Summon Druid Endgame Guide

4 or less you'd be looking for a conquest or similar. Phase is just mweh for anything that isn't a Grief.
I never switch out gear based on party. But yeah, if one does that it'd be a fair point. Though Pride would still blow.


On a semi-related note, I'm actually a little impressed:

Yeah was super easy.

I just did the first 3 portals of Ubers with the lvl 85 Druid and crap gear on PTR.
Don't think I can actually do the last portal with that gear especially considering how bad my resist are.

I have the new charts according to my calculations with current

Raven damage numbers from PTR. As you can see the total numbers show that it is very close between

Ravenlore and Jala's Mane.

But

1. Actual

Raven dps will be significantly lower because of monster block and natural misses.
2.

Ravenlore provides a whole lot more other useful stats compared to

Ravenlore (strength, FHR, more res, shapeshifting skills

Also there is this:
The numbers from column E have +5 Summoning Skills from

Helm and Amulet (Jala's + blue 3 summon amu).
You can use these to simulate that you have a Mara's and a +3 Summoning Pelt (same +5 skills from those two slots).
And now compare those numbers to column F and they already beat that.
What this means is that a simple magic +3 Summoning Pelt already beats

Ravenlore and it doesn't even to have extra stats.

Has any of you every tried a Delirium

Helm?
I think I'd give it a shot if I find a good base.

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

1. Actual

Raven dps will be significantly lower because of monster block and natural misses.

your numbers for ravens seem off a bit

Finally i found other summon druids =)
Thats my build https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/fi0106im

Alibaba is the main hand for 380% MF
"Summon" Set is for presummoning in town
"Grind" is for grind afterwards

Testing new PTR right now anyone got a save for single summon druid i can tweak? =)

The tooltip numbers are not dps.
That's just the damage per hit per

Raven.
I explained how I calculated the dps in the chart.

DPS: (avg tooltip damage * 5 * 25) / (39 * 0,95)

5 is the amount of

Raven
0.95 is the modifier for physical resist of Diablo including

Decrepify
25 is the game fps
39 is the attack frames of the

Raven
so 25/39 is basically the calculation for dps

And this calculation still does not include misses and block chance of the target (which is included for all the other summons and merc).


For your MF build you probably want to combine your Ali Baba with a Rhyme shield. I don't see the purpose of the

Spirit Ward.

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

For your MF build you probably want to combine your Ali Baba with a Rhyme shield. I don't see the purpose of the

Spirit Ward.

i just like that it makes my Druid go transparent and some resist isn't hurting =) thought about isted

Monarch but i seems like 380 of 500 MF isn't that big of a difference
Also no CTA because it's to much of a haste and it's not like i am dying without HP bonus
Same reason for no Beast (tried it, didn't feel like it helped much, i would rather do runs that are 5% slower but with 150% more MF
i can squize some more HP or DPS, but

Baal runs are under 3 minutes anyways and i am not even using potions usually

with PTR changes probably have to reconsider things

P.S. i wonder if any people playing other classes have extensive excel sheets of calculations for DPS. Because I definitely have them too

As you can see from my numbers Beast is so much better than Hoto.
Especially if you prebuff in town and then switch equip anyway (I don't do that).

I'm happy running with ~140mf and have no need to increase that further. Might get additional 25 if I find a good Delirium base.

CtA is effectivly only 1 skill point less than Hoto (CtA gives +1 from the buff and has +1 on it). If anything I'd drop the Hoto and not the CtA.

I usually just use Maxroll dps calculations for my char.
The only reason I made this sheet is to compare different setup with each other and post the results here.

Hoto gives higher HoW lvl and total dps in case it dies and it needs to be resummoned (again less of a hastle)
also i play with controller (don't have much spare buttons for 2 more skills from CTA =) ) on a TV so there's that
so i guess different people prefer different playstyles sometimes =)
here's ancients, but video is quite old

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

Yeah was super easy.

I just did the first 3 portals of Ubers with the lvl 85 Druid and crap gear on PTR.
Don't think I can actually do the last portal with that gear especially considering how bad my resist are.

Challenge accepted!
Since PTR druids are stuck at 85, I didn't bother maxing ravens yet and went with Jalal's accordingly.
Also noticed that especially for Ubers, Beast really is a solid middle-of-the-road choice. The

Fanaticism speed is fairly required. But Faith hurts too much in terms of mana and res.

The main problem is that none of the pets have any real crushing blow or open wounds to counter regen for that matter.

Izual and

Lilith are fine regardless. But

Duriel and especially Meph and

Baal just out-regen what your pets can do.

Solved that by replacing my merc's fort with a Duress. So he ended up with

Cham'd

Crown,

Shael'd reaper's and Duress.

With that, only

Duriel and

Baal ended up still being annoying.

Duriel because of that stupid bug where a merc doesn't attack him 99% of the time meaning neither crushing nor decrep nor open wounds was applied to him (good luck outdpsing that regen with just pets..).

And

Baal because of his stupid phys + cold immune adds. Once he stacks up too many of them, it becomes nearly impossible to keep pets on

Baal himself, forcing you to basically restart over and over until you get more lucky with placement. Not using ravens actually improves the odds against

Baal (unless the positioning plays out just right) because the adds that spawn next to him tend to get decrep right away and can then be taken down by pets before you get overrun (or before they lead your pets off again). Ravens jump in to blind them though, removing the decrep instantly and making them immune against everything again.

You can use a

Guillaume's Face for your Merc to do Ubers.
That gives him access to Crushing Blow.

You can also attack yourself in Bear form with the Beast which also applies the Open Wounds.

Attack myself? As a summoner?
Blasphemy!

Gulli would work for more crushing, true. But that'd be even less leech for him. Duress was sufficient for it either way. When he did attack that is..

Well glad it worked out for you.
I actually never did Ubers myself with any char but maybe I'll have to give it a try when the patch goes live.

Probably need to get some more lighting resist gear first too though.

Also I did try out a Delirium Pelt (+3 Grizzly +3 Dire Wolves) in single player on PTR.
Here's my findings:

-

Raven don't get synergy bonus from the extra staffmod skills (someone mentioned that

Raven actually don't get any synergy bonus from soft skills).
- I don't have max resist anymore even with really good charms trying to compensate for the loss from

Jalal's Mane.
- I'm losing a FHR breakpoint in both

Werebear and Human form
- The strength loss is also noticable. I need more points in strength to wear my Enigma and

Aegis (could switch our the latter for a

Monarch).
- I'm losing ~250 life in Bear Form, Human form stays pretty much the same. This is a result of less vitality (need more strength), -2 Shapeshifting (

Jalal's Mane) and +2

Battle Orders (Delirium)
- Grizzly gains 765 dps (+11.5%)
- Dire Wolves gain 813 dps (+11.5%)
- Spirit Wolves gain 143 dps (+5.3%)

It's technically possibly to also roll Heart of the Wolverine in addition to Grizzly and Dire Wolves which would increase the damage even further (also benefits the merc) but a base like that is pretty much impossible to find.

Since my resist are still all >50 even after losing the all res from

Jalal's Mane I think I will switch it out if I can find a good base for Delirium.
The damage gain seems worth the downsides.

Delirium is a brilliant concept. Until you get hit and proc that 1% chance of sitting around doing nothing useful until it finally wears off again. That just kills it for me.

Sure, it is significantly less terrible for a summoner but even then, no re-summoning, no tele-stomping, ... just gets way too annoying for me, even if it would be better in theory.

You don't need much res for ubers btw (there's something I never thought I'd say..). Even on Meph, my Zoo just soaked up everything. I was sitting at 15-50 res for everything and got by just fine.


Figured I'd make Ubers my new test bed, seeing how it does work now. And it is by far the 'closest call' so any benefit or lack thereof shows immediately. After a few more runs (now that I know what to do/not do as a druid) and a good bit more experimentation..I actually went back to HotO. Jalal's + HotO that is. Simply put, when things are easy, the difference is hardly noticable anyways (be that Beast, Faith or whatever). When things get tough however, so when things actually die, you very quickly get into having to re-summon your pets over and over. With Beast/Faith, you never want to switch over for that because you lose way too much aura uptime. So you're down quite a few skill points on the re-summon which not only pretty much removes the dmg bonus but it also results in those new summons having less life, leading to even more re-summons. With HotO on the other hand, you can re-summon all you want, always keep the full benefit of what it is and even have time to switch over and BO your re-summons because you don't have to worry about losing an aura in the meantime, yet again helping significantly with the re-summon rate. Jalal's gets priority over

Raven simply due to Ravens having that stupid blind, making them unwanted for certain fights so as not to override decrep and because the extra summons levels do help with summon life and hence re-summoning.

Baal remains the hardest (slowest..) to kill so he tends to make those differences blatantly obvious.

Sticking with Duress on the merc for previously stated reasons. Tried attacking myself with Beast to get OW up and whatnot but that not only makes everything significantly more dangerous for yourself but it also takes away from re-summon time and thanks to horrid AR, doesn't even work reliably to keep OW up.

Also gave Wrath a shot (at least we do get an elite 4s bow base). Ended up disappointed tbh (not just for Ubers but in general). The big plus is that she shoots while teleporting so on occasion, you have decrep up before you even really get to your targets. After that though, not only is her AI still horrid and she stops shooting half the time, trying to get to just the right distance, but the

Life Tap interferes with decrep too often on top of that, leading to even further reduced decrep uptime. Add the crap dmg of an A1 merc (even more so with Wrath) and the lack of might on top of that and it just isn't even close.


Edit:
I stand corrected, you can actually re-summon while in Delirium. Stupidly fast at that, due to low AF breakpoints. Was that always like that or is that a side effect of the "more stuff while in bear/wolf form" changes?
Either way, no tele-stomping though so still not worth it imo.

Got a bit bored today so I figured I'd add some real-world numbers to all of the theorycrafting here and do a bunch of dia runs.

- Druid is in top-end gear, opting for Jalal's and Mara's (Jalal's for the reasons previously stated).
- Merc is using reaper's and Duress (Duress also for the reasons previously stated).
- Did 25 runs each, using HotO, Beast and Faith.
- Due to the lvl limitation on PTR, the runs slightly favored Beast and Faith due to Ravens not being maxed (i.e. the aura applied to a larger proportional share of the total dmg than it would with max ravens).
- Due to the crap PTR gear only offering a non-

Eth reaper's, the runs equally slightly favored HotO as the aura effect on the Merc wasn't as much as it would be with a solid weapon.
- I dare say the two points above probably roughly equal out.
- All pets were re-summoned right before dia to avoid complications from prior curses or near Death. Dires got a fresh enrage off the corpses still lying around.

Across all of those runs, the average time to kill for Diablo (first hit to last hit) was as follows..
HotO: 4.954 seconds
Beast: 4.820 seconds
Faith: 4.517 seconds

Putting that into perspective with Faith being the top choice (in terms of DPS), Beast would be about 93.7% and HotO about 91.2% of that same DPS.
Naturally, that's not an infinite sample size..but it felt consistent enough to stop there (plus I slowly went mad).

The difference between Faith and Beast is very much in line with what my spreadsheet's already told me. HotO performed a good bit better by comparison but that makes sense, considering the shift from fort to Duress which in turn results in a slight overall shift to ravens and hence away from aura impact.

Ignoring the kill times/raw DPS, I dare say I'll stick to my previous bottom line: overall, HotO is the way to go. Especially with Duress over Fort, the difference in raw dmg becomes minimal but the overall runs with HotO were not only less annoying (because apparently, even that measly 15% max mana makes a significant difference there) but a fair bit quicker all in all, due to the extra frame in teleporting speed. That alone more than makes up for the minimal difference in damage.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Delirium is a brilliant concept. Until you get hit and proc that 1% chance of sitting around doing nothing useful until it finally wears off again. That just kills it for me.

Just for info you can cancel that proc as a Druid.
If it procs while you are in Bear/Wolf form it will automatically transform you into human and you can switch back right into Bear/Wolf.
If it procs while you are human you will be transformed into a

Fetish but if you then try to transform into Bear you will go back to human immediately.

Duress on merc might speed up boss kills due to Crushing Blow but I think it slows you down on everything else because you lose so much raw damage.
I'll keep my Fortitude but for Uber running (if you are into that) it surely is a great option.

I get your point with Hoto when having to recast your summons a lot when they die.
But outside of Ubers and they usually don't die for me so there is no need to re-summon, except for the

Raven when they run out of hits and maybe occasionally HoW.
There is no denying though that it is a good weapon and a whole lot cheaper than Beast.
Getting 100 FCR for quicker

Teleport and more resist surely helps too. I still think it's vastly inferior in regards to damage though.

And I'm not going into specific equip for Ubers because I don't run them and lack experience for that.

Also for which fights specifically do you not want to use

Raven?
Yes the blind can theoretically overwrite

Decrepify however act bosses like Diablo and

Baal can't be blinded so the Drecrepify won't fall off.

I don't specifically equip for anything, unless the entire char is built specifically for that one thing. My druid is one of two all-rounders though, mainly because there just isn't anything he does better than other specialized characters (even with all of the buffs).

Plus I've never been a fan of switching stuff out all the time. So I don't want to get into "switch in Duress for this, fort for that, hoto for this, Beast/Faith for that" and so on. I prefer to just have that one ideal (for my playstyle mind you) all-round set. And while I dare say Duress over Fort won't even make a significant difference on trash mobs because they usually tend to die right away with either one*, I am well aware of the fact that an all-rounder will never be quite as min-maxed as he would be if he were to be built out for say pure Chaos running (in which case I, too, would stick with Fort).

Ravens basically slow you down on anything that is phys immune and not a boss. Technically, on Stone skin as well, but that's only a fairly minor slow-down so nevermind that.

Über Baal is the perfect example because his phys immune adds stack up too much with ravens up but he isn't the only example. The phys immune

Frenzy ox thingies (the name of whom I keep forgetting) in the A5 cavern areas for example get beyond annoying with them, too.

Gotta admit, I did not know about the Delirium-cancel. That does make it a lot better. Albeit still something that'd annoy me too much tbh. Plus in the particular case of a summoner, the other procs get too annoying as well because they, too, would override your merc's decrep.

Look what I just got my hands on ... The jewel is a 9 strength + 30 light res.

Going to use this until I can either get a +3 Grizzly and +3 Dire Wolves Delirium pelt or a +3 Summoning Skills magic pelt with +3 Grizzly and +3 Dire Wolves.

Nice one.

I randomly stumbled over a perfect Jalal's yesterday. That'll have to do.