2.4 was supposed to try to make fire druids viable. I’ve never run one past normal and given all the fire immunes in Hell, I’d like to have a strong secondary dmg type. Of course, even with the improvements it seems there are just not enough skill points to do that effectively:
Firestorm, Bolder, Fissure, and Volcano are effectively intermingled synergies, it looks like if you want to do an elemental druid you’ll have to max pretty much all of these for fire and physical damage hoping the physical damage is good enough for Hell.
Fire Claws looks interesting, but I don’t see a good way to work it into a Wolf of Bear build. If you could use Firestorm or Boulder then sure, but as it is you’re putting 40 in synergies that you can’t use in Beast mode. It looks like poison and fury are cheaper AoE for a wolf, and the Bear has crowd control (Shockwave) but no good AoE. You still seem to get a subpar caster (pts better spent filling synergies), a subpar wolf (pts better spent elsewhere), or a bear that slogs very slowly through mobs.
Volcano and Armageddon sound fun for beast mode but seem to need too many synergies to be effective. Hurricane’s cold/chill sounds better since now that and Armor can be as a bear or wolf. Also, volcano doesn’t look like very good AoE compared to the other too (more of a single target spell with fairly slow splash).
Thoughts in new builds?
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just put 20 points into ravens - 20 volcano you be fine
um no, ravens with no synergy and casting more ravens than hitting would not be fine
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Fire skills are very disapointing in 2.4. Armagedon the worst skill ever was buffed and the playable skills are weak as before.
If you want to play fissure and volcano you have to max 5 skills and even then the damage sucks.
For a strange reason you have to waste skill points for the wind side of the tree to use armagedon synergy.
It sucks hard. Very disapointing and I asked myself how its possible to do a complete fail like this
Volcano still horrible cooldown
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Yea, I haven’t found a good way to navigate the Elemental tree with a good primary and a good backup damage type. Windies are about the same I think - workable but nothing great. Fire Druids still take too many skill points due to overlapping synergies.
I also gave up on trying to find a workable were build now that the devs have come and and verified that the slow attack speed was intentional (nerfing the frame rate for weres into the ground). I’ll revisit that if it ever gets fixed.
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I trialled the fire druid in ptr and I loved the play style. Having 5 abilities to play around with was super fun. My thoughts on the fire immune situation is to buff the physical damage of molten boulder, not so much that it competes with the tornado element of a windy, but enough that it is viable against fire immunes.
fire druid only works in cows and thats about it.
I decided to play a fire druid when D2R first launched, he’s level 96 now and is my main character 
Fire druid is much stronger now in Patch 2.4, I’m excited to play him againin the first ladder season!
I recommend:
1 solar creeper
1 oak sage
1 grizzly
20 firestorm
20 molten boulder
20 fissure
20 volcano
armageddon remaining points (you could sacrifice a few points in fissure if you want armageddon/volcano to be more powerful and don’t mind armageddon being shorter).
MacroBioBoi posted a video about the Act 3 static merc, it works very well with the fire druid now.
Forget shapeshifting druids until they fix their IAS… They are working on fixing that…
found the physical dmg to be strong enough now. with 3 spamable skills i could easy delete fire immunes and that without torch anni skillers and sojs
it is not the opposite of before… mega cd rurned into spaming 4 skills at once + teleport. it is fun but not the relaxing 1 button farmer.
not super effective, but cows are quite ok.
baal sucks, chaos didnt test
Yeah, I did a budget build with the level 85 druid in PTR… Double spirit, vipermagi, jalals, magefist, and some random rare boots, rings, belt, ammy and he could solo WSK and Baal P1 Hell…
You could never do tha ton a budget druid before. And even with ultimate gear like enigma, infinity and all the BIS fire druid gear on live battlenet, I’d never bother with the last two Baal waves because the fire immunes are unbreakable.
Now it’s possible…
Yes, fire druid is not relaxed 1-button farmer anymore 
He’s a hungry mana boi now…
“Not enough mana” - Words I never thought I’d hear my fire druid tell me
yes but doesnt matter because you will run around with phoenix
but i must say fire druid is terrible expensive and doesnt perform thaaaat great.
i mean you need:
enigma
infinity
phoenix
sojs
arach
pref. a crazy 5 fire helm (non ladder) or -20 fire raven
hoto
and of course a 2/19 amu which is crazy expensive even with the reat stats being garbage
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No that is the old BiS set-up from before patch 2.4. I think you only need Enigma now…
Infinity polearm won’t be BiS anymore, because now the druid is closer to 50:50 fire+phys… So clear speed with reapers toll vs infinity will be closer now…
You can use Act 3 merc with static now also, he is very good before you have reaper’s toll or infinity (I actually prefer him over the Act 2 merc now).
Enigma you can skip and just use teleport staff… I did not now how to play D2R well enough to use teleport staff properly, but it will be easy now… Farm cows/flayers etc for the enigma runes and should be do-able…
Phoenix is a very small boost in clear speed, you can survive without it for a very long time… Not really needed until very late end-game when you are looking for a small 2-3% efficiency gain and your rune mule is overflowing. Spirit is just such a good shield… The constant heal is nice, but potions work fine…
Yeah, other gear is true… Arach, Mara’s and SOJ are hard because so many characters want them…
But let’s be honest, fire druid is still cheaper than lightning sorceress… You gotta pay Ber runes for lightning skillers, she is an expensive lady to maintain… And that griffon hat is like 2-3 Bers, it’s crazy…
I got a perfect Ravenlore helm at the launch of D2R for a pul rune, and I don’t think I paid more than Pul-Mal for any of my skillers… Got my torches for free from friends that didn’t want them…
He’s still pretty cheap… Just need to farm enough wealth for Ber+Jah+Arach+SOJx2 (plus some Pul runes for plain ele skillers) and you will be at ~90% of the fire druid’s full power…
well you can also play light sorc without skiller and griffons and it is still better than fire druid.
infinity on fire druid is still very good because fissure is pure fire dmg and the others are still more fire dmg.
my merc never hit anything besides immunes or bosses so i dont think reapers is even close. but maybe preference.
if you use infinity you need enigma anyways and even in cows enigma speeds up my run by a lot
if you use tele staff you lose your cta, then will have even more mana problems.
i am quite happy with my setup and i love phoenix. it certainly isnt a mega dmg boost compared to spirit but i love the aura
dudes can someone tell me why a molten boulder can miss? I see white crosses on mobs
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Maybe the knockback misses and not the dmg?
unfortunately it is very hard to test
Running a fire druid in ladder, only self found gear and honestly its great, definitely won’t be the meta start build but i’m not finding it painful so far
Fire immunes in nighmare were a non-issue, volcano/armageddon kill them pretty fast, the meatier fire immunes in hell are a problem but are still killable, armageddon served me quite well in hell contess, you can kill pretty much anything by just leading it a little, obvious exception is double immunities and stone skin+fire immune
I reckon act4 will be horrible though