Winniethepooh - Hybrid Werebear Single Pass - Topic

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

Aug 10 2020 06:35pm

Single Pass Rules:
• Always players 8 (bosses and countess included).
• Hardcore
• Absolutely no rerunning maps or bosses.
• All items are solo self found; However, I will "retire" items to shared stash. These stashed items will not be used once stashed.
• Plugy is only to be used for the extended stash; no restatting, reskilling, or ubers.

The intention is to theory craft a single build, avoiding respec, that can handle all aspects of the game but still presents some challenge. My goal is to full clear every map and defeat Hell Baal. I will be streaming this run everyday on twitch.

Its time for me to return to my favorite class, DRUID! This is certainly a much harder singlepass than the runs I've been doing lately. But this is where the majority of my D2 life has been spent and I love it. Gear constraints are rough due to needing a fast, strong weapon (almost always a 2her), needing resistances (no shield), getting enough life while pumping enormous str and dex, and getting attack rating. All that said, I'm really looking to this run. It's been about 3 months since my last shifter singlepass. That was also a hybrid werebear that died in A1 Hell Dark wood to a dual enchanted quill rat - I had terrible cold rez and the merc put it into hit recovery a bunch to pop me. The travesty of that was that I had already found a Mal rune about 1h prior! I feel I've learned a lot of new things (just general single pass experience) to try over the past few months that will have me doing some things differently for this run.

My Goals for this run:

A2H would be a personal best, but this would be a dream to guardian; And, it's a dream I believe in. However, Unravelers will be very problematic and tilting.

Going into hell my skill distribution will roughly look like:

10 Lycanthropy
1 Werebear
20 Maul
20 Fire Claws + 20 synergy
7 Shockwave (5.2s before +skills)
2 pre-req
1 spare

As I move into hell I'll be balancing life (lycanthropy) and physical (werebear) damage with fire (synergies) damage as needed.

Weapon: Find a decent/realistic exceptional drop such as Ribcracker, Buriza, or Athena's to up or get a Mal and Pul to make "Oath" (likely in a feral axe). Eth base is desirable but not necessary. I have found all of these (except athena's) at least once in the past 6 runs. If this fails, however, I can vendor exceptional and elite weapons with the goal being Cruel and Quickness on a decent -10 Base Weapon Speed, such as Thresher, Gothic Axe, Champion Axe. I will probably be avoiding the Grim Scythe/Giant Thresher line and its requirements for this run - depends on gear and drops. I will also being making use of the chippy/standard gem cube recipe to reroll qlvl 79+ elites like Champion axe as they appear in the shop or as a drop.

Helm: +3 Fireclaw Pelt 2os for Lore. Would like a Jalal's ofc, but I've yet to see this in my runs. Other desirable automods are Shockwave and Grizzly (I will not be spending points in summons for this build)

Armor: Most likely "Smoke" but Duriel's shell is desirable, "Duress" might be okay, unlikely "Treachery" will make it into this build

Amulet: Almost assuredly a prismatic. Mara's would be amazing, but so would a +skill prismatic rare with literally anything else on it.

Rings: Ravenfrost > Dual Resistance=Dual Leech > AR

Gloves: Crafted (Blood) preferably dual leech, OIAS most likely irrelevant but may need 10-20 OIAS for weapon BP (maybe)

Boots: Most likely an imbue if I decide against pelts (I don't see prismatic for pelts so this is likely the case). If that fails then Crafted (Blood > Safety)

Belt: Blood Craft or Trang's girth (yes I've found this before too)

Prebuff: Hoping for a fleshrender (I've found 3 in 6 runs) but a spirit+spirit may suffice, otherwise I might use a sigon's/lidless until a 4os monarch if such a thing will be kind enough to drop (I usually find a monarch before a2h fangskin )

---

With all that said, I've put in about 19.5 (3 days) into the run already. I'm up to the Frigid Highland waypoint. I've been busy playing and have not had a chance to start one of these posts yet. I'm also still a bit salty about last run

My last Werebear was named NicCage after the movie wickerman

Chat had an equally hilarious idea for naming this run. Act 1 proved fun. It can be a bit challenging when pumping stats other than Vit. But the +50% bonus werebear has over wolf helps.

Countess dropped an ith (it was practically the only rune chat didn't guess). I love chippies, I'm hoarding alllllll the chippies! Thanks Andy!

---

Act 2 started off very rough. I had less than 20 LRes for the longest time, but I started to patch that in as it became available. I found some nice early dual res boots (think this was stony tomb, could be HotD)
sadly no FRW

The cube is here and that means..... SAVAGE POLEARMS! - I might as well talk about this now. This is hands down one of my favorite recipes, especially because of how great this is having access to a possible amazing exceptional weapon as early as A2 normal! I've since rolled this recipe 40 times. I've hit Battle Scythe 5 times and War Scythe twice... unfortunately I've missed the 1 in 41 odds (after calculating odds of a suffix) for an alacrity 20% ias... I did hit it once, but it landed on a normal Scythe which I used all the way until diablo. In all honesty this is fine. I was 2-3 shotting most things.

---

Post 1/3

LogicalLynx

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

Aug 10 2020 06:35pm

Stream Day 1 persisted until canyon of the magi. I was really tilted that I died to cows on the necro and chat was keeping my mind off it... plus I LOVE playing my shifter druid.

I didn't actually use the staff of kings, but sometimes this is the best weapon you have at this point in the game.

Day 2 started in A2 canyon and tombs but persisted until meph.

Runes finally started dropping, unfortunately that's about all I found in Act 2.

---

Act 3 was lousy with Ith runes, everywhere ith rune. I must have found half a dozen or more ith runes from the a2 tombs to mephisto.

I've never had this interaction before, but untimely un-shifting mid-maul left my Human Form with the maul orb circling me.. funny stuff

Don't get excited its just a 26% nagels that I can't use right now. OMG! What a drop from Mephisto though!!! no... not the snakecord. Flawed diamond. As I often say on stream, "diamonds are a druid's best friend" - there's a reason I was able to roll 40 times already.

---

And finally we're to Day 3 (current)

I started in A4 today. My first thul was only the tip of the iceberg. I had some Amn runes coming my way

---

Post 2/3

[/B]

LogicalLynx

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

Aug 10 2020 06:36pm

I'm not sure I have had any harder normal diablo fights, perhaps barb. It's brutal this early and took some time and effort. I was pretty excited to see these 2 great axe rares. One was a minor upgrade but an upgrade nonetheless.

As soon as I got to A5 I said, "we just need a fuckton of shaels to drop" the game was happy to oblige 1. I will be ultra greedy with these as they're quite handy for this run.

I was really hoping this military axe would be 2os for a "steel" it'd be a modest upgrade right now. Unfortunately it was 3os so the search continues (NO, I won't be putting my shael in it)

I needed to keep stream short today (~3h) so I'd be able to get a bunch of off-stream stuff done, including this post.

I hope you're all looking forward to this run as much as I am. If you have any questions or suggestion feel free to share them with me. If you say "what about 6 shael pb" or anything like that though I'm going to ignore it Hybrid Bear > Mauler > Pure FC and I'm happy to prove it.

Here are my current stats and gear:

Post 3/3

Thanks for reading! (I know it was an earful this time)

This post was edited by LogicalLynx on Aug 10 2020 06:37pm

Ston3

Member

Posts: 34,158

Joined: Mar 3 2006

Gold: 1,194.00

Aug 11 2020 04:23am

FallenZealot

Member

Posts: 16,893

Joined: Nov 26 2016

Gold: 225,299.00

Aug 11 2020 07:39am

Looking good so far!

LogicalLynx

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

Aug 11 2020 10:14pm

Its kind of funny how it seems that whenever I increase my MF the uniques dry up... anyways I ran with 63% MF for most of the day. Some decent rare drops started coming in, finally; Including a really awesome 27% Cold 12% Poison 2os Breast Plate. Budget "30@" is good enough until "Smoke". Not a single unique dropped in all of Act 5 however.

Anya gave me a placeholder pelt. I'm hoping to replace this with a +Fire Claws "Lore" soon-ish. I'm still looking for the base, and oddly I have no Sols

I have never seen this, my chat didn't either - I thought I was losing my mind... but I had a waypoint-less glacial trail. This was more unnerving than getting "an evil force" in A4 yesterday: https://clips.twitch.tv/WittyDrabCurlewWholeWheat I'm wondering if I got some weird normal seed.

I found a decent AR LL wring with some life and pitiful fire res. Had this rolled better res it'd probably never come off, but I'm going to eventually have to replace this.

Ancients were easy

---

After getting a 3os and a magical military axe... my 2os finally dropped, woohoo! Going from a 15 fpa Battle scythe to a 10 fpa Military axe feels AMAZING - even if the base weapon damage dropped from 56 to 32 - this is still a dps increase, the leech will hurt some in nightmare, but we'll be on to better things by Act 2 (hopefully)

We talked about all the possible drops we wanted from Baal... ravenfrost.. ribcracker. Never to be seen in my druid runs (I will point out that my werebear run dropped an ethereal kelpie snare from normal diablo 3 months ago tho)

I'm happy to see some runes at cows, but I was here purely for revenge... I killed them, I killed them all. They're dead. Every single one of them. Not just the Bulls, but the Heifers and Calves too!

---

Lucky or unlucky I have a lot of 3-4% res small charms.. I wish it were better but it's enough for now to keep me topped off on light and fire res in nightmare. Cold is lacking a bit, but I have replaceable gear in quite a few slots.

Here's my stats and gear going into nightmare:

I've finished pumping Fire Claws to 20. Maul is on 17 (18 with +1sk - want to keep this on an even level). 6 pts in Shockwave and 5 in lycanthropy. I'll be taking 1 synergy to max in NM with some other points being allocated to more ED and life as needed.

Thanks for reading!

LogicalLynx

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

Aug 13 2020 10:37am

My damage is surprisingly solid for entry into NM, but that doesn't mean I won't be trying to improve it ASAP. Killing wasn't the issue though. My lack of FHR and somewhat slow (10fpa) attack speed meant for some scary scenarios with CE, cursed, extra strong, might and fanatic packs but I endured - only one close call I'm now working on boosting my life a little bit and I'm ever-inching closer to getting a smoke to get some more gear flexibility and FHR in.

My first rune was a Dol, this is my second Dol and certainly not a bad start.

Countess wasn't that much of a problem, just her usual annoying kiting.

Hel rune, okay we're slowly getting there!

---

I finally got my chance to try and roll for some dual leech blood gloves. Sadly these are total unusable hot garbage.

This amulet might be good enough for Hell if I need to plug up some resists, rather than simply waiting for a decent prismatic. I have a 2 shapeshifting and +1 druid as well but these will unlikely see use.

I was immediately swarmed by packs as I stepped foot into dark wood.. at least they provided me a moment of excitement as I hoped for a ravenfrost. Sadly this is my second nagels this run. I was hoping, and pushed for Andy thinking that if she dropped a unique ring in this same game my odds for raven would be pretty high. Oh, well that didn't pan out either.

---

Countess coughed up my first Sol rune. Ignore the woestave, its god awful in almost all conditions. I dropped a second Sol rune later on too!

I'll gladly take every single shael that drops. This was #2.

Things are dropping, I am running a small amount of MF. Even as beefy as a Bonesnap is, its just too slow.

---

Post 1/2

LogicalLynx

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

Aug 13 2020 10:53am

Shael #3 ain't shabby!

Sigon's are actually somewhat useful atm. 10% leech really helps my low phys atm, also some AR and defense aren't unwelcome. The Cold Res helped bring me up about 30% (added some charms), although I had to sacrifice about 7 fire res. No more chugging 900 thawing potions (yes I drank these in ~120-240 clips all stream)

Disappointing Andy drops, but I'll take the consolation chippies and standard gems. This was actually a pretty difficult fight. Low res on my part and her thwaps were chunking me for a not so insignificant amount.

---

Here is my gear and stats heading into A2. I've traded blessed aim Kasim out for holy freeze Kasim. I'm looking for a 4os Partizan/Bec base for insight for him. I don't need the mana, but the CS and ED this early is good for him.

---

I'll probably stop around claw viper temple / character level 56 to shop Fara for a better weapon.. something that gets me to 10 or 9 fpa without the gloves 10ias. The reason to wait for ~56-57 is because the number of shoppable items with swiftness and ferocious increases. While I only need about 60-70 weapon damage to beat nightmare, hitting higher is a possibility and desirable.

Items that I can shop include (sorted by best to worst):
Ferocious Battle Scythe of Swiftness: 63-95 dmg @ 10fpa (9fpa with 15 OIAS) [clv 56] ~2.5k dps 42% phys
Cruel/Ferocious Great Axe of quickness: 39-78 dmg @ 9fpa (8fpa with 20 OIAS) [clv 57] ~2.5k dps 35% phys
Ferocious War Scythe of Swiftness: 51-77 dmg @ 10fpa (9fpa with 15 OIAS) [clv 53] ~2.3k dps 37% phys
Ferocious Halberd of quickness: 57-86 dmg @ 11fpa (10fpa with 5 OIAS) [clv 55] ~2.2k dps 40% phys
Ferocious Bearded Axe of Swiftness: 70-105 dmg @ 12fpa (11fpa with 15 OIAS) [clv 55] ~2.2k dps 44% phys
Ferocious Bill of Swifness: 67-101 dmg @ 12fpa (11fpa with 20 OIAS) [clv 54] ~2.1k dps 43% physical

For Comparison:
Current setup = "Steel" Military Axe +10 OIAS: 31 dmg @ 10fpa, ~1.3k dps 33% phys

Thanks for Reading!

Post 2/2

This post was edited by LogicalLynx on Aug 13 2020 11:20am

LogicalLynx

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

Aug 14 2020 09:31pm

Act 2 was done over 2 streams. It took about 12h to clear A2 nightmare, and honestly this was easier and quicker than the first time. Lots happened here so this post will be rather lengthy.

Things that did not happen in A2:
I did not find a partizan/bec "Insight" base. I did not find any "Spirit" base for my prebuff weapon. I did not find a "Smoke" base. I did not find a Lum rune.

Here are all the somewhat valubale/useful runes I did find across act 2. I also found several lower runes and a couple Sol and Amn runes.

All of these combined put me pretty close to cubing a Lum once I have the base for "Smoke". I am 1 Io rune away from being able to cube up. (1 Io + 2 Hel + 3 Dol).

---

These are actually pretty close to the crafted Blood gloves I was hoping to get. The life leech roll is sadly low and the +1 bow would been preferable as resistance, but they're fine for now.

This is my THIRD ... freaking 3rd ... nagelring. My hopes of ravenfrost died here.

Anyone that's familiar with my runs, knows I really despise unravelers, as such Halls of the Dead is one of my least favorite places. It really wasn't that awful, fortunately.

Not a single FE beetle in all of A2 to be found. That was a relief. Maggot Lair was the last thing I did on day one of Act 2. BTW, this stealskull is great for the merc 10ias and 5% LL

---

Lost City and Ancient tunnels were rather unmemorable. I had unravelers in my claw viper temple though, so that made the start of today rather interesting. That Io rune dropped at the very end of floor 1 from an urn. Floor 2 was quite interesting as well. I immediately went top left to try and avoid fangskin. To my surprise he was top left waiting with a juicy LECE affix. I quickly circled clockwise to the bottom of the map running past a bunch of mummies. I had to sacrifice my merc to fangskin, but it allowed me to open up a tp and get out. I then walked back via waypoint instead of portal and pulled fangskin to the door, left floor 2 and walked back to the waypoint to take my portal. This allowed me to safely clear the center snakes and mummies leaving just fangskin and crew. It might not have been necessary, but with how things have gone lately I wasn't chancing it, not even in nightmare.

It was up to this point that I was hoping to be level 58 to shop for decent ED%+WIAS. With how smoothly things were going I decided the "Steel" military axe was fine for completing Act 2. I decided I was instead try and shop Hratli at level 60 in A3 as this opens some better stuff like Gothic Axe. Nothing too interested happened in Harem/Cellar or Arcane. Almost all the packs were manageable even if not fun (skele archers). I did have one exciting cursed extra strong Gorebelly pack that 1 shot my merc from about 700 hp. That was a little frightening.

Onto tombs, I found this nice all rest massive life amulet. It's not quite as much res as my current 31 cold 26 fire, but I held onto incase I can swap to this later. I would have to give up some AR and MDR for the extra life however.

I was somewhat lucky in that my Kaa tomb did not have unravelers, however karma ensured my duriel tomb would have vamp+mummy+unraveler. Tombs went surprisingly well but they took quite a while ~3h 45m. But I wasn't really trying to quickly, just safely. I decided to pick up a 1pt oak sage earlier than planned after having to face check a room that had some nasty gorebellies next to a fanatic beetle pack. The oak sage isn't being used for life although that can be a bonus. The purpose of this was to scout ahead, pull mobs, and also distract others while trying to burn value targets (like unravelers). Things have been a fair bit safer since. And fortunately we had that to check the 4 pack room of the following: Fanatic Wraiths + Conviction CE Vamps + Extra Fast Mana Burn Vamps + Holy Freeze Vamps. Only 4 of my tombs had unravelers which was nice. I didn't get a lot of beetles but did get lots of wraiths. Lots of gems, not too many important runes

In the final (duriel's) tomb this rip hook was one of the last things to drop. It's actually a decent physical dmg upgrade for me (32 base to 46 base). It also takes me from 11 fpa to 9 fpa and applies a slow and OW. Oh and yeah - no repairs Thanks game! This now allows me to not have to shop until clvl 69. The nice thing about shopping at clvl 69 (early a5) is that I can shop the weapon I'm likely going to use for hell; A Cruel Gothic Axe of Swiftness/Quickness.

Duriel had his usual drops of garbage.

Thanks for reading. I'll post gear and stats just under this post.

LogicalLynx

Member

Posts: 296

Joined: May 10 2015

Gold: 0.00

#10

Aug 14 2020 09:34pm

I have a couple spare fire and cold charms. No more lightning charms available atm. I have about 4 columns of inventory space (using my cube and 2x tomes). I'll eventually make smoke to get the 20 FHR sooner and free up some more space before NM is over. I desperately need a +Fire Claw 2os base. Had to burn a sol on a terrible 2os antler with no automods. I'm currently using both nagels for some AR MDR and MF. the Leech, AR and defense are nice bonuses from sigon's but eventually these will need to be replaced, like the nagels, with crafted gear.

My life in werebear is about 1300. This is pre-A3 quest and without my prebuff +skills. I anticipate getting close to 1500 before I start Hell. I will only be investing 10 more pts into vit for nightmare.

This post was edited by LogicalLynx on Aug 14 2020 09:36pm

Go Back To Player vs. Monster Topic List