In depth druid questions.

Hi all. Here are some questions i have regarding the druid and his abilities to summon.

1 - If i use

Carrion Wind ring to summon the level 21

Poison Creeper, may i also summon another Vine from my skill tree? (either Carrion or Solar)?

The question spans from the fact that while you can summon the entire middle tree, only the bear really has any value late game. So i'm thinking in my next run trying something different.

2 - This reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2 ... uid_vines/

States that while wearing

Spirit Keeper you can summon 2 spirits at the same time? Is that true? And if it is does that allow 2 spirits from the

Wisp Projector ring to be summoned at the same time? <--- EDIT: PD2 thread, not relevant to d2r sorry

3 - Say you build up a bear or wolf with 81 or 82 points in Shape Shifting, you get 2 of whichever spells + one transformation +

Lycanthropy maxed. Where else would you put the remining of your points? You could get another lvl 20 spell by level 90 or so but i am just at a loss here what to go for.

Bear?
One of the creeper?
One of the Spirit?

Hunger?

Rabbies is completely useless if not build fully poison, same for fire claw if not build fully fire.

I feel like a single spell from elemental would be completely worthless due to no synergies at all.

Bachelier wrote: 1 day ago

1 - If i use

Carrion Wind ring to summon the level 21

Poison Creeper, may i also summon another Vine from my skill tree? (either Carrion or Solar)?

The question spans from the fact that while you can summon the entire middle tree, only the bear really has any value late game. So i'm thinking in my next run trying something different.

You can only have one vine at a time. Also I feel like you're overlooking

Raven. A fully synergized level 40+

Raven can hit for almost 4k damage.

Bachelier wrote: 1 day ago

2 - This reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2 ... uid_vines/

States that while wearing

Spirit Keeper you can summon 2 spirits at the same time? Is that true? And if it is does that allow 2 spirits from the

Wisp Projector ring to be summoned at the same time?

You can only have one spirit at a time. The thread you're referencing is for Project Diablo 2, a modded version of the original D2:LoD, it has nothing to do with D2R. Sorry

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 day ago

You can only have one vine at a time. Also I feel like you're overlooking

Raven. A fully synergized level 40+

Raven can hit for almost 4k damage.

Only one vine even from charges just feels silly. It feels like a penalty. Thank you for confirming.

Regarding

Raven, i am aware that the spell can be good late game, but it requires a massive 80 points investment, since

Raven is the only one of the four middle-tree summons that takes only base skill into account for synergies, while the three other ones do take the + skills (it's a unique feature to the summon druid). That makes

Raven truly only good if you go full summon, which with my experience i would recommend not to do.

In my experience, Summon druid is the weakest of all druid builds. I would also argue it's one of the weakest 'straightfoward' build in the game and usually kind of a trap for newcommers who ends up investing time in it for them to realize maxed summons can barely scratch mobs in hell.

What i usually do is 1 point in the four main summons and one in

Oak Sage for requirements, and only play the bear, because with some +skills (anni + torch + wtv) you get those 5 spells at level 7/8 which grants 2k hp to the bear so he doesn't instadie. He can't kill anything but he has enough survivability to be there for maybe half a Sanctuary run.

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 day ago

You can only have one spirit at a time. The thread you're referencing is for Project Diablo 2, a modded version of the original D2:LoD, it has nothing to do with D2R. Sorry

I completely missed that. This has been happening more than i expect, i'm not paying attention enough to PD2 posts online and i get confused from it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Bachelier wrote: 1 day ago

Regarding

Raven, i am aware that the spell can be good late game, but it requires a massive 80 points investment, since

Raven is the only one of the four middle-tree summons that takes only base skill into account for synergies, while the three other ones do take the + skills (it's a unique feature to the summon druid). That makes

Raven truly only good if you go full summon, which with my experience i would recommend not to do.

In my experience, Summon druid is the weakest of all druid builds. I would also argue it's one of the weakest 'straightfoward' build in the game and usually kind of a trap for newcommers who ends up investing time in it for them to realize maxed summons can barely scratch mobs in hell.

What i usually do is 1 point in the four main summons and one in

Oak Sage for requirements, and only play the bear, because with some +skills (anni + torch + wtv) you get those 5 spells at level 7/8 which grants 2k hp to the bear so he doesn't instadie. He can't kill anything but he has enough survivability to be there for maybe half a Sanctuary run.

Yeah, fair, it seems you have put some thought into this I don't have enough experience with summoner Druids to offer much advice (besides some technicalities of the skills )

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 day ago

Yeah, fair, it seems you have put some thought into this I don't have enough experience with summoner Druids to offer much advice (besides some technicalities of the skills )

Yeah i'm always overthinking it. This will be like my 6 ladder run on d2r with a druid. I've tried all straightforward builds and i would argue full summon and cold elemental are completely worthless.

Tornado is a terrible spell.

Arctic Blast is the worst spell in the game.

Hurricane barely deals damages even with full synergy.

Poison is also terrible. Going Rabbies with

Poison Creeper underdelivers completely, even with enemy poison res reduction. The only build that works for poison in the entire game is

Poison Dagger necro with a way to trigger Venom to abuse of the bug, with a build focused on reducing enemy poison res (trang head/gloves/

Belt) and the

Lower Resist curse.

But the Shapeshifting builds are incredibly strong and fun. By very far the tankiest builds in the game due to Lycantrophy. Physical Fire Elemental is also very strong, very similar to fire sorceress in damage output but both physical and fire (fire spells also hit regular damages, little known fact) and because the druid can have

Ravenlore he has de facto a better

Helm than Flickering Flame for playing fire, in which you can drop in a facet.

Fire elemental druid also has better melee capacilities than sorc (albeit no

Enchant other than

Demon Limb or Obedience). Phoenix shield can also be weild with a Phoenix weapon giving you unbelievably high reduce enemy fire res (for a price )

Fire claw works completely too. Very straightforward but you get 1 spell versus the 5 fire spells.

But now im gonna run shapeshift again and i'm at a loss what to invest my points into passed the 82 points in shapeshift. By level 90 i could have another spell level 20 but i am unsure where to go.

Creepers are garbage but the mana sustain of

Solar Creeper is better than most other skills.
All summons are bad other than the bear.
Spirits get one shotted, completely useless compared to auras.

Cyclone Armor barely blocks over 200 dmg without the synergies. Almost useless.

Hunger? While i ran shapeshift several times i never went with

Hunger but it might be a way to recover mana easily in case i don't have mana leech.

I'm just at a loss.

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 day ago

Yeah, fair, it seems you have put some thought into this I don't have enough experience with summoner Druids to offer much advice (besides some technicalities of the skills )

Actually sorry for double posting but you might know this.

If i do put points into Rabbies will the level 21

Poison Creeper from

Carrion Wind get the synergies?

That would probably be the best option.

Bachelier wrote: 1 day ago

If i do put points into Rabbies will the level 21

Poison Creeper from

Carrion Wind get the synergies?

Yes! Skill casts via charges on items (as well cast via CtC procs on items, and auras granted by items) do benefit from synergies.

For what its worth, Summon druids went from a meme build in 1.x to extremely solid (and very difficult to kill) in 2.4.

To answer your original question, on my Lycanthropes I tend to put 1 point each into

Raven,

Summon Spirit Wolf,

Summon Dire Wolf,

Summon Grizzly,

Poison Creeper, and

Carrion Vine After +skills, the Ravens toss around the occasional blind while the mammals soak up hits.

Carrion Vine's life returned value is massive in the current state of the game and is a great QoL option to keep the huge Life pool of your average shapeshifter topped off. I typically put however many remaining points I can muster into Heart of the Wolverine. Hit harder, hit more often. Simple enough.

With that said, though there is something to be said for

Oak Sage. The combination of heavy investment into

Lycanthropy and

Oak Sage can leave your Life so high that basically no enemies have an attack that can deal enough to put you into hit recovery.

Aelanwyr wrote: 13 hours ago

For what its worth, Summon druids went from a meme build in 1.x to extremely solid (and very difficult to kill) in 2.4.

To answer your original question, on my Lycanthropes I tend to put 1 point each into

Raven,

Summon Spirit Wolf,

Summon Dire Wolf,

Summon Grizzly,

Poison Creeper, and

Carrion Vine After +skills, the Ravens toss around the occasional blind while the mammals soak up hits.

Carrion Vine's life returned value is massive in the current state of the game and is a great QoL option to keep the huge Life pool of your average shapeshifter topped off. I typically put however many remaining points I can muster into Heart of the Wolverine. Hit harder, hit more often. Simple enough.

With that said, though there is something to be said for

Oak Sage. The combination of heavy investment into

Lycanthropy and

Oak Sage can leave your Life so high that basically no enemies have an attack that can deal enough to put you into hit recovery.

How much survivability does lvl 20

Oak Sage has? It could be the best option, but if it gets oneshot by anything it's trash.

I wouldn't mind

Oak Sage and suggest going for HotW.

Melee is on hard disadvantage (for years now...), and damage is your best friend. Always. Dead monsters can't hurt you. By the way, with a CtA you are ending up with 4k life or more, this is quite comfortable.

Werewolf has several safety nets available. High FRW (running speed is the defense #1), High IAS, leech,

Carrion Vine, Minions and hopefully a merc with some source of

Decrepify.

Oak Sage is a 1 pt wonder for caster builds.