There are some pretty nice variations you can do with Summon Druid late game to make it more exciting
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I play HC and I can run a Hammer pala in okay gear through chaos.
But then again HC players are MILES better than SC. Deaths happen tho and thats part of HC.
Blizz sorc can literally MF hell naked there is no other better starting character than a toon that can teleport and do what blizzy sorc can do with crap gear and do it faster than any other starting toon.
Nothing beats fissure build for leveling bro. Fissure is mad broken OP now that you can weave in other skills while on cd. It slows down in hell sure but leveling wise you will carry full tomb groups at 12+ and keep carrying all the way through night mare the way a Trap sin does at the start of ladders.
Hardcore Diablo players are like Vegans, you donāt have to ask if they are one, they will tell you, lol. It takes a different type of skill. You arenāt any better for enjoying soy milk so to speak.
I am a grandmaster at Starcraft multiple times(1,000,000 x harder than hardcore on D2R), and I havenāt touched hardcore on D2R yet. Iāve yet to die even once with my summon druid so technically Iāve been playing hardcore the whole time. But I wonāt select it.
I donāt have all day to play and donāt want to lose a character I spent 150 hours leveling just because my screen glitched or the server disconnected/lagged or I made one mistake. You can still learn from a mistake and be a better player after memorizing it, without losing everything.
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I didnt know you need skill to be vegan.
No, just matter of opinion.
Sure its understandable.
And who asked that? Seems like boasting, just like HC players.
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its not boasting bro I play HC and SC
HC players are just better overall. Just a fact. They always have been overall in generally no need to get all salty about it
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Ok ok, I didnāt realize playing hardcore was all you had. Yes buddy, you are better than others haha.
Of course dear, youāre a big boy.
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Haha I dont feel Im any better because I play HC ā¦ Its just the only way I can enjoy the game and I dont hold it against anyone that plays Sc, its just not my thing.
But I do agree the summoner in HC is much safer approach with all the meat shields and some defensive skills mixed in instead of all out nuclear war offensive builds. It might take me an extra 2 minutes to complete a Baal run but if I live its all goodā¦
Hows everyone feeling about ladder start tommorrow ?? Ill be at work so I wont be home until 8pm - just hoping the patch dont fail and it gets rolled back. Im still not sure IM even going to worry about the ladder, Im just now getting some of my builds into Hell Mode to grind items and stuffā¦
Tonight i made a bit of progress taking act II merc finishing Nightmare and went to Hell so to say.
What i found out with very budget gear self found
(+2 to druid skills rare mane,spirit sword,splendor spiked shield and few mf resist items i had harder time killing Den of Evil compared to Mausoleum) i went with 1 on all skills up to hurricane and with players 1.
Counting all stuff my summons were mostly lvl 25 not counting spirit wolves which were level like 15-16.I could do Mausoleum easily tad bit slower but easily lightning immunty meant nothing(i have spellsteel axe as 2nd slot which just ruins any stoneskin or physical immune boss enemies inside.
My toon is lvl 69 (i know poetic)
Merc gear
is Partizan insight low roll
Sigon Armor
Sigon helmet
10% lifesteal +500 attack rating
Positive thing
- its filled with barells and extremely slow enemies having 0 ranged units inside its soo easy to grind.
-extremely easy to find LK chest and 1 guaranteed boss near it
-Hurricane with just 1 point - slows those slow enemies even more combined with twister they are item pinatas for your small animal kingdom
Negative
-well its empty
-low density enemies(which oddly enough works in favor of budget summoner build)
A very good way for pet/summon builds to be active is to add a summon control button, this will make the need for enigma in summon builds to be redundant (good to have but not necessary like it is now). Oh and it should work on merc too. God damn it we need this button to allocate on LMB, RMB or quick cast slots.
As for summoner druid, make oak sage and heart of wolverine a durational skill and remove the hp, making them immortal while summoned but has to be recast once in a while.
3 Likes
I rather agree with this TBH. I only die on D2 to 3 things, Net Issues, Crashes, And Boredom.
The first two not much can be done about, the third is because frankly it doesnāt matter on SC if you die, and much of the time I spent playing D2 is play & watch. I donāt really enjoy the HC playstyle as it just requires too much of my attention.
Can I do it? Absolutely. Do I want to play D2 in a manner than requires me to actually pay attention? Debatable. If more of the content was challengingā¦ maybe. The problem is D2 isnāt challenging, only a few things can realistically kill you, and those generally comes from lack of paying attention. If the rest of the game held my attention well enough to make that enjoyable, then Iād be more likely to do so.
Iād say my average SC character has 3-4 deaths on the way to 93. Usually 1 or 2 from a net issue, or a crash, and maybe 1 or 2 to something like a LR + Conviction spawn when Iām on Chaos run number 700 or something and the D2R being buggy and not spawning the seal packs where itās supposed to. Do I want to relevel a character because of my brain being mush several hundred runs in and watching Youtube? Ehh not really.
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I appreciate HC but rarely play it after stressful last few month IRL and intensive life i think of going SC again.I also die mostly on lower lvls by some lack of attention unlucky spawn with conviction or dolls with that same aura or offcourse not thinking gloams could spawn somewhere.
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I experimented with Summon Druid and found it to be viable.
I used:
Lore
Lidless
Spirit sword
a +1 summon GC
a +3 summon druid ammy
I put:
1 into ravens
enough for 5 spirit wolves
enough for 3 dire wolves
1 poison creeper
I maxed oak
10 points summon grizzly
I maxed Armageddon
I let +skills items do the rest
I attacked with pets/merc [act 2 freezy merc with obedience] while using armageddon and a few synergy skills while armageddon was running.
I put forth very little effort and needed no help. I also used VoR on switch, just to get my licks in. No deaths, and critters stayed strong.
Normal [cue fancy drop down]:
totally effortless
NM [cue fancy drop down]:
Again, very little effort needed
Hell [cue fancy drop down]:
I needed a little more caution/ Planning/ and strategizing. But, not too awful bad.
As I normally play my most beloved character, Summonancer, this build was akin to that. It is not as ferocious a dominator as a Summonancer, but it does get the job done. It felt weird, but I also enjoyed the change of pace. Nothing will ever be stronger than or replace a summon necro, but this did come to a close second.
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I am confused why so many players are putting only one 1 into ravens when they are basicly highest dmg summons you have fully leveled up.
I max ravens i only put last points into spirit wolves since well ā¦ they are kinda lacking 
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Well, I use the +skill gear to raise their levels. I needed a back-up to help kill, hence Armageddon. I always max oak, well, because I like to stay alive [an old HC habit]. As far as the summons go, well, Mr. Bear is my main meat-shield/tank. He falls [and heās plenty tough and strong] then my merc will probably die and then me. We all have our unique way of playing. there is NO 100% right or wrong way. Simply put, The way I built him and the way I ran him was fine. Hence the post: I experimented with him and this is how it came out. I have years of experience with summons. My main was almost always a necro-summoner. This distribution, as part of my EXPERIMENT, worked out very well for MY game-play and MY character advancement. And from my experimental experience, I thought I would post and encourage people to try it out. I did NOT say, you MUST do it this way, as I am NOT them, nor will I be playing THEIR character.
Get the HINT?
THIS!!!
edit: They donāt do much damage against physical immunes and arenāt a great meat-shield or tank.
I know Easy-core peeps donāt care ā¦ die, run up grab body and continue ā¦ but my play-style is a little different. Out of the 7 characters I made for Resurrected [which I just deleted all for ladder], know how many times I have died on them as a total??? ZERO! The highest got to be 86+.
Not trying to hate on summoner Druid. I think itās great that theyāre bringing it back. Only thing I donāt like about it is how the ravens target blind can interrupt decrepify proc from Reapers Toll. For example, in baal runs if I am running with barb I want my merc to proc each wave with decrep because the kill speed is much quicker.
I think Ravens are good for early game summoner builds but if you plan on using other procs for enhanced damage or whatever, youāll soon see that blinding targets can sometimes be an annoyance, especially in group play.
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How Mausoleum went with ultra budget you can see that spirit wolf damage is abysmal!And i guess that part is slowing down the killing of physic immune opponents!
Hate to disagree. Sure play however you want. Regardless not maxing ravens when its literally your highest dmg skill in the summoner tree is in fact wrong. Inefficient. By the numbers. You know math? Yeah math says your build is wrong. By the numbersā¦
So if your okay being wrong with the wrong build more power to ya. Just accept people are going to call you out for derpy choicesā¦