Hurricane Druid

Hello Ladies & Gentlemen,

Figured I’d author a review of the Hurricane variant of the ‘ Tornado’ Druid. I heard about this and ended up following the guide listed here a couple months ago: https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/tornado-hurricane-druid

I had prior experience with the traditional version of the Tornado build. My favorite aspect was the quality of life. Literally able to go AFK within a dense mob of enemies without fear of dying due to the inherent ‘protective’ nature of skill: Hurricane. I want to first list off the primary negative aspects of going all-in on this. Not to deter others who haven’t tried the build, but they are certainly challenges.

• Not efficient for clearing higher than players count = 3

• Not easy to stack Magic Find

• Not easy to stack all resistances

• Cannot hit that sweet breakpoint of 163

In terms of the benefits, as I remarked the quality of life is excellent. Additional points below.

• With Hurricane as your ‘primary’ damage dealer, Tornado is inherently less important and one can merely cast at ‘random’ versus requiring much (if any) skill

• Multiple elemental damages open all zones in the game which I feel is vastly underrated

• No this isn’t as fast as a standard Hammerdin Paladin, but the difference feels somewhat marginal (low players count). I liken it to Hammeridin due to the radius of Hurricane and the telestomping gameplay.

• Minus Enigma which I view as table stakes, there is a way to do this without insane resources. Though the range is extremely wide on this topic (perfectly rolled gear + GG jewelry for example).

The gear I have chosen:

• Doom in a Berserker Axe

• Nightwing's Veil with Rainbow Facet: Cold Death

• Crafted Amulet

• 35% FCR Spirit in Monarch

• Tri-res rare Boots

• Arachnid Mesh

• Enigma

• Trang-Oul's Claws

• Rare rings with FCR and resistances

• Perfect Cold Rupture

• Elemental GC’s

• Hellfire Torch

• Annihilus

• Resistance SC’s

I use a Call To Arms on swap and my mercenary has a standard setup with: Fortitude, Andariel's Visage & Infinity in a Mancatcher.

In conclusion, I really recommend folks give it a try sometime if they haven’t already. If you have played the standard Tornado Druid and it wasn’t for you, then avoid. Otherwise it’s a very relaxing playstyle that compliments my OCD given how comprehensive the Hurricane skill is at clearing everything around me. Happy to answer some questions if anyone has them or hear some critical takes. I am playing solo offline so any further optimization will take some time (still painfully rolling for a crafted 2/20 amulet). Lastly, I think he looks really cool.

Thanks for sharing.
I'm surprised you are aiming for a 2/20. The next BP you can hit is 99 and with a 35 fcr Spirit you only need 4 or 14 (with only one fcr ring) on your amu. So you can use any crafted Caster Amulet.

Why did you opt for a Berserker Axe? Wouldn't a weapon with lower requirements be better?

vued wrote: 11 months ago

Thanks for sharing.
I'm surprised you are aiming for a 2/20. The next BP you can hit is 99 and with a 35 fcr Spirit you only need 4 or 14 (with only one fcr ring) on your amu. So you can use any crafted Caster Amulet.

Why did you opt for a Berserker Axe? Wouldn't a weapon with lower requirements be better?

I reached the 99 BP already but I want a 2/20 to potentially leverage The Stone of Jordan or Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band. Good question re: Berserker Axe. I want to potentially use it for a Barb build one day, again solo self-found so can't waste good runes!

A quick question, since the focus is on Hurricane for main damage dealer, how affective is that compare to ei: auradin?

In P1 in act 4/5, would you say it takes about the same amount of seconds before the mobs surround the druid to drop compare to auradin?

If the Hurricane damage and as potent as auradin aura ticks, i might consider building one for lazy farming for fun

ghostpos wrote: 11 months ago

vued wrote: 11 months ago

Thanks for sharing.
I'm surprised you are aiming for a 2/20. The next BP you can hit is 99 and with a 35 fcr Spirit you only need 4 or 14 (with only one fcr ring) on your amu. So you can use any crafted Caster Amulet.

Why did you opt for a Berserker Axe? Wouldn't a weapon with lower requirements be better?

I reached the 99 BP already but I want a 2/20 to potentially leverage The Stone of Jordan or Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band. Good question re: Berserker Axe. I want to potentially use it for a Barb build one day, again solo self-found so can't waste good runes!

With a 2/20, SoJ and BK, you will be at 95, not 99. That's my whole point. 20fcr is not needed in any druid build. 18 for 163 BP, 0/4/9/14/19 for 99 BP. If you use Spirit, arach, trang gloves, you need 24 from your jewelry.

Yeah I just want more options on the ring slots, you're math is correct and I realize there isn't a lot to gain here @vued. I also kind of want to play around with ditching the Nightwing's Veil in favor of a 2/20 Circlet for some additional optionality but that may result in too steep a cost on the damage side.

@d2rppa69 Never played an auradin before so can't comment on the comparison. I will say if you're only on P1, Hurricane slaps. It's extremely efficient running say, Chaos Sanctuary.

I built a very similar build for the first time the other week. Have gone with Magefist and Insight merc so I don't need to worry about mana. Hosted a Baal run and ran 30 games and was one of the safest throne room tele char I can remember and the 99fcr tele is nice and smooth.

Can't clear the waves P8 solo so fortunately there was a DPS char there to do that side of the job. The Hurricane and Holy Freeze chilling the waves is great, only had hydras 1 game out of the 30.

Have also found it great at countess and arcane Key farming, have been struggling on nihlithak though.

I wish there was a way to make Hurricane viable while using Fissure/ Firestorm. I think it would be neat. Also, Armageddon is loud and annoying.

I think will not have enough points to make Fissure/ Firestorm relevant (or Hurricane for a fire druid...)
Unless you do not maximize Cyclone Armor

The point is that maximizing Hurricane you end up maximizing Tornado too...
(similar to Amazon that maximizing Lightning Fury will maximize Charged Strike and Lightning Strike too...)

justinman114 wrote: 11 months ago

I wish there was a way to make Hurricane viable while using Fissure/ Firestorm. I think it would be neat. Also, Armageddon is loud and annoying.

yep, it's fire or Wind. other makes no sense because of synergies.

Yeah I know, it would just be cool to have both. I suppose in P1 you could make it work without maxing Cyclone Armor (and just spam it every 12 seconds or whatever), but you'd still have unmaxed Fissure, etc.

Yeah, the Cold Druid finally got some recognition (my childhood's fav build) and significance. Even if you go fully into the Cold and not mix it with Wind, it's still very fun to play with. Ofc it's not on Cold Sorc', Javazon's or Hammerdin's level, but it's still quite powerful on low players count (< 3) and can still kill stuff even on players 8 (not be completely useless). However, in comparison to you, I was using CoH instead of Enigma (with double SoJs I think or at least 1 + res ring) and was slapping everything throughout Normal and Nightmare with that phenomenal Arctic Blast (yes, you read it right the Arctic Blast!!) -- which is actually quite good and fun and different when you have it maxed. Even on Hell it's not completely useless and that build is also quite safe (everything is soooo slooow around you)!

There's even a full playthrough of MrLlama if you are interested on this old post: forums/cold-druid-t1486150.html

Anyways, I guess something like half Fire half Cold could work as well, because Fire is already absolutely amazing and Cold could bring that bit of diversity -- I can personally see a play of dual Druid on the road to lvl 75. I'm always happy to see when someone's using Hurricane, just because it's very underrated/underused skill and it's dearly close to me!

Very interesting regarding Arctic Blast and the Cold Druid more broadly. Thanks for sharing! @TheDoo

justinman114 wrote: 11 months ago

Yeah I know, it would just be cool to have both. I suppose in P1 you could make it work without maxing Cyclone Armor (and just spam it every 12 seconds or whatever), but you'd still have unmaxed Fissure, etc.

You dont really need the Cyclone Armor other than one level if you want to use the points elsewhere. Its not a must no matter which difficulty you play in the endgame because you get so many levels to it just by taking 1.
Ofc if you are HC player, then it would make sense to max it out aswell I suppose.

I Def wanna try the Arctic Blast piece of info!

here is what i use, which isnt that different than the meta build, but it works well!

Main Skills Maxed:
Hurricane
Tornado
Twister
Cyclone Armor
QUESTION: Should i dump the remaining into Artctic Blast and try that? or just go with Oak Sage?

Gear:
Nightwing's Veil - 5/5 Cold Rainbow Facet QUESTION: I have a 2/20fcr/20FRW Circlet with 1 Socket in it.... should i use this instead to open up some options for other gear and still reach the FCR bp of 99? i could add an additional SOJ or use Mara's Kaleidoscope.... or even use a Pheonix Shield in place of the Spirit Monarch for Redemption Aura....
Enigma
Doom Berserker Axe (For Value incase i ever want to Sell or use on Barbarian)
Arachnid Mesh
35FCR Spirit Monarch
Tri Res Rare Boots
2/15 Caster Amulet
Trang-Oul's Claws
Call To Arms and Spirit Monarch on switch
FCR Rare Ring
Stone of Jordan

Cold Sunder Charm and then the usual charms

Functions extremely well in solo play.

Merc is using Infinity.

But im def about to try that Arctic Blast idea. He does well even with only 1 point in Oak Sage

@Scellis24 Super similar to my build. Glad to see others give it a try! That's what I want to explore myself, that is using a Circlet versus Nightwing's Veil. I need to actually find a nice Circlet first though =(. I am still annoyed it's not possible to hit 163 BP but it is what it is.

ghostpos wrote: 11 months ago

@Scellis24 Super similar to my build. Glad to see others give it a try! That's what I want to explore myself, that is using a Circlet versus Nightwing's Veil. I need to actually find a nice Circlet first though =(. I am still annoyed it's not possible to hit 163 BP but it is what it is.

Agreed on the BP. Although i think there is a way, you would just have to sacrfice things that arent worth it.... like Enigma/ Teleport, to go with something like Viperskin of the Magi or even Fortitude. You would also have to ditch the Doom and go with something like Heart of the Oak. Which again, kinda not worth it.

Hoto - 40
Circlet - 20
Ammy - 20
Spirit - 35
Magefist - 20
Rings - 20
Arachnids - 20

Is 175 fcr and you can still wear Enigma. So can swap out a ring or get a lower ammy and still be 163 fcr with Teleport

ghostpos wrote: 11 months ago

@Scellis24 Super similar to my build. Glad to see others give it a try! That's what I want to explore myself, that is using a Circlet versus Nightwing's Veil. I need to actually find a nice Circlet first though =(. I am still annoyed it's not possible to hit 163 BP but it is what it is.

I'd rather go down to 68FCR bp (trang+arach+2/18+1xring) and wear a 20/20 shield to further boost Hurricane dmg (at 163 you basically destroy your cold dmg by losing Doom and become a regular nado druid).

or stay 99FCR with a trang+arach+2/19+2xring+3ele20fcr2sock/faceted/ setup using a 20/20 shield:)

Ignorant question incoming. What is a 20/20 shield?