Fury Druid - Is Death as good as Breath of the Dying?

Hi

I'm using a Fury Druid (L82 with an Oath Ethereal

Feral Axe at the moment).
At first my end goal was to get an Ethereal Breath of the Dying (but at the moment I don't have base or a

Zod... )

Someone suggested me to use a Death instead of Breath of the Dying as it is cheaper and it would be almost as good (I don't have the base either yet... but have the runes )

As I started to compare both runewords and did some calculations with my Druid,
it seems to me that Death will actually be better than Breath of the Dying in my case
Am I missing something? Or are my thoughs rights?

Comparison:

* draw / close values / not relevant:

- Indestructible: Both give
- Mana Stolen: Both give
- Life Stolen: Only Breath of the Dying gives, but Fury Druid doesn't need it on equipment (thanks to

Feral Rage)
- Prevent Monster Heal: only Breath of the Dying has, but I do not have it now and I'm not missing it yet... anyway I may use something on the off-hand/inventory with Prevent Monster Heal or equip something with Open Wounds.
- 30 To All Attributes: For me at the moment damage has priority over the extra life.
- Bases: Breath of the Dying has more options, so may be easier to find one Ethereal, but I will probably find a Death Ethereal base before a

Zod anyway...
And about the damage/speed of the bases, Death may be done of a

Silver-Edged Axe which have the same average damage as

Great Poleaxe (and for the Druid the 2h axes are faster ) or a

Champion Axe if I want a faster one.

* Death wins:

- Total damage (it's the debatable one): They have similar "Enhanced Damage". Additionally Breath of the Dying has 60% Increased Attack Speed and 30 Strength, while Death has 40+% Deadly Strike which seems to have more effect in the end, at least with my equipment and skills (on my calculations a minimum roll Death does just a little less damage than a max roll Breath of the Dying, while an average roll Death superpass it)
- Attack Ratting: Death gives a little more.
- Crushing Blow: only Death have, and is very high
- Crowd Control: on paper at least, the

Glacial Spike On Attack, seem like a very good extra

* Breath of the Dying wins:

- Enhanced Damage: Breath of the Dying wins (buy not for much... and on "Total damage" Death wins )

Calculations:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/yh01vont

Ethereal

The Reaper's Toll for a well-rounded furydruid that can kill anything, incl. immunes without

Bone Break. Also ignore defense on non-champs for 95% hit chance. Against any enemy with physical resistance (most enemies in hell difficulty), reaper's toll has the highest damage output after

Decrepify trigger out of all the weapons below.

Ethereal Death 2h axe for up to 100% crit chance.

Decapitator/

Glorious Axe are the best 2h axe options. In the end you will reach the same speeds as with

Champion Axe/

Silver-Edged Axe. Use Death together with Metamorphosis buffs or not at all. Without it it comes out on top only against higher player count enemies and act bosses.

Ethereal Breath of the Dying

Archon Staff for tight damage spread or

Thunder Maul for swingy hits. For Fury consider the highest range addition as well.

Glorious Axe adds 3. All kick like a truck.

EDIT for endgame gear: Fortitude > Treachery on self; Pride over Reaper on merc (you will be outrunning him all the time, so the

Decrepify triggers from him are unreliable.) You could get an act V barbarian with double Lawbringer for better

Decrepify procs + quick movement. Definitely a fine option.

Thanks for the tips
(still don't have runes for Pride and Fortitude )

About Act 5 x Act 2 merc for

Decrepify trigger, I found both very unreliable...
(If I didn't have

Bone Break, I would probably use

The Reaper's Toll or Lawbringer on the off-hand instead of depend on my merc)

Just to clarify, at the moment I'm not really using

The Reaper's Toll on Act 2 for the

Decrepify proc, its just that for now it is my higher damage Polearm that is "free" and thanks to the Life Steal on it, my Merc if free to choose a

Helm/Armor without any Life Steal

I've been playing with this build for a bit. I've been using BoTD on an

Eth

Giant Thresher. It's super-fast without any additional IAS and has the longest reach in the game. I was running

Bone Break +

Atma's for the Amplify proc for immunes and Drac's for

Life Tap to deal with skeletons / mobs that don't allow life leech.

I was thinking about going the Death route. The

Poison Nova proc is pretty much useless in hell and the chance to freeze enemies for crowd control with

Glacial Spike is super nice.

I also adopted your Obedience strategy since I found CTA to be both annoying to keep up, as when you break were form you drop the Feral buff and not much benefit from a damage / survivability standpoint. I figure higher AR = more consistent hits = more consistent damage and procs!

Queegon wrote: 6 months ago

Ethereal

The Reaper's Toll for a well-rounded furydruid that can kill anything, incl. immunes without

Bone Break. Also ignore defense on non-champs for 95% hit chance. Against any enemy with physical resistance (most enemies in hell difficulty), reaper's toll has the highest damage output after

Decrepify trigger out of all the weapons below.

Ethereal Death 2h axe for up to 100% crit chance.

Decapitator/

Glorious Axe are the best 2h axe options. In the end you will reach the same speeds as with

Champion Axe/

Silver-Edged Axe. Use Death together with Metamorphosis buffs or not at all. Without it it comes out on top only against higher player count enemies and act bosses.

Ethereal Breath of the Dying

Archon Staff for tight damage spread or

Thunder Maul for swingy hits. For Fury consider the highest range addition as well.

Glorious Axe adds 3. All kick like a truck.

EDIT for endgame gear: Fortitude > Treachery on self; Pride over Reaper on merc (you will be outrunning him all the time, so the

Decrepify triggers from him are unreliable.) You could get an act V barbarian with double Lawbringer for better

Decrepify procs + quick movement. Definitely a fine option.

This is super interesting; I threw on my non-

Eth reapers toll and started playing with it. 33% proc is nice and it happens on nearly every mob. I need to play with it some more.

I was playing with the Act 3 Merc for a bit to see if just running him for

Enchant would be worthwhile.

I'm about to drop Pride on my Act 2 Might Merc and go ham. Still working on the Runes / base for that tho!

@Queegon any thoughts on Pride base? Does it really matter? The damage on the merc isn't really worthwhile if it's running Pride anyway, right?

I had Pride on my merc for my physical bowa, I hated it, it does 0 damage, merc died constantly.
Is Grief not a good option too? Mega damage and ITD for mobs, -target defense for bosses.
You can even put it on a

Phase Blade, and allow a shield since they fixed druid blocking right?
Disclaimer, I did a ton of Fury/elemental druids so I almost always did that for the shield, never did a pure Fury.

Fellstar wrote: 6 months ago

@Queegon any thoughts on Pride base? Does it really matter? The damage on the merc isn't really worthwhile if it's running Pride anyway, right?

Doesn't matter all that much with the caveat that merc will be dealing crappy damage, so leeching will be low. With that in mind, scrap the idea of

Andariel's Visage and give them

Vampire Gaze. Either of Fortitude/

Shaftstop for armor is fine.

Either of these is perfect at 0% IAS:

Great Poleaxe,

Mancatcher,

Giant Thresher,

Stygian Pike,

Ghost Spear.

Ghost Spear and

Stygian Pike are super cheap bases to get while being exactly the same as

Great Poleaxe in damage (just with different spread) and on par with

Mancatcher and the much more expensive

Giant Thresher (different speeds but same DPS overall).

Stygian Pike has an extra benefit of always getting 4 sockets from

Larzuk, so it's easy to get a superior base on an otherwise no-ED Pride.
My personal favorite for that reason.

or.houster wrote: 6 months ago

I had Pride on my merc for my physical bowa, I hated it, it does 0 damage, merc died constantly.
Is Grief not a good option too? Mega damage and ITD for mobs, -target defense for bosses.
You can even put it on a

Phase Blade, and allow a shield since they fixed druid blocking right?
Disclaimer, I did a ton of Fury/elemental druids so I almost always did that for the shield, never did a pure Fury.

For 1h weapon, yes, I think Grief does the higher damage in general.

But if you can/want to use a 2h weapon, you get the higher damage using an ethereal weapon with a huge enhanced damage.

And for the Druid l, some 2h weapons (

Axe, Maces and Polearm) are faster than other weapons (even 1h). That's why most Fury Druid guides recommend a 2h weapon instead of 1h weapon + shield.

About Pride merc, in the case o Fury (and other melee builds), I think the merc will not die too easy, because you will be in the front taking most of the hits... (and also the Druid has a lot o summons too)