Summon Druid Endgame Guide

Been done for a while. Played around with a few hybrid builds across multiple classes (of which Druid was sadly never an option as the pre-requisite was to be able to kill dclone quickly while on a budget). Now that's settled into the last one who sits around collecting dust and waiting for the next walk. Everything else is back to non-ladder.

Though even that is much less these days...'tis basically summer after all!

Poison Creeper against act bosses is just ridiculously slow damage. even on normal. but it's pretty good against packs of monsters. and it works really well with the act 3 frost merc. freezes monsters on every shot. even super uniques. act 1 frost merc with Edge bow is great too. minimum 3 points in

Summon Dire Wolf from level 18. and pump

Summon Grizzly from level 30.

What would be the best weapon if I choose to go hybrid? Summon +

Werebear?

Basing the answer solely on the shift/summon hybrid testing I've done on the PTR:
Faith in a

Great Bow.

As a shifted druid, you can actually use a Faith bow as a melee weapon, oddly enough (doesn't need

Arrows either) and doing so not only leaves you with a solid fana for your summons and yourself but you actually get pretty respectable damage out of it. Never actually did the math on that one but based on the plethora of items I tried on PTR, that yielded the best results.

Mind you, that was before they then changed the druid IAS calculations again so..no idea how well that still holds up.

(Didn't bother with any testing after that because pure summon ultimately worked out better)

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Basing the answer solely on the shift/summon hybrid testing I've done on the PTR:
Faith in a

Great Bow.

As a shifted druid, you can actually use a Faith bow as a melee weapon, oddly enough (doesn't need

Arrows either) and doing so not only leaves you with a solid fana for your summons and yourself but you actually get pretty respectable damage out of it. Never actually did the math on that one but based on the plethora of items I tried on PTR, that yielded the best results.

Mind you, that was before they then changed the druid IAS calculations again so..no idea how well that still holds up.

(Didn't bother with any testing after that because pure summon ultimately worked out better)

So basically if I already have a Beast then it works okay?

And what's the skill points for SS tree? WB,

Maul and SW get how many for each for an optimum distribution if skip

Raven?

Skills are obviously up to you. Bear, wolf, pure dmg, control..all a matter of preference.

Beast is solid for the aura but more often than not, the actual weapon dmg on it (and hence your dmg) is significantly lower than what you would get on a proper Faith. Plus you're missing the ITD/massive bonus AR. Though you do get a shield so you're basically just being defensive instead. Unless you happened to build a 2hand Beast which..is rare.

Just as a reminder by skipping

Raven in order to get some damage in yourself you are losing over 50% of your total summon damage output.

I understand you probably want something to do yourself while the summons attack but damage wise it’s so not worth it.

Do a „Hunter“ build and use a Faith Bow and just shoot some

Arrows to help out instead.

Thanks for the insights, I'll make some experiments then.

I just managed to trade for a jewel to put into my Summon Pelt.
This is how it will look like once the seasons ends.

Really nice blue

Antlers there.

Would a hybrid summon / SS WW work? Simply due to Oath

Eth

Feral Axe being very easy to make in early ladder I assume. Any

Eth

Feral Axe gets 4os from socket quest anyway.

It definitely works, the question is whether it's worth it.

Especially if you use Oath instead of Beast or Faith or the like, you're losing massive boosts to your summons, in addition to what you already lose there due to moving skills over to SS.

Basically, my response would remain the same as for necromancy above:
You can do it. If you do do it, try to aim for something like a Faith

Great Bow to still buff your summons. But no matter how you do it, it'll probably still perform worse than full summons (or become a solid shifter that just has then worthless summons there for the feel of it).

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

I just managed to trade for a jewel to put into my Summon Pelt.
This is how it will look like once the seasons ends.
unknown.png

What should it be to be a White or socketed gray base? Is +3 SS making it magic?

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

I just managed to trade for a jewel to put into my Summon Pelt.
This is how it will look like once the seasons ends.
unknown.png

What should it be to be a White or socketed gray base? Is +3 SS making it magic?

+3 Dire, Grizzly and ideally HoW White/gray to use as a RW base.

Or the same skills on a blue with +3 summon skills (which is a magic prefix) and of course ideally a nice suffix as well.

+3 (or any) Summoning Skills is an affix and can only be on magic and rare pelts.
A White base can only have individual skills and you want Grizzly, Dire Wolves and HoW (in that order) as ideal skills for a Summoner.

However the chances of finding one that actually has all those skills will be incredibly difficult (and expensive).

Personally if you don't have anything with at least +4 combined Grizzly and Dire Wolves I would not make Delirium in it.

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

+3 (or any) Summoning Skills is an affix and can only be on magic and rare pelts.
A White base can only have individual skills and you want Grizzly, Dire Wolves and HoW (in that order) as ideal skills for a Summoner.

However the chances of finding one that actually has all those skills will be incredibly difficult (and expensive).

Personally if you don't have anything with at least +4 combined Grizzly and Dire Wolves I would not make Delirium in it.

Thanks. I'm looking at every Druid pelt I ever see with all of my chars but so far I was just able to find some elemental skillers with 3 OS but not particularly useful. I guess summoner pelts are more rare. So for now stick to Jalal's.

I reached lvl 70 and with Beast, this build rocks. Of course, I play online and it's only P1 since I prefer solo game but anyways. Incredible. I'm planning to switch my merc from Insight to Pride and to solve mana issue I'm planning to go with

Solar Creeper. What would be your opinion about that? Mostly I'm in human form and if I decided to go with this I can even switch to

Shako but not sure yet since with Beast and Pride,

Maul can smash.

And another personal opinion about creeper and Spirit summons: It is incredible how stupid their AI and also incredible how Blizzard didn't solve this even if there's a solution in the game. Some monsters have these prevention motive and some of them even better when they have little HP. For example in CS there're these Fingermages. They just run away. Or Vampires. They can simply solve this annoying behavior but no. And how they stupid that they always tend to throw themselves into the fight. Annoying.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

I guess summoner pelts are more rare. So for now stick to Jalal's.

That's just RNG. Summon skills are just as likely/unlikely on pelts as elemental ones. In either case, getting a truly useful combination is insanely rare.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

I'm planning to switch my merc from Insight to Pride

Don't. Switch to an

Eth

The Reaper's Toll instead. Not only is it significantly cheaper than a Pride it also gives your summons much more of a dmg boost via decrep than Pride's conc gives them (while boosting overall survivability at the same time, again due to decrep). And it leaves your merc with very solid damage as opposed to Pride which reduces his own damage to just sad, sad levels.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

And another personal opinion about creeper and Spirit summons: It is incredible how stupid their AI and also incredible how Blizzard didn't solve this even if there's a solution in the game. Some monsters have these prevention motive and some of them even better when they have little HP. For example in CS there're these Fingermages. They just run away. Or Vampires. They can simply solve this annoying behavior but no. And how they stupid that they always tend to throw themselves into the fight. Annoying.

Agreed on the AI being just terrible but usually for the opposite reason. If they ran away at low life, it wouldn't help you much as a summoner because their dmg goes to 0..if they just died and you resummoned them, you'd lose a lot less. The main problem imo is that they keep running away/not going after targets all the time for no reason whatsoever other than bad AI. Like half or more of your summons tend to just stand around twiddling their paws, looking at your merc and maybe 1 or 2 other summons actually going after targets.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

That's just RNG. Summon skills are just as likely/unlikely on pelts as elemental ones. In either case, getting a truly useful combination is insanely rare.

Yeah, it's my luck I gues. 2 pelts with 3OS has skills 2

Volcano and 2

Tornado but no even near with summon skills.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Don't. Switch to an

Eth

The Reaper's Toll instead. Not only is it significantly cheaper than a Pride it also gives your summons much more of a dmg boost via decrep than Pride's conc gives them (while boosting overall survivability at the same time, again due to decrep). And it leaves your merc with very solid damage as opposed to Pride which reduces his own damage to just sad, sad levels.

I already have a Pride so I'll try and see. I don't have

Eth RT but a normal one and I can try that, too to see the difference.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Agreed on the AI being just terrible but usually for the opposite reason. If they ran away at low life, it wouldn't help you much as a summoner because their dmg goes to 0..if they just died and you resummoned them, you'd lose a lot less. The main problem imo is that they keep running away/not going after targets all the time for no reason whatsoever other than bad AI. Like half or more of your summons tend to just stand around twiddling their paws, looking at your merc and maybe 1 or 2 other summons actually going after targets.

No, actually I don't want them to run away. What I meant is that there's such AI management so they can easily solve this stupid behaviour but no, they won't.

Even a regular

The Reaper's Toll will beat at Pride by miles.
It has something to with how all the damage multipliers stack onto the base damage of the Summons which is different from the tooltip (that already includes Grizzly synergy).
In reality Pride only provides a laughable ~12% damage increase for the Summons (not including

Raven) while also neutering the damage of the merc itself.

You honestly should not have mana troubles as a Summoner unless you

Teleport a lot.

Solar Creeper is a QoL thing to restore mana when needed but it is way down the priority list and you should definitely max out everything else before considering getting it.

Thank you mates, got informed well thanks to you. Experimenting with Pride and later with RT.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

Thank you mates, got informed well thanks to you. Experimenting with Pride and later with RT.

Another option is good old Infinity.
Merc has 40% CB.

Conviction reduce 83 defense so more physical damage.
And also reduce 85 res so more damage for Spirit Wolf.