roll other buff-giving items, your damage will still be decent, but this guide will focus on getting relatively consistent DPS increases across your games, rather than specific sub-builds.

Your Primary slows you for about 1/2 a second.

This is very important – as any spellcaster in both R&S and FFXIV can tell you, it’s common to get hit because you decided to attack while movement is needed.

Moreso than most of the other classes, you’ll often be relegated to using your Primary a lot, especially at the start, as once you’ve pressed your Special and Secondary once, there’s quite literally nothing else to do for the next few GCDs.

No matter how low the damage is, every other class at least has *an* option if they don’t have a Primary. Druid literally has nothing else that can increase their damage.

Despite this, many other classes benefit more from buffing one’s Primary than Druid. Wizard and Assassin both rely on using as many Primaries as they can to reset their Special or Defensive respectively. Bruiser, for another, relies on stacking Charges on their Primary and releasing it all at once, and as such tends to be much more dependent on their Primary than Druid tends to be.

Your normal Primary shoots a projectile every 1.5s that explodes and deals 120 damage in a small radius near the target. It says “radius”, but unless there are multiple stacking targets, or unless you’ve rolled multiple size increase items, for all intents and purposes, it’s just a single-target projectile.

Opal Primary reduces the cooldown of your Special by 2 seconds each time it’s used.
Sapphire Primary makes it deal 90 damage every 1s instead.
Ruby Primary makes it deal 250 damage every 2.5s instead.
Garnet Primary grants [Flash-Dex] every 10 times it is used.
Emerald Primary makes it deal 180 damage, but makes its range extremely short, giving up the point of playing Druid to begin with (positional versatility).

Not only does your Primary deal much less damage than others, there are few weapons that buff Primaries to begin with, so more often than not, you should expect to give up Primary-buffing items to your teammates who can benefit more. A good Bruiser with a Giant Stone Club (Your Primary deals 70% more damage. Its GCD is increased by 0.60 seconds. Your movement speed is also moderately reduced.) or a Heavyblade with Shinsoku Katana (Your Primary’s GCD has a 50% chance to be 0.80 seconds instead of its normal amount.) would very likely deal more damage than a Druid would with the same.

As such, generally speaking, I’ll grab an Old Bonnet (Abilities and loot that hit once now deal 250 damage, regardless of other loot effects.), Ghost Spear (Your Primary now only deals 10 damage, and applies Ghostflame), or another debuff-applying effect if it’s there, no one’s taking it, and there’s nothing better, but I wouldn’t attempt to build into Primary damage, unless there’s nothing better or unless I obtain very specific rolls.

Druid’s Primary may slow her for ~1/2 second, but her secondary slows her even more for ~1 second.

Given your Secondary’s AoE sticks on where its placed, it becomes inconsistent not just in terms of dealing damage for moving bosses, but also in terms of getting a good build:

Your original Secondary deals 120 damage every 2s for 12s, hitting 6 times.
Opal Secondary deals 140 damage every 2s for 20s, hitting 10 times.
Sapphire Secondary deals 140 damage every second for 6s, hitting 6 times.
Ruby Secondary deals 420 damage every 6s for 12s, hitting twice, and has a larger size.
Garnet Secondary deals 140 damage every 2s for 12s, hitting 6 times. Importantly, it hits all enemies on screen.
Emerald Secondary deals 40 damage to all enemies on screen, but applies decay on them, hitting for 100dps for 10 seconds.

Immediately there are several issues: Unlike the other classes, your secondary should not be used more than once every 12s, or 6s if you have Sapphire Secondary, which limits usefulness of items that apply on use, like Timewarp Wand (Your Secondary has a 40% chance of giving you HASTE-0 for 5 seconds.) or Assassin’s Knife (Your Secondary has a 30% chance of dealing an additional 2 blows, dealing 50 damage each, in a radius around your target enemy.)

To begin with, one would not want to pick Sapphire Secondary, as being slowed for 1s every 6s is much worse than being slowed for 1s every 12s or 20s. One would much prefer Garnet or Emerald just to consistently hit moving bosses.

Should you build into Secondary damage, many of the items that synergise with one Secondary do not synergise well with another. Ruby Secondary, for instance, is excellent with Reddragon Blade (Your Secondary inflicts 5s Burn), but Emerald and Sapphire Secondary is pretty bad with it, and the others are just okay.

Emerald Secondary is great with Debuff-enhancing items. Witch’s Cloak, for instance, (Your Secondary deals 10% more damage. Debuffs you place deal 70% more damage) is excellent for Emerald secondary, but picking Emerald Secondary to begin with limits the usefulness of any other secondary-buffing item, such as Peridot Rapier (Increases Secondary damage by 20%. Every 8 seconds, using your Secondary will grant you brief invulnerability and erase projectiles in a large radius around you.) or even the best Secondary-buffing item for Druid, Occult Dagger. (Your Secondary is 80% more powerful, but gains a cooldown of 5 seconds.)

Atop this, unlike building into Special or Primary, you can’t ever have more than 1 Secondary going at once. This means that even if you build into Secondary, and have the best Secondary going, you’ll still be stuck using Specials and Primaries until your previous Secondary wears off.

TL;DR Due to being unable to spam or stack secondaries, due to its ineffectiveness on moving bosses, and due to big differences in secondary upgrades, building and focusing solely on Secondary isn’t the best unless you get godly rolls on items.

And now, Specials.

This is where you can get so much damage you overshadow the other classes.

Your normal Special puts down a butterfly Sentry Gun that fires a projectile 4 times over 12s, for 170 damage each. This can be placed every 7 seconds.

Opal Special buffs it to 6 times over 18 seconds.
Sapphire Special changes it to once a second for 4s, hitting for 210 damage each time. It also changes the cooldown to 5s.
Ruby Special changes it to a bomb that explodes after 6 seconds, dealing 320 damage. It can be placed 3 times every 9s.
Garnet Special also changes it to a bomb, but it explodes 4 times over 12s, dealing 210 damage each, and erases projectiles in a small radius on placement.
Emerald Special buffs it to 10 times over 30s, dealing 240 damage each time, but changes its GCD to 2.5s, it’s CD to 30s, and is unaffected by loot that changes ability cooldown.

Immediately, it’s pretty obvious that this is where much of your damage can come from. Not only do you hit multiple times, it deals decent damage on a short-ish cooldown, and synergises with the largest stock of items in the game.

While your Ruby and Garnet Special requires you to position yourself closer to the boss, and your Ruby Special synergises less with items that directly make your abilities deal more damage per individual hit like Shadow Bracelet (Abilities and Loot that hit more than once deal 30 more damage) or Venom Hood (Your abilities deal 15 more damage. Debuffs you place deal 50 more damage.), and while you would want to get Emerald or at least Opal Special in the end, most of your Specials synergise with most of the Special-buffing items.

Why Emerald Special?
First off, over time, it deals the most damage of any Special in the game with a single buttonpress. Most times, it wouldn’t matter as you would tend to only have 1 or 2 up every 30s anyway.

However, while your Emerald Special may not be affected by items that change ability cooldowns like Hawkfeather Fan (Reduces your Special’s cooldown by 2 seconds), but it’s still affected by items that reduces or resets your cooldown.

Case in point, the Necronomicon, Shinobi Tabi, Raindrop Earrings, Sun Pendant, and Nova Crown.

Necronomicon: Every 8 seconds, using your Special will reset its cooldown instantly and Charge it.
Shinobi Tabi: Standing still will cause you to Vanish for 5 seconds and resets your Special. Available every 8 seconds. Starts battle on cooldown.
Raindrop Earrings: Every 18 seconds, when you stand still, gain Repeat for 5 seconds.
Sun Pendant: Every 10 times you use an ability, reset your Special’s cooldown and gain Flash-Int.
Nova Crown: Your Special’s cooldown becomes 30 seconds. Every 8 seconds, this loot item reduces your Special’s cooldown timer to 1 second and Charge it.

With Necronomicon, by waiting for its cooldown rather than pressing two specials at once, you can have a Charged Special every 8s. In doing so, rather than having a base of 240×10 damage every 30s, you’ll have a base of 360×10 every 8s.
With Nova Crown, its also 360×10 every 8s.
With Shinobi Tabi, it’s 312×10 every 8s.
With Sun Pendant, it’s 600×10 every ~13s.
With Raindrop Earrings, it’s 3x240x10 every 30s, assuming you can control your movement properly.

Even Mountain Staff, an item that doesn’t affect its cooldown, is insane with it, making it deal a base of 720×10 every 30s.

This is with one item. Any one of these items can form the core of your Exodia-equivalent. Especially Necronomicon, which synergises with any possible Special you can obtain. I cannot stress this enough, always fight for Necronomicon. Always get the Necronomicon. Always forfeit all mortal possessions to the Necronomicon

(This was in the Demo, but Necronomicon did the exact same thing back then)

Should you not obtain any of these items, a few other items also have a chance of resetting your Special when combined with other effects, such as Crowfeather Hairpin or Obsidian Hairpin, and both of these increase your Special’s damage. If you stack luck with Gemini Necklace, for instance, you can get really close to obtaining 240×10 damage every 2.5s, which is also really good.

Opal Special can also substitute for Emerald Special quite well – while it is less efficient, it has a shorter GCD, allowing you to stuff 4-5 into one use of Raindrop Earrings, giving you 5x170x6 every 18s. You can use this with Necronomicon as well, as it’ll come off cooldown every Special cast, giving you 2.5x170x6 every 8s.

Even without these items, thanks to the sheer amount of damage you can get off of your Emerald Special, other items such as Nightingale Gown (Every 15s, Omegacharge your Special) function much better with Druid as opposed to other classes. Drawbacks given by Stonebreaker Staff (Your Special’s cooldown is increased by 2s, but deals 40% more damage) also get nullified thanks to your Emerald Special’s effect. Opal Primary reduces your special’s cooldown by 2s every time you fire it, and using that with even just an ordinary Emerald Special can net you much more damage than with many items.

Very specific items can synergise much better with other Specials, like Hawkfeather Fan with Sapphire Special, and combined with Bolt Staff (Deals 150 damage every time you use your Special) or Book of Cheats, but again, this guide is about the consistent core of your build rather than specific sub-builds. If you have already managed to roll said items, great! But if there are better general items, it’s better to go for those. Especially since Bolt Staff and Book of Cheats are better for Special-spammers like Spellsword or Sniper, who can get a Special off every second or so.

Focusing on general use and DPS gain:


Disclaimer: These charts are ABSOLUTELY NOT the end-all-be-all for Druid. All this is for general increase of DPS in games, and in specific cases, other items will be rated much better than others. For instance, if you already have Emerald Secondary and/or are applying lots of debuffs, Witch’s Cloak is absolutely core. If you have Metronome Boots, Ruby Primary is excellent; if you have Old Bonnet, you might want to consider Sapphire Primary. If you’re going for Floof no-hit runs, Emerald Chestplate is core, etc etc.

That’s all! Leave some comments about stuff you disagree with, or about builds you’ve done before!