Summon Druid Endgame Guide

Just remove the

Raven hit limit, tone down their damage a little bit again (maybe not even that) and let us summon everything at the same time. Done.

Given, pre-buffing would take even longer than it does now but that's worth it. At least that way the by comparison pointless skills (now Spirit wolf) would still be used, the sheer number of summons would help offset the terribleness of their AI, the overall damage would (even without a nerf to ravens) probably not be any higher than other well performing classes as everything is still single-target and subject to AI issues (plus it could be easily tweaked if needed), it'd actually start to feel like a summoner and you wouldn't be stuck in an endless loop of re-summoning ravens like an idiot 98% of your time as you are on the PTR right now.

BigBangoBananaBob wrote: 2 years ago

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*.

I may be mistaken as I admittedly haven't looked at the actual mechanics behind it but..your last point is off, right? Meaning it isn't actually quite that obvious that a single

Raven does the dmg of Grizzly.

Now, it is obvious that the base damage of a

Raven is about the same, true. But unlike a Grizzly or Wolves, at least from the looks of it (the part I haven't actually looked up - maybe you have), Ravens are not affected by Auras, right? So once you add in a higher level Heart of the Wolverine, your Grizzly does about the damage of 4 ravens. Add in a might merc and your Grizzly is equivalent to about 6.3 ravens. Add in say a Beast Fana aura on top and your Grizzly is somewhere around 8-9 ravens (actually more than that as using Beast would force you to re-cast ravens 3 lvls lower).

Mind you, I'm not saying that makes the whole situation any better. Quite the opposite in fact..if Ravens - buffed as they are - remain that comparatively little of your damage output, the fact that you have to constantly keep re-casting is just even worse.


Edit:
Alright, I did some digging, found what I could and ended up spreadsheeting all of this out, comparing 3 top-end druid loadouts (HotO vs. Beast vs. Pride).

Results (summarized):
- HotO: 110843 DPS total with Dire Wolves doing just under twice the DPS of 5 ravens which in turn do about 1.3 times the dmg of your merc
- Beast: 123361 DPS total with Dire Wolves doing about 2.5 times the DPS of 5 ravens and your merc doing about 1.15 times the dmg of your ravens
- Pride (the winner): 130123 DPS total with Dire Wolves doing about 3.15 times the DPS of 5 ravens and your merc doing about 1.2 times the dmg of your ravens

Points to note:
- With a crap roll (16 conc), Pride still wins out but barely. The difference between Pride and Beast is almost non-existent at that point.
- The one thing I could not find is whether or not Grizzly acts as ED for wolves (and itself) via the Synergy or whether it increases their base damage. I assumed it adds to base damage directly for the numbers above. If it does not, then HotO still looses out but Beast actually (barely!) beats a lvl 20 Pride.
- I checked Pride on Merc + Beast on Druid for good measure but that's just a terrible choice. Even if you only have 15% uptime, reaper's beats the living daylights out of Pride.
- Dire Wolves outdamage Grizzly (on paper) by a fairly small amount in all scenarios (<7% with HotO or Beast, ~2% with Pride), to the point where I would actually have to suggest using Grizzly full time instead. This is because a) Grizzly doesn't lose time to consume corpses and b) Grizzly doesn't lose even more time due to idiotic "wait, there's a nearby corpse? let me stand around for a minute and run a few circles first" AI. So basically.."summoner" = "1 summon" for best performance. Bit of a bummer...
- Spirit wolves, as we already know are just abysmally bad in realistic scenarios, thanks to the change to cold damage. They literally won't even do 10% of the damage dire wolves or grizzly will.
- Ravens account for between ~27% (HotO) and ~19% (Pride) of your damage, despite not gaining from any auras. As such, sadly, constantly recasting them like an idiot remains the best way to go.

You are absolutely right, Ravens do not benefit from Auras. I left that out because I think its ridiculous that a single

Raven amost does the same Damage as an unbuffed Grizzly. Yes, the Grizzly´s Damage can be gretaly increased by Auras, but still, an unbuffed Grizzly should do way more Damage than a

Raven?

Someone pointed out to me that my calculations are incorrect, and I have to admit, he is right. And this is crucial for your calculations, too, as you mentioned this exact point at the bottom of your post:

Lets say, we have got a Level 50 Dire Wolf. Damage per Wolf is 371-426, or exactly double that numbers, if it is enraged.
2281-2619 or 2652-3045 if it is enraged. And this already gives the clue to the solution: The %Dam-Bonus from Grizzly is not added to the base Damage, and after that, this numbers are taken as a new base to calculate %Dam-Auas on top of it. The %Dam- Auras (as well as the Enrage-Ability) are always added on top of the absolute base-value, that is to say, on 371-426 in case of lvl 50 Dire Wolf.
So the correct calculation is (for a Level 50 Dire Wolf, with Grizzly on the same Level)

371-426 Damage * (1(base value) +1(enrage) +5,4 (Grizzly lvl 50 Damage Bonus) +3,45 (lvl 20 Conc) +0.93(lvl 9 Fana) +3.63(lvl 50 HoW) +2.3(lvl 20 Might))

=371-426 * 17,71 = 6570-7544

This includes the ultimate Maximum on %Damge-enhancing effects that you can get in single player. And it is really, really expensive. As an alternative, instead just stick with

Raven: I only completed the calculation Sheet up to Level 44, but a Level 50

Raven will do about 5200 Damage. This only needs +Skills.



This doesnt do anything to the Videos that @trader467 and I posted, the Summon still do some Damage and with absolut top-end equip, even the Spirit Wolves beat down the Ancients in no time. But on the other hand, a Sorc/Java/Hammerdin with equal Equip could carry a whole players8-leechers-only-party to

Baal in record time.

Your experiences with

Concentration vs. Reapers Toll are just the same as what I found out. Its sad, but Reapers Toll beats Pride with

Concentration Aura by far.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Alright, I did some digging, found what I could and ended up spreadsheeting all of this out, comparing 3 top-end druid loadouts (HotO vs. Beast vs. Pride).

Results (summarized):
- HotO: 110843 DPS total with Dire Wolves doing just under twice the DPS of 5 ravens which in turn do about 1.3 times the dmg of your merc
- Beast: 123361 DPS total with Dire Wolves doing about 2.5 times the DPS of 5 ravens and your merc doing about 1.15 times the dmg of your ravens
- Pride (the winner): 130123 DPS total with Dire Wolves doing about 3.15 times the DPS of 5 ravens and your merc doing about 1.2 times the dmg of your ravens

Why is it Beast / Hoto vs Pride?
You can have both with the Pride being on the merc and you wear the other?

For the record you do need a correct gear setup for your merc though when using the Pride.
You need

Andariel's Visage with an IAS jewel in it, you need a Fortitude armor and ,this is important, the Pride needs to be in a

Great Poleaxe.
This allows the merc to get down to 9 frames per

Jab which greatly increases his damage output.

Reaper's Toll is only ahead for Bosses that actually live longer than 5 sec giving you a chance to apply the curse.
But most monsters aren't bosses and the Pride aura is active all the time giving you an advantage.
And that advantage only comes from the Merc itself. The Summons all do more damage with

Concentration than they do with

Decrepify.
You can easily just check this using maxroll calculator for minion damage.

I will die on that hill that Reaper's Toll is a little overrated, especially post patch when you don't need it anymore to break immunities.

Now this all changes if you want to build an actual "

Raven" Druid as all the auras don't apply to them and you just want to stack as many + skills as possible.
But in that case I would not even go with an Act 2 merc.
Act 1 Mercs now have

Pierce and get a Runeword bow that allows the application of

Decrepify (30%) and with the piercing effect this should apply the buff more consistent and to more targets.

@BigBangoBananaBob: I did the calculations for both Grizzly impacts. So either scenario is covered. Though yeah, if your wolf-dmg source is correct, then that clears that up.

@tmGrunty: True, you can have both. But that is the worst possible solution. Pride has no ED on the weapon itself and hence results in your merc damage dropping so ridiculously far for using it that he is just useless by comparison. Additionally, you lose the

Decrepify you'd otherwise have from Reaper's which buffs your Ravens as well (unlike Pride). True, A1 mercs are better for

Decrepify alone now but they also don't come with might and have comparatively crap dmg themselves. All in all, not up to par. Also, even if the first mob dies in a second, you tend to have packs and Decrep is still an AoE (albeit a small radius). So you keep the benefit of the proc on further mobs in the pack. That's why the assumed uptime was adjusted, based on actual play-testing (in cows and Chaos sanc). Pride sounds a lot better than it is because conc reads like a ton of extra dmg. But it is only one of many ED sources, being added to the stack. Decrep on the other hand multiplies ALL of the physical damage, making it worlds better, even if you only have an uptime as low as 10-20% (which is significantly lower than playtesting/experience shows).

I actually found myself wondering this morning as to why noone ever uses a bow. Turns out I should've been wondering that a long time ago...added Faith to the math-mix (again, for both possible implementations of the Grizzly bonus). Turns out Faith wins in EVERY scenario, regardless of how Grizzly dmg is added and regardless of how good or bad your rolls are. Even a complete trash Faith (1/12) beats a perfect 20-Conc Pride. A 2/15 Faith is well beyond that again. That is not yet counting any possible dmg from Faith proc summons - honestly no idea if those are even worth it so I left them out, considering that Faith is a clear winner even without them.

Now, the "fun" thing is that Faith is an actual usable weapon if you so choose, even in full +skill summoner gear (thanks to the ITD and solid dmg on-weap), meaning you could actually go for a hybrid build, max out Grizzly damage bits in the summon tree and then Fury-wolf yourself. That is entirely viable (thanks for the free Faith @ PTR) but do note that even with a top-end Faith in a solid bow, your own damage will still only be about 27% of what ravens would do if you still just sat there, summon-spamming.

So new take-home: Get a Faith, forget about all of the other weapon combos and just spam ravens all day (I genuinely do hate that last part...).

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

I will die on that hill that Reaper's Toll is a little overrated, especially post patch when you don't need it anymore to break immunities.

Admittedly, I'm blanking right now (haven't had my 2nd coffee yet) - why wouldn't you need it to break immunities anymore?
If you're referring to Spirit Wolves, then do keep in mind that their dmg is just ridiculously bad (thanks to 0 scaling due to now being cold) and they really aren't worth using on anything, ever. If there's some other reason..then I really am drawing a blank.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

@BigBangoBananaBob: I did the calculations for both Grizzly impacts. So either scenario is covered. Though yeah, if your wolf-dmg source is correct, then that clears that up.

@tmGrunty: True, you can have both. But that is the worst possible solution. Pride has no ED on the weapon itself and hence results in your merc damage dropping so ridiculously far for using it that he is just useless by comparison. Additionally, you lose the

Decrepify you'd otherwise have from Reaper's which buffs your Ravens as well (unlike Pride). True, A1 mercs are better for

Decrepify alone now but they also don't come with might and have comparatively crap dmg themselves. All in all, not up to par. Also, even if the first mob dies in a second, you tend to have packs and Decrep is still an AoE (albeit a small radius). So you keep the benefit of the proc on further mobs in the pack. That's why the assumed uptime was adjusted, based on actual play-testing (in cows and Chaos sanc).

I actually found myself wondering this morning as to why noone ever uses a bow. Turns out I should've been wondering that a long time ago...added Faith to the math-mix (again, for both possible implementations of the Grizzly bonus). Turns out Faith wins in EVERY scenario, regardless of how Grizzly dmg is added and regardless of how good or bad your rolls are. Even a complete trash Faith (1/12) beats a perfect 20-Conc Pride. A 2/15 Faith is well beyond that again. That is not yet counting any possible dmg from Faith proc summons - honestly no idea if those are even worth it so I left them out, considering that Faith is a clear winner even without them.

Now, the "fun" thing is that Faith is an actual usable weapon if you so choose, even in full +skill summoner gear (thanks to the ITD and solid dmg on-weap), meaning you could actually go for a hybrid build, max out Grizzly damage bits in the summon tree and then Fury-wolf yourself. That is entirely viable (thanks for the free Faith @ PTR) but do note that even with a top-end Faith in a solid bow, your own damage will still only be about 27% of what ravens would do if you still just sat there, summon-spamming.

So new take-home: Get a Faith, forget about all of the other weapon combos and just spam ravens all day (I genuinely do hate that last part...).

I actually built my first ever Faith some weeks ago, because it was on the List for Equip to test (which is like 10 years old )
I don´t like it. Max Damage Boost would be with Act 2 NM Off Merc, wearing Pride (or Reapers, dont want to discuss that now) and Faith Bow on the Druid himself, who can put that Bow to good use if he uses

Werewolf and Fury, but the Damage of Faith is so ridiculously low compared to good two- or even onehanded weapons that I actually dont attack anything in

Werewolf Form. Built that Faith in a

Great Bow, for best Attack Speed, and I think the Druid needs the fastest Weapon Base if he wants to attack while in Wereform. So I think its Level 12-15 Fana Aura (from Faith) versus Level 9 Fana Aura (from Beast), whereas all the other Auras and Buffs stay the same: Might,

Concentration or

Decrepify, HoW.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

I will die on that hill that Reaper's Toll is a little overrated, especially post patch when you don't need it anymore to break immunities.

Admittedly, I'm blanking right now (haven't had my 2nd coffee yet) - why wouldn't you need it to break immunities anymore?
If you're referring to Spirit Wolves, then do keep in mind that their dmg is just ridiculously bad (thanks to 0 scaling due to now being cold) and they really aren't worth using on anything, ever. If there's some other reason..then I really am drawing a blank.

Because for the very immunues you face (mostly a Boss that rolled Stoneskin) you can just switch to the Spirit Wolves in order to kill that and then go back.
No need to carry a specific weapon for it.

Well, the bow is still a bow, sadly, true. But for a bow the dmg is solid and it scales quite well, thanks to how Fury is built.

Either way, it doesn't really matter right now. Even if you could build Faith in a sword or any weapon of your choosing, your own dmg would still be below that of ravens. So as long as you need to keep spamming ravens and hence have to choose between them or doing dmg yourself, the weapon itself is irrelevant and ravens win.

Now if ravens actually stuck around... then it'd be more interesting. Though even then, boosting your own dmg via a better weapon for Beast results in enough of a dmg drop to your summons that it probably isn't worth it (won't bother doing the math on that until/unless ravens are changed to stick around). Plus if you actually are in summoner gear, you'd lose tons of that theoretically higher damage due to constantly missing your target because Beast doesn't come with ITD.


Side note: A bow on a druid does look wrong somehow.

I have to admit though I made a crucial mistake.
When doing my calculation in maxroll and switching out

The Reaper's Toll for a Pride what happened is that the my target minion actually did not lose the

Decrepify buff.

So all my numbers with Pride were actually way too high *sigh*

So mea culpa an

The Reaper's Toll (or Act 1 merc with

Decrepify) clearly wins on damage (assuming the curse is active).

However. I still love my auras and I will stick with them for the most part just because I like them so much.
Might get myself an

Eth Reaper's Toll again though just to have an option.

For the

Raven Druid I still think Wrath on an Act 1 merc is the way to go.
That with their new

Pierce is the best way to apply the curse which is the only way to buff you

Raven damage besides +skills on your own gear.

I hear you on that *sigh*

I much prefer the concept of Auras myself and genuinely wish Pride were better. Sadly, no such luck.

For the Wrath, do keep in mind that
- Your merc's dmg will suck.
- Your merc, your bear/wolves and yourself (if applicable) lose might which makes a very significant difference as ravens are still only a fraction of your overall dmg output.
- The

Pierce helps a lot less than you'd think because summons tend to attack from front to back and not jump to the rear end of the pack and clear up from there. So while it increases the chance of application due to hitting say the 2nd mob in line, it doesn't do you any good if it then procs like half a room further down the road because your summons aren't anywhere near that yet. But yes, uptime would still be notably higher overall.
- You have a chance of overwriting all of your decrepifies with

Life Tap (which has a significantly higher radius and more likely than not would remove all decrep procs across larger packs whenever it procs).
- A1 merc AI is significantly worse than A2 when it comes to actually attacking stuff. They spend a ton of time just walking in circles and standing around before they get to "just the right distance" to actually attack.

Well the concept of the

Raven Druid is that you max every bit of +Skill you can get.
And level 50+ Ravens should outdamage everything else you have with ease.
Therefore you would not have any auras to buff other minions anyway so I'm not sure the loss of might would even be that big of a deal.

Yes you can overwrite the

Decrepify but the chance of proccing

Life Tap should be low enough for it to not matter too much, especially as you can just overwrite that with

Decrepify again.
And the main advantage I see is that you don't need your merc to actually run up to the target and attack them but instead can attack from a distance.
It's defintely on all-in on Ravens build and personally I would not play it because it's too annoying to recast them all the time (unless Blizzard changes them).

This would be the "

Raven" build: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/mr0106fd#2

Spoiler alert: good call!

Wouldn't that be the concept of any summoner? At least I always go full skills for it.
That having been said, I actually didn't look into

Ravenlore as a replacement in prior calculations so I went ahead and did that now. Built out a full

Raven build on the PTR (no Anni so 1 more skiller than you'd normally have) to get the actual numbers. You end up with lvl 52 ravens that do 5526-5961 dmg each and lvl 45 on your other summons. Mind you, there is no reason not to still have your other base auras (might + HoW) as those don't take anything away from the ravens, excluding the potential shift in decrep uptime from a2 to a1 merc (more on that in a sec).

Turns out if you spam ravens (which is the best choice atm), then using

Ravenlore wins out in every scenario except when using Faith and if Grizzly bonus is baked into the base damage. Since the base dmg bake-in doesn't seem to be true,

Ravenlore is simply the better choice all around. The +7 ravens more than make up for the slight drop in skills for other summons.

The results are then actually quite interesting. Sticking with HotO for max skills is still actually the worst pick in terms of damage. Yes, ravens get better and yes, other summons get worse but the gap is still there and the benefit of extra auras still outweights the extra skills. The order stays the same:
HotO < Beast < Pride < Faith
However, the gap between them is now significantly smaller. HotO, Beast and Pride end up all within 5% of each other which frankly could probably be considered even in any realistic scenario (mainly because dire wolf AI is still horrid). Faith stays ahead of HotO by about 13%. Adjusting that for realistic scenarios (same AI issue) probably brings the HotO version still very close to it but leaves it just slightly worse (yes, that part is educated guesstimation).
Note: That is with perfectly rolled Pride or Faith so if you can't get 20 or 15/2 respectively, don't bother.

Honestly, looking at those numbers I'd even go so far as to say HotO ends up the preferred choice in the end, simply because the difference in damage becomes so minor that the additional stats for the druid outweigh the loss in kill speed. Primarily, that's because HotO puts you at 1 frame faster

Teleport than Beast and 3 frames faster than Pride/Faith. So the travel time is improved significantly.
Disclaimer: If you

Teleport with CtA switch, you only gain 1 frame against Pride/Faith as well but you lose a bit of time on arrival before your aura ticks and turns back on.

In terms of gear, that changes things significantly. So nice call on that

Ravenlore actually, counterintuitive as it may seem to drop skills on other summons. Funny enough, summoner gear would then pretty much be the exact same as elemental, excluding the skill charms.

Now, the other question would be A1 vs A2 merc, comparing

Decrepify uptime impact vs. might.
With ravens moving up and summons moving down, might does become less important but still makes a significant difference. Long story short, putting the whole thing in numbers, IF your A1 merc gives you about 20% or more higher uptime (in absolute terms) than A2 with reaper, then A1 wins out. If the increase in uptime is less than that, A2 Might still wins. Meaning if you move from say 60% uptime to >80% uptime, A1 wins.
The disclaimer to that is that I didn't bother adjusting the merc base dmg for the lower A1 merc so the actual needed increase is probably closer to 30-35% (estimate).

In either case, I believe it then boils down to playstyle. If you primarily telestomp and your A2 merc always ends up being teleported on top of his targets, decrep uptime is already so high that there is no realistic way for A1 to still be enough of an increase to make it worth it. Even more so because the same telestomp behavior would result in your A1 merc always first running away and then starting to shoot, probably actually decreasing your uptime overall.
If you yourself play more defensively however and tend to

Teleport a short distance from packs and then let your summons

Charge in, the opposite is true because your A1 merc will start firing, most likely proc by the time your summons got to their targets and you should have an uptime of close to 100%. An A2 merc on the other hand would first have to run to those same targets, then start swinging and hope for a proc and end up with significantly lower uptime in the end.

TL;DR:
- Use

Ravenlore!
- Once you use

Ravenlore, the choice between HotO, Beast, Pride and Faith becomes one of personal preference and playstyle with more travel time favoring HotO and more killing time favoring Faith (slightly).
- If you play defensively, an Act 1 merc with Wrath should be your best choice.
- If you play offensively (telestomp), an Act 2 might merc with Reaper's should remain your best choice.

I actually just acquired all the necessary items for a

Raven build on the live server just in case I want to play like that.
Think I'll settle for Heart of the Oak just because reaching the FCR breakpoint and getting to max resistances is too good to pass.
Especially since Pride or Faith would mean a loss of significant loss in both of those and the build is designed for the

Raven after all.

However to actually constantly switch between the equipment I need to invest some more points into strength (the loss of

Jalal's Mane means I can't wear my Enigma).
So that's 12 more points in strength needed for the

Raven build compared to my Aura setup.

I do still need to get a decent

Eth Reaper's Toll though. And if I go that route and put extra points into strength I should try to switch out my 9str + 30 fire res jewel in the Jalal's for an all res + fire res one as the 9 str aren't needed anymore in that case.

Aye, Reaper's and one more summon charm is the only thing my live Druid would be missing.
(Currently Ele so no Reaper's yet)

Either way, here's to hoping they still add some balance changes and make ravens not a forced constant spam cast. That part is just annoying af...

Hah I just snatched a cheap

Eth Reaper's Toll (211ed/11LL) for a

Vex.
So I'm good to go with that build as soon as the patch drops and I invest the additional points into strength.

That was quick..
Nicely done

That

Raven build might be great but I'm not looking forward to seeing how my Druid will look when using that build ... Just compare it to this ...

I suppose the armor makes a massive difference in that case. I've always liked the

Raven/

Monarch look and match. But then again, I use an

Archon Plate:

Only thing I still don't like is how little of a summoner they really are and how they play with that idiotic

Raven-spam. So unless that still changes, I guess he stays elemental after all.
Same number of summons (cuz that makes sense...), 10+ times the clear speed and more sensible casting than blindly spamming ravens.

But here's to hoping! I'd much prefer an actual summoner tbh

Yeah I use a Dushshroud for both the looks and the lower strength requirement.
I usually don't like how Archon / Mageplate looks but I have to admit it looks good in with that helmet.c

Also for the

Raven build I think it's best to replace the Mara's Amulet with blue +3 Summuning + extra (strength in my case).