mainly making this because i do not like breaks guide (no offense)

ok i copy paste for you gimme sec


dudu

As the thread title suggests, this guide is for a level 30 Druid using the spell Fissure. Fissure druids mainly depend on exploiting their opponents' mobility to dominate them with fissures that can do as much as 6k+ damage. However, I think the greatest strength of a fissure druid is that it is a great budget character. Since it is not dependent on physical high damage or mana, you can easily get by with an inventory of only plain 15 life scs and compete against people with superior gear. (I'M TALKING TO YOU, WHITEREFLECTION) Aside from the pelt and amulet, the items that the fissure druid wears is also really easy to obtain.

Because it is easy to get the items for (in comparison to many other builds) and uses mid (and some high) level dueling strategy, I assert that the fissure druid is one of the strongest and best characters for both starting and experienced duelers.



Abbreviations

If you are new to Diablo II in general or just PvP in Diablo II, then you might not know some of these. Here's just a small list of some abbreviations that are used in this guide (and in most guides).

STR = strength
DEX = dexterity
VIT = vitality
NRG = energy
FCR = faster cast rate
FHR = faster hit recovery
FRW = faster run/walk
@ = resist all
CR/LR/FR/PR = cold/lightning/fire/poison resist (respectively)
Ele = elemental skills
MDR = magic damage reduced
DR = damage reduced
Rep = replenish life
SC = small charm



Skill Build

1 Oak Sage
1 Molten Boulder
19 Fissure
20 Firestorm

The skills speak for themselves. Oak Sage is a one point wonder skill, Fissure (maxed for your level) is your main attack, Firestorm is Fissure's synergy, and Molten Boulder is a prerequisite for Fissure. I have been toying around with a 13 Firestorm/7 Volcano build for a bit (with a 5 Fissure 5 Volcano pelt), but, from my findings, Volcano is really not very good in LLD. The 7 into Firestorm is a much better investment than having a third, easily countered attack (move 2 feet in any direction and Volcano is totally useless).



Attribues

Strength: enough to wear your gear
Dexterity: enough for max block with your blocking shield
Vitality: rest of your points here
Energy: base

I'm sure you are all well familiar with this build. This is the attribute build for almost every single character in today's metagame (for good reason). If you follow this guide's item suggestions, you will need 53 Strength and 67 Dexterity. The rest of your points go into Vitality. As for Energy, you will never run out of mana on a fissure druid. Points here are about as useful as putting more points into dexterity to increase your AR in order to hit more often when you are smacking people with your spirit sword for fun.



Item Build

I'll be listing some alternative items after this, so read on if you have a tight budget or if you just can't find the items listed here for trade.

Helmet: Use a pelt with 2 to Elemental Skills and 3 to Fissure socketed with either a shael rune (if you want to hit the 99 FHR breakpoint) or a perfect skull. If you are lucky enough to have two sockets on your pelt, then add a perfect skull as your second socket.

Amulet: 2 to Elemental Skills is a must. After skills, the mods you want to look for are Life and Replenish Life. Other good mods to have are Strength, Dexterity, Resists, Magic Damage Reduced, and Poison Length Reduced. Unlike his cousin the wind druid, the fissure druid does not need Mana or Faster Cast Rate on his amulet. I personally use a 2Ele/Dex/Life/Rep/Mana/FR amulet.

Weapon: Any Spirit runeword (Tal + Thul + Ort + Amn) sword will do the job. It's got everything you need on it. +2 to All Skills is awesome, 55 FHR is sick, even the worst roll of 25 FCR will get you a high enough breakpoint when paired with Magefists, more mana than you will need, 44 life bonus from the vitality, and even magic absorb. Spirit is absolutely the best choice possible. Use which ever base sword you think looks coolest. I use an ethereal longsword one.

Weapon #2: Keep a staff with charges of Teleport on your weapon switch. It can be really handy in some fights.

Armor: The best possible armor for a level 30 fissure druid is Spirit Shroud. This item was basically tailor-made for a level 30 fissure druid. It's got 1 to All Skills, Replenish Life, Cannot Be Frozen (awesome!), and Magic Damage Reduced. If you have a choice, get the highest MDR (11 is perfect) you can. Socket it with a perfect skull for more replenish life and some mana regen. If you have low CR or LR, you should consider keeping switches in the stash of Spirit Shrouds socketed with ort/thul runes depending on what resists you are lacking in.

Shield: Whitstan's Guard is your best bet here. It's lightweight and has really high/fast blocking mods on it. I recommend socketing it with a 15@/9Dex jewel. This will give you Dexterity to make reaching max block easier and some resists. The reason you want both max block and high resists is so that you can participate in team duels, which I think is really important. Other cheap options would be either an Eld rune or a perfect diamond

Shield #2: Unless you hit 150 cold and lightning resists with a Whitstan's Guard (mass resist/life or resist/frw sc's), I suggest having a lightweight shield with 3 perfect diamonds in it in your stash for 1v1 against cold sorceresses or paladins with FoH (that do not use a physical attack like mages or just pure fohers). An Artisan's Kite Shield of Regeneration is what you want to get if you can.

Gloves: Magefists

Belt: The best choice would be a rare belt with 24 FHR, life, and replenish. CR and LR are the most important prefixes. FR and PR are good, too, if you do not already have 75% in either of them. A much cheaper alternative would be String of Ears with 15% DR. If you are using SoE, then try to get as high MDR on it as you can (15 is perfect). With a perfect Spirit Shroud and perfect MDR SoE you will have a total of 26 MDR, which is quite a lot.

Boots: IMO the best choice is Sander's Boots. 15 total stats and 40 FRW is great. Other options would be crafted blood boots with FRW (try to get high rep on your roll) or rare 30 FRW boots with CR and LR. Use the rares if you have low resists.

Rings: 2x Stone of Jordan

Charms: I suggest using 20x 15 life sc's and 20x 3 FRW sc's. Try to get as many of them with resists mods as you can. If you find a sc with a resist prefix and the desired suffix, then it's acceptable to have less than 15 life. Resists on your sc's is pretty important in my item build.



Alternative Items

As previously mentioned, here's some other items you can use.

Helmet: If you can't find a 5 Fissure pelt, try to get either a +1 to Druid Skills pelt with +3 to Fissure or a Lore runeword (Ort + Sol) pelt with a +3 Fissure staffmod. The Lore pelt can be nice because it has 30 LR, which can help vs FoH paladins or if you are lacking resists in general.

Armor: If you plan your character out and you realize that your resists still are really lacking (even WITH stash switches), then use Vipermagi. Socket it with a pskull. I doubt you will have to resort to this, but it is always an option.

Shield: If you end up using Vipermagi, then I suggest you use a Rhyme runeword (Shael + Eth) bone shield. Again, I doubt you will have to use this, but it will definitely solve any problems your character had with resists. It's not that it is a particularly bad setup - it's just that it 1) isn't as good and 2) you end up looking like a wind druid, which you aren't.

Belt: As stated before, just use a String of Ears. Try to get the highest % DR and MDR that you can.

Rings: Use Manald Heals if you can't afford SoJ's. Try to get as high replenish as you can (8 is perfect). Manalds aren't too bad. They have life, mana replenish, and life replenish. SoJ's are just better.

Charms: Just use plain lifers and FRW sc's if you can't afford ones with resists. With enough stash switches you can pull off not having the resists from charms. The ratio isn't changed - use 20life/20frw.



In the next few posts I'll cover some dueling strategies (with pictures).

This post was edited by MiKTeX on Jan 12 2010 07:19pm

omg soz didnt see rest


but is epic

This post was edited by Dwerfs on Jan 12 2010 07:18pm

Fissure Druid 101

I'm going to talk about some basics here. First off, here's a picture of about how big fissure is on your screen.



Fissures will randomly appear within the blue square there. Each one of those deals the damage that the skill says it does (with my setup it will be about 1.5k each hit), which means you will do a lot more damage if your opponent runs through your whole fissure. Now let's get into some strategy. For this first part I'm only going to be talking about facing people who have to be up close to deal damage (any melee, chargers, hammerdins to a certain extent, whirlwind barbarians)


Your most basic strategy is this: place a fissure in between you and your opponent. This forces whoever you are against to either run straight through the fissure or go around it. That's pretty simple, but that will only go so far. Let's improve on that strategy.


Fissure is pretty large, so you can use its size to your advantage. Place it between large objects to force your opponent to either go through the fissure (and take damage) or go all the way around.



As you can see, my opponent gobb, a charger, has to make a choice. He can either charge straight through the fissure or go all the way around. If he goes around, then I can just go through the fissure and we will be in the same situation. His only chance to deal any damage is to go through my fissure. However, not only do I have max block, but he is probably going to hit multiple fissures on his way through to have only a 1/4 chance of hitting. Depending on how his luck is, he could take anywhere from 1.5k-6k damage.

Here's another example of the same, except I am using a large rock, which takes even more time to go around.

Against close range characters, a fissure druid standing in the open with fissure on cooldown is a vulnerable one. In short range duels (where your opponent is mostly on your screen), you need to maintain some sort of a defense. Having just a defense makes you pretty weak, though. Here's a way to incorporate your powerful defense in with an offensive play style. This is mainly used when you are against a charger (or any melee) that is trying to play conservatively against you.



As you can see, I've placed a fissure in between gobb, a charger, and myself. As stated, if he is trying to play conservatively, then he will not be reckless and will wait for an opening in your defense before striking.



In this next shot, you can see (look where my cursor is) I have casted a fissure on him. If he doesn't move, then he is going to take damage. He still doesn't want to attack me, though, because there is still the fissure between us. The only option he has (besides sitting still and taking damage from my fissure) is to move away.



In this final shot, you can see that he moved up out of my fissure. Since he was running through about half of the fissure, there is a good chance that he took at least one hit from it (1.5k damage). Unfortunately for him, during the time it took for him to charge out of it, I moved underneath the fissure. Now he is stuck in the same predicament as he was in the first picture, with a fissure between the two of us. My next course of action (if I wanted to continue doing this) would be to place another fissure on him, move up so that it is in between us as he is moving out, and repeat. Just make sure if you are doing this to be careful when moving in between fissures. Don't let him catch you running between them. I suggest walking.

Now that you know how to fight in close range, let's talk a bit about long range duels. These duels aren't really complicated. Just predict where they will be moving and place a fissure in their path. Namelocking with fissure can be pretty good, too. If people run out of namelock range when they realize you have a namelock, then try sometimes mixing it up by using unsummon to trick them into thinking you don't have a namelock on them. As soon as you see them stop on the minimap to attack you, put a fissure on them. Before they realize what you have done and can react, they will be in the center of a full fissure, and will more than likely take at least two hits running out of it.

Unfortunately, a lot of your duels will force you to be offensive. Since people with long ranged attacks (think necromancers) don't even have to be on your screen to hit you, they probably aren't going fall for your close range tricks.

Here's a somewhat advanced strategy you can use in long range duels to hit careless players with a full fissure.



This is a picture of the minimap. As you can see, it is where the moor has kind of an inlet on the side of it. The situation is your opponent ran (at the red cross) is hiding in one of these areas. The first thing you do is find where their escape route is going to be. After identifying it, place a fissure there, covering as much of the path as possible.



Here I am at the green cross casting a fissure where the green square is. As you can see, the fissure is taking up most of the path between the puddle, tree, and rock wall. Next, you want to circle around (shown by the green arrow) to where the blue cross is and attack the player head on. The blue square is an example of where to place a fissure. Your hope is that he will (assuming he is playing defensively) run away and straight into your other fissure (shown by his red arrow). Ouch.

Here's another slightly advanced strategy you can use. This won't work against everyone, but it can be great when executed well. It's called cornering someone! Here's more or less how to do it.



As you can see, I have made a wall between myself and gobb there creating only one way for him to move. The lines represent the barriers of the puddles and the rock wall just to make them more visible.



In this next picture, gobb has moved up and to the left of where the first picture was. As he moves, I lay more fissures to block off his exits.



In the third and final picture, things have grown quite dire for poor gobb there. The next thing to do is to end his misery by placing a fissure on top of him, forcing him to do run all the way out of there, going through one and a half fissures in the process. That's going to really hurt. Most of the time things won't work quite as perfectly as it would in a simple demonstration like this. Even if it doesn't, it's still a pretty good tactic.



Here is some additional information by character class.

Hammerdins: read their desynch and place fissures in their desynch paths

Barbarians: place a fissure in their whirlwind path if they do a long whirl

Bowzons: abuse cover, use your teleport staff to teleport between cover, and use namelock fissures a lot

Sorceress: cast a fissure on yourself and then move away if they telestomp a lot, but don't expect to win many duels against sorces - they are basically your counter (fissure relies on exploiting mobility, but sorceresses have the best mobility in the game with teleport)



Just remember that my strategies aren't exactly what you should use or anything. Try to make your own that fit your play style. Over all else, have fun. Fissure druids are really cool. They suck vs sorceresses, though, lol.

This post was edited by MiKTeX on Jan 12 2010 07:36pm

Tele dudu: zack wins


ok now guide is complete

awesome/10

basically a sorceress with cyclone armor

basically a sorceress made of awesome