Hey I was thinking about making a summon druid... not a town guarding B.S. one but a real GM PK Dudu

I've seen a few different strategies and wanted to get some feedback on what works best before I invest and build the char

1) Twister for stun / swirl

2) Wearbear + shockwave for stun/swirl

Also I've seen some builds maxing heart of the wolverine + OAK sage, and others just maxing Heart of the wolverine and maxing ravens

What is best for duels in this patch?

Also, thoughts on 163 fcr build, or 99 fcr with beast?

Nobody wants to duel a summ druid and nobody good will, so you'll just be sitting afk on a pub bridge. Learn to play a windy instead.

Stun is not a big thing since 2.4.
Twister's swirl doesn't work good.

I have a very good windy. You're more than welcome to duel it as long as you dont bring a SIN

There are some maul + summon builds that are usefull

Basicly using a beast war spike with -10wsm.

Metamorphosis etc. Maul stuns as well.

But theese builds was best prior to massive nerf of both stun and werebear shape lol xD

i would just go for the 163 fcr hoto build (absolutely not pelt for this one)

hoto
2/20 2 soc circ berber LoLo whatever
bk
10 fcr str life mana ring
aldur
arach
trang gloves
enigma wyrm
2/18 life amu
life @ scs
summ sks life
2x 5 fhr 5@ sc

a1 merc with faith shadow bow if you need to bm

act1 merc will beat a2 merc by a longshot in this case since her inner sight cast will reduce everyones defense to 0 (even paladins and barbs as the -defense is applied before % enhanced defense is, only exception maybe being a char with insane high defense like an exile vortex etc)

stun doesnt work great in this game, you could use volcano vs chars that have block to trigger block animation on occasion (altho doesnt do much vs paladins cos they have like 2 frames block or something iirc)

vs casters you could use twister i guess but youre probably better off just holding teleport

also precast ravens with ravenlore etc for 6.4k dmg if you need to bm

skills:

20 HoW
20 raven
20 grizzly
20 dire
20 spirit

maybe 1 into cano/cyclone armor

you could also put a doom in stash if you wanna bm some ppl

This post was edited by Stefbef on Dec 12 2024 08:43am

Why no pelt? Druid summon synergies work from soft points in d2r so a 3/3/3/3 pelt is possible but very rare and expensive. If you can find something like that with 2os it might be worth going over the hoto circ setup

yes but +all skills/druid skills is also soft points no ?

this is what your tree would look like with hoto bk diadem:



this is what your tree would look like with a very unrealistic 3 summ 3 grizz 3 dire 3 HoW pelt:



i guess you gain 1 hoW and 1 grizzly and 1 dire

but you lose 2 spirit wolf and 2 raven

i guess this very unrealistic pelt could be a tiny bit better? but any non <25k fg pelt i think is worse than the hoto one

again, unless im mistaken about the ''soft skills''

This post was edited by Stefbef on Dec 12 2024 09:00am

Nah you’re right. The points in Raven especially since that’s going to be most consistent dmg. For sure much more cost effective to go hoto circ. The all res and rep life are also quite nice especially since you won’t have cyclone or oak!

Stun/swirl is pretty useless in d2r

You can only have either oak or HoW up, so don’t max both lol.
Oak will make you and your summons ultra tanky.
HoW is obviously better dmg.
You decide

Like it was mentioned above, soft points from +skills also apply to the druid’s summon synergies.
They scale exponentially, cuz each extra +skill gives bonus % based on newly increased flat stats.
So the last few +skills you can get are the most important.

+6 pelt is BiS
I would base my choice about oak or HoW based on the pelt you can get.
+3 bear/dire/HoW would be gfg
But if you get some cheaper +3 bear/dire you could use oak instead.

You can get A LOT of bonus flat health on magic 2os pelt and even a 3summon/100life amy, which all scale with massive +% hp bonus from oak/cta

99fcr easy to reach without a circ.
The only spell you’ll cast is tele, so you don’t need more, that would only make your summons much more weak.

Edit :
The 2 skill planners shown above are for max fcr.
Imo this is not the way to go.
99fcr is more than enough on a summoner. Not worth sacrificing a lot of dmg/tankiness for only 1 frame faster tele.

This post was edited by SinsOfTheSun on Dec 12 2024 09:27am