2.4 Fire Druid Hardcore Build

Druid
1

Which defensives should I pick up for HC fire build?

I was thinking of picking up Heart of the Oak, Grizzly, and Cyclone Armor for defensive abilities. Is it worth it to grab Wearbear form for an “oh s***” button? Or is the activation too slow to be worth it? Is one point in cyclone armor worth the trouble without having the synergies of the wind skills? Since it just stops flat damage, it seems it might scale very poorly into hell until I have a lot of +skill.

Any other suggestions?

2

I’m currently running a summon/armageddon build that works quite nicely for me. It’s very hardcore friendly because I’ve got Werebear with 2.5k hp, a whole army of minions/meatshields and permanent aoe stun with shockwave. It’s really nice for farming almost anything since I have cold/fire/physical damage I don’t urn into much I can’t completely kill. If you’re looking for an oh-sh*t button, shockwave would probably be the best solution since it stuns everything in your path. Here is my setup if you’re interested. I do have about +20 summon skills and +13 elemental skills in this build, but it does work with less too.

20 grissly
20 armageddon
13 firestorm
13 molten boulder
13 volcano
1 carrion vine
1 oak
1 werebear
1 shockwave
1 fire claw

and all the rest you need to get to these points. with this setup you’ll have a decent zoo that keeps enemies busy and you can permastun everything around you while armageddon rains down on them. very fun to play

3

Interesting, how long does it take you to clear things?

4

The Meteor shower is random, but with a good hit you can take out most monsters instantly, and for big packs you want to get in and mingle with them to make it very effective, shockwave helps a lot here. I usually spawn the bear into a big pack so they are busy hitting that instead of me, then I start shockwaving while I move clsoer to the middle. And to answer your question, I basically just walk through the pit without stopping.

5

Looks pretty interesting. However, if you use Grizzly not as a damage source but a distraction consider change of points allocation to 20 Oak Sage 1 Grizzly. This way both you, the sage, suppose the vine too, and your bear will get a solid bonus to health - your 2.5k life, with 20lv Oak Sage providing 125% bonus, will become 5625. That health pool will combine nicely with percentage regeneration provided by Carrion Creeper, and bear with +125% extra life will tank even better than now.

Btw @Pinesin, could you import your druid into https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/? It’d be much easier to see.

EDIT:
I’ve respecced my lv86 Wind Druid into this Diablo II Druid Skill Calculator - Diablo II and did a short playtest - Chaos Sanctuary + Diablo kill on Players3, and 2 levels of Nihlathak’s temple.
Upsides:

  • The build is truly almost unkillable, my characted had ~5200 life with not so good gear (2xSpirit, 1xStone of Jordan, Nagelring, Immortal King belt, Skin of Vipermagi upgraded, tiara +2 druid skills, amulet +1 druid skills 16% MF); actually, it was me who was tanking.
  • Carrion Creeper healing is decent.
  • Shock Wave stunning works astonishingly well.

Downsides:

  • Clear speed it atrocious, especially against fire immune enemies. I had to switch off werebear form, and use Volcano against such type of enemies.
  • As I expected, Armageddon while visually nice spreads too wide to be reliable. True, if a meteor finally hit an enemy it does very high damage, but to wait for that to happen…my original Wind Druid, even considering how hard aiming Tornado sucks, would kill the enemy triple or quadruple times in that time.
  • Fire Claws had too low attack rating to be viable option, my character had only ~32-45% chance to hit enemies; some flat +attack rating is a must if you want to use them.
  • Carrion Creeper seems to be extremely lazy, to force it make its job I had to constantly resummon it. Otherwise it consumed corpses to heal me once in a blue moon.