Hi. As a nice gesture I thought I would post my summoner druid build that is great in this new format and not too pricey. This is up to lvl 90, If you want to add points into something else afterwards go for it. without further ado, here goes:
12 point raven
1 point oak sage
20 point spirit wolf
20 point dire wolf
20 point grizzly
20 point heart of wolverine
then in the shape shifting tree:
1 point werewolf
1 point were bear
4 points lycanthropy
1 point maul
1 points shock wave
Then for merc, Use a Act 1 merc (with fire) with the rune word EDGE, (tir,tal,amn)
This setup will allow you to easily clear any difficulty or area. all the way to hell baal.(Even Uber diablo I confirm killed solo on Friday night april 16) The basic strat is summon all your stuff, get them buffed by the merc and the heart of wolverine to crank up all their damage potentials. Use your shock wave to stun groups of enemies for long periods of time while your pets feast on enemies. (depending on the enemies feel free to jump in and attack things yourself)
Next focus on getting gear. The summoner is needing of + to skills gear. My preffered setup uses as follows.
spirit weapon (elite)
spirit shield (ward)
arachnid mesh belt
mara kaleidoscope amulet
rain chest (ort,mal,ith) or arkaines valor
soj ring
Bul kathos ring
soul drainer gloves
any +2 to druid skills yellow helm
for boots there are several different options, mostly comes down to individual choice. I like to use upped infernostrides but sandstorm treks or other choices are really as good or better depending on you.
Anyways, try it out you will like it and if I were to rate it id say its maybe even A class
p.s.
almost forgot you should get + to summon GC’s and a torch.like 4 or 5 gc’s to push your skills to lvl 40+ for max fun
My build uses act 2 merc with might aura.He has reaper’s toll for now but I plan to give him Pride runeword for aditionnal damage for my pets (as soon as I get my hands on a Sur rune lol).
As for me I have
Heart of the Oak and Spirit shield as secondary weapon.
Faith bow as primary weapon.
Arkane’s valor, SOJ ring, atma’s scarrab amulet, a razortail belt and last but not least a Delirium Helmet.
I maxed all 3 main summons and oak sage, and put remaining points in fissure. I collected I think 8 summon skillers and a druid torch. My imventory is basically full except for the 2 tomes lol.
First I cast all summons with secondary gear then switch to the bow and fight.
The Idea is to proc the curses I have with Delirium. Also since Ill give my act 2 merc a pride runeword I lose decrepify so Atmas scarrab lets me deal with physical immunes by procing amplify damage.
The strategy revolves around sowing so much chaos whithin ennemy ranks they can’t focus fully on my summons. If I encounter physical immunes I keep shooting until I proc Atma’s scarrab for amplify damage.
Most curses override one another so I just have to stop shooting when I get the curse I want.
Not only does the bow allow me to safely curse monsters from a distance but it also provides a higher fanaticism aura than beast. I also use fissure for additionnal damage.
I got Razortail because it has a chance to pierce which increases the odds that I get a proc.
Also delirium does not cripple a summoner the way it does most other characters. In fetish form I can still cast all my summons ! As a matter of fact the casting delay is shorter in fetish form ahahah. To top it all off Delirium has charges for the attract curse. That curse does NOT override other curses lol.
Anyways that’s my build. It’s a variation of the sumonner where I use the faith bow and procs instead of beast and shockwave to cripple/ disable monsters while my summons tear through everything lol.
I have to agree with this. He’s still very very slow. With gear, my Druid summoner has the following:
39 - Summon Spirit Wolf
42 - Summon Dire Wolf
39 - Summon Grizzly
41 - Heart of Wolverine
20 - Raven
20 - Poison Creeper
I have an act 2 might Merc with Pride (Concentration aura) and I am using Beast (Fanatacism Aura) and it’s still very slow going. Baal’s minions of destruction took a while to kill and then Baal himself took at least twice that long (and that’s with Enigma dropping my summons right on Baal). The Driud’s minion AI also seems a little worse than the Necro’s. Many times I’d look and have one or two wolves just wandering off instead of fighting.
To each his own I suppose lol. We may also have different ideas about what slow means.
If you’re expecting him to kill baal as quickly as someone who can spam amp damage or as quickly as a sorc or palladin then absolutely in comparison he’s slow.
Don’t get me wrong the summon druid still has a lot of space for improvement if thr devs wanted to especially with the vines.That being said his current state in patch 2.4 at least makes him viable. He actually feels strong to me now with all the summons out.
My bear is lvl 44 with the other two lvl 41 and they run through everything and I haven’t foind a sur rune for my pride yet ahah.
Ill say though that I did not try a baal run yet but even before the patch, Baal couldn’t really do much against my bear lol. It was slow going true but im expecting it to be faster.
As for the summon build being too passive where the druid just “stands there and does nothing”, this is only the case if you build him that way. My build isnt passive at all and you have many variations of the summoner where you can actively fight alongside your summons.
I mean, fundamentally I agree with you guys when you say he could still be stronger. The vines are still too weak and not impactful enough, and the spirits could honestly all be summonned and the summonner still wouldn’t be OP. I mean why can the Palladin stack auras but the druid can’t stack spirits?
That being said, I just find this new summoner a LOT more fun to play now that all the summons are available at the same time !
Both builds are very likely to be hell viable, with a few things to keep in mind:
For excala1:
Shock wave stun caps at 10 seconds. Anything over 10 seconds will have no effect, regardless what the tooltip says. That is level 15 after +skills is all you need. Since you have so many +skills, you will achieve the same result putting only 1 point in shock wave, not 12.
You may also put only 1 point in lycanthropy, not 4, and let the +skills do the rest.
The new ravens are big damage dealers. With 5 of them, they dish out more damage than all your other summons combined (I don’t have the numbers yet). The biggest advantage is, they don’t block, and are not blocked by other summons. That is, in tight spaces, the maggot lair, the sanctuary, a door way, etc, they will attack as if it’s open field. If you want to use your summons as main damage dealers, you will want to max raven, and probably max first. Since you can save 11 points from shock wave, 3 points from lycan, you can pull 5 points from HoW, to max raven. Do not reduce points from the wolves and the bear, they are synergies to raven.
Edge the runeword offers level 15 thorns. If you want to use that benefit, your shock wave will play against you. Enemies can’t attack you if stunned (and likely permanently stunned), and won’t receive thorn damage if they don’t attack. Maybe use Harmony instead. The vigor aura will help your summons a lot.
For PlaqueLord:
Delirium has 11% chance to cast 18 confuse on striking. All its other procs are when struck. I doubt you want to get hit that often, so I will presume you want to proc confuse only. Confuse will overwrite amplify damage from your Atma’s. That seems a big lose, as your summons will have little to no survival issues. Only damage will be beneficial.
Pride has hits blind targets. This will overwrite amplify damage as well. Is this what you want?
As mentioned in point 1. You may want to switch from oak sage to HoW for extra damage.
Necro skeletons and clay golem (I haven’t used other golems for too long), top tier.
Aggressive. They even pick fights beyond the screen.
The Act 5 merc could be in this tier too. I just haven’t used one in too long. Don’t remember.
All other mercs and summons, except druid summons, mid tier.
At least they engage constantly. Sometimes they may walk back to you, but for the most part, they are alert of the surrounding.
Druid summons, oh man… tier.
A bunch of cats. They do whatever they want. And they have the eyesight of a rat.
I am torn on this issue. I acknowledge the horrible AI of druid summons, but it makes me more involved, to resummon, reposition, etc. The alternative would be the summons being more alert. Then I will have little to do. A druid doesn’t have curses or CE these 1 point wonders (except shock wave maybe), as a SSF player, I don’t have spare skills to make another viable skill for myself.
All good points! I considered all of the downsides to having delirium and Atma’s as well as the fact that pride’s blind on target nullifies amplify damage. Those are all things I have to test as I am yet to have a sur rune. That being said, the blind from the ravens really isn’t an issue when I’m trying to proc confuse or when my merc is procing decrep with his reapers’s toll. My hope is that when facing physical immunes and amp dmg procs, my summons and merc deal enough dmg on their first attack that when pride blinds he’s already low enough for my spirit wolves and my fire dmg to finish the monster off with cold and fire dmg.
As for delirium the other curses are purely for defense. I don’t want monsters coming near me but if they did well they’d eventually get cursed lol.
Reguarding HOW vs Oak , this is another thing I have to test. The new summons are tankier than the ones pre patch 2.4 so I’ll probably start a player 5 game in hell like a cow run or something and test my build with oak vs HOW and see what feels better, but indeed if I get the sense my summons don’t need oak I might switch to HOW, the only thing that stings about HOW is that the spirit wolves don;t benefit from the dmg as you and others have pointed out on another post.
The one thing I really regret is not having a better way of procing amplify damage. I could get an act 1 merc with a bow but then id lose 2 dmg auras for my summons, I could use the bow myself but then I’d lose fanaticism not to mention the proc chance is even lower on that bow, it’s a unique bow who’s name I forget lol. There’s also a runeword for abow which has it but only when attacked and to make things worse it requires a Jah rune
It’s really a balancing act. When I get the proc I want i stop shooting my arrows, otherwise I keep shooting till I do.
One question though if you or anyone else knows : Is the blind effect on pride an aoe effect or single target ?
All in all I’m still tweaking the build . I need to get pride runeword and see how it interacts with my procs and I need to compare HOW with OAK, so still a work in progress… but I’m close I’M CLOSE ! MUAHAHAHAH
Think you may be wrong on this, Yes, I have seen other skills cap at 10 sec stun. In my own playtesting, They are being stunned longer the more points put in without a decay that I was noticing. (compared to other skills) Just tried to playtest…my tooltip says it stuns them for 17.2 secs. even with only the bear out mobs were dying before the stun would wear off. This would be over the 10 secs. This is in hell difficulty
the four points rounds it to roughly 3 minutes a “shift” so you wont need to recast often and allows for the 5 points needed to move into the next “tier” of skills
with skillers the ravens are like level 20, they do some more damage for sure but, I feel they’re not the “main damage” I mean bear does over 3k for example.
the reason for this runeword choice is for when you run into immune or stun resistant mobs. The boost to how thorns works allows you to still kill even those kind of annoying mobs relatively quickly and easily.
This is also a “budget” build. There are options to make it more “bling” for sure, but then this wouldn’t be the “everyday persons build” anymore.
I see your point. I have to admit this has never come to my mind. I play HC SSF only. Damage at your level is way beyond my imagination.
I believe you are talking about Witchwild String (WWS). Yeah, that is mostly a strafe bow. The 2% to procs is too low for no pierce, single target hits.
The dim vision is applied only to the individual target that is hit. It’s the same as Coif of Glory and The Minotaur.
Let me know how your build goes. I am curious. This is way past my experience.
Is that how the new thorns work? The patch notes still just says damage, which I presume is physical. If thorns can kill physical immunes that would be awesome.
thorns is great skill now, It does a flat returned amount of damage plus percent of damage received returned now. It really helps your “zoo” to have thorns aura with the heart of wolverine. drops the tougher mobs much faster. so to expand on that even if you get hit for 1 damage it will do the flat return damage of say 100 or whatever the skill level is at PLUS a percentage of the 1 received. before it would only return a percentage of say the 1 damage received which sucked.
Oh I see. I misread you. You use thorns for mobs that are immune/resistant to stun.
I am guessing you won’t find too many of them. Your summons are so high level, even a few uniques (the minions will be stunned easily) won’t stand much chance unless they are physical immunes. The damage from thorns may not be of much help.
yeah, the thorns are the icing on the cake or the oil for the gears so to say. It eases the time/challenge needed to kill the more annoying mobs. It makes noticeable difference in how quick a pack of immunes go down.
I played around with other mercs and aura and most didn’t seem to help as well. The heart of wolverine gives huge atk boost, more than a might or concentration aura. like 300% to atk rating and damage in 1 buff at lvl 40, like build suggests. Defensive auras just slowed things down because the pets already live thru most things and if they die can be insta resummoned for low mana.
Will do ! I love experimenting different variations from what is always shown by youtube content creators. Ill let you know what I find.
Honestly another variation I’ll probably try is to actually use witchwild bow and replace atma’s scarrab by a maras’s kaleidoscope. I would lose the fanatacism but it would allow me to gain an additionnal 2 skill points from Mara’s.
Although my druid is not a summoner but Wind Elementalist I can share some of my experiences, and advices related to having a full zoo.
1st, these companions as it turned out greatly distract enemies; use that to your full advantage by pointing an annoying enemy with cursor then cast the bear or wolves - that trick was immensely useful in act II against these pesky, resurrecting mummies. Also, before getting inside a room it’s good to cast bear ahead and watch what is happening - if it is attacking something follow with full flock of Ravens pointing the same spot with the cursor, then enter with the rest of company. Other application of active casting is to summon the bear/wolves behind enemy types which flee when something is going closer to them, like Dark Archers in Countess’s Tower.
Although druid’s minions are not as strong, neither they have as good AI as necromancer’s ones they have a distinct advantage of being able to be summoned at will, without any corpses or cooldowns. I really suggest to use, exploit even, that merit - especially if you can combine that with strong Thorns aura.
2nd, even with 1 point investment + skills (currently I have +7 druid skills, and only Oak Sage has 7 hard points put) they are quite durable, I mean Grizzly and Dire Wolves; although Spirit Wolves are also doing rather fine. Another observation - thanks to larger crowd my Oak Sage stopped to die so often, as there are much more meat shields around than just one bear and mercenary.
I was in the middle of act 2 just before patch 2.4 was introduced so I have a very clear comparison how it was with and without all summons - I prefer new druid with all summons all the way.
i use ravens i just only put 1 point into them and let my skillers get it to 20. They’ve been improved yes but they aren’t the main dps of the build. bear and dire wolves still do more. I’m not hating on them I’m glad they are more useful. Certainly better than vines. I may put more points into it from 91-99.
I pref to invest 20 points to ravens since they do the most dmg of wolves combined, they are untargetable and dont colide with anything. I mean there are so many prons and no con so is GG to invest
