Humor me - Bow Druid

Amazon
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So I have a level 94 Druid, Zoo keeper, who runs a bow (Faith in a Crusader)… and I’m quite fond of my Act1 merc (Mist in a GM).
Not giving up the Act1 merc.
Merc has a decent ethFort and Andy’s lid with a 15IAS jewel in it.
Druid, is primarily a Zoo keeper… so he’s wearing a Jalal’s pelt(Um’d) and an Enigma (for easy Zoo placement)… the rest I get confused on.

Gloves are 20ias, 10crushing, 1%LL, +4dex, +10Life, Light res +5%
I sometimes throw LoH on him, and have an assortment of unique gloves on a mule
Suggestions welcome.

Boots are GoreRider… Druid has no critical strike/bow skills so… ??
I sometimes throw WarTravelers on him, and have an assortment of unique boots on a mule.
suggestions welcome.

Belt is a Razortail.
If I am running WSK I thow a TGods on to survive Souls, I have an assortment of unique belts a on mule
Suggestions welcome.

Rings are Bul-K and RavenFrost.
I have an assortment of unique rings a on mule
Suggestions welcome.

Amulet is a +3 Summons (for, Summoning) then I swap to a Atma’s for ctc Amp Damage.
(as an FYI my weapon swap is Hoto/Spirt for summoning).
I have an assortment of unique rings a on mule
Suggestions welcome.

So, I’m running a character with bow, whom has no bow skills, and trying to increase my damage, without loosing much Zoo power.

Really would appreciate any advice on Boots, Belt, Gloves and Ammy/Ring… not real excited to ditch the RavenFrost tho.

Oh, this is purely PvM.
Thanks.

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I think your reasoning on gear choices is really sound.

Do you have any enemies that specifically seem to take too much time to kill?
Might help down select between the CB Blood gloves and LoH.

From what I’ve read CB is half effective in bows vs. melee hits though (1/8 HP vs. 1/4 per proc), so I’m thinking the full time 350% damage to demons would likely be better, even though all enemies aren’t demons of course.

Same deal with Gores, although the DS and OW are also really nice. I think WT and Gores would be the top choices for damage, with something like Waterwalk, Aldurs, IK for more all around and survivability, so since you want to increase damage, I’d think it would be between those too. I don’t think Druid has any other ways to crit, so the DS on Gores may end up being nice, but maybe the total DS chance is low enough that the damage add from WT just ends up being better?

Since your damage isn’t boosted by skill increases, and you have no other method of pierce, I can’t see anything being as good as Razortail for you in terms of pure damage. Maybe worth using an attack speed calculator to see if the speed from Nosferatu’s Coil gets you to a new BP?

A rare or crafted ring with ar/dmg may end up being better than BK in terms of pure damage, if you don’t need the leach (or can also get it on the hypothetical ring upgrade). I agree giving up Ravenfrost doesn’t seem like a good idea.

How is your chance to hit? With Fant and Raven I could see it being good, but also as a normal attack, I could see it maybe not being, but at lvl 94 you also out level most things, so probably good? Sometimes chance to hit issues are actually the root cause of not doing enough damage, not the outright damage.

Atmas for ctc amp seems like a solid choice. The other phys damage stand by, Highlord’s Wrath might help, both from IAS and DS point of view. Might have to make some math assumptions there, but 35% chance to do double damage might be better then 5% chance to cast amp that is also basically double damage? I think amp might increase CB though whereas I don’t think DS does, so there may be more to it…

Also might be worth your time to use the maxroll planner and look at damage calcs. I haven’t used it a lot, but it lets you duplicate your in game spec and then calculates actual damage, so you could make 1:1 swaps and see what it says damage wise.

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What insidious said is spot on about crushing blow: it only does half it’s usual damage with ranged attacks.

To put things into perspective, gore riders for a bowazon is really only useful to equip over war travs when fighting hell Baal or Ubers.

The math might work out differently for your build but that’s the sort of ballpark you’re dealing with.

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I always love to see people expeimenting with weird builds. :grinning:

One option for gloves, belt, boots would be the IK set pieces. Faith has +300% AR, plus more % boost from the fanatacism, so flat AR gains are worth a lot. Those pieces give you 25ias, resists, fhr, strength, dexterity, life, defence, and +235 flat AR.

In my experience with non-Amazon bow builds, Atma’s doesn’t proc very often and hasn’t been worth it. Your fastest attack is 9 frames. Bonus AR is nice, but you really news more flat AR boosts rather than just +20%. I usually use highlords for deadly strike and attack speed.

One interesting option, which will really depend on your play preference, is Metamorphosis. It gives some crushing blow, resists, CBF, plus the marks - more life, AR, IAS, DR. With the IK pieces and Mark of the Bear, you would hit your 9 frame max attack speed. Without Metamorphosis you could reach 10 frames with Higlords and keep your Jalals.

One option I’m eager to try is having Lacerator on switch to proc Amp Damage. I haven’t tried it test, so I’m not what attack rating I’ll get to, but it’s a much higher percentage that Atma’s, so I’d hope to land a hit quickly then switch… :thinking:

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The Atma’s was/is really more for Physically Immunes… I have an extra HighLords (just found a couple days ago), I will equip and see what happens.
Thanks, always appreciate your insight.

Ran the WarTravs (since reading your reply several days ago)… seem to work pretty good… cannot really tell from “seat of the pants”, maybe that cal’c Insidious noted would tell me for sure.
Either way, they are certainly not noticeable as “worse”… quite possibly better as you noted.

HaHa… thanks, he’s actually really chill and half way decent… admittedly, mostly due to the level 43 (as cast) Zoo.

I have a full IK set on a mule, I’’ have to try it out… and, there is that HighLords recommendation again… hmm.

If Metamorphosis ever arrives in non-ladder I will give it a go… as well as a Cure for my Act1 Merc.

Hmm… I have an eth one on a mule… not sure i want to go there as Hoto/Spirit are on swap for casting the Zoo…
Hmmm.

Thanks to you all so much… I know weighing in on “weird builds” probably feels a waste of time/effort… so… again… Thank You.

Been playing my Zealot the last few days, and think I might solo him to lvl99… he’s lvl98.25 now (been 99% solo’d to that point)… thought I would note such, in reference to “weird”… as, when is the last time you saw a pure Zealot, much less one solo’n to lvl99… and… that would not be complete without being accompanied by an Ac1 merc… :slight_smile: )
Ok, way off topic.
Sorry

I’ll get back to my Cupid-Druid in a few months… probably take a few (several) months to solo the Zealot there.

I have a memory like an Elephant tho, so I will report back.

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You have to address IAS first on a bowman. I think 9fpa is the highest you can achieve with 60ias. That should be your first priority. Then DS all the way, highlords and gore. WTs aren’t as good for you because a druid doesn’t have 72% chance of critical strike a bowazon has. Laying of hands is the best, alternatively you could use cleglaw’s gloves for slow and knockback (not useful for a druid I guess but also a nice option against act bosses).

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You’re right about the overall choice in boots. My response above was specifically about Gore’s crushing blow, but probably shouldn’t have left it there.

If Gore’s is your only source of deadly strike, then that alone is a larger damage bump than war travs.

Amp damage in most cases triples your damage vs enemies in hell. You’re taking 50% physical resistances to -50%, effectively making them take 3 times more damage. For enemies with even higher base resists, the benefit is even larger.

Also, it’s a 5% chance to cast amp damage, which triples all damage from subsequent attacks for a few seconds on the enemy you initially hit and surrounding enemies.

Amp damage also benefits the minion’s and mercenary’s damage, which seems to be in part the point of the build.

Crushing blow does benefit from amp damage, but the benefit is capped to treat monsters having a minimum of 0% physical resists.

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Dang, I only have 20 IAs, but, HighLords will get me to 40… hmmm… 20 more from where?
I have some 15IAS jewels, if I yanked the Um from my Jalal’s… I’d be 5 short…

Nos belt would get me there, but, I’m giving up res (15IAS jewel ilo Um) and pierce (Noz vs Razortail) … Arg.

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You can always get res from charms. What’s your armor?
There is a new druid helmet runeword. You could use mark of the bear then put on jalals again.

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Before I put together my Death runeword in an eth CS for him, I ran a burrito ww druid. I still keep a hellrack in the offhand for PI’s.

Bow druids have been a thing since 1.09, believe it or not. Very viable and very fun, plus a good way to stack elemental damage depending on the bow/xbow.

Congrats on finding this little segway to the “meta builds”. In 1.09, there was a rather large portion of the population that would specifically look for non meta builds to see how broken they actually were, or if they could work if the gear/stats were right.

After 1.10 hit with synergies, it took away a lot of the fun of this experimentation, not to mention it used to take 10 minutes to hit 75, and after 1.10 hit, it took substantially longer.

I was just discussing something similar in another thread, that mixing up gear can give you a big boost in fun factor. It was recommended elsewhere by Jedi.

Good luck, have fun. There’s a lot more to the game than meets the eye.

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Well, I got my Zealot to lvl99 last night, so, I’m back to my Zoo Cupid Druid.

I Hel-Portal’s my Jalal’s, and put a 15IAS jewel in it.

Sidebar;
I had a rare dual-leach ring with 5% Cold/Fire/Poison and 24% Lightening resistances, that was enough to get me back to 75% fire/light and 49% cold/poison res.
I loose +1 skills from BK ring.
I know 15IAS/15@Res jewels exist, so, I went looking for one, and could not find… I did see they trade for many Jah’s… so, I’ll settle for loosing +1 on the BK vs my rare ring.
/end Sidebar

I swapped RazorTail for Nosferatu’s, and Atma’s for HighLords…
All to hit 65 IAS.

I also made an Edge bow for my Merc… I want to see if Thorns makes a difference on Baal and DClone (next time he appears). Tried it out on current TZ (BloodMoor) and it was not impressive. Back to her Mist.

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Great advice Mr CrazyMage.
Got to 65 IAS, and, I think he fires arrows as quick as my Merc.
Gores and HighLords gets me to 50% deadly strike…
He is certainly better.

Not Bow related;
I also respec’d him to pull points out of the WereWolf tree, and distributed those into Heart of Wolverine, Poison Creeper (both at lvl30 now) and Rabies (synergy to Creeper) is now at lvl21… he is still 1 points into WereWolf… guessing I will need shapeshift to help with Baal and DClone

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TZ Baal… Wow… still a battle, but actually went much, much better than previously.

Thanks to all who provided help/shared ideas.

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Well what do you know… I dropped a 15ias/15@res jewel in flayer jungle yesterday, Hel-portaled my Jalal’s again, and am most pleased.

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Well, Bow Druid is level 98 (over half way to 99), and I swapped my Merc for an Act2 Might Mecr and put a Cure helm, eth Forti and … eth Infinity I stole from my Amazon.

When I take HighLords off an equip Atma’s, I loose the 60IAS break point (down to 45IAS) but darn that Atma’s really makes up the difference.
But.
I have Deaths gloves and an up’d Death belt on a mule, which will get me back over the 56IAS breakpoint.
I loose LoH gloves and Nosfer belt… but I’m not the true damage dealer…

Thank you both.
I’ll let you know

ETA.
Arg, forgot that +30 on one setup, is the same as +30 is on a different setup…
LOL.
Welll, guess I live with the 10FPA and see how it goes.

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Well, like all things… it depends.
If I am running an area with high density PI’s, Atma’s and a Bone Break is a clear winner.
(Trav, Tombs, Arcane, Act5 Ice tunnels… etc)
Otherwise, the IAS and DS from HighLords is clearly better.

Makes me want to dig out my Wrath bow and give it another shot… but, I loose Fanata, as does the Zoo… dang