Quote (Koston @ Feb 14 2024 05:41pm)
always interesting to me when people who have never done a gm melee duel comment about it when they have have repeatedly demonstrated a misunderstanding of it
bringing up either OW or enhanced defense as if they are somehow relevant for wolf druids and/or gm melee is literally laughable. what the hell are you on about? OW does nothing in the duels where this pelt would be used, they last mere seconds. enhanced defense? sir, defense is not relevant for wolf druids. i mean, it could be if you're going for some weird whacky high defense build, but then you would use eth Jalal over a cerebus. if someone is trying to make the argument that Cerebus' superior 140 edef and 33% OW is somehow assisting wolf druids win gm melee duels, feel free to hit them in the noggin. wolf druids don't rely on defense (or OW) to get by - zealots and conc barbs do, sure - they rely on their very high life, boosted by Oak.
as my original post stated, this pelt offers more damage, AR, and, most importantly, life than 99% of the Cerebus' that exist right now.
my standard fury vs. zealot setup:
Build #1 with this rare pelt - 5083.5 average damage, 44513 AR, 9310 life
Build #2 with a perfect Cerebus socketed with a 30 max jewel (a meaningful comparison as most people aren't spending a crap ton on insane rare jewels, which Cerebus has only room for one anyway) - 4981 avg damage, 43276 AR, 9090 life
the next argument might be, what if you put in a nice rare jewel in the cerebus? maybe even one with 7fhr so you could take off one 5/3/20 sc and put on a nice 3/19/20 instead (since people here keep posting about fhr so much)? so i put on cerebus with a higher end fhr/ed/str/dex jewel (because this is among the most common jewel type a wolf druid would use), you'd get:
4849.5 avg damage, 44447 AR, 9185 life
this pelt, with its current jewels, once again offers more damage, AR, and life (wolf druid's top 3 most relevant stats for vs. zeal) than most Cerebus'. i said 99% of Cerebus' above because there is an argument that could be made here if the Cerebus had a sick/insane rare jewel with AR on it, it'd probably balance out with the AR on my pelt. but, again, cerebus only has room for one jewel, and putting AR on the jewel means taking away one of the following: the FHR (less life), the ED (less damage), or str/dex (less life).
wolf druids are highly reliant on high life to get by and do well in duels. even in the best case scenario for the cerebus, my pelt still offers anywhere between ~125ish-300ish life than a solid Cerebus with a good jewel. although this might seem miniscule to people posting here, when every duel is ending with me having anywhere between 1-300 hp left, you start to see the value of min/maxing to get as much life as possible.
there is no indication that fhr is even working as intended in d2r. the testing that wolf druids have done so far indicate that fhr isn't really doing anything at all, as most wolf druids are performing identically whether at the first or second fhr breakpoint. so, it is also questionable whether 10 base fhr would even improve this pelt, but i understand that it COULD, and therefore the pelt could technically be improved. i did extensive testing with this to determine whether i should put FHR jewels in the pelt and concluded that i shouldn't (otherwise, the jewels that would have gone in were a 7fhr/30ed/9str/9dex and a 7fhr/30ed/9str/8dex, and that would have also been better than cerebus too, assuming fhr is working as normal).
the only arguments left really are that gm melee is dumb (everyone enjoys the game in their own way, leave it be) or that my pelt is only a miniscule improvement over cerebus (ok, but min/maxing is fun and important in gm melee - anything helps).
im thinking one of those jewel in jalal is better than this
D2:R