Again. NOT EVERY THREAD IS ABOUT YOU!!!!

You’ll learn to ignore him

Here’s my thoughts on ss druids at lvl 18;

Lvl 18 is a bracket dominated by bowas and chargers and people who dodge real duels and only click and hold.

Lvl 18 bear and wolves have huge limitations in all of those categories;

Bear;
Shit ias frames
Crappy fhr
Worse FBR
Interuptable attacks

Wolves;
Same but slightly better ias, fhr fbr

Both builds struggle with the fact that they do not have a mobility skill (charge, burst of speed), or a ranged attack (double throw, guided arrow, bone spear, fireball etc).

Both builds do have some positives, mainly high life and defense for bear, high life and ar for wolf.

Wolf can be fun in Tvt and with feral rage it can catch up to a bowa, however block frames and low defense mean it will die to Jab if the bowa thinks to stand still and jab.

Bear is a huge balancing act of where to put skills. You basically have 4 areas to put skills in, maul, HoW, Bear, and lythan depending on your goal. I have tried pretty much every variety and every skill variety of mauler and what I’ve found works best is max bear, 1 pt maul, HoW from pelt, the rest into lythan.

Ias hurdle has to be overcome with khlamins flail. This lowers your damage.

FBR hurdle has to be overcome with pelta, this means more points dex and 1 less socket.

FHR hurdle has to be overcome with bloodfists + fhr belt or armor, meaning no deaths, no big sigons defense boost.

You can str bug boots but you lose a massive amount of life in doing so (20 dex = 100ish life on my bear), HoW on pelt means you can’t use a circlet. Needing damage armor means no stealth (although I’ve been debating it). So to hit the 100 frw cap you’re looking at CK’s plus 10 (a full inventory) of grand charms. Which is ridiculous. So we don’t hit 100 frw. That means bowa wins unless you run them out of stamina AND they have a shit jab weapon. Neither are likely to happen.

Bear is still not, and will likely never be, competitive vs bowa. It can however beat non defensive based melee builds.

Compare the cost of building a shifter to any other character and you’d likely end up better off making a clegs zeal/charger that would get more wins for 1/10th the cost. Probably why Linny hates the Paladin class but I digress.

This sums up the past 6 months of our pms and will save him at least 60 respec tokens lol

All that said;

I find 18 shaper quite enjoyable. It’s a never ending theorycrafting experiment. I think my euro mauler does quite well for a shit build.

2020 project: We finish the leap throw

2021 no one tvt’s because we broke Europe with leap

Touche

Cheers fellas. Seems like I will try to make a lvl 18 Shaper at some point then

Pm me your thoughts when you do and I’ll theory craft with you