[Zoo Druid] 0% CB Uber with budget build is possible. No torch/runes higher than Lem#20/Mara/Arachnid/skiller lifer

Druid
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Finally got the video uploaded. Budget 0% Crushing Blow Ubers with Zoo Druid: How did I beat Ubers with an Excel sheet

I just want to show the potential of full Zoo Druid and the results are quite good. I can beat Ubers and get my first torch with 0% Crushing Blow! And even without any high end equip! That means, I don’t use:

  • Runes higher than Lem#20
  • Enigma (when people think this is a must for Summon Druid/Nec
  • Hoto for +3 all skills and Resistance
  • Pre-farmed torch for Resistance and +3 skills
  • Mara for +2 all skills
  • CTA for skill lvl boost and +hp/+mana
  • Arachnid for +skills and fcr
  • Skiller lifer(+40) for + summon skills and +life; I only use skiller and only 4 of them

Why no CB? That is a must(almost) for Ubers

My idea is to show the potential of full Zoo Druid. If I use CB, either on me or on merc, I would be cheating, as no pets can do Crushing Blow. I want to kill ubers with only the damage coming from my pets. I wanted to know if with only me doing Open Wounds, can pets alone kill Ubers(ofc with help of merc)? Can they survive the most critical situation long enough, because without CB, the process would be slow? The answer, now we all know, is a big yes. I am very excited.

Why no high-end, expensive equips?

Again, I want to show the potential of full Zoo Druid. At first I tried with all the expensive items I mentioned above. When I did it, I was very happy, but then I started to wonder:

Not everyone could have such expensive items. Does that mean Zoo Druid is not viable for the ultimate challenge of this game even when the player only has basic items?
What if he/she is on single player and cannot trade? Do people have to enjoy Summon Druid when he/she has already got the runes/items with Sorc and the first torch with Paladin?
If that is the case, why should people use this build in the first place?

So I decided it must be done with budget, or at most mid-tier items, to let ppl know, Zoo Druid can:

  • beat the whole game
  • farm all areas
  • and beat the ultimate bosses in this game

in all, the build is a all-arounder.

Why…the most importantly, how?

So, ask whatever you want. I will answer them one by one. Later I will post a video in YT. Am already on it.

Update: for runes, the highest is Lem(#20).

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Same here, I have 39lvl summons and killed Dclone, I had to resummon many times my Wolves tho it was a safe kill,

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Killed dclone with lvl 34 summons, as long as you (or your rogue) hit him with a edge bow it’s totally easy, just takes time. Ubers is something different though. Will there be an “how” Update?

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How long does it take for your zoo to kill Uber bosses?
The whole run?

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cool, good job. I already confirmed it could do everything with only budget back in april. I had maras and arachnids but they dropped for me I didn’t trade. Also only used some plus skillers without + to life. only difference really was I already had a torch but a low end crappy one

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yes edge bow is great for that

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I will post video on Reddit, and then here; there is more active imo. But I am busy editing right now!

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I am loving my zoo druid.

What merc do you like? I have been using the act 3 fire merc to give enchant to my zoo, but am thinking about an act5 merc with lawbringer and kingslayer.

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A1 fire for inner sight and Edge bow, and maybe Mist later. But been running with A3 fire too before and was also smooth. Got flickering flame on both for fire resistent Zoo :grin:

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I use A2 offensive, as I need blessed aim; I don’t know if a3 could work, as I don’t know how I could control him to cast enchant every time when I resummon; but after all, I never used him.
Lawbringer can work, I think; but then you lose the blessed aim; again, ubers are lvl 110; if you calculate the chance to hit, and multiply by chance to block, actually the chance to damage ubers are low; if you don’t have Blessed Aim, that would be even lower.

Well I am just thinking about ubers; for other scenarios I think AR is not a problem if lvl of monsters is near or below you. I mean, if lvl diff is small or none, you don’t need AR boost; if lvl diff is huge, I think the best is Blessed Aim(+330%); even with this boost, you cannot hit ubers with 50% of the time, as they would block (50%/50%/55% for Baal)

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I guess I will see. My minions have +975% AR and my ravens +1240% AR - are you sure another 330% is better than 50% less physical resistance?

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Hum A2 really? I mean the main damage source is Ravens, and they are not affected by auras. Wolves and Bears also deal quite some damage, but most comes from Ravens? I mean sure you can give the A2 merc an Infinity to lower their defence, but we’re talking about budget builds.

From D2 planner Hit Chance for Raven (without block considered) on Pandemonium Baal:
Normal: 59%
Blessed Aim: 59%
Inner Sight: 74%
Infinity: 86%

And Wolves and Grizzly already get alot AR from HoW - or did you run Oaksage for survivability?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J09gybJGU8A

i always thought oooh ubers hard, until i came to this
that’s all there is to it…
any weapon with prevent monster heal and like 1 hit on the boss ( sure casters may swing for a while with their 5% chance to hit it’s gonna be like 1/20 chance to hit. but once you get the hit ( yes your char not your merc). it’s easy peasy literally 2,5hrs time to mow the boss down…

as for my 2 cents before i knew the above i did a succesfull uber run with a offline summondruid with full gear
Merc A5 Frenzy
skill points were:
20 raven
20 spirit wolf
20 dire wolf
20 grizzly
1 oak sage
20 Heart of Volverine
1 twister
1 cyclone armor ( prerequisite to twister)
7 arctic blast ( stun synergy for twister - 0.9s per tick total)

points used: 110

strategy summon your horde, spam twister to stunlock everything except bosses resummon minions when nessecary ( since it was a offline hero editor build i telestomped with enigma and casted battle orders and battle command, had to rely on my merc for crushing blow and open wounds ).

with the knowledge fromMr.Llama i can now swap to prevent monster heal weapon, go in hit them once, go out, summon my army and prebuff, go in agin and melt them. since they’ll not regenrerate health for the next 2,5 hrs, it’s gonna be a cakewalk for the zoo.

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With Reaper’s Toll and Blessed Aim, you have both.

And for Blessed Aim, yes I am sure; I see without Blessed Aim, the chance to damage Mephisto (I define it as chance to hit * (1-chance to block)) are as follows:

me 17.50
merc 28.50
SW 27.00
DW 27.00
GZ 27.50
Raven 34.50

With Blessed Aim:

me 27.00
merc 35.50
SW 38.50
DW 39.00
GZ 39.00
Raven 34.50

Notice that the aura gives each one (except Raven) 10% chance to damage, which is huge; consider that the block rate is 50%, so chance to hit is actually 20% boost.

Yes I think I need Oak Sage. My experiments show that at summons lvl 31, with HOW they cannot survive well facing Mephisto; but with Oak Sage they can. Somehow the HP boost gives me more winning chance, even though with HOW I hit more, but they die too fast and I need to resummon more, even when Mephisto is totally slowed down (like only at 15% of attack/cast rate); it’s because Mephisto releases charged bolts constantly when struck, so even he does not cast spells much, we still receive huge amount of damage. Remember pets have 85% of resistance and under conviction aura, it’s -40%, so for 100 points of damage, they receive 140.

And even Raven do more damage, I cannot rely all on raven.

Damage output (summons lvl 31)
SW: 3115 (5 in total)
GZ: 3143
Raven: 12727 (5 in total)
DW: 3300 (3 in total)

So GZ, SW, DW do 9558, and Raven do 12727, like 3:4. As we are on budget, we must take every damage into consideration. And I don’t use Might aura, so that’s all from other summons. And I see Might is not my choice here, as I need to land my first attack as soon as possible so to cast Slow Target, and only Blessed Aim can give me that. Mercenary does not need it, but I do. Using Malice, it takes me about 35 successful hits to reduce Uber def to 0, so I don’t need Infinity. And with Blessed Aim vs without, as each hit has higher chance to hit, the time to land 35 hits would be shorter, and my squad can reach the highest 40% or 45% of chance to damage faster.

Inner sight I would not go with it, as I need Decrepify on Reaper’s Toll, so I cannot use A1 merc. Decrepify slows down Ubers by 50%, and I need that to stay healthy all the time; summons would survive very well when Ubers are slowed.

Again at last we must consider block rate, so I will always take them into account. Raven attacks can be blocked, too.

Yes for DClone, Prevent From Heal works; but for Ubers, it does not. Actually all pandemonium bosses(Lilith, Uber Duriel, Uber Izual, Uber Meph, Pandemonium Diablo, Uber Baal) are not affected by it. I think you have high CB and somehow OW so they don’t regen. https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php?title=Prevent_Monster_Heal

My last run took 45 min, but actually killing time for each boss is 2 to 3 min. Because I was circling around with Baal; caught him at first but then I changed from Oak sage to HOW and suddenly things went uncontrolled; took me some time to isolate him again in a corner.

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Yeah not me but my dual wielding merc. As I said b4 i was using Last Wish , kingslayer, duress and guilliame’s face witch cham, not exactly a cheap option, but i did it only few timrs on offline, no chance I’ll be rolling with this kind of gear anytime soon, and yeah the prevent monster heal has to be triggered from your char not from the merc. Dclone gets truggered by the char only, and it has to be a melee attack, (even if it says cth is only 5% it is still 1/20 attacks :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well, over a month has passed, and still no video proof.

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OK finally on YT:

Budget 0% Crushing Blow Ubers with Zoo Druid: How did I beat Ubers with an Excel sheet

Enjoy!

One month editing, apart from work and feeding my baby… hope it’s fun for you all.

when you don’t know the effort and time others spending on discovering a new build, please don’t say so. BTW I just added the link.

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Pardon, which part of my post previous is a hate? Just stated that so far there wasn’t any video to backup your claims.

Anyway, though I haven’t seen it all yet, just around 25 minutes, the video looks very good - plenty of information, explanation, planning and “how to” stuff. Great work meanwhale, and congrats on creating a really viable druid summoner :slight_smile:

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Thanks MasterBLB for the compliment, I withdraw my previous comment. Spent a lot of time on this so it took very long time, myself became anxious at last. Have been trying my best.

Just added timestamps in the description:

00:00 Intro
1:40 Stop regen and reduce def
6:11 Resistance: you need 300/310
12:46 Slow Target, Decrepify and Freeze
23:19 Some other options: Lacerator and Blackhorn’s Face
26:33 Gears recap, strategy
30:28 finally the demo

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It was fun to watch. Haven’t went through planning section fully, just jumped to the kills this time - and I think you could use Gore Rider boots against Baal for some Crushing Blow, just to lower time to kill a bit. Yet the main statement in your initial post (you don’t need CB to defeat ubers) has been confirmed.

Once again gratz for you mate for the detailed video :slight_smile: