Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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Pure fire druid is hell viable - with infinity. Of course, if you're going that route, you may as well make a FC bear - fully synergized, they give over 2k physical damage and 10k fire damage per whack, and with a fast weapon, can get a 5 frame attack. (It's the one skill that WBs are faster than WWs - WW max out FC at a 6 frame attack.)

But with a fire druid, what way are you planning on going with it? Volcano and Fissure are non-negotiable. They have solid damage, synergize each other, and have area of effect. But if you're going pure fire, then you also have options of Firestorm, Molten Boulder, and Armageddon.

(Incidentally, I find the decision to go strictly fire a little puzzling, given the passive synergies granted to summons with just +skill items. I would seem like even a single point in Spirit Wolves, Dire Wolves, and Grizzly would be well spent, and I'd seriously consider dumping a few extra into DW to make the Grizzly a tank.)

The only other fire skill that receives a synergy from both Volcano and Fissure is Armageddon, but that's a suboptimal choice for a Fire Druid. Not only does Armageddon require a point in all of the cold and physical skills, which at best will have marginal utility for you, but because a fire druid isn't a melee character, most of the damage from Armageddon will be wasted, as you can only cast it over yourself.

Firestorm gives a solid 12% synergy to Fissure, and like many druid skills escalates dramatically after level 20, but it does squat for Volcano. Likewise, Molten Boulder increases the physical damage of Volcano (Volcano is half fire, half physical, and you're already getting the fire half synergy from Fissure), but won't help your Fissure. Then again, if you're going pure fire, then you can max all four of the fire skills out.

 

The Grizzly is almost universally regarded as the better hell summons for caster druids, simply because of the beating it can take. For melee druids, they like Dire Wolves because they can tie up three different enemies while the druid goes to work. That said, most people only put a single point into grizzly because the grizzly gets a bigger life boost per point spent in Dire Wolves than a point in Grizzly itself.

You probably know this already, but most FC WBs also max out Maul. The damage boost you get from Maul applies to FC as well - so long as you keep the charge active. So as long as you use Maul at least once every 20 seconds it's a substantial damage increase. It certainly would be the most efficient means of getting through Normal and NM anyway.

Perhaps surprisingly, most FC WBs don't max WB. Some go for as little as one point (assuming a lot of +skill items). And there's certainly no way you'd max both WB and Lycanthropy. The damage boost you get from WB only applies to physical damage, and you get a bigger boost to physical damage by using Maul than you'd get from maxing out WB. Usually it's 1 point WB, 1 point Lycanthropy, max Maul and FC, and everything else into the FC synergies.

The max WB build is associated with the iron bears, because of the AC boost. Years ago I played with my brother online, and a maxed WB, maxed Lycanthropy build is one solid brick. Huge life pool and huge AC, but it's killing speed was awful.

 

Wow - I'm slipping - didn't see this for four days. Anyway, I would recommend more points into the summons tree rather than getting Armageddon. Not only do you have to spend a ton of points to get to it, Armageddon is of marginal use for a caster druid. Armageddon activation is centered on your caster, and moves with him, but you'll need to be reasonably close to the front lines in order to hit anything with it, which as a caster, is not something you'll want to do a whole lot of.

IMO, Armageddon is an area of effect attack for WW and WB - I don't think it's by accident that it is the one elemental skill you can cast while shape shifted. Since you're in melee, having the area of effect cover everything near you is assured. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's an entire build centered around it's use. It's a Fury-Armageddon build, so obviously a WW. You use Earth Shifter I think (or whatever the big ass maul is that adds +7 to elemental skills). You max Fury and Armageddon. Season to taste your investment in WW and Lycanthropy (usually just 1 in WW, and sometimes just 1 in Lycanthropy), and then spend the rest on synergies for Armageddon. So it's a fire-physical build. There's also a WB variant that uses Maul instead of Fury IIRC, although I've heard that the Fury build is the preferred method.

 

Well the set itself is absolutely lovely. Huge resistances, mana and life leech, 30% damage reduction, magic DR, IAS, ITD, massive bonus damage (200% all, and another 200% against demons and undead, so 2/3 of everything is taking 400% damage), a ton of skills, and the armor can have up to three open sockets (don't know how many yours has).

Out of curiosity, what made you go with Phoenix Strike as your primary? Most assassins pick up Phoenix Strike as a synergy for the main elemental attack, and as a secondary attack for when they run into something immune to their main attack. PS gives and receives synergies from all three of the individual attacks, (FoF, CoT, BoI), but unless you are willing to dump 80 points into these, you're generally better off picking one or at most two of the elemental attacks to use.

Assuming full synergies, you actually get more elemental damage out of the individual skills than you do from PS. Let's take CoT as an example, and we'll assume level 20 in both CoT and PS, even though we know you have +skills.

PS does 1-836 chaos lightning damage to all nearby targets. With a 13% synergy per level from CoT, that ups you to about 1-3k lightning damage to everything around you.

CoT gets an 8% synergy from PS. You get a 1-780 lightning bolt straight out that may only hit the creature you hit with the finisher (unless something is directly behind it). With synergy, that's 1-2K. Then you get a lightning nova that does 1-475 (1-1.2K synergized) that hits everything around it. Charge 3 is 1-740 charged bolt damage (1-1.9K synerigzed) that will hit everything in front of you, possibly more than once, but nothing on the side or behind you.

So for a singular enemy, PS is preferable, but against packs of non-LI, CoT will do more lightning damage. A similar argument can be made when comparing FoF or BoI to PS. Most players pick either CoT as their primary attack (offensive) or BoI (defensive) as their primary attack (with extra cold damage on Natalya's Claw, the stun length will be significant, even in hell). Most avoid FoF, because if they want a source of fire damage, that can be acquired through a finisher.

And what are you going with as a finisher? DTalon would be a poor choice given your boots, but DTail or DClaw would work.

The other reason I would be hesitant to fully synergize PS is because the set gives you so many bonus +skills that I would want to utilize at least two trees. I would plan a build like:

Phoenix Strike - 20
BoI OR CoT (choice) - 20
DClaw or DTail (depending on if you're going one claw or two) - 20
Prerequisites - 6

With a 66 point investment, you'll have plenty to spare for all the 1-point wonders in the shadow disciplines tree, as well as a fully buffed shadow warrior or shadow master, which would require 28 skill points, so 94 total.

EDIT: obviously the alternative is to save up the 20 points is SW or SM and dump that into another elemental attack and have both CoT AND BoI maxed.

 

Yeah, well, like I said, all elemental assassins max PS. It's the only synergy for your main attack, and it gives you a means of dealing with something immune to your main attack. Just saying that a maxed elemental attack with a maxed PS synergy does more damage in that particular element than maxed PS with a maxed elemental synergy.

EDIT: The only thing the set lacks is some CB. Although does Bartuc's come with that?

 

Yeah a Ber is way to rare for a measly 8% CB. As you said, you can get more from blood gloves.

You know, if you have all the unique claws, Shadow Killer is not a bad selection at all for your second claw - it has the freezes target 2 seconds mod on it (so half a second in hell), which combined with a cold build with a 33% ctc frost nova, and that you main claw gives a 4 second freeze (1 second in hell), should do a very nice job of turning your enemies into topiary. But that goes back to the original argument - lightning does more damage, but cold is more defensive. It also has the -25% enemy defense on it which unlike ITD works on bosses too - although the bosses will merely be chilled, not frozen, of course.

Yeah the CB is problematic. I would personally love to stick Lava Gouts as the gloves on this character, but that's the last place you can get CB. None of the unique claws have it. Gore Riders are out of the question because of the set, and are unsuitable for this build anyway (your finisher isn't a kick). And the helm slot is filled with the set item.

What's your plan for the armor sockets and how many sockets do you have? With the resistance inherent in the set, and presumably a Mara's, additional resistances shouldn't be necessary, especially when you can just Fade in any situation that's a little scary.

 

I seem to remember you saying you had a couple of facets lying around. If you've got all your resistances covered, this might be the place to use them (unless they are poison facets of course).

 

Well, you'll likely earn two socket quest rewards by the time you'll have the required level to equip the set anyway.

Actually, once you figure out your offhand weapon, you'll can socket that as well. I don't recall what type of breakpoints you're looking at for claws. I don't even remember if they average the speed, or calculate each one individually, so the claws you may be limited to shaels or IAS jewels, depending on how the break points work. That would probably be worth looking into ahead of time as well. I think the quickest reasonable break point you can obtain with two claws is 8, but that's two attacks, so a 4fpa rate. However, I don't recall what IAS you need to get that. I know that there are a couple of skills with a single claw that get down to 3 frames.

 

The only downside I can see to MF is that I don't think the set comes with any MF on it at all. That doesn't seem right - pretty much all the class-specific sets come with some MF. Am I forgetting something? Is it part of the complete set bonuses?

That said, you can still get up to 25% mf per socket. (Although realistically, it will be 24% on the armor and helm - 1% isn't nearly enough to justify the use of an Ist - you'll need the those for just the two claws - ptopazes for the armor and helm. So that's 146%. Decent, depending on what else you'll be carrying between charms and other equipment.

One thing that I'm sure you already considered is that you'll have a pretty good block chance with this character with just one point in weapon block. You'll have a ton of +skills, so you should be able to get it to around 50% with just one point. Furthermore, you'll get decent blocking with minimal investment in dexterity. Weapon block isn't altered by dexterity like with shields (and it drops to 0% if you're running, but works fine while attacking), and since the other pieces of the set include a fair amount of dexterity, you'll only need to spend lightly in dexterity to get to the minimum dexterity requirement on the claw (most of the high end claws have dex requirements in the range of 100-120). Since all of your attacks come with a substantial bonus to attack rating, there won't be a real need to add to dexterity for that either.

It's a character I had always wanted to get around to, but since I had limited experience with assassins, the first one I made was a kicker/trapper, as those are pretty much the easiest.

And Treachery is a no-brainer for while your assassin is leveling up.

 

Sorry to butt in here gentlemen, but I felt the need to say an AMEN to this!! I ran a fire druid not too long ago, and pretty much sailed through the entire game EXCEPT for the fight against Lister and his cronies. Fighting him was like watching paint dry, and that fight alone turned me off to the character in spite of a rocking experience through nearly all of the game up until that point.

Ironically, I started a Phoenix Strike Assassin after the druid... which is currently stuck somewhere in act III of hell... as I'm now using all of my game time for Medieval 2 - Third Age Total War. She was my first serious assassin character ever. Very fun, very powerful... but extremely high maintenance to play well. The antitheses, I guess, of the necromancer, with whom you can pretty much beat the game while you're reading a book.

And with that, I'll let the true D2 mavens around here get back to it.