Lets discuss out of the ordinary druid builds

Yo, i always had a thing for wolves, shamans, fireclaw bears etc. I think they are fun to play.
I have been posting several topics on the matters with builds and such previous, but there are some changes now where the mark of the bear now only last 180 seconds.

That beeing said thats about the duration of a pretty high level bo/bc, and u can re-apply it on a summon or a random monster

So in my minds if we look away from ele druids and pure fire druids we are left with some fun builds:

Earth shifter hybrid wolf + spellcasting:
- Physical & fire boosted fire spells + Fury
- Only physical boosted fire spells + Grizzly + Fury
- Tornado + Fury

The way i see those builds is that they are flexible, and flexible builds with training can be pretty effective.
Such builds do not have the luxery of boosting fire pierce. But they can be built several ways.
They use mark of the bear for reaching 28% DR and Mark of the bear to reach: 5/4/4/4/7 or 5/4/4/4/6 fpa on fury.
Eth Earthshifter zod will Dash out around 1,5 - 8,1k fury damage and have +2 range adder, but AR wont neccesary be high enought to be effective vs paladins and barbs.
They are built as either 68fcr or 99fcr, but the fire ones can take alternative routes with slower fcr to boost other areas.
In my mind Volcano and Armageddon works very well together with such a build, as you then have ur ranged attacks in form of Volcano, ur aoe attacks in form of Armageddon and you have stuff like firestorm and moulten boulder to deal with close enemies with high def.
And you have fury to effectivly kill close casters trying to push you.
But mainly suchs builds empazise on fun gameplay.

- Physical & fire boosted fire spells + Fury
Gear:
Eth earthshifter ZOD
Enigma
Magefist
Shadow dancers 25dex
Metamorphosis: 1-3volcano, 1-3armageddon, 1-3fury
2 x 10fcr/ar/str/dex or life/@ (possible adds are single res or mana)
Arach
Highlord

Torch
Annie
8 x ele skillers life
1 x ele fhr
10 x life/5@ scs

Minimum Stashed gear:
TG (light abs)
Dungo (DR boost)
Infernostrides / Hots

This base gear reach:
68fcr break, 42fhr break, 28% DR, decent res, decent frw, no abs, CNBF, teleport.

Damage etc:
Fury: 1500-8100 damage with 34% deadly strike.
AR is with demon limb ench: 5861 AR. (ar will quickly scale with dex investments, 1 dex = 46 AR on this build)

Armageddon damage:
3,9 - 4,1k physical
7,8-8,6k fire
1,6k burn

Volcano damage:
1,5k physical
2,1-2,4k fire

Moulten boulder:
1754-1927 physical
1-1,1k fire
0,9k burn

Fissure:
3644 - 3809 fire

Firestorm:
4781-5295 fire burn

Skilling:
Max: Armageddon, Volcano, fissure, moulten boulder.
8 base werewolf
1 lycan, werebear, oak, raven, spirit wolf, dire wolf, grizzly, how, artic, cyclone.
Remaining Firestorm (12 if lvl 99)

This link will not work over time:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/tg39i0xt

- Only physical boosted fire spells + Grizzly + Fury:
Okay, lets say we wanna be more shaman like, wanna focus on grizzly as a usable tool forexample:
We then only skill 1 to firestorm and fissure, this way we maintain max physical damage on fire spells.
Now we put 20 grizzly and we have only used 88 skills, and have up to 11 skills remaining.

Theese can be used for whatever you like:
HoW: Bonus damage and espesially AR will boost grizzly very much.
Spirit wolf will give passive 25% AR to grizzly which scales quite good as well.
Dire wolf will give 15% bonus HP per level.

But we can also put them into either:
Fissure (Boost volcano damage + duration on armageddon)
or
Firestorm (Boost Armageddon damage and passive bonus to fissure and moulten boulder)

We can also have a helm swap like:
Rare: 2dru/3grizzly/3armageddon/3volcano with cham rune
or
Totally swap our build into hoto + spirit or Beast War spike + Pheonix or Spirit.
In combination with a 2/19/adds ammu.

Because the fury will have to low AR vs paladins and barbs anyway. So we instead boost our grizzly damage as close damage dealer, like a shaman would.

So in a way this last build can jump between:
Fury + Fireskills + Grizzly (3hybrid)
or
Fireskills + Buffed Grizzly (Shaman)

The only downside is the large strengt investment to use eth thunderhammer.
We can also keep up to 9 summon skillers in stash.

Beast and HOW have very good bonuses to grizzly. A grizzly can easy have up to 32k AR with HOW + Fana, or 26k with HoW Alone.
I will link grizzly guide here:
https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=84698278&f=87

Here is a tempoary planner for 3 hybrid, which can be item swapped into pure shaman:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/ft2r509m
Setup for shaman:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/9n3am0xl

And one can even maul with beast while ctc firestorm:
First 5-6 mauls are at 9fpa, then rest is 8fpa. 1k fire dmg per secon on firestorm.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/po3ar0xb

Or with beast + spirit etc...

- Tornado + Fury
Okay, last build is fury + tornado. It has higher damage outputs, but i dont think its as good since both attacks are kinda ment for close. It will ofc have better chance vs hammerdins and smiters compared to a shaper:
We use this:
Eth zod earth shifter
Arach
Magefist
2 x fcr rings
2/20/20@/adds ammu
eni
shadows
Metamorph 3fury/3nado/3hurricane

We will stay on the 4fpa middle frame fury, our listed damage is more, but we dont have deadly strike. Ofc arach + Hl can be swapped with current setup.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/bw3az0x9

It ends up around 6,8k nado + 43% DR + 68fcr + 1,8 to 9,7k fury damge at "4fpa".

Next post will be the CTC builds.

This post was edited by gel87 on Mar 31 2024 06:03am

Okay, here is the ctc build:

Items:
Eth stormlash ZOD + Pheonix Monarch
Enigma
Highlord
Arach
Trang oul's
10fcr/ar/str/life or dex/@/fire res
Raven / Wisp /
Metamorphosis 3fury, 3hurricane, 3 grizzly/how/shockwave or whatever.

7 x shape sks life
1 x shape fhr
13 x life/5@
torch
annie

Demon limb enchant for high def chars.

There is 40% chance to cast lvl 22 firestorm which burns for 0,9k fire damage each second.
There is 20% chance to cast lvl 18 tornado which has 1491-1691 damage.
You attack with 5/3/3/3/6 fpa
Fury damage: 332-6810 with 34% chance to double
Ur attackrating is: 25k and you have +2 range adder.
You have: max block, 80lr, 85fr + absorb, 75cr, 56pr and 28% DR with this setup, and 6,4k life with oak up in werewolf state. 5,4k as werewolf with no oak, 3,2k life with no oak or no shape. 4,2k life with oak up and human shape.
50fcr / 42fhr
You have 1k hurricane without any attempt to cast it cta side, and can cast 1k nadoes as human, or 1,3k cta side.
Ur grizzly have some damage as well, and you have ur meatshield.

The idea here is to attack a monster or a summon as bear to trigger mark of the bear.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/bl3be0xx

I love this idea. I've been theroy crafting ideas. Like a geddon fury wolf or geddon rabies. Also been wanting to play around with shockwave swirl tag and hurricane for trips. Maybe stomp shift fury or something? Idk lol. But I would like to see a shape shift hybrid Druid!

Rabies is kinda destroyed by d2r. It dont work. I have tested it and there is so many situations where it just stops dealing damage.
Shockwave + hurricane jumps can work

As a werewolf theese days, using mainly fury i would use remaining skills on grizzly Good meatshield and can damage and stun super fast.

Didn’t read it all yet but are you trying to say that person will cast some fire spell ( fissure / volcano ) as human form and then change a form to wolf and start slashing with Fury ?

This post was edited by MultipleUser1 on Apr 1 2024 03:38am

Yes.
You mix it up. Basicly ur a fire druid with 2-8k fury damage.

thx for sharing. hybrid is always fun 😊

mine is a Uber-Killer

Neat idea but I really can’t see this being at all viable outside of getting a few kills in pubs