Maelswarm Druid: Having Our Cake and Eating It, Too Build Guide

• Large aoe with Locust Swarm to clear monos quickly
• Fast character; able to reach upwards of 90% increased movement and attack speed
• Easy to play; stack Bleed on a healthy target, use Swarm Strike with Summon Locust nearby, and just go
• Durable character; several defensive layers and good sustain

• Needs several Idols with average rolls on resistances and Grand Resolve of Humanity to open affix slots on gear
• Downtime on this build will leave you slightly vulnerable, as much of your damage and sustain comes from Locust Swarm with high stacks of Bleed consumed from enemies
• Can be very gear dependent. If you do not have a well rolled Crystal Sword, Shard of the Shattered Lance and Undisputed (possibly Taste of Blood as a low level SuffixChance to Bleed on Hit option) are the only viable alternatives IMO for higher levels
• You are subject to minion AI and must have some understanding of bosses/enemies to position your low health hives correctly

This build scales the majority of its damage by stacking Bleed on a target, and then using Swarm Strike to consume said Bleed via Bloodlust Swarm. It also utilizes Maelstrom's Windswept, Windfury, and Sleet-Footed nodes with Swarmblade Form's Water Strider for our defenses/speed. We do not scale any minion health, so you will need careful placement of Summon Hive to get the most out of it.

Skill Rotation:

Skill rotation starts with using all available Summon Hive charges on the opposite side of your target to ensure Summon Locust can survive during the fight. Then you will stack Bleed with Summon Locust, Armblade Slash, and Dive ( SuffixChance to Bleed on Hit is from the Death by a Thousand Wings node in Swarmblade Form and Serpent Strike's Blood Flurry) for a few seconds before consuming Bleed with Swarm Strike. You will also want to consume as many Summon Locust as you can to gain the maximum possible amount of base damage for Locust Swarm, since each locust consumed increases the base damage. You will continue to use Armblade Slash on tougher enemies and bosses to get damage reduction using Boar Heart from Primal Strength and Impervious, as well as inflicting cold resistance shred from Grand Rage of Winter.

If you choose the Release the Horde, you will want to begin stacking while the hives are in close range. This greatly increases QoL with the build as it will be easier to achieve a good swarm and helps alleviate the frustration of boss aoes by immediately spitting out your max locust count and consuming.

Skill Notes:

During any amount of downtime, you can maneuver through packs and maintain some damage with Dive and proccing Maelstrom. This will kill trash mobs easily so you can focus on finding a rare or large pack for a new Locust Swarm. You are tanky enough to survive in large packs of enemies to stack huge amounts of Bleed , but just watch out for aoe attacks from a Diamond Matron or a Gorgon.

Something to know with Locust Swarm is that it will scale its damage off the most recent use of Swarm Strike. If you have a strong Locust Swarm, then use Swarm Strike before the duration expires; a new Locust Swarm will be active. This causes us to lose all the possible damage and duration from the previous. You will want to wait until the duration of a good Locust Swarm expires before starting the loop again to use the skill as effectively as possible.

You may be wondering, is the damage of Maelstrom any good? The answer is yes, as I will show in a clip below. It does not get scaled quite as high as Locust Swarm, but it is about 1/3 of our damage and is enough to kill trash mobs without Locust Swarm so the engine does not completely stop running. You may be able to achieve more damage than what you'll see in the video with more optimized rings and relic.

One last thing, Summon Locust will not come out of Summon Hive unless there is an enemy nearby they can target. You won't be able to pre stack a swarm of locust at the start of a mono or boss fight, so keep this in mind running around.

I wouldn't level into this build, follow any other Primalist leveling guide on the forum involving Maelstrom. At the time of writing, this skill is the likely the fastest way to level in the game.

If Maelstrom gets nerfed in the future, Werebear Form and Swipe is smooth until you can equip the required gear to start the build.

Once you reach Empowered Mono, you should be able to equip all necessary gear and have the passive points for Primal Strength and Impervious.

At this point, you should only need to optimize your Idols and Blessings, and grind for LP if you want. The build will be able to easily clear 200+ Corruption and at the very least T4 Julra.

This build is NOT compatible with the Soulfire Bastion. The final boss has too many aoe attacks, and the Summon Locust will not survive even one ignite at T3 or higher.

Lightless Arbor is a breeze, as Swarmblade Form has good mobility to dodge the final boss' attacks. Only thing to watch out for is the slams in phase 1, you just can't tank this one. Phase 2 is very easy as staying within melee range of the heart lets you passively avoid some attacks, while Dive can be used to cross to the opposite side for the lasers. Just keep your Locust Swarm up and consume locusts before an aoe to make this fight easy as possible.

Check the planner for optimized gear.

During leveling for Maelstrom, take as much spell damage as possible to blitz through story.

Dual-wielding

This enables max DPS. Taking a Bastion of Honour is possible, but you'll need different blessings and will feel QoL drop for stacking Bleed, but this might just make the build hardcore viable.

Why Not [Insert Unique Here]?

There are some viable options outlined above, but having the right bases with the right affixes adds QoL and thus far more valuable to me. The planner shows the minimum required uniques for the build to function, and nothing else. You can definitely take this build even further, just need appropriate LP.

What's The Difference Between This And Other DoT Swarmblade Builds?

Other DoT Swarmblade Form builds either use ailments to deal damage, or scales purely Locust Swarm. There have been a few builds with Locust Swarm seen here on LE tools, but they are either outdated or have a heavy reliance on other Primalist minion skills. As far as I'm aware, this should be something new to some readers. I wanted to make a Locust Swarm build that's different enough and is currently useable. Also, look at that name! "Maelswarm". No way that doesn't stick.