Pulverize build - Earthen Might vs Ursine Strength

Druid
1

So ive been running Pulverize build since the beginning, i didnt play any betas and didnt watch any guides, but i ended up at pretty much the same build maxroll has on their site. I mean its not rocket science, you get your main couple earth skills aspects and everything falls into place after that.

The only difference (besides not having Temerity, which is just utility piece) is the key passive: i run Ursine Strength, everyone else seem to like Earthen Might instead.

Ive tried it twice, first around lvl60 and now again at 74. At 60 it felt completely garbage, i didnt proc it nearly often enough (because of low mob density i guess; i usually do tiers with mobs just +5-10lvls).
Now i tried it again and it almost feels good, but still not quite there yet.

If theres enough mobs in the pack, lets say 20 it usually procced, but then mobs die on first or 2nd Pulverize, so my 5s window to crit is kinda wasted unless i find another pack quickly. It works best on high density events, like cursed strongbox with hordes of enemy waves. Then yeah, its high dopamine injection.

In less than ideal situations though, like kill all mobs and other low density areas, im like regular druid without +30% dmg and life from Ursine Strength.
And without any crit % btw, because ideally i wasnt suppose to have ctit chance gear with Earthen Might, (instead its crit dmg, slow dmg, vuln dmg etc).
So instead of my 39.3%(*) i would have 10.5%, which is like nothing.

Currently im lvl 74 with 39.3% crit chance. Thats with 277 dex, 5% crit boon and perfectly rolled hands and rings, but only 4/5 upgrades and one is still sacred (11.2+7+5.6), so theres still some room to improve it further - im guessing 50+% at higher levels. I also have +6% crit to mobs at close range, so its like 46% to them.

What im saying is that im already critting almost half of the time without Earthen Might proc, so why should i rely on the proc in the first place. Yes, I dont get Spirit back, but with Reclamation paragon node i get +4 spirit on kills, and with some other stuff it feels like i have enough Spirit most of the times.

Any thoughts from Earthen Might enjoyers about this?

Ill try again at 84 and again after that :wink:
Its just 1 passive change after all

PS. Sorry for the wall of text and thanks to anyone who read it lol

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2

earthen might is based on lucky hit procs rather than an on-kill effect which can help a lot vs. beefier elites and bosses. I think it just has to do with the fact it’s a very “braindead” passive that works in the background and allows to to chain a massive amount of consecutive pulverizes if you get lucky

3

well against bosses it most likely wont proc at all, since like you said, its lucky hit proc, which is 25% and then 5%. You need a lot of targets around to reliably proc it

4

So we saying Ursong Strength is better to use then ???

5

So im 79 now (quite slow lately, because its the same dungeons over and over again, so im kinda alt tabbed more than playin lol), got my 2500 dps axe last night, so time for a little update (and with video gameplay, yay!).

I didnt plan to do it, its just a recording i made to see how my dmg looks like after weapon upgrade, since i cant see sh1t when playing with all these Vulnerable messages flying around.

Random gameplay:

Character sheet:

So if you care to watch you can see how the build looks like in quite small density dungeon. Pulls are small, sometimes i even pulverize a single mob for no reason. And even then spirit is mostly fine i think - im not at full all the time or anything, but it looks ok considering how low mob density is. Imagine how Earthen Might proccing would look like here lol

Since i didnt plan to upload this, later i recorded second short video of my character sheet, for anyone who cares to check gear and numbers. Maybe it would help somebody to decide to play or not this build.
Gear is quite solid, but still has few useless stats on it and some mid range rolls. Also im not finished with crit damage paragon board yet, so quite a lot of dmg is still missing, but im close to those nodes.

So anyway, decide for yourself, but for me i think there is no point of doing no crit Earthen Might proc build, if i can do one without it.
Also as a side note, im currently leaning towards Axe rather than Staff (mace is just garbage obviously), because that dmg to healthy seems to be doing work on first Pulverizes and i like it

6

trample slide seems fine but I can’t imagine anything is as strong as pulverizer build for aoe clearing dungeons. I’ve heard it has a bit low single target damage but it looks fine to me.

You prefer shockwave on the necklace over weapon or is that more so you don’t have to risk not having more to replace it?

7

Yes, my Shockwaves have always been on neck or ring, so i dont have to reapply it every time i change weapons… I have quite a few more of them in stash now, but their rolls are like 60-64, so this one on the neck is still better. And this new weapon is still not ideal to use best rolled aspect on it

Single target is fine, if you can open the fight with few Pulverizes in that 3s Vuln window you have, like i did here.
I think this boss must have low life though, i was surprised myself how fast he dropped lol, and i didnt even have Grizzly Rage. Normally boss is around half hp after 3 Pulverizes and then you need to build spirit back a bit to continue. But its like idk, 5-10s fight maybe? Bosses are a joke anyway

Longer single target fights may be harder, like Pinnacle Lilith - because of Vuln window is only 3s every 20s (from Glyph).
Also people who say Pulv is low single target probably run Earthen Might and cant proc it on a boss

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