Introduction:

Tom and I came up with the idea of a fissure / armageddon lvl 49 druid. After talking for some time I decided to tweak this built to reach the perfect balance between mobility, adaptation to certain situations and maximum life and dmg output. This hybrid druid works much better than expected in both PvP and TvT and is far superior to a normal fissure druid. I will explain this later.


General Information:

This build doesn't really need fcr due to the cast delay but we still use 20 fcr (19 fcr for 15 frames) to summon oak/wolves faster and the animation will be faster. Also it doesn't depend on fhr but in certain situations we give him the chance to use 30 fhr (26 fhr for 9 frames). Since we want to fight all chars, especially in TvT we need max block here. The downside of this built is that even with oak we will reach only little life (around 1.2-1.8k depending on the items and setups) since we want mobility and this means getting frw. I myself like much frw (90-120) - if you can play with less, your life will be higher ofc. I tested that with a little mana regen 350 mana is enough to cast summons and attack for a long time. On switch we will put a harmony to escape dangerous situations. Since we want high mobility and adjustment to our enemies this char will have high base str (100) to wear aldurs, dusk, eth tg and the dragon shield. This way we also need less dex for max block without getting any frw malus. Also we will use 15 dr (with string), no 45 dr (with additional shaft) since the replacement of the dusk with shaft isn't worth it. A tele amu comes in handy to tele ontop of bowas, necs and some other caster we cannot reach due to range advantage. They will get stunned from armageddon and our summons prior to our fissure attack. When they run away, fissure gets them.


Items:


Items:
Helmet: 3 fissure 30 frw 2 soks circ 10/-10 fire & 2 druid 1-3 fissure 1-3 armageddon (adds like wolves, oak, 2 soks) pelt with 5/-5 fire rbf(s)
Amu: 3 ele life & 3 ele tele charges or 2 ele life cr tele charges & 1 druid 10 frw life cr amu
Weapon: 6 sok crystall sword with 30/-30 fire & harmony on switch
Shield: jewelers or artisans dragon shield of deflection 15/-15 fire & dragon sanctuary
Armor: 4 sok life dusk 20/-20 fire
Belt: string & 24 fhr life cr & eth tg
Ring: sojs, ravens, dwarfs
Gloves: 1x upgraded mages & 1x upgraded bloods
Boots: aldurs & wws & infernos & 40 frw 40 cr greaves

Grand Charms: 10 * ele skillers with life
Small Charms: 10 * 5 frw / mana or cr scs

Note that this combination adds more frw than using ele frw sks and 20 life scs.


Skilling/Statting:

We need 100 str to equip eth tg, the rest has lower req. Get enough dex for mb (142 with dragon shield) with sojs and ww, since this the TvT setup where you don't need cbf. Rest goes into vita.
Put 1 into oak (you can also put 1 into wolves if you like summons as meat shield), 1 into armageddon and all pre reqs, max fissure and firestorm and the rest goes into volcano.
If you are so lucky to find the pelt mentioned above you don't need to skill armageddon and pre reqs, those 6 skills add up to 1k fissure dmg. Note that you won't have armageddon with your 3/30 circ then anymore!


Stats:

This way we can reach 30 fhr, 20 fcr, 1.2k-1.8k life, 90-120 frw, 5-6k fissure dmg, 4-4.6k armageddon dmg, 4.5-5k firestorm dmg, ~300 abs, 15 dr with mb all the time.
For TvT we can use ww, dragon sanctuary and 1 raven. Along with some frw/cr scs we have better chances of winning against teams with fb, blizz and phys chars since we have fire res, stack cold res and mb along with 15 dr.

Keys:

left click - firestorm
w - spirit
a - armageddon
s - fissure
d - cycloon armor
(e - wolves)
(f - birds)


Strategies:

I don't want to go into details here, just some basic tips. Let them come to you! This build isn't meant for chasing more powerful chars like bowas, trap assas, sorcs, etc.. Play defensive and plant your fissure fields wisely, always keep armageddon up. Be aware that armageddon has a huge cast delay so always cast it before starting the duel. Fissure is most effective against chars who run since it does more dmg to running opponents than to those who stand still. That's why you will have a very hard time vs sorcs. You can crash even good melees since armageddon and fissure does double dmg compared to a pure fissure alone. The summons act as a meat shield (also use oak as shield) and they also interrupt charges if you cast them into their charge. Use the upper/lower right/left edges of your screen to cast fissure more far away


Thanks for reading and enjoy!
Perz

Helmet: 3 fissure 30 frw 2 soks circ 10/-10 fire & 2 druid 1-3 fissure 1-3 armageddon (adds like wolves, oak, 2 soks) pelt with 5/-5 fire rbf(s)

3 fissure circ?

e/ else it looks ok



This post was edited by DalaiLama on Jul 15 2010 08:11am

without the pelt I don't think it's > to a fissure dudu. otherwise it'd be imo.

gl finding such a pelt.

well written guide.

Dont know how you can write a ''guide'' when you have barely used this char and like a week ago you were asking how to build one.
Also cant imagine this will be of any competition to anyone , would like to duel it and see how it works in tvt with so low fhr and dr.

this should be ele

even without pelt it's still worth skilling

test it extensively and there you go, doesn't even need a week to make such a guide. the strategy is similar to fissure and those i played already.
let's test it tonight.

why not whistan ?

is that -10/+10 that important with all others rbf ?

their dmg are strong but i've never seen one tanking more than 2 arrows ^^

because the dmg gain is much better than the little life gain from whistans.
i know a big flaw of this char is its low life, you can already die with 2 crit arrows. i'm not saying this is a epic overpowered build but it's strong enough if well played to bring down quiet a few enemies and it's very much fun to use.