The Big Bad Bear
LLD Mauler guide V 1.0

This build is not for the faint of heart. It will test your patience, frustrate you and enrage you to the point of s/e’ing and rejoining with a charger so you can easily win duels. Fear not though, the build is viable with enough practice, patience, and the right gear. If you expect to win every duel, this is not the character for you. If you just play D2 to have fun, then this might be a viable character for you.

Table of Contents:
I…. Basics
II… Skills
III.. Stats
IV… Gear
V…. Charms
VI… Strategy
VII.. Links
VIII…Example of a fully built mauler

I Summary:

Maul is a relatively hard build to create since it has several shortcomings. First, maul only uses weapon increased attack speed, which severely limits your gear choices in some regards. Second, block rates and faster hit recovery frames are the worst of any class for the bear druid. And lastly, maul is completely interruptible as an attack, (unlike the incredibly powerful fury and zeal skills).

The strong sides of maul however are the massive life, the defense bonus from bear, and the style factor (yeah, that’s totally a thing).

Building a mauler is a delicate balance of life, attack rating, defense, damage, stash space, and breakpoints (fhr, fbr, and ias).
II Skills:

Before I go into telling you the “optimal” skill distribution, grab a few tokens and your thinking hat.
First of all, the most common skill planner no longer works since maul and bear was patched in 1.13 to slightly tweak it. Additionally, what works for me with my maul vs all, may not fit your needs or goals so you may have to respect multiple times to get your ideal build.

That said here’s a couple options:



Option #1; The TvT Bear
1 Werewolf
1 Oak Sage
10 Lycanthropy
10 Werebear
4 Maul
13 Heart of Wolverwine

This gives you (without skills from gear)
140% health bonus
79% Defense
251%-351% Enhanced Damage
179% Attack Rating
2.3 Second Stun

Option #2; Fat Bear
1 Werewolf
1 Oak Sage
11 Lycanthropy
18 Werebear
9 Maul
1 Heart of Wolverwine

This gives you (without skills from gear)
145% health bonus
127% Defense
231%-351% Enhanced Damage
125% Attack Rating
2.7 Second Stun

I’ve personally used this build to some success in the past

Choosing your skill setup is entirely up to you. I will give you a few suggestions here as to why I build a certain way (as well as list my build at the bottom).

Maul: (adds stun length, 20% top end damage every two levels and 10% ar every level)
Maxing this is an option, however be aware that you only gain damage from the skill every two levels, not every level. Also maul depends on charges, the base damage is always 20% so if you max maul you will have quite low damage until you are charged up; this is very bad for chasing casters.
Lycanthropy: (adds 5% life per level)
This adds life, always useful in itself. The only reason we do not max this is because then we suffer in the damage, attack rating, and defense departments.

Werebear: (adds 8% damage 6% defense per level)
This adds defense and damage, both useful things to have; however it does not add attack rating, which is quite important vs pretty much any matchup you will face.

Heart of Wolverine: (adds 7% damage 7% attack rating per level)
This is our friend, damage, attack rating, and a sexy creepy friend to hang out with. The only down side is this can be killed and needs to be recast. It is useful as a meat shield though so there’s always that.



III Stats:

Druids start out with these base stats:
Strength: 15
Dexterity: 20
Vitality: 25
Energy: 20

Every point in vitality gives 2 life to the druid

Since the gear for your druid will have high strength and dex requirements the optimal stat distribution is this:

Strength: enough for gear in all setups
Dex: enough for max block/gear in all setups
Vitality: everything else (should be maybe 5-10 points haha)

IV Gear:

Breakpoints:
We aim for 7 and 6 frame block setups (40, and 65 faster block rate required)
We also want at least 37% faster hit recovery to achieve 8 frame fhr

Shield:
Artisans Dragon shield of Deflecting x2

Dragon > Kite because dragon has better block
Dragon > Tower & Pavise because dragon has no frw penalty

Socket one with 1x shael 2x damage jewels (with other modifiers like defense and ar if desired)
Socket the second shield with 2x shael 1x damage jewel

These shields will cover all your needs, there are times when the increased FBR is greatly desired.

Weapons:

6 socket 15% ed naga with 6x shael
No other choices here, you need the IAS to hit 5 fpa maul

6 socket 15% ed grim scythe with 4x hel 2x -15 jewels (or hel’s)
4x shaels to hit 4 fpa maul, 2x –req/damage jewels to lower requirements and add some damage

Optional:
If you want a 4 fpa low damage maul attack you can use a 6os 15% ed war scythe with 6x shaels, the str/dex requirements are lower so you do not need to –req socket it
Amulets:
Melee amulet:
2 shapeshifting 80 life magic

Caster amulet:
2 shapeshifting 50+ life 10+ all res, other mods are nice to have as well

Rings:
You need a lot of stats for this build, and there is not many places o get them from due to need to swap gear around so that said, dual stat rings are necessary.

Ideal:
70+ ar
9 strength
3+ dex
50+ mana
Anything extra is a bonus

Hats:
Melee setup:
2 shapeshifting
3 maul
2 sockets (insert damage jewels, not enhanced damage jewels)

You can also use a 3 socket 3 maul pelt to some effect, although you lose defense life and ar from this

Caster setup:
2 shapeshifting 30 frw 2 socket circlet
Socket with 2x 15 max 15 all res jewels (easiest way to get some more res)

Gloves:
Single up’d bloodfists
No other option, faster hit recovery and life are amazing things to have

Boots:

Melee:
Single up’d goblin toes
Because crushing blow
Caster:
30 frw 5 dex 30+ cold/light/fire boots (the 5 dex is to help you equip grim scythe)

I do not use sanders as the stats on sanders are wasted due to melee boots, and res is more important than 10 frw to me

Belts:

Melee:
String of Ears (Is there any other melee belt? Spoiler: there’s not)

Caster:
Deaths belt (cannot be frozen)
I’ve tried fhr/life/res belts here and they sucked. Getting frozen on a melee build is horrible and should be avoided. I’ve even used deaths in melee duels where my opponent put on cold damage (which cold damage is bm in real melee but whatever)

Armor:
Defensive:
Eth/rep ornate plate (preferably with 2 sockets)
This works best with a high werebear skilled druid, other builds won’t benefit from it as much

Offensive:
Artisans mage plate of the squid (80 life 3 sockets)
Socket with 3x damage jewels (not enhanced damage)

Swap:
Spirit sword and sig shield for precast

V Charms:

38x 3/20/15’s (max, ar, life) or as close as possible
2x 3/20/5 fhr sc’s (to hit 37% fhr)
16x 3/20/3 frw’s (max, ar, frw) or 12x 3/xx/5 frw’s
1x 3/20/3-6 cold damage sc (because some zons don’t use deaths combo)

You can also swap some of the frw/max/ar’s for frw/all res sc’s to make sure you achieve 75%+ all res
VI Strategy:

I’m not going to tell you how to duel with a character that has 2 hotkeys (maul and heart of wolverine), instead I’m going to tell you some problems commonly faced with this build.

1. Mana: Maul uses mana for attacks even if you miss, so at 5 fpa your mana pool goes very quickly for chasing down casters
2. Faster Run Walk: one of the single most important things for dueling a caster, you will swap gear often to change setups for various duels
3. Stash space: there’s never enough space to house what you “need” sacrifices have to be made
4. Some match ups you simply cannot win: Face it, a hdin will always beat a mauler (among a few other builds), you play a mauler to have fun not win
VII Links:

Skills:

Note: D2JSP blocks some links, to find the correct website copy and paste the link and put it in your Google search bar.

http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/druid-shapeshifting.shtml#werebear
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/druid-summoning.shtml
http://diablo2.***/spiel/skills/calc/index.php?char=dru&lang=en

Breakpoints:

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Breakpoints
http://diablo2.***/tips/calcs/weaponspeed.php?lang=english



VIII My Mauler

This is an old version of my mauler.





He uses the second build above and will soon be switching to the first build and ditching the ornate to try something new. I’ll Post an update as to how the new build works out as well as pictures of his new gear sometime soon.

Feel free to ask questions and rage/spam/flame me!

This post was edited by IAmAsylum on Jun 18 2014 09:35am

Good guide for this druid.
His quite annoying in melee vs melee.

10/10 for sure!

Nice guide from a nicer dood.
Style factor is measurable for sure.

mauler/10

Sell me raven master, I gieb you vn1 price

clarification on option #1:

1 Werewolf
1 Oak Sage
10 Lycanthropy
10 Werebear
6 Maul
13 Heart of Wolverwine

original post only uses 39 of 41 skills lol

Always seemed about on par with a fireclaws druid. If you can catch them u have a shot but have fun is always the main goal. GG guide from a GG dudu-dude

bad ass dudu