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).

And Bui takes a wrecking ball to the face!
Ty 4 knowledge gg

A more accurate comparison would be to use the same jewels.

Not a worse jewel in cerb to justify using your pelt that is worse than cerb.

Durr de durr.


And yes def matters. Especially considering most will go non fools or low AR setup vs a fury, thus making def even more me meaningful. To the point where you can calculate your opponents hit rate difference with or without fort chilling armor up, and add that reduced hit chance to your life total, thus giving you a higher effective life total.

And yes OW still does damage.


Cerb > this

This post was edited by Bui6Pays40Percent4Wins on Feb 14 2024 05:41pm

that would require me to use maxroll which has never matched my in-game stats with 100% accuracy. and maxroll has been proven to be wrong on a number of different metrics. unless there's some other way that i can do it, sure.

a solid fhr/ed/str/dex jewel is not "worse" than either of the two jewels i put in my cerebus. and if you or what anyone else here has said is factual, a fhr/ed/str/dex jewel should actually be quite good in a cerebus, and from what you say, should certainly outperform it because of how much better you think cerebus is anyhow.

i tested the comparison with both what would likely be used in terms of a magic or a rare jewel (or at least what's currently used by most wolf druid players), and both failed to perform better than the rare pelt.

last thing i'll say, once again, is that the only thing you could possibly do jewel-wise to make cerebus more evenly match my rare pelt on at least one metric is to put in a rare jewel with 60 AR on it. doing so would then make my pelt even more significantly outperform cerebus on the other metrics, such as life and damage, but it is possible to get similar AR depending on jewels, sure.

ah, i can see you edited your post to fall back on your defense/OW argument. sorry, but i, and the many others who participate in gm melee duels everyday and play wolf druids, disagree with you. i'd certainly be losing more than winning with this pelt if edef and OW were relevant, but i'm doing better overall with the pelt than cerebus, so i'll continue to do my thing and you can continue to do... whatever it is that you do.

This post was edited by Koston on Feb 14 2024 05:45pm

You can didageee all you want.

But it is a factual statement to say that defense matters. And that lowering your opponents hit chance increases your effective life. And it is factual to say that open wounds deals damage, even tho you can’t see it on your character screen.

Your constant issue is that you constantly say “I hve tested it”. Which is you saying you eye balled it. With the variables involved, you can’t eye ball it. It’s very easy to do a calculation of your average hit rate and average damage vs your opponents life and defense, giving you which setup will perform better in the long run. Not just “I did a set of 5 and this one setup won”. With the amoijt of variables, you need 1000s of duels under the exact same conditions to have enoguh data points to say which one is better.

Cerb > this

This post was edited by Bui6Pays40Percent4Wins on Feb 14 2024 05:53pm

10/10 as usual

you've been proven wrong in other threads, and you continue to be proven wrong, and when you are, you silently disappear and pop up again somewhere later to start all over again. it's nuts.

when i test stuff, i do duels in game. can't do 1000s but i do as many as i can, whether it ranges from 50-100, to at least try and give a good idea. this is definitely not the same as "eyeballing" or playing some guessing game. i go by win/loss records and testing in game repeatedly. (this is far more than you can say, considering you haven't touched d2r.) wolf druid's defense, because you're talking about sub 3k, doesn't matter. if you add 100-200 defense or whatever it is from cerebus, you're not doing anything to help yourself. some druids go for high defense builds, including myself, and they used a perfect upgraded 714 defense Jalal. when that happens, cerebus is out of the equation. i, too, would go for an eth upped Jalal and SA fort if i thought defense was a significant factor in determining my duels as a wolf druid.

open wounds doesn't do anything, because the duels end too quick for it to have any effect. i'm not teleporting and flying around the screen in fpk duels for ~10 minutes. these duels last mere seconds. it is, as you have said, click and hold duels and they are over in the blink of an eye.

want to meet in game and test? we'll see how useful cerebus' 140% enhanced defense and 33% OW is. since you seem so sure, you won't have a problem meeting up to prove your point, or at least provide some solid math/evidence.





This post was edited by Koston on Feb 14 2024 06:05pm

The only advantage this pelt has over cerb is 39 life 1 socket and 1 fury.

2 lycan is the same as 2oak from your 2 Druid skills.

So it’s 2 werewolf / 33 OW / 140 ED / 21% AR vs 1 fury / 1 socket / 39 life

The 140ed outweighs the life gain in terms of effective life.
33 OW will he roughly the same average pvp damage output as your damage from 1 fury and 1 socket
21% AR + the extra AR % difference from 2 werewolf vs 1 fury gives and the AR from your jewel will favor cerb in terms of hit rate. And hit rate is part of your effective damage calculation

Of course the character screen will show more damage on character screen from your pelt because of the extra socket. But it’s not telling the full story. Which is why people call the character screen the LCS. Lying character screen.

Use your head. Stop reading output from a chatavher screen that never gives the full picture

Yeah 200 more defense is super good when you don't have a skill like shout, iron skin, or holy shield to boost it

i'm glad that you finally admitted the pelt has advantages, and as i clearly demonstrated above with solid numbers and math from actually going in game and looking at real stats, i think we're finally on the same page. the character screen is taking account extra ED from an extra point to fury and the minimum damage from the jewels. i agree that the character screen is inaccurate, but it's not inaccurate on every metric, and you know that.

even in the insane chance that OW did a little something here, a little something there, or that an extra ~150 defense was somehow helping a wolf druid (who has never cared about defense, dating back to LOD, for a reason), i'd STILL prefer even just this pelt's +300 life over cerebus. you're proving nothing by saying, "ok well maybe the pelt beats cerebus on life, AR, and damage, but it doesn't beat it on DEFENSE AND OPEN WOUNDS." like, sorry, but WHAT, SIR?


"The 140ed outweighs the life gain in terms of effective life." LMFAO, ukon, cut it out and stop. no it doesn't, and until you provide me with solid testing (i'd accept 50-100 duels and see how that goes) or numbers, just cut your crap, dude. defense doesn't scale for crap on a druid, it's never mattered in LOD, and it certainly doesn't matter now. life, however, is significant, and +100 life can determine an entire duel.

This post was edited by Koston on Feb 14 2024 06:08pm