Yeah you are right, it’s an expensive build for P1… I don’t know, can you change player settings in PTR?
I think from the videos, it should be strong enough to handle P3 difficulty no problems? P8 it would be quite slow, but not the worst…
At the end of the day, it is the same build (or similar) to wind druid… You would play the game and farm with the wind druid and use cheap gear like reaper’s toll and spirit crystal sword (later you’d use HOTO).
But when you are so rich that you start thinking about making an arctic blast druid, then you can make some expensive things like Infinity and Doom .
I think if you want to be unique and look different to all the other players, it’s an okay build, at least B-tier?
Test it with Reaper, forti, guli face and oak+beast… i think he will destroy diablo.
The grizzly is strong in single target too, but with cb on the merc … in pod the merc is dmg dealer nr1 and that mod have 2 grizzly
I doubt they want to completely remove and add a new skill. I wouldn’t mind seeing Poison creeper, Solar Creeper, or Spirit of the Barbs replaced with a Summoning Mastery. I just doubt they would do it.
60-80 points for a full build is not unreasonable - IF you get the whole benefit of all those points. If we were allowed all 9 pets simultaneously then requiring us to max both wolves, bear, and HoW would be perfectly reasonable. This honestly feels like it would be the best solution.
If they don’t give us all, then they need to drastically reduce the point investment, as you say.
Just remember, a summoner necro only has to spend 40 points in summoning tree, leaving a huge number of skill points available for expanding into their curses to break immunities, corpse explosion for AOE damage, etc. Right now dumping 100 hard points into summoning tree leaves you weaker than a 20 point summoning necro, with fewer summons that do less damage and no AOE and no utility. Heck, druid spirits dont even properly buff the other druid summons. That lousy cold damage on wolf, will forever be lousy, you cant benefit from anything else to buff it.
Yeah hurricane is probably 60-70% of the damage. Arctic blast definitely needs more power… Given that it’s AoE is so small and it stops you from moving while casting…
I think the devs should buff it it a bit more… Or ideally, they should let you move while casting arctic blast
activate skill → arctic blast starts shooting and follows the mouse pointer → you can keep running → when you want to deactivate arctic blast (or you run out of mana) just click the skill again and it deactivates…
This would improve Arctic blast and make it more functional… Would also make it operate and feel different to twister/hurricane (which you cannot most and cast at the same time).
Also, it would help if the AB projectiles moved 20-30% faster… Sometimes hard to get into position and start hitting the target (especially if they are moving at a strange angle to you).
I created what I consider to be an “optimal summoner druid”, you can see the build here:
I used the same concept as a “Fishymancer” summon necro: spend about 40 pts on a pet to distract enemies and provide a meat-shield (similar to raise skele+skele mastery), then spend the remaining 40-60 points on other skills that will give you high DPS and AoE (similar to corpse explosion).
In the PTR I recommend that the best summon druid would be something like:
Spirit Wolf - 20pts (this give you a lot of bodies, some elemental cold damage and crowd control. synergises well with spirit of barbs, returning maximum damage)
Spirit of Barbs - 20pts (as stated, lots of returned damage)
Poison Creeper - 20pts (this gives you AoE like corpse explosion and synergises rabies. also another meat-shield)
Rabies - 20pts (this is your real AoE. Poison the bad guy and let your wolves strike the finishing blow - same concept as CE necro).
Remember - SOFT POINTS IN WOLF SKILLS AND BEAR COUNT TOWARDS SYNERGIES!!! This means if you stack enough +skills gear on your character, as well as summoning skill charms, your summons will get a lot of benefits from even just a 1-pt investment in a secondary summonable creature. This is the key to the druid summoner… Investing 60-80 hard points into summons is actually VERY inefficient because of this core mechanic.
So the build relies on stacking as many good auras as you can to buff your summons, stacking as much +damage and -enemy poison resist to make rabies super strong, and then adding lots of druid summon skillers and +all skills to provide passive bonuses and make all your pets stronger.
I think if the devs focused on buffing this build specifically and balancing it, they could make a build that competes VERY WELL with the CE Necromancer (Fishymancer).
I think the dream of making a build that uses 80 hard points in Ravens, Spirit Wolves, Dire Wolves, and Bear is a waste of time - players will just keep complaining that “they want to spam all their pets and fill the screen with furries”. The new raven mechanics/synergies entice players to invest their points like this, and it’s a bad idea in my opinion…
I think getting rabies, poison creeper, and spirit of barbs working really well will be better than letting players summon 8 wolves and a bear and a spirit and a vine all simultaneously…
Congratulations, you did in 8 minutes with a full belt of potions, nearly dying multiple times on Players 1 , with endgame gear what any paladin, sorcerer, assassin, or amazon can do in under 3 minutes on players 8 … this is NOT OK
I’ll spend some time tonight trying to optimise and practice the hotkeys… Needs trangs gloves for +50% poison skill damage, but we don’t get them in PTR?
I think with some practice and optimization, I could get it down to 4-5 minutes… Will re-post soon
I tested bear and ravens in pvp. It if targets get hit by ravens its doing a lot dmg. But they have issue to hit moving targets. Grizzly is very strong but he was even before.
Mainly PvM currently. I loved to do low level pvp, mid level pvp and some players killing But i am mostly playing Hardcore so i am not sure if I will get back to pvp honestly.
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