Sad Polar Bear (new "on paper" idea - help me improve it)

I had a new idea for yet another off-meta hybrid... I'm presenting you -- welp it's already in the title...the Sad Polar Bear. If you are thinking why sad? -He is a polar bear who's blue all the time! Hehe
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/9bh440ln
EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to put changed/improved version of it, my bad folks! Here it is: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/6k7nm013
ALT (special order for Double Dream lovers even tho differences are negligible): https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/x97od01i

Think this would classify as mega-safety build or at least a try at it... You are sitting comfortably on 4.6k life with everything being super slowed around you!

Charge is a must for moving around quickly tho.

Stats:
-Enough STR for the gear
-Enough DEX for max block (does block even work with SS form??)
-Everything else into VIT

Gear is not perfect, I just put values on stuff I think I can either make, is easily obtainable or I already have... Besides obviously that, how would YOU improve it?

The base idea is for him to SS into bear and then use

Holy Freeze as his main thing in any way possible. Deliberately avoided pre-SS into bear and then using something else just to avoid annoyance of juggling Beast, swap CtA and another weapon which would be main (maybe Doom? with some other skills combo) and then swap them around to SS every 5 minutes.

With current setup, he still kills Hell

Baal in 11 sec (not OP but still more than fine or rather said viable) well that is on players 1 (duuuh ). Do you think Metamorphosis would help more? Maybe changing out something else? I was thinking about alternative too, and that would probably revolve around self Doom +

Conviction solution with Act 1 Faith Merc. BUT, and this is a big but, I think that would probably negatively affect the actual dmg output not to mention it's waaaay more expansive plus I'm kinda fed up with Act 1 Merc to be completely honest (been using her a lot in general).
Another thing would be putting a Beast on swap, lowering some total HP and using some big bada-bing-bada-boom dmg stick as a main weapon to maximize raw dmg. Is it worth it loosing

Fanaticism and dropping frames? I have absolutely no idea!

What's the idea behind 20 pts in

Blessed Aim?

You're not using it as you're using

Holy Freeze yourself. You shouldn't need it anyways since your merc's Infinity will take care of most of enemies' defense. And even if you did need it, you actually have a

Blessed Aim merc already granting it anyways.
So...the only "use" I see for those 20 pts is to buff your lvl 1

Blessed Hammer?! I kinda doubt that's a real consideration.

If you wanted you could change it to a barb, put on wolf

Howl, dual beasts on swap for best possible SS, then use two dooms for level 24

Holy Freeze with a whooping -120 en res…

Holy, that might work

Edit: nah, it won’t work, I checked the damage, still too low

Schnorki wrote: 10 months ago

What's the idea behind 20 pts in

Blessed Aim?

You're not using it as you're using

Holy Freeze yourself. You shouldn't need it anyways since your merc's Infinity will take care of most of enemies' defense. And even if you did need it, you actually have a

Blessed Aim merc already granting it anyways.
So...the only "use" I see for those 20 pts is to buff your lvl 1

Blessed Hammer?! I kinda doubt that's a real consideration.

Naaah just to spend them somewhat useful (since there is a lot of unused/not needed points anyway),

Blessed Aim grants a passive bonus to AR (not that big of a deal). Alt. those points could go to res fire and res light to push max res a bit higher.

I actually was thinking of putting more points into

Holy Shield and dropping all the DEX not needed and pumping life even more. And why Arachnid and stuff instead of some maybe better melee gear (like

String of Ears for example) just because of those +skills that helps [longer] SS!

Nate2.0 wrote: 10 months ago

If you wanted you could change it to a barb, put on wolf

Howl, dual beasts on swap for best possible SS, then use two dooms for level 24

Holy Freeze with a whooping -120 en res…

Holy, that might work

Edit: nah, it won’t work, I checked the damage, still too low

Yeah I checked that too before and I don't think it would work either, unfortunately. I also planned to do that on a physical

Wolfhowl Barb with Death +

Stormshield, but the dps on

Baal is around 15k (in comparison to this one it's significantly lower) with a lot more CB and DS tho but still feels weak (at least for a Barb). I dunno, that experiment will have to wait for a while.

P.S. I think those 2 might end up being "offline tryouts" because there I have all the material (runes) to mix and test different stuff as I please, I just need to find me some decent bases and that's it. Also a big chunk of "why" would I do that in SP is so I can pump the players count and see if they are even viable on like p3 or neigh.

TheDoo wrote: 10 months ago

[..]
Naaah just to spend them somewhat useful (since there is a lot of unused/not needed points anyway),

Blessed Aim grants a passive bonus to AR (not that big of a deal).
[..]

Unless that's changed, the passive AR is only applicable when active BA AR isn't being granted by you or to you by anything else. So as long as your merc hits you with BA, the passive AR shouldn't actually be working, meaning those points are indeed not doing anything.

Holy Shield and/or

Defiance to then further buff

Holy Shield would likely offer you quite a bit more all in all.

Schnorki wrote: 10 months ago

TheDoo wrote: 10 months ago

[..]
Naaah just to spend them somewhat useful (since there is a lot of unused/not needed points anyway),

Blessed Aim grants a passive bonus to AR (not that big of a deal).
[..]

Unless that's changed, the passive AR is only applicable when active BA AR isn't being granted by you or to you by anything else. So as long as your merc hits you with BA, the passive AR shouldn't actually be working, meaning those points are indeed not doing anything.

Holy Shield and/or

Defiance to then further buff

Holy Shield would likely offer you quite a bit more all in all.

Riiiight, I kinda forgot about Merc's BA whooopsie! xd Well I guess I'll be moving those points after all... Thanks! Or I guess we can argue if some other Merc type is better/more suited there? I would maybe go for Might one and have a bit more physical dmg boosted on top of the main cold or even go for like

Prayer (even tho Merc's using Infinity instead of Insight).

Another thing I'm wondering (I need to roll those numbers on maxroll and see) if it's worth changing out HoZ for something like

Head Hunter's Glory with 3x cold Facets? That would mean I'd drop a lot in cold res tho, which I don't embrace... Brrrr

DIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDER

Edit: I just tested it +block % chances breakpoints are on 3 hardpoints, then 7, then 10 and finally at 14... So the actual difference between [again talking about hard points with current +skills] lvl 1

Holy Shield and lvl 20

Holy Shield is neglectable 4% ending up on 37% which is basically half of max and IMHO spending 80-ish points in DEX yields max block which is far more effective. However difference in defense if I transfer all points from BA (and continue using BA Merc) to Defience is 7,300 to 13,700 (and then to 17k+ with Bear form) which is significant.

Now something I totally forgot about is a fact I won't be able to move around with

Charge when in Bear form which makes things easier for me (I think at least) in deciding on how I want SS to work -- I need an actual real-time response to see how annoying would be to SS and un-SS when I have to run and maybe only use it for longer distances as well as definitely using nothing else than Beast as main weapon of choice.

Still, I would love to see/read about suggestions, something you think can make it better. Also how would you fix the issue of low res if I was to switch from HoZ to faceted

Head Hunter's Glory and/or CoH to 4os faceted armor?

I'll add my 5 cents:
No matter what the build is - shifter hates block. Really. Especially bear.
Much better if you stack high %fhr instead, or useful procs/mods on takin hit. That means having min possible dex and block chance, even if you use shield. With one like

Medusa's Gaze you actually want to get scratched - for LR procs (armag bear).

Block can get you effectively staggered instead of counteracting, especially if you stand in the thick of it. This may end bad, and is annoyin af even if you survive well.

So my advice is: dr%, res, absorb, fhr, ias, frw - whatever, BUT block.

Asha wrote: 9 months ago

I'll add my 5 cents:
No matter what the build is - shifter hates block. Really. Especially bear.
Much better if you stack high %fhr instead, or useful procs/mods on takin hit. That means having min possible dex and block chance, even if you use shield. With one like

Medusa's Gaze you actually want to get scratched - for LR procs (armag bear).

Block can get you effectively staggered instead of counteracting, especially if you stand in the thick of it. This may end bad, and is annoyin af even if you survive well.

So my advice is: dr%, res, absorb, fhr, ias, frw - whatever, BUT block.

This is very interesting and timely as I'm about to make some type of melee druid, not sure what. I had no idea the wolf/bear doesn't like block. I suppose it would be a good idea to use a 2-hander with that build.

I love this sad polar bear build as it's quite different and unique. The gear is interesting as well, I think this could work. Building a pally for something other than block is probably a fun way to go as it focuses you on all the other defensive stats.

@here I edited in the update/current version of it, sorry in advance I thought I already changed the link. Whooopsie

Asha wrote: 9 months ago

With one like

Medusa's Gaze you actually want to get scratched - for LR procs (armag bear).

With Medusa's I feel like he'll have a huge problem in the all res department which is already questionable aspect of this build to begin with and I don't even know if LR procs work while under different form? And you can't even fix the res problem due to fact you need to put an IAS jewel in shield anyway for the 88 bp and on top of that you lose +skills which is essential part of this cold-based build because as someone already mentioned in one other post cold is mostly used for cc and not for raw dmg.
If I drop more skillers to balance res with already low chance to even proc LR (in case it works) you don't get much improve in DPS if at all, just avoid the annoyance of block. Personally, don't think it's worth it but we'll see -- he is ready with everything except Beast, I still need to find a proper base for it.

Think I didn't see any post about shifter Paladin so I kinda wanted to "mash" other rarely used things with it, like for example,

Holy Freeze. However, being as it is -- yes it's gonna suffer a lot from bad blocking thing and it lacks some serious life leech but I don't think those are fixable parts (well I guess instead of Mara's it could have some LL amu and if rolled well better LL gloves) but that's pretty much it.