A few questions been away for sometime.
Can Rabies druid be viable pvp related?
just curious.
i want to invest in an off meta pvper for fun thank you for your time!

I tried. Worked inzanly bad in d2r. Rabies is completly changed.
It do not seem to overwrite higher damage properly.
It stops 100% to deal damage if you or enemy leave minimap range. And it will not start again by itself if you get into range again.
It stops 100% dealing damage if you shape into human. So the good old tele rabies build is gone.

dang...

Haven't touched D2 anything in eons, and not sure how Rabies works now in D2:R... but I will correct you on a matter:


"It stops 100% to deal damage if you or enemy leave minimap range. And it will not start again by itself if you get into range again."

The first part was always how Rabies worked even in D2 classic.

There are two portions of the Rabies skill:

-The poison damage inflicted via skill contact (character turns green to denote poison status).
-The actual Rabies affliction (which was shown as a swirling reddish aura to denote the Rabies kill effect).

The actual poison would tend to last a bit longer than the Rabies aura itself.
The Rabies aura is what determines whether the victims' HP goes from 1 to 0.
This explains that one issue where the enemy is poisoned and should have died, when in fact the aura timer ran out before the actual poison timer.

This is where the minimap instance comes into play: as long as the victim doesn't 'see' the rabies druid (which was about two-three screen distance iirc, it's been that long) they will stay at ONE HP for the entire duration of the aura. The first frame you see that X on the minimap, and that reddish aura is still on your character, your HP ticks from 1 to 0. POP! Free gold.

====

"It stops 100% dealing damage if you shape into human."

It sucks if true (again I don't play D2 anymore), but they kinda had to do something about this. It was one of the few unique things that Rabies Wolf had access to that was borderline broken.

Having the ability to swap to a 163fcr setup and catch up with some-most competent duelers in human form (along with Druids' innate cast frames) made that highly doable.
And in instances where I know my opponent is at 1, and the Rabies aura isn't present, that's where 1-point Volcano comes in.


Cheers!

This post was edited by Jekk on Apr 8 2025 12:39pm

Well, in d2lod the psn damage kept on going but you would have to move in close to allow it to kill. And yes enemy may still be green and its to late to autokill by existing close.

But on d2r aura is gone forever as soon as enemy is outside range for a split second.
Psn damage stops dealing damage and even if close it will not start again. You would need to strike him physical with rabies again.
Enemy will be green but take zero damage.

So as soon as some1 is affected by rabies it takes them 1-2 seconds to become unnafected.

Ur also a sitting duck since any attempts to teleport will result in zero damage.

This post was edited by gel87 on Apr 8 2025 03:57pm

Man... reading all this made me extra sad. Blizz really hates shapeshifters. Rabies and fireclaw were my favorite buillds but both are complete ass atm