Fire Bear -- discuss with me

It got me thinking about a Fire Bear build... Was definitely thinking about maximizing fire output as much as I can, so I went to Maxroll and slapped some of the best gear I currently have/can make (important note: on things I didn't craft yet [like some RWs] I put all min. rolls stuff can get). I also tried mixing some things up, like use

Scourge as a base and

Berserker Axe as well for weapon, also tried some other gloves +

Belt +

Boots combo to achieve that lowest possible attack frames with max

Maul: Skill stacks (another note: those are stacks I can currently have, although those will still change as I level him up) and still retain a decent amount of all res, LL, and other bonuses (like for example DR% or CB), yet this setup as weird as it is remained the best (at least visually). This is the final result:

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/t901khos
It kills

Baal in 12.29 sec

Alternatively regarding skills and equipment I could go for max

Maul: Skill instead of

Werebear, and put rest of points into

Werebear (I think 3, total 4) and thus completely free up gloves and

Boots slots and "only" lose like about 1-2k DPS in the process. This means I could slap something like

Gore Rider and craft some

Blood Gloves (even without IAS on them is still fine) in hope I get a bit of cold res that way to balance things up.

Less budget way is to completely give up on

Holy Fire/Dragon build and go absolutely bonkers with standard-ish Grief (PB) + CoH/Forti (AP) + Phoenix (

Monarch) = almost double gains on DPS and aprox. 7.2-7.4 sec for killing

Baal. This also resolves my all res problem(s) quite a bit, which opens up opportunity to add 2 more skillers + some life/AR/FHR small charms.

Taking into account I would probably go for Faith/Mist bow + Forti on Act 1 Fire Merc (or Infinity + Forti on Act 2

Blessed Aim/HF Merc alt.), but that's too expensive atm for me, soooo if a more budget setup like this could work that would be much cooler (or rather say hotter ). Your opinions, suggestions, alternatives and experiences are what I'm asking for in this post!

Sounds like a fun build! You could gain about 1300 life by putting one point in

Lycanthropy but you may have just missed that.

Neonspark wrote: 6 months ago

Sounds like a fun build! You could gain about 1300 life by putting one point in

Lycanthropy but you may have just missed that.

Yeah I saw I missed that, it also means I lose on about 9 minutes of bear form... It's easily fixable, I put on Grief and Spirit with CoH I borrowed from another character just to see how he's running and almost grind up a whole lvl 83 with it in 30-ish minutes. xd Will definitely put 1 into

Lycanthropy on first level up since I totally forgot about that (also thanks for reminding me)!

This reminds me a bit of dbrunski's apocalypse build:

The major difference is that a druid can synergize

Volcano and

Molten Boulder from Destruction, but your build can't synergize or enhance

Holy Fire like a pally or sorc can

I think both builds look like a lot of fun, though

I play mostly HC so that life is big... For softcore it is mostly QOL if you can survive regardless, and obviously the duration is huge QOL like you said.

marl71 wrote: 6 months ago

This reminds me a bit of dbrunski's apocalypse build:

The major difference is that a druid can synergize

Volcano and

Molten Boulder from Destruction, but your build can't synergize or enhance

Holy Fire like a pally or sorc can

I think both builds look like a lot of fun, though

The ramp up of those

Volcano's looks awesome haha. It's so unfortunate you'd have to spend more than an Enigma just for that weapon though. Q_Q

I'd suggest dropping Dragon since you've got no Mastery/synergies for it, and instead using

Armageddon for the AoE. I had a ton of fun with that build.

I've invested quite a fair bit in the gear: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/f4014hg3 , but you can use non-perfect rainbowfacets in the weapon for a more budget version.

Goggen wrote: 6 months ago

I'd suggest dropping Dragon since you've got no Mastery/synergies for it, and instead using

Armageddon for the AoE. I had a ton of fun with that build.

I've invested quite a fair bit in the gear: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/f4014hg3 , but you can use non-perfect rainbowfacets in the weapon for a more budget version.

Yeah, I see the AoE variant being better, well for the AoE part, but I intentionally wanted it to be in a bear form nevertheless... Made some adjustments to your suggestion and this looks dope!
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/a1016h1t
Killing DClone for example in a bit more than 11 secs is very nice.

Thanks for everyone's input, be free to add more thoughts for sure!

Even tho it's quite expensive now I'm thinking of actually making 2 separate Fire SS builds, one probably being an Apocalypse Woofy and other one just plain single-target oriented

Fire Claws/

Maul: Skill Bear. And then on top of that I also need to remake a classic Fury-physical Wolf. This is too much, too much I say (I only started playing SS Druids like 6-ish months ago and now you give me all of these eye candies)!!!

Neonspark wrote: 6 months ago

I play mostly HC so that life is big... For softcore it is mostly QOL if you can survive regardless, and obviously the duration is huge QOL like you said.

The ramp up of those

Volcano's looks awesome haha. It's so unfortunate you'd have to spend more than an Enigma just for that weapon though. Q_Q

Then check this one out (built on Goggen's suggestion):
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/q4016hkt

You can always change a weapon a bit, knock off a couple of points on lesser Metamorphosis base (like me, I got my Meta from that huge Shadow's giveaway because I don't really play ladder), and use a non-perfect anni+torch+charms. Everything else is pretty easily achievable/getable. And since you play HC mostly, sitting on almost 6k (or in more budget option probably around 4.5-5k HP) is godly!