Summon Druid Endgame Guide

trader467 wrote: 2 years ago

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*

Just fantasising....
Grizzly doing AoE with Chance to

Taunt, at the same time 3 Dires doing what they do, and also 5 Spirit Wolves slowing mobs with cold

BigBangoBananaBob wrote: 2 years ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 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

I'm not sure the scaling is really the issue. Actually respecced my druid to summoner to mess around a bit and as far as damage goes (given, with a ton of +skill), they're all throwing out a fair bit. In fact, the speed at which he blows up single targets via telestomps is..impressive I would even say. But therein lies the true issue...it is all single target. Each of the wolves and/or the buffed up merc take their target down pretty quick but you are obviously at best limited to 4 targets at a time, even assuming they do all split out and take one each (which is rare to begin with). And after each such target, you lose what feels like an Infinity just watching them mindlessly stroll around in circles before they finally pick a new target. So by the time your "zoo" even touches target #5, most other builds in the game used their aoe/multi-target attacks and took down the entire room plus the next 3 zones as well.

Simply having more summons at a time would help that a fair bit although it'd also make the single target damage probably quite a bit too ridiculous. So..not sure how to balance that with the hoped-for zoo feel. Giving the wolves some sort of AoE swipe however..now that would actually make a massive and overdue difference.

trader467 wrote: 2 years ago

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

Not as fast as my pack of max-level- wolves, but still very fast! And safe, right? Youve got that much life, there is almost no chance for you to die!
Maybe its just as @Schnorki says and the problem is that the summons all do single target damage and stand around chilling some seconds before they preoceed to their next victim.
Thats why I suggested

Just fantasising....
Grizzly doing AoE with Chance to

Taunt, at the same time 3 Dires doing what they do, and also 5 Spirit Wolves slowing mobs with cold

Otherwise, its a bit like a Barb who does no AoE damage and hits only one enemy at a time

I have indeed never died with this Druid.
It's super safe and relaxxing but yeah obviously with "only" level 45 summons and no

Decrepify it's a little slower on killing than levle 50+ Summons.

I have managed to get my hands on a +6 BO Call To Arms today.

Over 3k life in human form now and close to 6k in

Werebear.
And more than 700 mana to use

Teleport from Enigma more often which is very convenient.

I'm excited to test the new skills on Tuesday.

Raven as spammable burst damage skill seems great and gives something to do.

I'm also thinking of putting a single point in each of the Vines.
After their buffs this seems a great way to get mana and/or health back after the fight especially considering that you use more now with the spam of

Raven.

The only downside is that you need at least level 96 if you want to may all the Summons, Wolverine and a point in each Vine plus one in Shockwave.
Gonna start power leveling this weekend.

Well, Life actually isnt a problem of this Druid Build at all! But its still not a "direct killer" as Sorc, Hammerdin and Java, because most of the Damage is done by the Summons, their terrible AI und (prior Patch 2.4) low Damage. Which can be boosted to pretty high damage output, but with expensive gear.

I am pretty confident Blizz is going to overpower the Summon Druid The Skilltree that probably got the most changes of all!

Looking forward to those Ravens. Cant calculae their Damage now, because we dont know their damage increase per level, but with +12% per level from Spirit wolves, Dire wolves as well as Grizzly, this should be very interesting. Shame they dont get Bonuses from auras

I also wonder if for the Ravens´ Synergies, will they stick to the "classic Druid Synergies", which work with +skills, too, and not only the hard points that you invested in the Synergies?

The whole summon tree profits from synergies in the unqiue way to I'd assume it will be the same for Ravens.

I'm thinking of investing some more runes and upgrading my

Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band rings to The

Stone of Jordan. This would give me ~250 more mana to use for the

Raven spam of the cost of ~160 life which isn't an issue considering I have almost 6k HP.

But I'm not sure the mana is even needed and SoJs are so god damn expensive.
And I already spent a

Ber yesterday to get a better

Annihilus with 10% XP for the levelling.
Then again they are changing the way spawns with 2.4 so maybe SoJs won't be needed anymore and their price drops again.

Thanks for the guide @BigBangoBananaBob! i have added this to our pinned links thread at the top: ps i love your username and noticed it in new members when you first joined. lol

@trader467 I think SoJs will probably go down. I am wearing 2, and the bonus to Mana is great! I dont care for the XP bonus of Anni, though. I really did hope they would make

Carrion Vine heal the Merc and the Summons, too. But this is still quite a big boost! Going to try it out.

@BillyMaysed Thanks for adding this to the stickys! I am going to continue this Guide with Patch 2.4! And I am using this Name for 2 Decades now for several Games and Stuff

I just managed to upgrade my Beast to a 40str one.
Now I can use my

Aegis without it requiring any additional points in strength once I reach level 94.

Regarding the SoJs it will heavily depend if the new mechanix still involves them being sold and if so how many.
Probably gonna take the gamble and wait until we know more details before trying to buy some.
This would be stats at level 94 with SoJs instead of BKs.

I was experimenting a little bit with a possible MF build and this is what I came up with.

Jalal's Mane (

Ral) -->

Jalal's Mane (

Ist)

Trang-Oul's Claws -->

Chance Guards

Sandstorm Trek -->

War Traveler
BK Ring / SoJ -->

Nagelring
Spirit --> Rhyme

Compared my normal build this loses +2 skills (from the rings) and you would have to summon your minions on the weapon switch (which you should anyway) because you also drop the Spirit in slot 1.
Other then that you only lose some FHR and FCR but get the MF up to almost 300 which is pretty good and more than sufficient.

You can change more but that cuts into +Skills (

Goldwrap for

Arachnid Mesh), lowers damage output (MF on weapon instead of Beast) or requires additional stats points (

Harlequin Crest instead of

Jalal's Mane).
You can obviously use a nice MF amulet with +Skills if you have one but I don't.

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

I was experimenting a little bit with a possible MF build and this is what I came up with.

Jalal's Mane (

Ral) -->

Jalal's Mane (

Ist)

Trang-Oul's Claws -->

Chance Guards

Sandstorm Trek -->

War Traveler
BK Ring / SoJ -->

Nagelring
Spirit --> Rhyme

Compared my normal build this loses +2 skills (from the rings) and you would have to summon your minions on the weapon switch (which you should anyway) because you also drop the Spirit in slot 1.
Other then that you only lose some FHR and FCR but get the MF up to almost 300 which is pretty good and more than sufficient.

You can change more but that cuts into +Skills (

Goldwrap for

Arachnid Mesh), lowers damage output (MF on weapon instead of Beast) or requires additional stats points (

Harlequin Crest instead of

Jalal's Mane).
You can obviously use a nice MF amulet with +Skills if you have one but I don't.

Sounds good! In my opinion, 300mf is more than enough. killspeed wins- therefore, I am waiting for PTR 2.4 to test that
I am still searching for the best farming area. I like doing Pits and Chaos with that Build, but still, it is not the fastest build. But who needs to play Sorc, Java and Hammerdin only?
Trying to level up to 96 now to complete the (probably) best skilltree for patch 2.4, as you said. I will probably drop my Phoenix shield for

Carrion Vine.

I wanted this to work. I really did. But honestly, summon druids still fail. Hard.

Even if the 5-hit limit currently on ravens was removed (which it should imo..that constant recasting is just dumb), summoners would still just suck by comparison to damn near everything.
True, they (ravens) actually do solid dmg now. But between everything being single-target and summons AI still being just abysmally bad, it just isn't enough.

The simple fact that your tiny amount of summons spend anywhere from 20 to 90% of their time not attacking anything but rather just slowly strolling around in circles just isn't overcome by some mostly minor dmg tweaking. All that does is make tele-stomping bosses more and more ridiculously good while still leaving everything on the way there painfully slow and aggravating. I dare say Blizz won't invest the resources to actually create a solid AI for these but as a tiny first step in the right direction, it'd help of dire wolves got that stupid corpse-eating feature removed and just rolled the dmg buff from that into their base. Not so much for the additional flat damage but because that "ohh, corpse, yum!" behavior is beyond broken and leads to what seems like 80%+ downtime reliably so long as there is any corpse nearby.

Also doesn't help much that you still can't BO or

Teleport in bear form.

I wrote some feedback on the forums because their survey options didn't let me write that much.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... ack/102107

BigBangoBananaBob wrote: 2 years ago

Thanks for your feedback!
...

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

Your video inspired me, very nice job. It moved me in the days when WoW started and I was a dwarf hunter with his Black bear hunting the evil that corrupted Lock Modan...
Coming back in D2R, I started as budget too to try the build from its early levels and managed to finish normal difficulty wearing full Sigon's set.
The build is really nice and funny to play and I like my wolves around much more than the skeletons of my necro.
I really don't care if it will take long time... I'm playing a game to have fun.

BigBangoBananaBob wrote: 2 years ago

...
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

I'm trying to sort the items provided in the PTR, but it will take longer than I expected...

BigBangoBananaBob wrote: 2 years ago

I hope they dont just change the Spirit Wolves Damage to cold damage.

Well, this certainly didn't age well.

It really didnt.
The damge on the Spirit Wolves is pathetic and probably needs to be trippled or at least double to be viable.

I did a full Excel calc tab for comparison.
It lists
- the Skills

Raven/Spirit Wolf/Dire Wolf/Grizzly
- the base Attributes Damage/Life/%AR/%Def
- for Patch 2.3 and 2.4
- for every Skill level from 1 up to 44

this is just a small part of it, due to the size.

- It is obvious that they drastically improved the Life of Spirit Wolf and Dire Wolf (Almost doubled)
- It is obvious that they didnt change anything at Grizzly at all
- It is obvious that the Damage of both Spirit Wolf and Dire Wolf almost remained the same
- It is obvious that a single

Raven does almost the Damage of Grizzly. Considering that you can have 5 Ravens, but only one Grizzly, this seems to be the right way to go. *NOT*.

Left my 2 Cents in the Blizz PTR- Feedback Thread, too: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... -24/102542