QUESTION: What's best DPS druid at the moment?

As above. I’m fixing to respec and I can’t really find any reliable sources. YouTubers exaggerate. Maxroll has disappointed me twice already. Any ideas where I can find credible meta info?

check the ladder

if you click on the character you want to view, you can see their skill trees and gears

The thing about the top druid builds for arena is that theyre absurdly tanky and outlast the waves. They’re great builds but just keep that in mind if you’re trying to find the “best DPS” since some of them are low DPS but last very long. Druid’s arn’t in the best place right now in terms of damage, and you can definitely get the DPS quite high but sacrifice a ton of survivability and since Druid’s have poor synergy with ward, which is the probably the best defense layer right now, they have to rely on other ways to reliable DPS while staying alive. Lightning Swarmblade relies on stunning their enemies while lightning procs, Frostbite Swarmblade relies on freezing enemies, the #1 Druid build in that arena list relies on spamming thorn shield and form switching for ward, even my cold maul werebear relies on super high hp regen to just last for dps. Druid’s feel like an after thought rn, Just don’t compare yourself to the Acolytes and Rogue’s doing literal millions of damage and you’ll be fine. I hope they buff them!

Druid unfortunately, is one of the worst specs DPS-wise in the game atm. Most the builds running around are hyper defensive. The Swarmblade builds are decent, but the damage is still mediocre compared to the seemingly overpowered specs in the game.
I made a lightning build that does more damage than I’ve seen on other builds thus far, but I’m not sure how far I’m going to be able to push it.

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCGluB9UNvM&t=909s&ab_channel=tridanium

This is by far the best druid build on YT rn for current patch (DPS wise).

And I agree with you, practically every Youtuber is posting bait content doing regular monos and exaggerating damage.

Thanks. I know about the dual form druid. I hear it’s super tanky but dps is terrible.

Thanks, I’ll make sure to check it out. I’m running the cold swarmblade now do like the loop but and I’m really disappointed with the dps. Maybe you could check it out Druid, level 100 (Release / 1.0.3) - Last Epoch Build Planner and tell me what I’m doing wrong? Julra has not been kind to the boots and the Shackles so far.

This is my video, thanks for recommending it!

Druids don’t DPS. They just survive. Which is slow and agonizing.