Summon Druid Endgame Guide

My personal Legacy for D2. Wanted to do this for 15 years now!

The Idea is to push the Summoning Skills to the highest level possible and add as many Damage-Buffs as possible, and then to check out how badass the Wolves and Grizzly really can be!



Through the eastern Deserts, thrashing his path through the once glorious Kurast, calling forth the mighty Guardians of Mount Arreat, Garruk the Beastmaster has come to your Aid! He summons five of his trusted Level 50 Spirit Wolves to ensure the Victory of Nature.
Join genuine Garruk in his endless Battle of Natures´ Forces vs. Hells Minions!







For Gameplay, Equip, Skills watch my new Video:





Want to receive help from this Druid? Check out his Player Service Thread post2022873.html#p2022873 in the Trade Section!

lol awesome

Very nice, congrats!

What

Helm are you wearing? Did you cover that in the video?

Nope,I didnt cover that, because I didnt want to its a magic Pelt with +3 summons +2 Grizzly. I am still searching and cubing for a better one!

thanks for that detailed build video!

What I was missing is that when you go through your items (next time ALL items pls :p) that you also tell on what you're looking for in these items and why. Also on what could improve.

I really would love playing a Summon Druid, but as you already said: Blizzard needs to buff it quite well, also the Summonmancer is basically the same idea, but much more easy to achieve and viable.

I really hope next patches show much love to these builds!

Yeah, I should have shown all Items! Maybe I will add that. But I cant add any speech of why I am wearing those Items.

Yeah,Blizz should really buff that build!

Cool build really going all on that +Summon Skills with the items to maximize your damage.
Don't really understand the Phoenix shield though. The aura doesn't buff your damage and it takes away corpses for Dire Wolves to consume.
Combine that with the fact how expensive it is I think you can safely stick to a Spirit.

Regarding the merc weapon. Pride is better if you look purely at the damage for the Summons.
If you look at the combined Merc + Summon damage then

Eth Reaper's Toll wins. And the ability to break immunes is nice.
Also the latter should not be an issue with 2.4 anymore.

I really dislike you not having any open space in the inventory though.
I understand you are going all out on skills but I'd drop one skill charm and fit in a cube so you can pick up items.

I'm playing Summon Druid myself and this is the build I'm using:
https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/mr0106fd

Definitely less damage output than you have for sure but maybe a bit more balanced especially in regards to resists without the need of having tri-res

Boots and gloves.
I also prefer CtA over HotO on swap. It is 1 less skill but the additional mana and HP is nice especially if you play with friends and can buff them too.
I put my leftover points into

Raven but you can honestly put them whereever you want at least for now.
Maybe 2.4 will add another synergy to something that makes it worth speccing.

Started this char as a pure budget build just to have something different to play but quickly fell in love with it so I recently upgraded to my current gear.

Thanks for your feedback!

Phoenix Shield: As I use weapon slot 1 just for maximizing skills and weapon slot 2 for maximizing melee damage output, I originally chose Phoenix for the 300-400% damage increase, but I figured out that the

Redemption Aura is really nice. But Ive no need to use Spirit on that slot. Maybe I would go for some high ress shield there instead of Phoenix.

Invenroty space: I usually keep the Cube in my Inventory. Just put it off the Inv in the Video to get +1 more Skills. Carrying 9 GCs in the Inv is very uncomfortable, I agree!

CTA and Hoto: Yeah, I see why CTA can be a nice choice over Hoto. I like the +3 skills and 40%FCR, because im teleporting all the time. But those Summons buffed with BO would be pretty nice! On the other hand, my Spirit Wolves with their 970 life rarely die. I think theyve just got enough defense, they have 85 all ress, and a pretty good replenish life. I will try out with CTA instead of Hoto, anyways!

Im really looking forward for some buff to

Raven or the announced cold damage boost to Spirit Wolves. I hope they dont just change the Spirit Wolves Damage to cold damage. The Druid wouldnt be able to support the Damage of his own summons with HoW, then

You started as budget? Its pretty hard to play through the game without decent gear! Especially because it takes very long

I agree the FCR from Hoto is nice to

Teleport around. But since I'm using Spirit and Trang Oul Gloves I get the FCR from there and reach 70 FCR anyway.
Spirit is also great to reach a FHR breakpoint which helps when teleporting around.
I usually also don't attack myself and while I'm sure the regeneration from

Redemption Aura is good I just can't justify that cost for it.

Regarding the cold damage on Spirit Wolves what I heard is that a certain percentage of their damage is converted to cold.
So HoW should still work and boost the damage before the

Conversion happens.

The budget build was honestly not bad at all.

Jalal's Mane

Archon Plate Rain (my most expensive piece)

Crystal Sword Spirit

Monarch Spirit

String of Ears

Trang-Oul's Claws

Aldur's Advance

Dwarf Star
Ring with dual res and stats
Amulet: with 19 all res, +2 Summon Skills and 10 FCR (self found)
Inventory: low Druid Torch and 8 plain skill charms

Merc: non-

Eth

The Reaper's Toll, Treachery,

Vampire Gaze


If anybody wants to try that build themselves I still have like 5 plain skill charms left.

BigBangoBananaBob wrote: 3 years ago

Nope,I didnt cover that, because I didnt want to its a magic Pelt with +3 summons +2 Grizzly. I am still searching and cubing for a better one!

No problem

I was just curious if you were using the one I traded you.

I have to say I really dig how the outfit on my Druid looks.
Although I must admit it is not 100% ideal in the regard to effeciency on stat points (15str more than on optimal gear).

Azer-Archon wrote: 3 years ago

BigBangoBananaBob wrote: 3 years ago

Nope,I didnt cover that, because I didnt want to its a magic Pelt with +3 summons +2 Grizzly. I am still searching and cubing for a better one!

No problem

I was just curious if you were using the one I traded you.

The one with +3 Summons/+2 Dire Wolf, right? Would use it if I would go for Dire Wolves, of course I still have it

trader467 wrote: 3 years ago

I have to say I really dig how the outfit on my Druid looks.
Although I must admit it is not 100% ideal in the regard to effeciency on stat points (15str more than on optimal gear).

Outfit looks great! Those brown colors and leather with some small parts of Steel are perfect for the Druid.

Aegis looks great, too!

Yeah the

Dusk Shroud and the

Aegis are the reason I need the extra strength.

With a Mageplate Enigma and a

Monarch it would be possible to do a 0 str build.

But with my current Torch and Anni (36 stats combined) I need to put 9 points into strength in order to wear Jalal's which then gives me enough strength to wear the rest of the equip except for the

Aegis.
That requires an additional 6 points in strength although that could be reduced by having a higher char level (more str from Enigma) or more strength on Beast.

All in all 15 points isn't the end of the world and well worth it for the desired looks.

And here I was, thinking that the end-game for a summon druid was when you finally respec to elemental or just reroll necro.

On a more serious note..I'd love to get summon druids to work at a more entertaining level. But something about the "summoner" feel just gets lost when all you get is just a handful of wolves.

Yeah it would be awesome to have all the summons avaiable at the same time.
Or at least 1 set of wolves plus the grizzly.

Blizzard please? *pleading eyes*

Quick showcase of my Druid (or rather the summons) fighting the ancients on Hell.

Schnorki wrote: 3 years ago

And here I was, thinking that the end-game for a summon druid was when you finally respec to elemental or just reroll necro.

On a more serious note..I'd love to get summon druids to work at a more entertaining level. But something about the "summoner" feel just gets lost when all you get is just a handful of wolves.

Best decision, just give up on it and switch to elemental to finally get a viable build true. But as I said in the video: From a certain point on, the Summom Druid benefits more from +Skills as many other Builds do and in my opionion, this is where his strength is and what really makes a difference.

But that Summoner-Feeling gets definitely lost when you create your first Druid ever and expect to get that total wolf amount up with every few skill levels like it does for the first few levels and finally notice that 5 or 3 is all you will get. Even worse, you notice that their stats just dont scale with the mobs