Hey heroes. Today I'm going over the Druid — the best hero for Boss Brawl in Heroes vs Hordes.
Why do I say he's the best? Pull up the global leaderboard for Boss Brawl and you'll see a pretty common theme: Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Druid, Bunny. The only reason Phoenix doesn't have Druid number one is because he doesn't have Druid.
You do need to level him up all the way, and we'll figure out why in this article. So let's deep dive into this half-bear, half-man, three-fingered king of Boss Brawl.
| 10 | -5% Cooldown |
|---|---|
| 20 | +200 Health |
| 30 | +200 Health |
| 40 | NATURE'S WRATH: 1% chance for enemies hit by hero weapon to create a pulse explosion, dealing 5%/20%/30%/50%/70% damage to surrounding enemies |
| 50 | All Heroes: +12.5% Damage |
| 60 | +35% Damage |
| 70 | All Heroes: -2.5% Cooldown |
| 80 | WEAKING WHISPERS: Every 10s cast an aura that causes nearby enemies to recieve 10%/20%/50%/80%/110% increased dmg, lasts for 2s |
| 90 | All Heroes that share faction: -2.5% Cooldown |
| 100 | SHAPESHIFTING: Killing enemies with the main weapon fills a meter the druid turns into a bear for 8s, stunning all enemies for 3s decreasing dmg taken by 50%. changing the base attack to a stomp that deals 120%/390%/770%/1260%/1840% damage |
| 120 | All Heroes: +12.5% Damage |
| 140 | Strong Stat Bonus: x1.2 Health (Multiplicative) |
| 160 | All Heroes: +100% Damage |
The way I usually go through heroes is base stats, level progression, skills, forge, then a little gameplay. For Druid in particular, his base stats are some of the best in the entire game. He gets +10% critical hit chance and evasion at base. Critical hit is great throughout the game as you push toward the 100% cap, and cooldown is one of the best talents for increasing damage. Hitting the cooldown caps in each game mode maximizes your damage — 90% in Normal, Hard, and Arena, then 40% basically everywhere else with exceptions like Boss Brawl. Druid has really strong base stats, and that cooldown number increases with each star fragment.
Then we look at level progression. You're hunting for cooldown, projectiles, and status effect multipliers — and you get cooldown right at level 10. So Druid already has a ton of internal cooldown, which makes him strong for clearing Normal and Hard Mode and contributes to his Boss Brawl dominance. The health at 20 and 30 is basically nothing. Damage at 60, again, nothing. And his strong stat bonus is more health. This guy is just a health tank — that's the idea of a Druid. Bear druids in most games are supposed to absorb damage. In HvH you don't take a ton of damage, so this stat doesn't translate as well in late-game modes like Nightmare or Hard Mode Arena where it could matter, but he's not awful there either.
Big takeaway: crit in his base stats plus cooldown in his level progression is what makes Druid strong throughout the whole game. He's a really good all-around hero. He just shines in Boss Brawl.
Druid's globals are decent, mostly because of one standout.
So roughly average globals — but the cooldown at 70 is really nice. He's a decent shelf hero. You'll take that cooldown and the faction cooldown 100% of the time.
Nature Scepter is a magic weapon — that matters, because Nature's Wrath procs off main weapon hits and the magical damage type opens a specific scaling lever I'll get to in a second. He unleashes green lightning that zaps enemies, starting with the first target and spreading his electric fury. It evolves into Rod of Life.
The big quirk: his weapon evolves off the Duration Tome, which is one of the least likely tomes to take in the game. That means in modes where experience is precious — Hard Mode Arena, Dragon's Tower — you're spending one of your scarce tome slots on Duration just to evolve, which changes up your entire build. That's a real cost.
Level 1: Nature's Fury (ultimate activation requirement reduction) or Wild Growth (+Area of Effect). Game-mode dependent. Nature's Fury is great if you can reliably activate the ultimate; otherwise Wild Growth/AoE is probably also fine, maybe a touch better early.
Level 2: Fruit Barrage (more weapon damage) or Primal Force (+10% critical hit chance). Crit is better early in the game; once you're at the 100% crit cap, you swap to straight damage. Crit has a chance to 4x multiply with rogue gear, so the multiple has higher value than 1.1x flat damage — but only if you're not already capped.
Level 5: Either the fruit stuns enemies, or it turns into a Withering Curse dead tree that pulses for damage every second. The pulse build is where you do massive damage to the boss in Boss Brawl — get the boss to stand under a tree during the vuln phase and it'll constantly tick. Stunning fruit is great for other game modes.
Not shown in the tooltip: the tree of life puts a shield on you. Stand in the shade and you generate a shield surprisingly fast. His whole kit reads like it should be amazing in Nightmare and Hard Mode Arena because of that shield + stuns + health, but in those modes you can't sit under the trees long enough — you're kiting or just trying not to die. So instead, for Boss Brawl, you take Withering Curse for the extreme damage.
The hidden secret is that since Nature's Wrath procs off main weapon hits and the weapon is magic, the 2x chance for magical projectiles talent doubles the proc chance of his skill — which doubles the chance of doing massive boss damage during the vulnerability phase. Stack as much magical projectile chance as you can when you're running Druid.
The key to Druid is getting star levels. He is incredibly star-level reliant. Hitting four stars and level 150 is when he takes his first big jump in damage, and he gets a massive jump at five star levels. I'm only at four right now and I haven't touched his true potential yet.
1% chance for enemies hit by the hero weapon to create a pulse explosion dealing 50% damage to surrounding enemies. 50% damage is actually really big — anything that's a version of your base damage can be huge. It's only a 1% chance, but it's impacted by cooldown, so the more cooldown you stack, the more chances this has to proc. As you get closer to the 90% cooldown cap in Boss Brawl, the more chances you have for this to fire during the vulnerability phase.
Every 10 seconds, casts an aura that causes nearby enemies to receive 80% increased damage from all sources, lasting 2 seconds. This scales up — at level 5 it's 110% increased damage. This is Druid's built-in expose, and it's part of the reason he's so strong against the boss. Combine this with Nature's Wrath and you get the engine that makes him a Boss Brawl beast. Each time Nature's Wrath procs during the vulnerability phase, it does a tremendous amount of damage. If you watch pros run Druid in Boss Brawl, you'll see giant spikes in their damage during the vuln phase — those spikes are Nature's Wrath procs hitting expose. It's not a high proc rate, but when it happens, it's magic.
Killing enemies with the main weapon fills a meter. When full, Druid turns into a bear for 8 seconds, stunning all enemies for 3 seconds, decreasing damage taken by 50%, and changing the base attack to a stomp that deals a whole bunch more damage. He's actually a pretty cute bear — three-toed and adorable. This damage scales really well with star levels too.
I never really use Druid in Nightmare Mode, Hard Mode Arena, or Dragon's Tower. The issue is that his whole kit reads about health and stuns and shields, but you need to evolve his main weapon for it to come together — and getting that to happen is hard in those modes when experience is limited.
Pop into his hero faction camp and you'll see he picks up a whole bunch more cooldown there too. My base Boss Brawl Druid build sits at almost 100% crit before any jewels, and 80% cooldown out of the box. That's nuts — he's got so much cooldown baked in that you barely need any in jewels, and his crit chance is so high that you can actually push to 100% crit using jewels alone.
What that lets you do: drop the cooldown and crit chance jewels, equip pure offensive jewels, and then in your tomes you go Cooldown → Damage → Duplicator → Duration → XP instead of taking Critical Strike Tome. That extra tome flexibility is a nice little edge. Stack magical projectile in your gear and talents and you're maximizing the engine.
Watching him in Try Mode: his main weapon is a green beam that's just shooting all across the map and auto-targeting horde, jumping around like a madman. The green pulses around his body are Weakening Whispers applying expose — you'll see a little shield icon above each affected enemy. Then his ultimate fires and he turns into that cute three-toed bear, his pulses stunning everything on contact. No horde is getting on the screen against this guy.
Overall I give Druid a high A. He's the best Boss Brawl hero when fully capped. I do think Bunny is better for most players because you don't need five stars on Bunny to have him go off in Boss Brawl, but with Druid you need at least four and preferably five. If you get him early, level him up and put forge levels in him. He's strong enough to push through Normal or Hard Mode if you want him as a main, but he doesn't excel in any of the arenas. He hasn't been around in events for at least 6-8 months that I can remember, so you're going to have to grab him in another event or via the Boss Brawl rotation. That's where I got him for $50 — and it was worth it.
