phiuh, there it is. so, what do you guys think. The story may not be all that good, but I'm sure it can be worked on. And help me with a name. Fallen satanist is not really that cool. Did some editing back there...
-background: A very few selected ones were aoptedd by the prime evils. They sold their souls and served evil with demonic powers granted from the trade. However, in fear of their very own powers, the prime evils had sealed boundries in their minds and souls to prevent them from becoming too strong. Long they served as toys and helpers for the three, but by their defeat, some of the souls were retrieved. Once again they were men, but their minds were consumed and troubled. They lusted for power and revenge, and by the destruction the worldstone, their seals collapsed. These mystic men with powers unknown to themselves and others now rage against the hells to learn, to have their revenge, an most important of all, to become more mighty than any other man.
-Personality: confused, selfconsumed, psyciotic, short tempered and troubled. Laughs at death and is not afraid of it. As he fights against evil, he is partially accepted by mankind as they unite against the common enemy. But even though he is accepted, he has no wish to do mankind any good and he is much dislike. His own winnings are all that matters. He is a lone wolf. The paladin especially dislikes him. He doesent care at all. Raw and dry sence of humour is his style.
Looks: He is a tall, skinny guy, and he is rather dark of appearence. His body is full of scrapemarks, scars and burnmarks. May or may not be floating/hoovering above the ground and may or may not have horns/wings/burning footsteps/unholy aura/etc. Does not have hair. Empty, unfocused eyes. Wears a dark cloak like the dark wanderer or a dark armor like in fable or WOW bloodelves. Weapon: Wands and staves and scepters of some sorts
Combat abilities: Very offensive and fragile char with lots of grotesque mage-like skills. Not many party friendly skills. Short range spells mostly. The most mana dependent of all the classes. Has some anti-demon skills. Most of his attacks are of a strange element, so imunities is not a big problem. Some spells are extraourdinary powerfull, but comes with a cating delay. Though he might sound like he is stronger than any other char, he is not. The game should offcourse be balanced. As he is not really familiar with his own powers and they still havent been completely unlocked, he is just a regular day-to-day hero.
Skills:
-Inner demon: A lvl 1 skill increasing mana and passivly synergise the demons aura.
-Call forth demon: lvl 30 skill. Calls forth a great demon with massive dmg, semi massive ammounts of life, physical immunity, and a party friendly aura. The demon is fast moving and can fend very well on its own. Its powers are also very dependent on the max amount of mana are capable of having (base mana). Like the blood golem, it is linked to your mana and can heal/destroy your mana bar. If you are killed, the demon will not be banished, but fight on against the monsters. It will also turn against you and your party members. To summon a new demon, you must kill of this one or convert it. Convert is a boilt-in skill like "normal attack", "unsummon", "throw weapon" etc. You must be at rather close range, and after you cast the convertion, the demon will once again be lojal to you and your freids in one minute. If the demon dies when lojal to you, half of your life is smashed.
-Demon annihilation: Splatters enemies like corpse explosion, but this one triggers only against demons and they must be alive. The splat itself can effect other monsters, but only demons can be splattered. At lvl 1, 1 demon is splattered, at lvl 7:2, lvl 16: 3, Lvl 25: 4. Only normal/minions can be triggered, and which demons that splatters is random. The splat deals 70-90% of the demons remaining (not max) life to other demons and 30-40% to other monsters. 8 sec casting delay at lvl 1, 2 sec casting delay at lvl 24. Area is the same as that of a meteor. Skill achieved at clvl 24.
-Soul wound: A spell that slowly kills an enemy. Very slowly. max duration is 30 sec before it wears of. Will not likely kill greater enemies. However, during this period, the enemy will be unable to attack and fill some of the mana for you. The demon can be killed at any time. Max 3 enemies can be afected at one time.
Demonic blast: Hurls long chains of fire and lightning in random semi-patterns around the screen. A mix between the druids twister and the sorceress's inferno. The skill in it self is rather powerfull, but has no synergies. A Favourite for builds who wants to fucus in more than one thing, like the sorc's frozen orb.
Projectile collectors: Small spirits flying around you (like hurricane). What they do is to collect projectiles fired at you and deal them to opponents when you get close enough. This means that if you are a little careful you can blow off 50 attacks occasionally, and the skill also acts like a shield. It has a rather short radius; a little smaller than that of the druid’s hurricane. When it all spirits have collected their projectiles, there no more shield. Each spirit gives 1 % chance to collect. Lvl 1: 10 spirits Lvl 10: 20 Lvl 20: 30 Lvl 40: 50 Reduced effectivity in PvP perhaps.
Demon link: links the forthcalled demon to your life as well. But not like the bloodgolem. This only makes the demon take some of your dmg. Applies to all sorts of dmg but poison. If your demon is hurt by this link, you will however not loose your mana from the other link. confusing? At lvl 25, about 85 percent of the dmg taken goes to the demon. If you heal yourself with a potion, the demon is healed as well.
Reveng's bloodlust: A buff spell that can be used on yourself and all your party members. Adds dmg against demons, reduces resistances of demons and increases movement speed (calculated seperatly from increased run/walk on items).
Body revitalisation: Passive skill. Massive health regeneration. Very massive. You must be killed off quickly to die. Affects only you.
Long range of short range mage spells: Yeah, u know what I mean.
druids and necros for me. I really think they have a lot of interresting builds, especially for SP. And they are the only "outcasts" among the charecters. Few likes the necromancers relations with dead powers and many feel uncomfy with the druids shapeshifting.
Just found that I would post one of my old guides for diablo2 for no particular reason.
I played this charecter all the way through the game in single player, and it is a fun and unique experience as well as challenging. A good read for those with special interests. It is also a headturner online:D
The Disaster Master the 1.10 PvM elemental druid’s guide to succes, fun and overpower. (version 2) Introduction I am known as bruthor, and this guide is a resoult of eternities of playing different classes/subclasses. When I am writing this, few have ever heard of me, but I’ve been around for a looong time, playing, and reding forums, guides and more. It is PvM based and makes it safe and easy to kill every enemy in the game except for fire/physical imune who will fall after some struggle. It is far from impossible to beat them, but most of us just say “Run Forrest, run!” I like guide that do not say “Do that and that,” and have tried to make this one like “You CAN do that, but should consider that, and maybe even something else.” It will cower items, but is not depandent. The guide provides: -success (ALL cleared without being hammerdinJ) -survivebility in all ways (monsters must get past MANY dangers before they reach you. -killingpower -versatality (no really big weaknesses) -cover of untwinked and rich gameplay and can possibly be used for hardcore -all this in singleplayer -a short PvP description (not what its made for, though) -encouraging for creativity (make your own unique) -some very usefull links spread around -All you need to know to make one. But what is a Disaster Master? The disaster master is named from his many skills that you will be using. All of them can be active at once, and with auras, moulten boulders, volcano, armageddon, hurrycane, cyclone armor, twisters and minions you are nothing but a walking disaster. With all these skills, he must aim for the higher levels and + skills on equipement, but the charecter can be finished anytime… His main protection will be minions and block, but most important off all – monster hit recovery and low speed! To really call yourself a Disaster Master you should also use a Doom axe. You will rain death and destruction upon your foes like no other, and where you enter, there will be a great mess. Therefore I dare claiming that a high level disaster master has the most spetacular in-game look! Unlike a fire/summoner druid, he will focus in many skills for protection and destruction, not mainly wolves and fire. His best defence is offence. The Disaster Master is great at all the focuses of the guide, but I would never claim that it’s the best. It still has all you need and can be great fun. Since I am a man of nature and a lone wolf, I have not got many insane items, but I`ll mention a few. Some may say; “Why not make a stun build instead?” Well, stunners are not as versatile and damage dealing. Besides, stun is hard to use against unique monsters and don’t work against act end bosses. Another says; “You will never get that high on levels” Well, maybe not, but level 85 is easily achived, and with skills from quests you will only be about 10 short. These are not needed to be succsessfull, only to have undefeatable minions. Read on and it will all make sence. Definations on druid builds: Wind druid: Max all wind spells and rest in summoning. You know this one. Fire druid: Max fire spells and little/no summons. Close to disaster master. Shifter: Any druid that use were-forms or switch between human and were. Armageddon-bear/wolf: Shifted and using high level armageddon. Stunner: Any build using stun for safety. DM uses hit lock and slow. Summoner: Mainly depends on minions for everything. Many sub classes. Fire/summoner: This is close, but not a disaster master. He use fire, often volcano, for killing from a safe distance, and have high life summons as meat shields. Disaster Master: Does use mainly fire skills too. BUT. He also take use of wind skills. He does not use high level summons except maybe at the end. His summons are treated like fellow party members, not your meat-shields. You will be fighting next to them, and they serve mostly as another source of distraction. Distraction. That is what a Disaster Master is. Massive distraction, confusion, chaos, and slow and struggling around you. Still, you are the only source, and in the middle of the disaster, your foes will never get the opportunety to hit you. He will, if possible use Doom for weapon if possible. The druids elemental skills are nature catastrophies, and you my friend will try becoming DoomsDay itstself. How does monster hit recovery work: I’m not sure. Some say it is size dependant. Some say it is occuring if 1/12 of monsters life is whiped away in one blow like in PvP. Someone should write a gude on this topic, but this one cover enough already. How does slow multiple slow effects work? I know that they DO add together in some way, and I’ve seen the resoults. It rocks. This is a big topic and needs a long explanation. Again, someone should write a guide. Try search some necro mancer forums. Stats The stats are not really what is going to crush your character, but all guides must have the next four sentences: Strength: Enough to wear your gear Dexterity: Enough for max block Vitality: Rest goes here Energy: Base I strongly recommend to plan out your gear before pumping your strength to high. You have absolutely no use of the 1% damage bonus per level except for maybe level 1-5. Maybe you like earthshaker, but I advise you not to get it. Dexterity can be discussed. Some recommend no block becouse of block-lock, but I can tell you that blocking can be your best friend. Also some would say 75% chance to block with storm shield is to stat point intensive and recommend 50%. However, out of 100 swings, the 1. would be hit by 25 and the second by 50, wich means the last points in dexterity doubles the effect. Some weapons requires dexterity as well, but not many. Most likely you will be using a axe (low requirement) or a mace (no requirement). Vitality is a no brainer- the more life the better ( a redused effect from healing potions, but still better. Try a vitabear with insane life and you will understand. Super healing for druid means only 320 hp recovered) Energy is a very tempting stat early on, but later it is useless to you. Be strong. Skills These are what makes a Disaster Master, and to make the build shine, the skill progression will be very important as well. Read the awsome Primal Flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers on fire skills. Elemental skills: Your arsenal. This will be the most pumped skill tree. Volcano: 20 points- The main killing skill of this druid. In my opinion it is awsome. Read the primal flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers. I would like to comment some things though. Unlike many fire skills, it don’t require you to be in the fray playing punching bag style. It kills stationary targets and damages those around. Most enemies become stationary targets if they have a volcano shooting balls of rock and magma up their butt every second frame. The spread radius is great, but few mention the radius of the volcano itself. It does not only destroy a stationary target standing in the middle of the volcano, but every enemy only slightly touching the outer edge of the volcano is hit by every ball. This makes it a devastating skill to multiple hit-locked targets instead of a single target destroyer like many think. I think that each ball to has a small splash radius too, at least they hit enemies that only being slightly touched. Each ball also is piercing meaning they can hit every monster standing on the top of it, and have a chance of hitting others. (This is information I researched myself. If anyone knows something else, bring it on) A dream calculation that never will take place in reality would be: Screen filled with enemies without resistance. Your synergized volcano deals about 1500 total damage after some + skills. Every ball (75 balls in six seconds according to primal flame guide)hits 6 enemies when fired off and 3 on impact (9 enemies total each ball total). This gives us: 75 balls*1500 damage*9 hits=1012500 damage The casting delay of volcano is 4 seconds. Volcano duration is six. That means 2 of 6 seconds damage is doubled (this is not complitely correct. I don’t know if volcano duration is when the volcano dissapears or when the last ball hits the ground. Casting duration and eventually faster cast rate should also be consedered, but I do it simple) This gives us: 1012500 damage+((1012500 damage/6 seconds)*2 for double damage duration*2 again for the double damage)=1687500 damage over six seconds Are you still hanging in there=) ??? Damage per second: 1687500/six seconds=281250 damage per second. Insane numbers, huh, but seriosly, it is not going to happen. Volcano is far from the fastest killer out there,but the best we’ve got. Please let me know if I have made any mistakes in the calculation or said something incorrect about the skill. Moulten boulder: 20 points- This is a great safety skill and exellent for low levels. The main purpose would be synergising volcano, but it is the best you have for your left qlick, and it will prove usefull. It is the only skill that adds to physical damage for volcano, so I recommand 20 points if possible. Cyclone armor: 10-20 points- This skill will protect you against elemental damage, wich is what you are most likely to be hit by. At level 20 with one point in each synergy and +10 to all skills it absorbs 469 elemental damage (fire, cold and/or lightning). This is considerably much and may save your life once in a while. It has no “damaged status look” like the necro’s bone armor. That means it can have only one point of absorb left without showing it. Make sure to recast it all the time. The main purpose off the skill is hurrycane duration. Hurrycane: 1 point- I will just mention the tiny damage you will recieve. About 150 damage per second. But this skill was the only thing I loved about my wind druids. For a wind druid it kills. For us, it is a lovely litlle holy freeze aura giving every monster within range hit recovery and chill status every second (I will add info about all chill effects later). Chill slows monsters by (not sure yet) percent. It also stack with holy freeze which slows enemies by 50 percent at level 12. This means that by equipping a Doom runeword axe your enemies will move, strike and recover from hit (not sure yet)% of what they normally would. Doom also has +2 skills! All this from a doom runeword and 10-20 not wasted points in elemental shield. Armageddon: 1-20 points- This is a skill that I personally hate. It rearly hits, has short radius, but looks awesome. It still does scary damage with some + skills and may save your life if it hits something close to you, eighter it kills it or gives it a hit recovery. You must have points in fissure in order to make have good use of it. This is synergy to volcano’s fire damage which is worth considering. Can of course whipe out everything that is not fire imune itself. I use it mainly for protection against close enemies giving them hits. If you like the skill and want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway. Fissure: 10-20 points- Another skill I don’t like. Some recommend to use it as killing skill, but I find that volcano rocks this on in all ways. Still it is one of the keys of your build. It synergizes your volcanos fire damage and adds to armageddon duration. I prefer having this one equal at skill levels to Cyclone armor or maybe one or to lower (before + skills). Hurrycane is much more important as protection than Armageddon. Therefore I can recast my armageddon and than my hurrycane when armageddon wears off. Hurrycane remains active all the time this way. Arctic blast, Tornado, Twister and Firestorm: 1 point each- Exept for maybe level 1 twister for stun and multi hit at fast rate between each volcano, these are only prerequisutes and minor synergies. Twister can be used as left click along with moulten boulder. It stuns for 0,4 seconds, does tinywiny damage and shoots 3 minor tornadoes in random directions about 45 degrees forward. With no faster cast rate, you can fire 4 twister waves between each volcano. This means a total of 1,6 seconds stun. This really helps a lot if you do not have summons to be resummoned. This is a spamming spell without casting delays. This means you will NOT have to wait extra between each volcano as if you fired a moulten boulder. Shape Shifting: Nothing. There are armageddon bear guides elsewhere. Summoning: After all the protection I have told you about now, there is one thing still missing. Meat shields. With lots of + skills these can be very powerfull and are used mainly for protection. I recommend you to read Lothric’s summoning guide for additional information(http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=575). Number off points here must be placed when you feel that you need it. There are lots of time to recast between each volcano. If you are hardcore, definitely place more points here. The reason I would rather use Doom than Heart of the oak weapon is that you already have the summoning skills here. Party is always great! Raven: one point- With lots of + skills it can be usefull for distraction, and no matter how low the damage is, it can give a monster a hit recovery status. The blind effekt is a curse similar to dim vision. They peck out the eyes of your pour foes. This is both good and bad. The curse is only working if you/your party is not close or already spotted. If monster is hit, than blind will work again even if you were spotted in the first place. The bad thing about ravens is that they need heavy recasting and blind goes over other more usefull curses. Poison creeper: 0-1 point- this is useless except for the very start of the game, but if you want carrion vine or solar creeper go ahead. Carrion vine: 0-1 point- At level 15 it heals 10% of max hit points. At level 10 it heals 9%. At level 15 it restores your red ball complitetly with 10 corpses. It removes corpses along with wolves and is usefull. It goes down whithin one or two hits or so, but monsters tend to miss it for some reason. Besides one hit on your vine means one less at you or your party. It heals only you. I did not bother using it. Solar creeper: 0-1 point- The same as Carrion vine, but it restores mana. I find it useless except for getting rid of corpses. It was never worth three skill points to me, but it is your choice. Oak sage: 1-20 points- It really helps out your whole party, but you are short on skills. It is probably the best skill in the game for mercenery protection. Your mercenery also helps your party out and cost a lot of money. I find myself only getting hit if my party members start dying, and it helps a lot. As many points as you can spare. If you want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway. Spirit wolf: 1 point- If you like it you can use it, but it is not my favorite minion. The passive bonus is also transferred to your other wolves/bear even with + skills and not only actually spent skill points. Dire wolf: 1-20 points- With enough + skills one point may be enough. How many to put here is all based on personal preferrance. Place points as you feel like are needed, and don’t consider any to be wasted. Dire wolves is limited to three wolves at a time. More than enough for crowd control (wich will not be a big issue) and they are what makes your minions tanks. They also get a icrease of 50% damage if they eat a corpse. Their damage is not what you want, but about 350 every hit at level 20 with + 10 to all skills and one point in grizzly is not too bad. After eating a corpse, damage will be about 525. Times three wolves they do 1575 while enraged. Not that bad? Life will be about 1000 each wolf. Grizzly: 1 point- At level 1 with + 10 skills and 20 points in dire wolf, grizzly will have about 6000 life before Oak sage aura. You don’t need more than that for boss slaying and the ancients. He also has some combat skills. You just use him for other purposes than crowds. Heart of Wolverine and Spirit of Barbs: 0 points- I find them useless, but some of you may want them for versatality and party damage. I recommend 0 points. My suggestion for level 99 (111 skill points): Dire wolves-20 Grizzly-1 Heart of the Oak-2 Moulten boulder-20 Fissure- 20 Volcano-20 Armageddon-1 Hurrycane-1 Cyclone armor-20 Rest-prerequisites The questions are what skills NEEDS to be maxed. Some could probably be at ~15 to increase others. The one I doubt the most is if you should max wolves, armageddon or oak at the end. The suggested setup worked for me. Mercenary: The last part of your party is your mercenary. I recommend act 2 normal mercenery. He is always close, deals great damage and can take quite a beating along with everyone else close to him. Give him a Reapers Toll weapon. Descriphy will break physical imunity and slow monsters by 50%. Now, imagine that along with hurrycane and holy freeze. Yeah baby. Infinity would also work great if you are ladder. Conviction lowers fire resistance after a wand with Lower resist has broken the fire imunity. Or phoenix would keep him alive and deling damage. If you do not use doom yourself, then do like Halciet. I will refer to Halciet’s great concentrate barbarian guide for the rest of his gear: Outfitting Your Merc: Anything with big defense is a plus, and you should try and make sure everything he’s wearing is ethereal, since his gear doesn’t get damaged. He’ll need some life leech from something, but other than that, it’s up to you. Vampire Gaze and Shaftstop are nice for the pdr and leech. Crown of Thieves is very nice as well, and an “Honor” weapon is a powerful, east-to-make weapon for earlier in the game. I’d definitely try and get the runes for “Doom,” just because that will make the merc much more powerful and useful. For the super rich, “Chains of Honor” is a nice choice for body armor, with the +2 skills (which will boost his aura) and life leech, and “Delirium” Rune Word is an incredible helm, with the % chance to cast Confuse. Doom, Delirium, and CoH, all in ethereal gear, would probably be the optimal equipment, though there are certainly many other options. Read a little in The Mercenary Guide by Sunbearie & Team for more information (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=580). Gear: You will be looking for + skills and resists mainly. Cast rate means next to nothing as your fire skills have heavy casting delays. All resist 75% in Hell takes 155. You need to reach 75% or more in hell, at least in fire and cold. After that, get +skills and maybe some damage reduction if needed. Chance to cast whatever when struck is also great, but if you are good, it will rarely happen. There are so many combos, and I leave you with some ingredients. Figure out some yorself;) I am not the best qualified to tell you about gear, but I will mention a few nice items. Most of them are relative expensive, but if you can’t afford anything, live by the land. Also, I admire anyone creative enough to use something totally weird and different=) Please share any ideas, and feel free to redirect me if I forgot something really nice. Weapon Suggestion: I really recommend Doom in a one handed axe. It has the holy freeze aura and + 2 to all skills. That pretty much makes this character. I do NOT like the idea of having Doom on your mercenary. When he’s down, no Holy Freeze. This item rocks, but it lack some resistances. Can’t understand why so few windies use it. 5% Chance To Cast Level 18 Volcano On Striking
Level 12 Holy Freeze Aura When Equipped
+2 To All Skills
+45% Increased Attack Speed
+330-370% Enhanced Damage (varies)
-(40-60)% To Enemy Cold Resistance (varies)
20% Deadly Strike
25% Chance of Open Wounds
Prevent Monster Heal
Freezes Target +3
Requirements -20% Second choise would be heart of the oak. I don’t think any other one hand weapon can provide plus 3 to all skills. All resistances is nice, and replenish life, dexterity and max mana is OK to have. +3 To All Skills
+40% Faster Cast Rate
+75% Damage To Demons
+100 To Attack Rating Against Demons
Adds 3-14 Cold Damage, 3 sec. Duration (Normal)
7% Mana Stolen Per Hit
+10 To Dexterity
Replenish Life +20
Increase Maximum Mana 15%
All Resistances +30-40 (varies)
Level 4 Oak Sage (25 Charges)
Level 14 Raven (60 Charges)
+50% Damage To Undead Third choise is old school now, but it still kicks ass. + 2 skills, 75 all resistances and magic find. Decent choice. We are talking Silence runeword, and it beats wizardspike anytime. 200% Enhanced Damage
+75% Damage To Undead
Requirements -20%
20% Increased Attack Speed
+50 To Attack Rating Against Undead
+2 To All Skills
All Resistances +75
20% Faster Hit Recovery
11% Mana Stolen Per Hit
Hit Causes Monster To Flee 25%
Hit Blinds Target +33
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
30% Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items Other than that, look for + skills and resistances. Early on I suggest a wand with +mana/energy and resistances. I mention Eternity as well. This can save you lots of skill points in the summoning tree and leave you with an even stronger army. Has usefull other mods too. Amulet: Mara's Kaleidoscope would be great with + skills and resistances. The best! Required Level: 67
+2 To All Skill Levels
All Resistances +20-30 (varies)
+5 To All Attributes
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later) The Rising Sun diserves mentioning. At least you can keep it in your private stash and use when needed. + 2 fire skills, and later on fire attacks will heal you! Not as good and versatile as Mara’s Kaleidoscope though. Required Level: 65
+2 To Fire Skills
2% Chance To Cast Level 13-19 Meteor When Struck (varies)
+ (0.75 Per Character Level) 0-74 Fire Absorb (Based On Character Level)
Adds 24-48 Fire Damage
Replenish Life +10
+4 To Light Radius
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later) Seraph’s Hymn is just as good as any + 2 skills amulet. Required Level: 65
+2 To All Skill Levels
+1-2 To Defensive Auras (Paladin Only) (varies)
+20-50% Damage To Demons (varies)
+150-250 To Attack Rating Against Demons (varies)
+20-50% Damage To Undead (varies)
+150-250 To Attack Rating Against Undead (varies)
+2 To Light Radius
(Ladder Only)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later) Rare + 2 skills and second mods like resists are great. Armor: Guardian Angel is the best if you want safety. If you reach 90% all resist, than your biggest problem will be solved, and that is, my friend, elemental damage. Cast rate is not effected by slow effects eighter. Also, the armor is great on mercenery to keep him allive and increase his aura skill level. No + skills or resists for you though, but still great. In combo with stormshield, it would be much easier to achieve max block too. Defense: 770-825 (varies)(Base Defense: 252-274)
Required Level: 45
Required Strength: 118
Durability: 60
+180-200% Enhanced Defense(varies)
+20% Increased Chance Of Blocking
+30% Faster Block Rate
+ (2.5 Per Character Level) 2-247 To Attack Rating Against Demons (Based On Character Level)
+1 To Paladin Skill Levels
+4 To Light Radius
15% To Maximum Poison Resist
15% To Maximum Cold Resist
15% To Maximum Lightning Resist
15% To Maximum Fire Resist
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or Enigma is great with + 2 skill, 8% damage reduction, teleport, run walk, magic find and so on. Great alternative, but no resists. +2 To All Skills
+45% Faster Run/Walk
+1 To Teleport
+750-775 Defense (varies)
+ (0.75 Per Character Level) +0-74 To Strength (Based On Character Level)
Increase Maximum Life 5%
Damage Reduced By 8%
+14 Life After Each Kill
15% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
+ (1 Per Character Level) +1-99% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level) Than there is the expensive one. Chains of Honor. This one has what Enigma lacks, and I love it. +2 To All Skills
+200% Damage To Demons
+100% Damage To Undead
8% Life Stolen Per Hit
+70% Enhanced Defense
+20 To Strength
Replenish Life +7
All Resistances +65
Damage Reduced By 8%
25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items Arkaine's Valor is great with high defence, + 2 skills and vitality bonus. Defense: 1295-1450 (varies)(Base Defense: 410-517)
Required Level: 85
Required Strength: 165
Durability: 30
+150-180% Enhanced Defense (varies)
+1-2 To All Skills* (varies)
+ (0.5 Per Character Level) 0-49 To Vitality (Based On Character Level)
30% Faster Hit Recovery
Damage Reduced By 10-15 (varies)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later) Skullder's Ire has + skills and magic find. Not my end-game suggestion, but can help you find it. Defense: 634-732 (varies)(Base Defense: 225-243)
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 97
Durability: 90
+160-200% Enhanced Defense (varies)
Repairs 1 Durability In 5 Seconds
+ (1.25 Per Character Level) 1-123 % Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level)
+1 To All Skill Levels
Magic Damage Reduced By 10
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later) Other than those, grab the best you can find. Rings: Stone of Jordan is the best. Dual wield them. +1 To All Skill Levels
Increase Maximum Mana 25%*
Adds 1-12 Lightning Damage
+20 To Mana Other than that grab something with + skills or resists or other useful mods. Gloves: Magefist is the ultimate if not some insane rare ones. Cheap too. Defense: 24-25 (varies)(Base Defense: 9-11)
Required Level: 23
Required Strength: 45
Durability: 18
+20-30% Enhanced Defense (varies)
+10 Defense
+1 To Fire Skills
20% Faster Cast Rate
Regenerate Mana 25%
Adds 1-6 Fire Damage
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later) If not, get frostburns or something. Boots: Whatever you want. Try filling your needs for resistances if you have them. Fire and lightning is most important. Other then that, I like morrowwalk. Surprise me… Helmet: Expensive choise is a non magic druid pelt with + 3 volcano, +3 direwolf and + 3 armageddon or something. As far as I understand it is possible, but the first two is the most important. Than you add sockets from quest and insert Delirium. Ultimate killer helmet! Jalal’s mane, Nightwing's Veil, Harlequin Crest, Crown of Ages, or +2 skills and other mods rare pelt works great as well. If you use Andariels Visage, consider Rising Sun amulet. Shield: I like safety, and I advise you to get stormshield socketed with shael and eventually guardian angel armor. This setup will however require lots of resists on your other items and no + skills. If you’re ladder and don’t want block, go Spirit runeword. If you’re not ladder and don’t like block, go for something with + 1 skill and/or resists if needed. There are many choices. A Tower Shield socketed with 3 UM runes will grant you 66 in all resistance. With guardian angel it will not be to hard to get 90 in all resistances and 75% block. If you are using Rising Sun you will be imune to fire. With 3 topazes you will have a lightning resist off 120%+30% from quests=150%. Equip T-Gods belt and you easily achieve 85% in Hell. Belt: Arachnid Mesh has + 1 skill. Need I say more. Other belts would be Verdungo’s Hearty Cord or String of Ears(deffensive options) or thundergod’s vigor or a rare/unique resist belt Weapon switch: If your mercenery has Reapers Toll, try to get Call to Arms weapon for the battlecries and + skills, and Spirit (or other + skills shield. If you have more + skills on switch weapon than standard, you should switch before summoning, casting armageddon/hurrycane and maybe even volcano. If your mercenary has conviction or not Reapers Toll, consider a wand with Lower Resist Charges. Charms: Do not use Annihilus! It sucks! Seriously, use Annihilus like everyone else. Look for resist charms if needed. Get as many skillers as you possibly can. It’s up to you wether to use summoning skillers or elemental. I’ve heard of + 2 all skills grand charms with second mods. Woah! If you don’t have skillers, use + life charms. Charms is what can make this character very versatile. Gameplay tips, facts and problems: Will he be any good for PvP: Let me start by saying; I have no idea. Never ever done that myself, and he is by far made for this. I have read some guides though. Some will guard your corpse for using absorb (elemental shield, rising sun, etc), so now you’re warned. I would max armageddon instead of summons for damage output. Consider spirit wolves only. Many players have Cannot Be Frozen, but hurrycane may still interrupt ( I maybe would recommend no hurrycane for PvP, but do not call you a disaster master if you do ;( ). You are almost based on hit-lock, but players often have very quick recovery duration compared to monsters. If you can hit-lock a player, you are most likely victorious (some attacks like barb’s consentration makes him imune to hit-lock if he’s constantly swinging). You are a fragile character if when you first get hit, so don’t get hit =). Use Moulten Boulders instead of volcanoes if the enemy is not holding his ground. A melee character can be fooled into your armageddon if you run. Enouch PvP, guess wind druids are better anyway. Fire imune/Physical imune: Option 1: Run. If you have a volcano on him, you may have a 6 seconds headstart. This is a easy and common solution. Option 2: Use your cold damage sources to kill him. Doom may reduse his cold resistance by 60%, and it will be even lower with conviction and Lower resist. There are still enemies imune to both fire, physical, and cold, but these are a rare sight. Option 3: Take advantage of descrephy or lower Resist and kill him with all you’ve got. Option 4: Be creative=) Act 5 minotour lords: These big bullies are often physical imune in hell, move quickly, swing hard and rappidly and they are imune to most if not all slow effects. The fact that they are large in size also gives them a redused chanse of getting hit recovery status. They are not undefetable, but be carefull. Just give them all you’ve got and they will fall like flies to your overpower. Theese also have a special AI (artificial Intelligence). It suits their description of making their own decisions on the battlefield. They may run past your party just to hunt you down… Other then theese, mostly rangers, enemies with physical spells (diablo and Stygian Fury), fetishes and other fast moving monsters will ever hit you with physical damage. Most melee enemies, even fetishes, will still be put in hit recovery. Willowisps: Often known as gloams or burning suns theese undead creatures can tear appart most characters. They are scary to you too myfriend. But not if you have 90+ lightning resistance. Keep your elemental shield up and hit-lock/kill them as quick as possible. There is one safer option: Any blind effect, eighter from raven, dim vision or Cloak of Shadows, will make all mage/ranger creatures go to melee mode if they can see you at all. If they have no melee mode, they tend to do nothing at all. Thight Quarters: “I hate the Maggots Lair and the Summoners sanctuary” This is not the case for you. Nothing is easier than maggots lair. Place a volcano around each corner, move behind your moulten boulder and if enemies comes towards you, cast volcano in front of them and they’ll be locked. For even more safety, keep everything active. Where to stand in a battle open field battle: This can be discussed a lot. Usually your minions are fighting some melee guys, but take some fire from mages/archers in the background. Moving in among your minions makes you and all your powers shine, but it’s a little kamikazee to me. I prefer to cast my volcano where the enemies are thightest or at the boss. Try get to a spot where minions are in front of you, than melee monsters within range of your hurrycane and armageddon, and let your minions take the damage from afar until melee guys are all down. Standing as far away from the battle casting volcanoes at your enemies work as well, but it is the way off a volcano/summoner, not a Disaster Master. You’r minions are not to hold their own in battles, but to aid you side by side. They are much safer next to you thanks to your aura-like skills. If enemies encounter from all directions, than I recommend to hade between your minions. Then you wipe out one side to create a safe spot for yourself. (Standing in the middle of your own volcano with everything activated pretty much ensures that melee encounters will be locked, but its risky) Act End Bosses: Normal Andariel should fall quickly to your moulten boulder. She has -30 fire resist. If you play in single player 8 player game, you shoul get around level 20 easily. Normal Duriel must be kept occupied with your party. Keep all of them up fighting fit. He will fall to your moulten boulder or volcano if you have. Normal Mephisto can easily be defeated the same way as Duriel. Normal Diablo is tougher. He will wipe out your party in no time. Have ligthning and fire resistance, block, some rejuvenation potions, dodge his attacks, keep volcano active and wait. Normal Baal is not too hard. He will most likely kill your party, but you have one option if you don’t want to get close. Baal can’t shoot across the deep under the bridge that leads to the world stone. You can’t eighter, but you can place a volcano on the other side of it. This is slow. I prefer just killing him. Nightmare and hell act ends I find very easy. Minions of Destruction: Lister and co. is just a little bit scarier than any crowd. Do as you use to. Ancients: I once again refer to someone elses guide. This time it is the fire/summoner guide that was so inspiring to me and probably the closest you can get to a Disaster Master. Originally written by AlterEgo: “NM & Hell Ancients are by far your toughest foe - aren't they always? Here's where all of the practice in switching skills and evasive tactics will pay off. The basic procedure is to place the grizzly in a position to tank all three and burn them to a crisp. Before the fight, unsummon the vine to keep it from leading one of the big three toward you. Immediately after they spawn & engage the ravens/merc/grizzly, check their mods. If any one of them is Fire Enchanted, cast a TP and reroll. Remember the FE bug I mentioned at the top? It is a one-hit killer no matter how much life you've built up.
After you take care of that problem the fun begins. You have no blocking and cannot let yourself be hit. Keep your merc alive for as long as possible. He may be able to seriously injure or even kill one of the Ancients before dying. Listen for Korlic's leap attack warning - if you hear it, immediately side-step. Keep your Oak Sage up. It will be targeted often, but is critical to keeping your meat shield alive. Try to keep your grizzly in the same position, and yourself clear of the main action. That will attract the three to the same relative area, and a volcano placed near your bruin will hit one or more of them pretty frequently. If you have time, ravens will take some of the hits and keep your grizzly alive longer. Be patient, and careful. Keep this process up and one will soon fall. Then another. Probably one of them will be FI and will take longer, but hang in there, and you will be victorious.” You will have a little easier thanks to your many defensive skills and block, but maybe more grizzly recasting is needed. One more thing. Mix full rejuvenations. Lots of them. To do this you need 3 rejuvs, a gem and the cube. A super healing slowly restores only 320 life for druid and wont save you. Fill your belt and drop full rejuvs all around the place before reading the book. This way you can pick them directly to your belt.
Help your mercenery out as well. Hold shift and press 1/2/3/4 to heal him emidatly instead of drawing your potions to his icon. He’ll be just fine...
Equip a Doom axe. 50% slow means double everything, and it has 2 all skills!
Good Luck Game Progression: If you don’t stick to this guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=512) by Denise or something close you may screw up big time. An important thing for you will be skill point distribution. Here’s my recomandation: My suggestion for level 99 (110 skill points): Dire wolves-20 Grizzly-1 Heart of the Oak-1 Moulten boulder-20 Fissure- 20 Volcano-20 Armageddon-1 Hurrycane-1 Cyclone armor-20 Rest-prerequisites Check out this site if you want to customise or get some numbers: http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~cbradfor/diablo2/skills.html If you stick to it I suggest this as a GUIDELINE: Level 2-5 + DenOE skill: 1 point raven, 1 point fire storm. Save the rest. Level 6-11: 1 point in oak sage, one point in spirit wolf. Rest in Moulten Boulder Level 12-17: Equalize your Moulten Boulder Fissure with rest. Level 18-23 + Radament skill: Get 3 points in Dire Wolf. Keep equalizing Moulten Boulder and Fissure with the rest. Level 24-43: Volcano only Level 45-68: Go to nightmare. Max Moulten Boulder and Fissure. Keep in mind that even if your minions are dying, you will get summoning charms and more + skills later. Place points in dire wolf if really needed. Level 69-99: Get to hell at level 71+. Get Grizzly (before Ancients), Armageddon and prerequisites. Pump Cyclone armor. When You get to hell you need protection! After that, pump wolves if you followed this to the letter. Final words: I hope to see some more spetacular druids around and hear about your processes. I like any comments, but off course “Great guide! You’re the man, and I wish I was a genious like you.” will be great to hearJ. Interresting suggestions, questiones, notifications on my mistakes, or someone serius saying; “you suck becouse…” are welcome as well. I really like my character, and must thank every guide writer out there helping me out. I’ve read many… Special thanks to everyone I borrowed information from, or made links to info (you are all mentioned in the guide)! More updated versions are to come! Please help me out. I know much, but not all… Oh. If the name is taken or you find it stupid, let me know.
The Disaster Master the 1.10 PvM elemental druid’s guide for to succes, fun and overpower. (version 1) part 1 Introduction I am known as bruthor, and this guide is a resoult of eternities of playing different classes/subclasses. When I am writing this, few have ever heard of me, but I’ve been around for a looong time, playing, and reding forums, guides and more. It is p/m based and makes it safe and easy to kill every enemy in the game except for fire/physical imune who will fall after some struggle. It is far from impossible to beat them, but most of us just say “Run Forrest, run!” I like guide that do not say “Do that and that,” and have tried to make this one like “You CAN do that, but should consider that, and maybe even something else.” It will cower items, but is not depandent. The guide provides: -success (ALL cleared without being hammerdin) -survivebility in all ways (monsters must get past MANY dangers before they reach you. -killingpower -versatality (no really big weaknesses) -cover of untwinked and rich gameplay and can possibly be used for hardcore -all this in singleplayer -a short PvP description (not what its made for, though) -encouraging for creativity (make your own unique) -some very usefull links spread around -All you need to know to make one. But what is a Disaster Master? The disaster master is named from his many skills that you will be using. All of them can be active at once, and with auras, moulten boulders, volcano, armageddon, hurrycane, cyclone armor, twisters and minions you are nothing but a walking disaster. With all these skills, he must aim for the higher levels and + skills on equipement, but the charecter can be finished anytime… His main protection will be minions and block, but most important off all¬ – monster hit recovery! To really call yourself a Disaster Master you should also use a Doom axe. You will rain death and destruction upon your foes like no other, and where you enter, there will be a great mess. Therefore I dare claiming that a high level disaster master has the most spetacular in-game look! Unlike a fire/summoner druid, he will focus in many skills for protection and destruction, not mainly wolves. His best defence is offence. The Disaster Master is great at all the focuses of the guide, but I would never claim that it’s the best. It still has all you need and can be great fun. Since I am a man of nature and a lone wolf, I have not got many insane items, but I`ll mention a few.
Some may say; “Why not make a stun build instead?” Well, stunners are not as versatile and damage dealing. Besides, stun is hard to use against unique monsters and don’t work against act end bosses. Another says; “You will never get that high on levels” Well, maybe not, but level 85 is easily achived, and with skills from quests you will only be about 10 short. These are not needed to be succsessfull, only to have undefeatable minions. Read on and it will all make sence. Definations on druid builds: Wind druid: Max all wind spells and rest in summoning. You know this one. Fire druid: Max fire spells and little/no summons. Close to disaster master. Shifter: Any druid that use were-forms or switch between human and were. Armageddon-bear/wolf: Shifted and using high level armageddon. Stunner: Any build using stun for safety. DM uses hit lock and slow. Summoner: Mainly depends on minions for everything. Many sub classes. Fire/summoner: This is close, but not a disaster master. He use fire, often volcano, for killing from a safe distance, and have high life summons as meat shields. Disaster Master: Does use mainly fire skills too. BUT. He also take use wind skillsof He He does not use high level summons except maybe at the end. His summons are treated like fellow party members, not your meat-shields. You will be fighting next to them, they serve mostly as another source of distraction. Distraction. That is what a Disaster Master is. Massive distraction, confusion, chaos, and slow and struggling around you. Still, you are the only source, and in the middle of the disaster, your foes will never get the opportunety to hit you. He will, if possible use Doom for weapon if possible. The druids elemental skills are nature catastrophies, and you my friend will try becoming DoomsDay itstself. How does monster hit recovery work: As far as I know, its dependant on size. Many monsters have different speeds. I’ll try updating this field as I know more for sure. It is important to your survival. How does slow multiple slow effects work? I know that they DO add together in some way, and I’ve seen the resoults. It rocks. I do not know exectly how yet, and I will update the guide as soon as I know. Stats The stats are not really what is going to crush your character, but all guides must have the next four sentences: Strength: Enough to wear your gear Dexterity: Enough for max block Vitality: Rest goes here Energy: Base I strongly recommend to plan out your gear before pumping your strength to high. You have absolutely no use of the 1% damage bonus per level except for maybe level 1-5. Maybe you like earthshaker, but I advise you not to get it. Dexterity can be discussed. Some recommend no block becouse of block-lock, but I can tell you that blocking can be your best friend. Also some would say 75% chance to block with storm shield is to stat point intensive and recommend 50%. However, out of 100 swings, the 1. would be hit by 25 and the second by 50, wich means the last points in dexterity doubles the effect. Some weapons requires dexterity as well, but not many. Most likely you will be using a axe (low requirement) or a mace (no requirement). Vitality is a no brainer- the more life the better ( a redused effect from healing potions, but still better. Try a vitabear with insane life and you will understand. Super healing for druid means only 320 hp recovered) Energy is a very tempting stat early on, but later it is useless to you. Be strong. Skills These are what makes a Disaster Master, and to make the build shine, the skill progression will be very important as well. Read the awsome Primal Flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers on fire skills. Elemental skills: Your arsenal. This will be the most pumped skill tree. Volcano: 20 points- The main killing skill of this druid. In my opinion it is awsome. Read the primal flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers. I would like to comment some things though. Unlike many fire skills, it don’t require you to be in the fray playing punching bag style. It kills stationary targets and damages those around. Most enemies become stationary targets if they have a volcano shooting balls of rock and magma up their butt every second frame. The spread radius is great, but few mention the radius of the volcano itself. It does not only destroy a stationary target standing in the middle of the volcano, but every enemy only slightly touching the outer edge of the volcano is hit by every ball. This makes it a devastating skill to multiple hit-locked targets instead of a single target destroyer like many think. I think that each ball to has a small splash radius too, at least they hit enemies that only being slightly touched. Each ball also is piercing meaning they can hit every monster standing on the top of it, and have a chance of hitting others. (This is information I researched myself. If anyone knows something else, bring it on) A dream calculation that never will take place in reality would be: Screen filled with enemies without resistance. Your synergized volcano deals about 1500 total damage after some + skills. Every ball (75 balls in six seconds according to primal flame guide)hits 6 enemies when fired off and 3 on impact (9 enemies total each ball total). This gives us: 75 balls*1500 damage*9 hits=1012500 damage The casting delay of volcano is 4 seconds. Volcano duration is six. That means 2 of 6 seconds damage is doubled (this is not complitely correct. I don’t know if volcano duration is when the volcano dissapears or when the last ball hits the ground. Casting duration and eventually faster cast rate should also be consedered, but I do it simple) This gives us: 1012500 damage+((1012500 damage/6 seconds)*2 for double damage duration*2 again for the double damage)=1687500 damage over six seconds Are you still hanging in there=) ??? Damage per second: 1687500/six seconds=281250 damage per second. Insane numbers, huh, but seriosly, it is not going to happen. Volcano is far from the fastest killer out there,but the best we’ve got. Please let me know if I have made any mistakes in the calculation or said something incorrect about the skill. Moulten boulder: 20 points- This is a great safety skill and exellent for low levels. The main purpose would be synergising volcano, but it is the best you have for your left qlick, and it will prove usefull. It is the only skill that adds to physical damage for volcano, so I recommand 20 points if possible. Cyclone armor: 10-20 points- This skill will protect you against elemental damage, wich is what you are most likely to be hit by. At level 20 with one point in each synergy and +10 to all skills it absorbs 469 elemental damage (fire, cold and/or lightning). This is considerably much and may save your life once in a while. It has no “damaged status look” like the necro’s bone armor. That means it can have only one point of absorb left without showing it. Make sure to recast it all the time. The main purpose off the skill is hurrycane duration. Hurrycane: 1 point- I will just mention the tiny damage you will recieve. About 150 damage per second. But this skill was the only thing I loved about my wind druids. For a wind druid it kills. For us, it is a lovely litlle holy freeze aura giving every monster within range hit recovery and chill status every second (I will add info about all chill effects later). Chill slows monsters by (not sure yet) percent. It also stack with holy freeze which slows enemies by 50 percent at level 12. This means that by equipping a Doom runeword axe your enemies will move, strike and recover from hit (not sure yet)% of what they normally would. Doom also has +2 skills! All this from a doom runeword and 10-20 not wasted points in elemental shield. Armageddon: 1-20 points- This is a skill that I personally hate. It rearly hits, has short radius, but looks awesome. It still does scary damage with some + skills and may save your life if it hits something close to you, eighter it kills it or gives it a hit recovery. You must have points in fissure in order to make have good use of it. This is synergy to volcano’s fire damage which is worth considering. Can of course whipe out everything that is not fire imune itself. I use it mainly for protection against close enemies giving them hits. If you like the skill and want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway. Fissure: 10-20 points- Another skill I don’t like. Some recommend to use it as killing skill, but I find that volcano rocks this on in all ways. Still it is one of the keys of your build. It synergizes your volcanos fire damage and adds to armageddon duration. I prefer having this one equal at skill levels to Cyclone armor or maybe one or to lower (before + skills). Hurrycane is much more important as protection than Armageddon. Therefore I can recast my armageddon and than my hurrycane when armageddon wears off. Hurrycane remains active all the time this way. Arctic blast, Tornado, Twister and Firestorm: 1 point each- Exept for maybe level 1 twister for stun and multi hit at fast rate between each volcano, these are only prerequisutes and minor synergies. Twister can be used as left click along with moulten boulder. It stuns for 0,4 seconds, does tinywiny damage and shoots 3 minor tornadoes in random directions about 45 degrees forward. Shape Shifting: Nothing. There are armageddon bear guides elsewhere. Summoning: After all the protection I have told you about now, there is one thing still missing. Meat shields. With lots of + skills these can be very powerfull and are used mainly for protection. I recommend you to read Lothric’s summoning guide for additional information(http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=575). Number off points here must be placed when you feel that you need it. There are lots of time to recast between each volcano. If you are hardcore, definitely place more points here. The reason I would rather use Doom than Heart of the oak weapon is that you already have the summoning skills here. Party is always great! Raven: one point- With lots of + skills it can be usefull for distraction, and no matter how low the damage is, it can give a monster a hit recovery status. The blind effekt is a curse similar to dim vision. They peck out the eyes of your pour foes. This is both good and bad. The curse is only working if you/your party is not close or already spotted. If monster is hit, than blind will work again even if you were spotted in the first place. The bad thing about ravens is that they need heavy recasting and blind goes over other more usefull curses. Poison creeper: 0-1 point- this is useless except for the very start of the game, but if you want carrion vine or solar creeper go ahead. Carrion vine: 0-1 point- At level 15 it heals 10% of max hit points. At level 10 it heals 9%. At level 15 it restores your red ball complitetly with 10 corpses. It removes corpses along with wolves and is usefull. It goes down whithin one or two hits or so, but monsters tend to miss it for some reason. Besides one hit on your vine means one less at you or your party. It heals only you. I did not bother using it. Solar creeper: 0-1 point- The same as Carrion vine, but it restores mana. I find it useless except for getting rid of corpses. It was never worth three skill points to me, but it is your choice. Oak sage: 1-20 points- It really helps out your whole party, but you are short on skills. It is probably the best skill in the game for mercenery protection. Your mercenery also helps your party out and cost a lot of money. I find myself only getting hit if my party members start dying, and it helps a lot. As many points as you can spare. If you want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway. Spirit wolf: 1 point- If you like it you can use it, but it is not my favorite minion. The passive bonus is also transferred to your other wolves/bear even with + skills and not only actually spent skill points. Dire wolf: 1-20 points- With enough + skills one point may be enough. How many to put here is all based on personal preferrance. Place points as you feel like are needed, and don’t consider any to be wasted. Dire wolves is limited to three wolves at a time. More than enough for crowd control (wich will not be a big issue) and they are what makes your minions tanks. They also get a icrease of 50% damage if they eat a corpse. Their damage is not what you want, but about 350 every hit at level 20 with + 10 to all skills and one point in grizzly is not too bad. After eating a corpse, damage will be about 525. Times three wolves they do 1575 while enraged. Not that bad? Life will be about 1000 each wolf. Grizzly: 1 point- At level 1 with + 10 skills and 20 points in dire wolf, grizzly will have about 6000 life before Oak sage aura. You don’t need more than that for boss slaying and the ancients. He also has some combat skills. You just use him for other purposes than crowds. Heart of Wolverine and Spirit of Barbs: 0 points- I find them useless, but some of you may want them for versatality and party damage. I recommend 0 points. My suggestion for level 99 (110 skill points): Dire wolves-20 Grizzly-1 Heart of the Oak-1 Moulten boulder-20 Fissure- 20 Volcano-20 Armageddon-1 Hurrycane-1 Cyclone armor-20 Rest-prerequisites The questions are what skills NEEDS to be maxed. Some could probably be at ~15 to increase others. The one I doubt the most is if you should max wolves, armageddon or oak at the end. The suggested setup worked for me. Mercenary: The last part of your party is your mercenary. I recommend act 2 normal mercenery. He is always close, deals great damage and can take quite a beating along with everyone else close to him. Give him a Reapers Toll weapon. Descriphy will break physical imunity and slow monsters by 50%. Now, imagine that along with hurrycane and holy freeze. Yeah baby. Infinity would also work great if you are ladder. Conviction lowers fire resistance after a wand with Lower resist has broken the fire imunity. Or phoenix would keep him alive and deling damage. If you do not use doom yourself, then do like Halciet. I will refer to Halciet’s great concentrate barbarian guide for the rest of his gear: Outfitting Your Merc: Anything with big defense is a plus, and you should try and make sure everything he’s wearing is ethereal, since his gear doesn’t get damaged. He’ll need some life leech from something, but other than that, it’s up to you. Vampire Gaze and Shaftstop are nice for the pdr and leech. Crown of Thieves is very nice as well, and an “Honor” weapon is a powerful, east-to-make weapon for earlier in the game. I’d definitely try and get the runes for “Doom,” just because that will make the merc much more powerful and useful. For the super rich, “Chains of Honor” is a nice choice for body armor, with the +2 skills (which will boost his aura) and life leech, and “Delirium” Rune Word is an incredible helm, with the % chance to cast Confuse. Doom, Delirium, and CoH, all in ethereal gear, would probably be the optimal equipment, though there are certainly many other options. Read a little in The Mercenary Guide by Sunbearie & Team for more information (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=580). Gear: You will be looking for + skills and resists mainly. Cast rate means next to nothing as your fire skills have heavy casting delays. All resist 75% in Hell takes 155. You need to reach 75% or more in hell, at least in fire and cold. After that, get +skills and maybe some damage reduction if needed. Chance to cast whatever when struck is also great, but if you are good, it will rarely happen. There are so many combos, and I leave you with some ingredients. Figure out some yorself;) I am not the best qualified to tell you about gear, but I will mention a few nice items. Most of them are relative expensive, but if you can’t afford anything, live by the land. Also, I admire anyone creative enough to use something totally weird and different=) Please share any ideas, and feel free to redirect me if I forgot something really nice. Weapon Suggestion: I really recommend Doom in a one handed axe. It has the holy freeze aura and + 2 to all skills. That pretty much makes this character. I do NOT like the idea of having Doom on your mercenary. When he’s down, no Holy Freeze. This item rocks, but it lack some resistances. Can’t understand why so few windies use it. 5% Chance To Cast Level 18 Volcano On Striking Level 12 Holy Freeze Aura When Equipped +2 To All Skills +45% Increased Attack Speed +330-370% Enhanced Damage (varies) -(40-60)% To Enemy Cold Resistance (varies) 20% Deadly Strike 25% Chance of Open Wounds Prevent Monster Heal Freezes Target +3 Requirements -20% Second choise would be heart of the oak. I don’t think any other one hand weapon can provide plus 3 to all skills. All resistances is nice, and replenish life, dexterity and max mana is OK to have. +3 To All Skills +40% Faster Cast Rate +75% Damage To Demons +100 To Attack Rating Against Demons Adds 3-14 Cold Damage, 3 sec. Duration (Normal) 7% Mana Stolen Per Hit +10 To Dexterity Replenish Life +20 Increase Maximum Mana 15% All Resistances +30-40 (varies) Level 4 Oak Sage (25 Charges) Level 14 Raven (60 Charges) +50% Damage To Undead Third choise is old school now, but it still kicks ass. + 2 skills, 75 all resistances and magic find. Decent choice. We are talking Silence runeword, and it beats wizardspike anytime. 200% Enhanced Damage +75% Damage To Undead Requirements -20% 20% Increased Attack Speed +50 To Attack Rating Against Undead +2 To All Skills All Resistances +75 20% Faster Hit Recovery 11% Mana Stolen Per Hit Hit Causes Monster To Flee 25% Hit Blinds Target +33 +2 To Mana After Each Kill 30% Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items Other than that, look for + skills and resistances. Early on I suggest a wand with +mana/energy and resistances. I mention Eternity as well. This can save you lots of skill points in the summoning tree and leave you with an even stronger army. Has usefull other mods too. Amulet: Mara's Kaleidoscope would be great with + skills and resistances. The best! Required Level: 67 +2 To All Skill Levels All Resistances +20-30 (varies) +5 To All Attributes (Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later) The Rising Sun diserves mentioning. At least you can keep it in your private stash and use when needed. + 2 fire skills, and later on fire attacks will heal you! Not as good and versatile as Mara’s Kaleidoscope though. Required Level: 65 +2 To Fire Skills 2% Chance To Cast Level 13-19 Meteor When Struck (varies) + (0.75 Per Character Level) 0-74 Fire Absorb (Based On Character Level) Adds 24-48 Fire Damage Replenish Life +10 +4 To Light Radius (Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later) Seraph’s Hymn is just as good as any + 2 skills amulet. Required Level: 65 +2 To All Skill Levels +1-2 To Defensive Auras (Paladin Only) (varies) +20-50% Damage To Demons (varies) +150-250 To Attack Rating Against Demons (varies) +20-50% Damage To Undead (varies) +150-250 To Attack Rating Against Undead (varies) +2 To Light Radius (Ladder Only) (Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later) Rare + 2 skills and second mods like resists are great. Armor: Guardian Angel is the best if you want safety. If you reach 90% all resist, than your biggest problem will be solved, and that is, my friend, elemental damage. Cast rate is not effected by slow effects eighter. Also, the armor is great on mercenery to keep him allive and increase his aura skill level. No + skills or resists for you though, but still great. In combo with stormshield, it would be much easier to achieve max block too. Defense: 770-825 (varies)(Base Defense: 252-274) Required Level: 45 Required Strength: 118 Durability: 60 +180-200% Enhanced Defense(varies) +20% Increased Chance Of Blocking +30% Faster Block Rate + (2.5 Per Character Level) 2-247 To Attack Rating Against Demons (Based On Character Level) +1 To Paladin Skill Levels +4 To Light Radius 15% To Maximum Poison Resist 15% To Maximum Cold Resist 15% To Maximum Lightning Resist 15% To Maximum Fire Resist (Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or Enigma is great with + 2 skill, 8% damage reduction, teleport, run walk, magic find and so on. Great alternative, but no resists. +2 To All Skills +45% Faster Run/Walk +1 To Teleport +750-775 Defense (varies) + (0.75 Per Character Level) +0-74 To Strength (Based On Character Level) Increase Maximum Life 5% Damage Reduced By 8% +14 Life After Each Kill 15% Damage Taken Goes To Mana + (1 Per Character Level) +1-99% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level) Than there is the expensive one. Chains of Honor. This one has what Enigma lacks, and I love it. +2 To All Skills +200% Damage To Demons +100% Damage To Undead 8% Life Stolen Per Hit +70% Enhanced Defense +20 To Strength Replenish Life +7 All Resistances +65 Damage Reduced By 8% 25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items Arkaine's Valor is great with high defence, + 2 skills and vitality bonus. Defense: 1295-1450 (varies)(Base Defense: 410-517) Required Level: 85 Required Strength: 165 Durability: 30 +150-180% Enhanced Defense (varies) +1-2 To All Skills* (varies) + (0.5 Per Character Level) 0-49 To Vitality (Based On Character Level) 30% Faster Hit Recovery Damage Reduced By 10-15 (varies) (Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later) Skullder's Ire has + skills and magic find. Not my end-game suggestion, but can help you find it. Defense: 634-732 (varies)(Base Defense: 225-243) Required Level: 42 Required Strength: 97 Durability: 90 +160-200% Enhanced Defense (varies) Repairs 1 Durability In 5 Seconds + (1.25 Per Character Level) 1-123 % Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level) +1 To All Skill Levels Magic Damage Reduced By 10 (Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later) Other than those, grab the best you can find. Rings: Stone of Jordan is the best. Dual wield them. +1 To All Skill Levels Increase Maximum Mana 25%* Adds 1-12 Lightning Damage +20 To Mana Other than that grab something with + skills or resists or other useful mods. Gloves: Magefist is the ultimate if not some insane rare ones. Cheap too. Defense: 24-25 (varies)(Base Defense: 9-11) Required Level: 23 Required Strength: 45 Durability: 18 +20-30% Enhanced Defense (varies) +10 Defense +1 To Fire Skills 20% Faster Cast Rate Regenerate Mana 25% Adds 1-6 Fire Damage (Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later) If not, get frostburns or something. Boots: Whatever you want. Try filling your needs for resistances if you have them. Fire and lightning is most important. Other then that, I like morrowwalk. Surprise me… Helmet: Expensive choise is a non magic druid pelt with + 3 volcano, +3 direwolf and + 3 armageddon or something. As far as I understand it is possible, but the first two is the most important. Than you add sockets from quest and insert Delirium. Ultimate killer helmet! Jalal’s mane, Nightwing's Veil, Harlequin Crest, Crown of Ages, or +2 skills and other mods rare pelt works great as well. If you use Andariels Visage, consider Rising Sun amulet. Shield: I like safety, and I advise you to get stormshield socketed with shael and eventually guardian angel armor. This setup will however require lots of resists on your other items and no + skills. If you’re ladder and don’t want block, go Spirit runeword. If you’re not ladder and don’t like block, go for something with + 1 skill and/or resists if needed. There are many choices. A Tower Shield socketed with 3 UM runes will grant you 66 in all resistance. With guardian angel it will not be to hard to get 90 in all resistances and 75% block. If you are using Rising Sun you will be imune to fire. With 3 topazes you will have a lightning resist off 120%+30% from quests=150%. Equip T-Gods belt and you easily achieve 85% in Hell. Belt: Arachnid Mesh has + 1 skill. Need I say more. Other belts would be Verdungo’s Hearty Cord or String of Ears(deffensive options) or thundergod’s vigor or a rare/unique resist belt Weapon switch: If your mercenery has Reapers Toll, try to get Call to Arms weapon for the battlecries and + skills, and Spirit (or other + skills shield. If you have more + skills on switch weapon than standard, you should switch before summoning, casting armageddon/hurrycane and maybe even volcano. If your mercenary has conviction or not Reapers Toll, consider a wand with Lower Resist Charges. Charms: Do not use Annihilus! It sucks! Seriously, use Annihilus like everyone else. Look for resist charms if needed. Get as many skillers as you possibly can. It’s up to you wether to use summoning skillers or elemental. I’ve heard of + 2 all skills grand charms with second mods. Woah! If you don’t have skillers, use + life charms. Charms is what can make this character very versatile. Gameplay tips, facts and problems: Will he be any good for PvP: Let me start by saying; I have no idea. Never ever done that myself, and he is by far made for this. I have read some guides though. Some will guard your corpse for using absorb (elemental shield, rising sun, etc), so now you’re warned. I would max armageddon instead of summons for damage output. Consider spirit wolves only. Many players have Cannot Be Frozen, but hurrycane may still interrupt ( I maybe would recommend no hurrycane for PvP, but do not call you a disaster master if you do ;( ). You are almost based on hit-lock, but players often have very quick recovery duration compared to monsters. If you can hit-lock a player, you are most likely victorious (some attacks like barb’s consentration makes him imune to hit-lock if he’s constantly swinging). You are a fragile character if when you first get hit, so don’t get hit =). Use Moulten Boulders instead of volcanoes if the enemy is not holding his ground. A melee character can be fooled into your armageddon if you run. Enouch PvP, guess wind druids are better anyway. Fire imune/Physical imune: Option 1: Run. If you have a volcano on him, you may have a 6 seconds headstart. This is a easy and common solution. Option 2: Use your cold damage sources to kill him. Doom may reduse his cold resistance by 60%, and it will be even lower with conviction and Lower resist. There are still enemies imune to both fire, physical, and cold, but these are a rare sight. Option 3: Take advantage of descrephy or lower Resist and kill him with all you’ve got. Option 4: Be creative=) Act 5 minotour lords: These big bullies are often physical imune in hell, move quickly, swing hard and rappidly and they are imune to most if not all slow effects. The fact that they are large in size also gives them a redused chanse of getting hit recovery status. They are not undefetable, but be carefull. Just give them all you’ve got and they will fall like flies to your overpower. Theese also have a special AI (artificial Intelligence). It suits their description of making their own decisions on the battlefield. They may run past your party just to hunt you down… Other then theese, mostly rangers, enemies with physical spells (diablo and Stygian Fury), fetishes and other fast moving monsters will ever hit you with physical damage. Most melee enemies, even fetishes, will still be put in hit recovery. Willowisps: Often known as gloams or burning suns theese undead creatures can tear appart most characters. They are scary to you too myfriend. But not if you have 90+ lightning resistance. Keep your elemental shield up and hit-lock/kill them as quick as possible. There is one safer option: Any blind effect, eighter from raven, dim vision or Cloak of Shadows, will make all mage/ranger creatures go to melee mode if they can see you at all. If they have no melee mode, they tend to do nothing at all. Thight Quarters: “I hate the Maggots Lair and the Summoners sanctuary” This is not the case for you. Nothing is easier than maggots lair. Place a volcano around each corner, move behind your moulten boulder and if enemies comes towards you, cast volcano in front of them and they’ll be locked. For even more safety, keep everything active. Where to stand in a battle open field battle: This can be discussed a lot. Usually your minions are fighting some melee guys, but take some fire from mages/archers in the background. Moving in among your minions makes you and all your powers shine, but it’s a little kamikazee to me. I prefer to cast my volcano where the enemies are thightest or at the boss. Try get to a spot where minions are in front of you, than melee monsters within range of your hurrycane and armageddon, and let your minions take the damage from afar until melee guys are all down. Standing as far away from the battle casting volcanoes at your enemies work as well, but it is the way off a volcano/summoner, not a Disaster Master. You’r minions are not to hold their own in battles, but to aid you side by side. They are much safer next to you thanks to your aura-like skills. If enemies encounter from all directions, than I recommend to hade between your minions. Then you wipe out one side to create a safe spot for yourself. (Standing in the middle of your own volcano with everything activated pretty much ensures that melee encounters will be locked, but its risky) Act End Bosses: Normal Andariel should fall quickly to your moulten boulder. She has -30 fire resist. If you play in single player 8 player game, you shoul get around level 20 easily. Normal Duriel must be kept occupied with your party. Keep all of them up fighting fit. He will fall to your moulten boulder or volcano if you have. Normal Mephisto can easily be defeated the same way as Duriel. Normal Diablo is tougher. He will wipe out your party in no time. Have ligthning and fire resistance, block, some rejuvenation potions, dodge his attacks, keep volcano active and wait. Normal Baal is not too hard. He will most likely kill your party, but you have one option if you don’t want to get close. Baal can’t shoot across the deep under the bridge that leads to the world stone. You can’t eighter, but you can place a volcano on the other side of it. This is slow. I prefer just killing him. Nightmare and hell act ends I find very easy. Minions of Destruction: Lister and co. is just a little bit scarier than any crowd. Do as you use to. Ancients: I once again refer to someone elses guide. This time it is the fire/summoner guide that was so inspiring to me and probably the closest you can get to a Disaster Master. Originally written by AlterEgo: “NM & Hell Ancients are by far your toughest foe - aren't they always? Here's where all of the practice in switching skills and evasive tactics will pay off. The basic procedure is to place the grizzly in a position to tank all three and burn them to a crisp. Before the fight, unsummon the vine to keep it from leading one of the big three toward you. Immediately after they spawn & engage the ravens/merc/grizzly, check their mods. If any one of them is Fire Enchanted, cast a TP and reroll. Remember the FE bug I mentioned at the top? It is a one-hit killer no matter how much life you've built up. After you take care of that problem the fun begins. You have no blocking and cannot let yourself be hit. Keep your merc alive for as long as possible. He may be able to seriously injure or even kill one of the Ancients before dying. Listen for Korlic's leap attack warning - if you hear it, immediately side-step. Keep your Oak Sage up. It will be targeted often, but is critical to keeping your meat shield alive. Try to keep your grizzly in the same position, and yourself clear of the main action. That will attract the three to the same relative area, and a volcano placed near your bruin will hit one or more of them pretty frequently. If you have time, ravens will take some of the hits and keep your grizzly alive longer. Be patient, and careful. Keep this process up and one will soon fall. Then another. Probably one of them will be FI and will take longer, but hang in there, and you will be victorious.” You will have a little easier thanks to your many defensive skills and block, but maybe more grizzly recasting is needed. One more thing. Mix full rejuvenations. Lots of them. To do this you need 3 rejuvs, a gem and the cube. A super healing slowly restores only 320 life for druid and wont save you. Fill your belt and drop full rejuvs all around the place before reading the book. This way you can pick them directly to your belt. Help your mercenery out as well. Hold shift and press 1/2/3/4 to heal him emidatly instead of drawing your potions to his icon. He’ll be just fine... Equip a Doom axe. 50% slow means double everything, and it has 2 all skills! Game Progression: If you don’t stick to this guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=512) by Denise or something close you may screw up big time. An important thing for you will be skill point distribution. Here’s my recomandation: My suggestion for level 99 (110 skill points): Dire wolves-20 Grizzly-1 Heart of the Oak-1 Moulten boulder-20 Fissure- 20 Volcano-20 Armageddon-1 Hurrycane-1 Cyclone armor-20 Rest-prerequisites Check out this site if you want to customise or get some numbers: http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~cbradfor/diablo2/skills.html If you stick to it I suggest this as a GUIDELINE: Level 2-5 + DenOE skill: 1 point raven, 1 point fire storm. Save the rest. Level 6-11: 1 point in oak sage, one point in spirit wolf. Rest in Moulten Boulder Level 12-17: Equalize your Moulten Boulder Fissure with rest. Level 18-23 + Radament skill: Get 3 points in Dire Wolf. Keep equalizing Moulten Boulder and Fissure with the rest. Level 24-43: Volcano only Level 45-68: Go to nightmare. Max Moulten Boulder and Fissure. Keep in mind that even if your minions are dying, you will get summoning charms and more + skills later. Place points in dire wolf if really needed. Level 69-99: Get to hell at level 71+. Get Grizzly (before Ancients), Armageddon and prerequisites. Pump Cyclone armor. When You get to hell you need protection! After that, pump wolves if you followed this to the letter. Final words: I hope to see some more spetacular druids around and hear about your processes. I like any comments, but off course “Great guide! You’re the man, and I wish I was a genious like you.” will be great to hear. Interresting suggestions, questiones, notifications on my mistakes, or someone serius saying; “you suck becouse…” are welcome as well. I really like my character, and must thank every guide writer out there helping me out. I’ve read many… Special thanks to everyone I borrowed information from, or made links to info (you are all mentioned in the guide)! More updated versions are to come! Please help me out. I know much, but not all… Oh. If the name is taken or you find it stupid, let me know.
if there were less items so that everyone knew exactly what to do, what would make one charecter different from another? Stupidity. who wants to be stupid? I think I am one of the few out there willing to suck big time just to stand out in the herd.
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-background: A very few selected ones were aoptedd by the prime evils. They sold their souls and served evil with demonic powers granted from the trade. However, in fear of their very own powers, the prime evils had sealed boundries in their minds and souls to prevent them from becoming too strong. Long they served as toys and helpers for the three, but by their defeat, some of the souls were retrieved. Once again they were men, but their minds were consumed and troubled. They lusted for power and revenge, and by the destruction the worldstone, their seals collapsed. These mystic men with powers unknown to themselves and others now rage against the hells to learn, to have their revenge, an most important of all, to become more mighty than any other man.
-Personality: confused, selfconsumed, psyciotic, short tempered and troubled. Laughs at death and is not afraid of it. As he fights against evil, he is partially accepted by mankind as they unite against the common enemy. But even though he is accepted, he has no wish to do mankind any good and he is much dislike. His own winnings are all that matters. He is a lone wolf. The paladin especially dislikes him. He doesent care at all. Raw and dry sence of humour is his style.
Looks: He is a tall, skinny guy, and he is rather dark of appearence. His body is full of scrapemarks, scars and burnmarks. May or may not be floating/hoovering above the ground and may or may not have horns/wings/burning footsteps/unholy aura/etc. Does not have hair. Empty, unfocused eyes. Wears a dark cloak like the dark wanderer or a dark armor like in fable or WOW bloodelves. Weapon: Wands and staves and scepters of some sorts
Combat abilities: Very offensive and fragile char with lots of grotesque mage-like skills. Not many party friendly skills. Short range spells mostly. The most mana dependent of all the classes. Has some anti-demon skills. Most of his attacks are of a strange element, so imunities is not a big problem. Some spells are extraourdinary powerfull, but comes with a cating delay. Though he might sound like he is stronger than any other char, he is not. The game should offcourse be balanced. As he is not really familiar with his own powers and they still havent been completely unlocked, he is just a regular day-to-day hero.
Skills:
-Inner demon: A lvl 1 skill increasing mana and passivly synergise the demons aura.
-Call forth demon: lvl 30 skill. Calls forth a great demon with massive dmg, semi massive ammounts of life, physical immunity, and a party friendly aura. The demon is fast moving and can fend very well on its own. Its powers are also very dependent on the max amount of mana are capable of having (base mana). Like the blood golem, it is linked to your mana and can heal/destroy your mana bar. If you are killed, the demon will not be banished, but fight on against the monsters. It will also turn against you and your party members. To summon a new demon, you must kill of this one or convert it. Convert is a boilt-in skill like "normal attack", "unsummon", "throw weapon" etc. You must be at rather close range, and after you cast the convertion, the demon will once again be lojal to you and your freids in one minute. If the demon dies when lojal to you, half of your life is smashed.
-Demon annihilation: Splatters enemies like corpse explosion, but this one triggers only against demons and they must be alive. The splat itself can effect other monsters, but only demons can be splattered. At lvl 1, 1 demon is splattered, at lvl 7:2, lvl 16: 3, Lvl 25: 4. Only normal/minions can be triggered, and which demons that splatters is random. The splat deals 70-90% of the demons remaining (not max) life to other demons and 30-40% to other monsters. 8 sec casting delay at lvl 1, 2 sec casting delay at lvl 24. Area is the same as that of a meteor. Skill achieved at clvl 24.
-Soul wound: A spell that slowly kills an enemy. Very slowly. max duration is 30 sec before it wears of. Will not likely kill greater enemies. However, during this period, the enemy will be unable to attack and fill some of the mana for you. The demon can be killed at any time. Max 3 enemies can be afected at one time.
Demonic blast: Hurls long chains of fire and lightning in random semi-patterns around the screen. A mix between the druids twister and the sorceress's inferno. The skill in it self is rather powerfull, but has no synergies. A Favourite for builds who wants to fucus in more than one thing, like the sorc's frozen orb.
Projectile collectors: Small spirits flying around you (like hurricane). What they do is to collect projectiles fired at you and deal them to opponents when you get close enough. This means that if you are a little careful you can blow off 50 attacks occasionally, and the skill also acts like a shield. It has a rather short radius; a little smaller than that of the druid’s hurricane. When it all spirits have collected their projectiles, there no more shield.
Each spirit gives 1 % chance to collect.
Lvl 1: 10 spirits
Lvl 10: 20
Lvl 20: 30
Lvl 40: 50
Reduced effectivity in PvP perhaps.
Demon link: links the forthcalled demon to your life as well. But not like the bloodgolem. This only makes the demon take some of your dmg. Applies to all sorts of dmg but poison. If your demon is hurt by this link, you will however not loose your mana from the other link. confusing? At lvl 25, about 85 percent of the dmg taken goes to the demon. If you heal yourself with a potion, the demon is healed as well.
Reveng's bloodlust: A buff spell that can be used on yourself and all your party members. Adds dmg against demons, reduces resistances of demons and increases movement speed (calculated seperatly from increased run/walk on items).
Body revitalisation: Passive skill. Massive health regeneration. Very massive. You must be killed off quickly to die. Affects only you.
Long range of short range mage spells: Yeah, u know what I mean.
.... PS : help me with a name.
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Defense: 98-116 (varies)(Base Defense: 37-42)
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 88
Durability: 18
16 Boxes
+130-170% Enhanced Defense (varies)
5% Chance To Cast Level 7-20 Blizzard When Struck (varies)
+15 Cold Absorb
15% To Maximum Cold Resist
Adds 13-21 Cold Damage @ 3 sec. duration (Normal)
+2 To Chilling Armor (Sorceress Only)
+2 To Blizzard (Sorceress Only)
+3 To Glacial Spike (Sorceress Only)
No, its not that one.
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/ Serched through all of the sets and unique belts. couldnt find any
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Never mind I think my mind is playing me a trick. I just saw through all the unique and set items, but didnt find what I was looking for
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I think I had a 2 all, 3 lightning sentry, 2 shadowmaster claw once
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http://strategy.diabloii.net/ All the best strategy guides there is (I've read'em all)
http://www.d2items.com/skills.php?class=bar Usefull little thingy
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/ All you needd to know about items
http://forums.diabloii.net/forumdisplay.php?forumid=12 if you still have questions
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I played this charecter all the way through the game in single player, and it is a fun and unique experience as well as challenging. A good read for those with special interests. It is also a headturner online:D
The Disaster Master
the 1.10 PvM elemental druid’s guide to succes, fun and overpower.
(version 2)
Introduction
I am known as bruthor, and this guide is a resoult of eternities of playing different classes/subclasses. When I am writing this, few have ever heard of me, but I’ve been around for a looong time, playing, and reding forums, guides and more. It is PvM based and makes it safe and easy to kill every enemy in the game except for fire/physical imune who will fall after some struggle. It is far from impossible to beat them, but most of us just say “Run Forrest, run!” I like guide that do not say “Do that and that,” and have tried to make this one like “You CAN do that, but should consider that, and maybe even something else.” It will cower items, but is not depandent.
The guide provides:
-success (ALL cleared without being hammerdinJ)
-survivebility in all ways (monsters must get past MANY dangers before they reach you.
-killingpower
-versatality (no really big weaknesses)
-cover of untwinked and rich gameplay and can possibly be used for hardcore
-all this in singleplayer
-a short PvP description (not what its made for, though)
-encouraging for creativity (make your own unique)
-some very usefull links spread around
-All you need to know to make one.
But what is a Disaster Master?
The disaster master is named from his many skills that you will be using. All of them can be active at once, and with auras, moulten boulders, volcano, armageddon, hurrycane, cyclone armor, twisters and minions you are nothing but a walking disaster. With all these skills, he must aim for the higher levels and + skills on equipement, but the charecter can be finished anytime… His main protection will be minions and block, but most important off all – monster hit recovery and low speed! To really call yourself a Disaster Master you should also use a Doom axe. You will rain death and destruction upon your foes like no other, and where you enter, there will be a great mess. Therefore I dare claiming that a high level disaster master has the most spetacular in-game look! Unlike a fire/summoner druid, he will focus in many skills for protection and destruction, not mainly wolves and fire. His best defence is offence.
The Disaster Master is great at all the focuses of the guide, but I would never claim that it’s the best. It still has all you need and can be great fun. Since I am a man of nature and a lone wolf, I have not got many insane items, but I`ll mention a few.
Some may say; “Why not make a stun build instead?” Well, stunners are not as versatile and damage dealing. Besides, stun is hard to use against unique monsters and don’t work against act end bosses.
Another says; “You will never get that high on levels” Well, maybe not, but level 85 is easily achived, and with skills from quests you will only be about 10 short. These are not needed to be succsessfull, only to have undefeatable minions. Read on and it will all make sence.
Definations on druid builds:
Wind druid: Max all wind spells and rest in summoning. You know this one.
Fire druid: Max fire spells and little/no summons. Close to disaster master.
Shifter: Any druid that use were-forms or switch between human and were.
Armageddon-bear/wolf: Shifted and using high level armageddon.
Stunner: Any build using stun for safety. DM uses hit lock and slow.
Summoner: Mainly depends on minions for everything. Many sub classes.
Fire/summoner: This is close, but not a disaster master. He use fire, often volcano, for killing from a safe distance, and have high life summons as meat shields.
Disaster Master: Does use mainly fire skills too.
BUT.
He also take use of wind skills. He does not use high level summons except maybe at the end. His summons are treated like fellow party members, not your meat-shields. You will be fighting next to them, and they serve mostly as another source of distraction. Distraction. That is what a Disaster Master is. Massive distraction, confusion, chaos, and slow and struggling around you. Still, you are the only source, and in the middle of the disaster, your foes will never get the opportunety to hit you. He will, if possible use Doom for weapon if possible. The druids elemental skills are nature catastrophies, and you my friend will try becoming DoomsDay itstself.
How does monster hit recovery work:
I’m not sure. Some say it is size dependant. Some say it is occuring if 1/12 of monsters life is whiped away in one blow like in PvP. Someone should write a gude on this topic, but this one cover enough already.
How does slow multiple slow effects work?
I know that they DO add together in some way, and I’ve seen the resoults. It rocks. This is a big topic and needs a long explanation. Again, someone should write a guide. Try search some necro mancer forums.
Stats
The stats are not really what is going to crush your character, but all guides must have the next four sentences:
Strength: Enough to wear your gear
Dexterity: Enough for max block
Vitality: Rest goes here
Energy: Base
I strongly recommend to plan out your gear before pumping your strength to high. You have absolutely no use of the 1% damage bonus per level except for maybe level 1-5. Maybe you like earthshaker, but I advise you not to get it.
Dexterity can be discussed. Some recommend no block becouse of block-lock, but I can tell you that blocking can be your best friend. Also some would say 75% chance to block with storm shield is to stat point intensive and recommend 50%. However, out of 100 swings, the 1. would be hit by 25 and the second by 50, wich means the last points in dexterity doubles the effect. Some weapons requires dexterity as well, but not many. Most likely you will be using a axe (low requirement) or a mace (no requirement).
Vitality is a no brainer- the more life the better ( a redused effect from healing potions, but still better. Try a vitabear with insane life and you will understand. Super healing for druid means only 320 hp recovered)
Energy is a very tempting stat early on, but later it is useless to you. Be strong.
Skills
These are what makes a Disaster Master, and to make the build shine, the skill progression will be very important as well. Read the awsome Primal Flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers on fire skills.
Elemental skills: Your arsenal. This will be the most pumped skill tree.
Volcano: 20 points- The main killing skill of this druid. In my opinion it is awsome. Read the primal flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers. I would like to comment some things though. Unlike many fire skills, it don’t require you to be in the fray playing punching bag style. It kills stationary targets and damages those around. Most enemies become stationary targets if they have a volcano shooting balls of rock and magma up their butt every second frame. The spread radius is great, but few mention the radius of the volcano itself. It does not only destroy a stationary target standing in the middle of the volcano, but every enemy only slightly touching the outer edge of the volcano is hit by every ball. This makes it a devastating skill to multiple hit-locked targets instead of a single target destroyer like many think. I think that each ball to has a small splash radius too, at least they hit enemies that only being slightly touched. Each ball also is piercing meaning they can hit every monster standing on the top of it, and have a chance of hitting others. (This is information I researched myself. If anyone knows something else, bring it on) A dream calculation that never will take place in reality would be:
Screen filled with enemies without resistance. Your synergized volcano deals about 1500 total damage after some + skills. Every ball (75 balls in six seconds according to primal flame guide)hits 6 enemies when fired off and 3 on impact (9 enemies total each ball total).
This gives us: 75 balls*1500 damage*9 hits=1012500 damage
The casting delay of volcano is 4 seconds. Volcano duration is six. That means 2 of 6 seconds damage is doubled (this is not complitely correct. I don’t know if volcano duration is when the volcano dissapears or when the last ball hits the ground. Casting duration and eventually faster cast rate should also be consedered, but I do it simple)
This gives us: 1012500 damage+((1012500 damage/6 seconds)*2 for double damage duration*2 again for the double damage)=1687500 damage over six seconds
Are you still hanging in there=) ???
Damage per second: 1687500/six seconds=281250 damage per second.
Insane numbers, huh, but seriosly, it is not going to happen. Volcano is far from the fastest killer out there,but the best we’ve got. Please let me know if I have made any mistakes in the calculation or said something incorrect about the skill.
Moulten boulder: 20 points- This is a great safety skill and exellent for low levels. The main purpose would be synergising volcano, but it is the best you have for your left qlick, and it will prove usefull. It is the only skill that adds to physical damage for volcano, so I recommand 20 points if possible.
Cyclone armor: 10-20 points- This skill will protect you against elemental damage, wich is what you are most likely to be hit by. At level 20 with one point in each synergy and +10 to all skills it absorbs 469 elemental damage (fire, cold and/or lightning). This is considerably much and may save your life once in a while. It has no “damaged status look” like the necro’s bone armor. That means it can have only one point of absorb left without showing it. Make sure to recast it all the time. The main purpose off the skill is hurrycane duration.
Hurrycane: 1 point- I will just mention the tiny damage you will recieve. About 150 damage per second. But this skill was the only thing I loved about my wind druids. For a wind druid it kills. For us, it is a lovely litlle holy freeze aura giving every monster within range hit recovery and chill status every second (I will add info about all chill effects later). Chill slows monsters by (not sure yet) percent. It also stack with holy freeze which slows enemies by 50 percent at level 12. This means that by equipping a Doom runeword axe your enemies will move, strike and recover from hit (not sure yet)% of what they normally would. Doom also has +2 skills! All this from a doom runeword and 10-20 not wasted points in elemental shield.
Armageddon: 1-20 points- This is a skill that I personally hate. It rearly hits, has short radius, but looks awesome. It still does scary damage with some + skills and may save your life if it hits something close to you, eighter it kills it or gives it a hit recovery. You must have points in fissure in order to make have good use of it. This is synergy to volcano’s fire damage which is worth considering. Can of course whipe out everything that is not fire imune itself. I use it mainly for protection against close enemies giving them hits. If you like the skill and want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway.
Fissure: 10-20 points- Another skill I don’t like. Some recommend to use it as killing skill, but I find that volcano rocks this on in all ways. Still it is one of the keys of your build. It synergizes your volcanos fire damage and adds to armageddon duration. I prefer having this one equal at skill levels to Cyclone armor or maybe one or to lower (before + skills). Hurrycane is much more important as protection than Armageddon. Therefore I can recast my armageddon and than my hurrycane when armageddon wears off. Hurrycane remains active all the time this way.
Arctic blast, Tornado, Twister and Firestorm: 1 point each- Exept for maybe level 1 twister for stun and multi hit at fast rate between each volcano, these are only prerequisutes and minor synergies. Twister can be used as left click along with moulten boulder. It stuns for 0,4 seconds, does tinywiny damage and shoots 3 minor tornadoes in random directions about 45 degrees forward. With no faster cast rate, you can fire 4 twister waves between each volcano. This means a total of 1,6 seconds stun. This really helps a lot if you do not have summons to be resummoned. This is a spamming spell without casting delays. This means you will NOT have to wait extra between each volcano as if you fired a moulten boulder.
Shape Shifting: Nothing. There are armageddon bear guides elsewhere.
Summoning: After all the protection I have told you about now, there is one thing still missing. Meat shields. With lots of + skills these can be very powerfull and are used mainly for protection. I recommend you to read Lothric’s summoning guide for additional information(http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=575). Number off points here must be placed when you feel that you need it. There are lots of time to recast between each volcano. If you are hardcore, definitely place more points here. The reason I would rather use Doom than Heart of the oak weapon is that you already have the summoning skills here. Party is always great!
Raven: one point- With lots of + skills it can be usefull for distraction, and no matter how low the damage is, it can give a monster a hit recovery status. The blind effekt is a curse similar to dim vision. They peck out the eyes of your pour foes. This is both good and bad. The curse is only working if you/your party is not close or already spotted. If monster is hit, than blind will work again even if you were spotted in the first place. The bad thing about ravens is that they need heavy recasting and blind goes over other more usefull curses.
Poison creeper: 0-1 point- this is useless except for the very start of the game, but if you want carrion vine or solar creeper go ahead.
Carrion vine: 0-1 point- At level 15 it heals 10% of max hit points. At level 10 it heals 9%. At level 15 it restores your red ball complitetly with 10 corpses. It removes corpses along with wolves and is usefull. It goes down whithin one or two hits or so, but monsters tend to miss it for some reason. Besides one hit on your vine means one less at you or your party. It heals only you. I did not bother using it.
Solar creeper: 0-1 point- The same as Carrion vine, but it restores mana. I find it useless except for getting rid of corpses. It was never worth three skill points to me, but it is your choice.
Oak sage: 1-20 points- It really helps out your whole party, but you are short on skills. It is probably the best skill in the game for mercenery protection. Your mercenery also helps your party out and cost a lot of money. I find myself only getting hit if my party members start dying, and it helps a lot. As many points as you can spare. If you want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway.
Spirit wolf: 1 point- If you like it you can use it, but it is not my favorite minion. The passive bonus is also transferred to your other wolves/bear even with + skills and not only actually spent skill points.
Dire wolf: 1-20 points- With enough + skills one point may be enough. How many to put here is all based on personal preferrance. Place points as you feel like are needed, and don’t consider any to be wasted. Dire wolves is limited to three wolves at a time. More than enough for crowd control (wich will not be a big issue) and they are what makes your minions tanks. They also get a icrease of 50% damage if they eat a corpse. Their damage is not what you want, but about 350 every hit at level 20 with + 10 to all skills and one point in grizzly is not too bad. After eating a corpse, damage will be about 525. Times three wolves they do 1575 while enraged. Not that bad? Life will be about 1000 each wolf.
Grizzly: 1 point- At level 1 with + 10 skills and 20 points in dire wolf, grizzly will have about 6000 life before Oak sage aura. You don’t need more than that for boss slaying and the ancients. He also has some combat skills. You just use him for other purposes than crowds.
Heart of Wolverine and Spirit of Barbs: 0 points- I find them useless, but some of you may want them for versatality and party damage. I recommend 0 points.
My suggestion for level 99 (111 skill points):
Dire wolves-20
Grizzly-1
Heart of the Oak-2
Moulten boulder-20
Fissure- 20
Volcano-20
Armageddon-1
Hurrycane-1
Cyclone armor-20
Rest-prerequisites
The questions are what skills NEEDS to be maxed. Some could probably be at ~15 to increase others. The one I doubt the most is if you should max wolves, armageddon or oak at the end. The suggested setup worked for me.
Mercenary: The last part of your party is your mercenary. I recommend act 2 normal mercenery. He is always close, deals great damage and can take quite a beating along with everyone else close to him. Give him a Reapers Toll weapon. Descriphy will break physical imunity and slow monsters by 50%. Now, imagine that along with hurrycane and holy freeze. Yeah baby. Infinity would also work great if you are ladder. Conviction lowers fire resistance after a wand with Lower resist has broken the fire imunity. Or phoenix would keep him alive and deling damage. If you do not use doom yourself, then do like Halciet. I will refer to Halciet’s great concentrate barbarian guide for the rest of his gear:
Outfitting Your Merc:
Anything with big defense is a plus, and you should try and make sure everything he’s wearing is ethereal, since his gear doesn’t get damaged. He’ll need some life leech from something, but other than that, it’s up to you. Vampire Gaze and Shaftstop are nice for the pdr and leech. Crown of Thieves is very nice as well, and an “Honor” weapon is a powerful, east-to-make weapon for earlier in the game. I’d definitely try and get the runes for “Doom,” just because that will make the merc much more powerful and useful. For the super rich, “Chains of Honor” is a nice choice for body armor, with the +2 skills (which will boost his aura) and life leech, and “Delirium” Rune Word is an incredible helm, with the % chance to cast Confuse. Doom, Delirium, and CoH, all in ethereal gear, would probably be the optimal equipment, though there are certainly many other options.
Read a little in The Mercenary Guide by Sunbearie & Team for more information (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=580).
Gear:
You will be looking for + skills and resists mainly. Cast rate means next to nothing as your fire skills have heavy casting delays. All resist 75% in Hell takes 155. You need to reach 75% or more in hell, at least in fire and cold. After that, get +skills and maybe some damage reduction if needed. Chance to cast whatever when struck is also great, but if you are good, it will rarely happen. There are so many combos, and I leave you with some ingredients. Figure out some yorself;)
I am not the best qualified to tell you about gear, but I will mention a few nice items. Most of them are relative expensive, but if you can’t afford anything, live by the land. Also, I admire anyone creative enough to use something totally weird and different=) Please share any ideas, and feel free to redirect me if I forgot something really nice.
Weapon Suggestion:
I really recommend Doom in a one handed axe. It has the holy freeze aura and + 2 to all skills. That pretty much makes this character. I do NOT like the idea of having Doom on your mercenary. When he’s down, no Holy Freeze. This item rocks, but it lack some resistances. Can’t understand why so few windies use it.
5% Chance To Cast Level 18 Volcano On Striking
Level 12 Holy Freeze Aura When Equipped
+2 To All Skills
+45% Increased Attack Speed
+330-370% Enhanced Damage (varies)
-(40-60)% To Enemy Cold Resistance (varies)
20% Deadly Strike
25% Chance of Open Wounds
Prevent Monster Heal
Freezes Target +3
Requirements -20%
Second choise would be heart of the oak. I don’t think any other one hand weapon can provide plus 3 to all skills. All resistances is nice, and replenish life, dexterity and max mana is OK to have.
+3 To All Skills
+40% Faster Cast Rate
+75% Damage To Demons
+100 To Attack Rating Against Demons
Adds 3-14 Cold Damage, 3 sec. Duration (Normal)
7% Mana Stolen Per Hit
+10 To Dexterity
Replenish Life +20
Increase Maximum Mana 15%
All Resistances +30-40 (varies)
Level 4 Oak Sage (25 Charges)
Level 14 Raven (60 Charges)
+50% Damage To Undead
Third choise is old school now, but it still kicks ass. + 2 skills, 75 all resistances and magic find. Decent choice. We are talking Silence runeword, and it beats wizardspike anytime.
200% Enhanced Damage
+75% Damage To Undead
Requirements -20%
20% Increased Attack Speed
+50 To Attack Rating Against Undead
+2 To All Skills
All Resistances +75
20% Faster Hit Recovery
11% Mana Stolen Per Hit
Hit Causes Monster To Flee 25%
Hit Blinds Target +33
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
30% Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items
Other than that, look for + skills and resistances.
Early on I suggest a wand with +mana/energy and resistances. I mention Eternity as well. This can save you lots of skill points in the summoning tree and leave you with an even stronger army. Has usefull other mods too.
Amulet: Mara's Kaleidoscope would be great with + skills and resistances. The best!
Required Level: 67
+2 To All Skill Levels
All Resistances +20-30 (varies)
+5 To All Attributes
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)
The Rising Sun diserves mentioning. At least you can keep it in your private stash and use when needed. + 2 fire skills, and later on fire attacks will heal you! Not as good and versatile as Mara’s Kaleidoscope though.
Required Level: 65
+2 To Fire Skills
2% Chance To Cast Level 13-19 Meteor When Struck (varies)
+ (0.75 Per Character Level) 0-74 Fire Absorb (Based On Character Level)
Adds 24-48 Fire Damage
Replenish Life +10
+4 To Light Radius
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later)
Seraph’s Hymn is just as good as any + 2 skills amulet.
Required Level: 65
+2 To All Skill Levels
+1-2 To Defensive Auras (Paladin Only) (varies)
+20-50% Damage To Demons (varies)
+150-250 To Attack Rating Against Demons (varies)
+20-50% Damage To Undead (varies)
+150-250 To Attack Rating Against Undead (varies)
+2 To Light Radius
(Ladder Only)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later)
Rare + 2 skills and second mods like resists are great.
Armor:
Guardian Angel is the best if you want safety. If you reach 90% all resist, than your biggest problem will be solved, and that is, my friend, elemental damage. Cast rate is not effected by slow effects eighter. Also, the armor is great on mercenery to keep him allive and increase his aura skill level. No + skills or resists for you though, but still great. In combo with stormshield, it would be much easier to achieve max block too.
Defense: 770-825 (varies)(Base Defense: 252-274)
Required Level: 45
Required Strength: 118
Durability: 60
+180-200% Enhanced Defense(varies)
+20% Increased Chance Of Blocking
+30% Faster Block Rate
+ (2.5 Per Character Level) 2-247 To Attack Rating Against Demons (Based On Character Level)
+1 To Paladin Skill Levels
+4 To Light Radius
15% To Maximum Poison Resist
15% To Maximum Cold Resist
15% To Maximum Lightning Resist
15% To Maximum Fire Resist
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or
Enigma is great with + 2 skill, 8% damage reduction, teleport, run walk, magic find and so on. Great alternative, but no resists.
+2 To All Skills
+45% Faster Run/Walk
+1 To Teleport
+750-775 Defense (varies)
+ (0.75 Per Character Level) +0-74 To Strength (Based On Character Level)
Increase Maximum Life 5%
Damage Reduced By 8%
+14 Life After Each Kill
15% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
+ (1 Per Character Level) +1-99% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level)
Than there is the expensive one. Chains of Honor. This one has what Enigma lacks, and I love it.
+2 To All Skills
+200% Damage To Demons
+100% Damage To Undead
8% Life Stolen Per Hit
+70% Enhanced Defense
+20 To Strength
Replenish Life +7
All Resistances +65
Damage Reduced By 8%
25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Arkaine's Valor is great with high defence, + 2 skills and vitality bonus.
Defense: 1295-1450 (varies)(Base Defense: 410-517)
Required Level: 85
Required Strength: 165
Durability: 30
+150-180% Enhanced Defense (varies)
+1-2 To All Skills* (varies)
+ (0.5 Per Character Level) 0-49 To Vitality (Based On Character Level)
30% Faster Hit Recovery
Damage Reduced By 10-15 (varies)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later)
Skullder's Ire has + skills and magic find. Not my end-game suggestion, but can help you find it.
Defense: 634-732 (varies)(Base Defense: 225-243)
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 97
Durability: 90
+160-200% Enhanced Defense (varies)
Repairs 1 Durability In 5 Seconds
+ (1.25 Per Character Level) 1-123 % Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level)
+1 To All Skill Levels
Magic Damage Reduced By 10
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)
Other than those, grab the best you can find.
Rings:
Stone of Jordan is the best. Dual wield them.
+1 To All Skill Levels
Increase Maximum Mana 25%*
Adds 1-12 Lightning Damage
+20 To Mana
Other than that grab something with + skills or resists or other useful mods.
Gloves:
Magefist is the ultimate if not some insane rare ones. Cheap too.
Defense: 24-25 (varies)(Base Defense: 9-11)
Required Level: 23
Required Strength: 45
Durability: 18
+20-30% Enhanced Defense (varies)
+10 Defense
+1 To Fire Skills
20% Faster Cast Rate
Regenerate Mana 25%
Adds 1-6 Fire Damage
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)
If not, get frostburns or something.
Boots:
Whatever you want. Try filling your needs for resistances if you have them. Fire and lightning is most important. Other then that, I like morrowwalk. Surprise me…
Helmet:
Expensive choise is a non magic druid pelt with + 3 volcano, +3 direwolf and + 3 armageddon or something. As far as I understand it is possible, but the first two is the most important. Than you add sockets from quest and insert Delirium. Ultimate killer helmet!
Jalal’s mane, Nightwing's Veil, Harlequin Crest, Crown of Ages, or +2 skills and other mods rare pelt works great as well. If you use Andariels Visage, consider Rising Sun amulet.
Shield:
I like safety, and I advise you to get stormshield socketed with shael and eventually guardian angel armor. This setup will however require lots of resists on your other items and no + skills. If you’re ladder and don’t want block, go Spirit runeword. If you’re not ladder and don’t like block, go for something with + 1 skill and/or resists if needed. There are many choices.
A Tower Shield socketed with 3 UM runes will grant you 66 in all resistance. With guardian angel it will not be to hard to get 90 in all resistances and 75% block.
If you are using Rising Sun you will be imune to fire. With 3 topazes you will have a lightning resist off 120%+30% from quests=150%. Equip T-Gods belt and you easily achieve 85% in Hell.
Belt:
Arachnid Mesh has + 1 skill. Need I say more.
Other belts would be Verdungo’s Hearty Cord or String of Ears(deffensive options) or thundergod’s vigor or a rare/unique resist belt
Weapon switch:
If your mercenery has Reapers Toll, try to get Call to Arms weapon for the battlecries and + skills, and Spirit (or other + skills shield. If you have more + skills on switch weapon than standard, you should switch before summoning, casting armageddon/hurrycane and maybe even volcano. If your mercenary has conviction or not Reapers Toll, consider a wand with Lower Resist Charges.
Charms:
Do not use Annihilus! It sucks! Seriously, use Annihilus like everyone else. Look for resist charms if needed. Get as many skillers as you possibly can. It’s up to you wether to use summoning skillers or elemental. I’ve heard of + 2 all skills grand charms with second mods. Woah! If you don’t have skillers, use + life charms. Charms is what can make this character very versatile.
Gameplay tips, facts and problems:
Will he be any good for PvP: Let me start by saying; I have no idea. Never ever done that myself, and he is by far made for this. I have read some guides though. Some will guard your corpse for using absorb (elemental shield, rising sun, etc), so now you’re warned. I would max armageddon instead of summons for damage output. Consider spirit wolves only. Many players have Cannot Be Frozen, but hurrycane may still interrupt ( I maybe would recommend no hurrycane for PvP, but do not call you a disaster master if you do ;( ). You are almost based on hit-lock, but players often have very quick recovery duration compared to monsters. If you can hit-lock a player, you are most likely victorious (some attacks like barb’s consentration makes him imune to hit-lock if he’s constantly swinging). You are a fragile character if when you first get hit, so don’t get hit =). Use Moulten Boulders instead of volcanoes if the enemy is not holding his ground. A melee character can be fooled into your armageddon if you run. Enouch PvP, guess wind druids are better anyway.
Fire imune/Physical imune: Option 1: Run. If you have a volcano on him, you may have a 6 seconds headstart. This is a easy and common solution.
Option 2: Use your cold damage sources to kill him. Doom may reduse his cold resistance by 60%, and it will be even lower with conviction and Lower resist. There are still enemies imune to both fire, physical, and cold, but these are a rare sight.
Option 3: Take advantage of descrephy or lower Resist and kill him with all you’ve got.
Option 4: Be creative=)
Act 5 minotour lords: These big bullies are often physical imune in hell, move quickly, swing hard and rappidly and they are imune to most if not all slow effects. The fact that they are large in size also gives them a redused chanse of getting hit recovery status. They are not undefetable, but be carefull. Just give them all you’ve got and they will fall like flies to your overpower. Theese also have a special AI (artificial Intelligence). It suits their description of making their own decisions on the battlefield. They may run past your party just to hunt you down… Other then theese, mostly rangers, enemies with physical spells (diablo and Stygian Fury), fetishes and other fast moving monsters will ever hit you with physical damage. Most melee enemies, even fetishes, will still be put in hit recovery.
Willowisps: Often known as gloams or burning suns theese undead creatures can tear appart most characters. They are scary to you too myfriend. But not if you have 90+ lightning resistance. Keep your elemental shield up and hit-lock/kill them as quick as possible. There is one safer option: Any blind effect, eighter from raven, dim vision or Cloak of Shadows, will make all mage/ranger creatures go to melee mode if they can see you at all. If they have no melee mode, they tend to do nothing at all.
Thight Quarters: “I hate the Maggots Lair and the Summoners sanctuary” This is not the case for you. Nothing is easier than maggots lair. Place a volcano around each corner, move behind your moulten boulder and if enemies comes towards you, cast volcano in front of them and they’ll be locked. For even more safety, keep everything active.
Where to stand in a battle open field battle: This can be discussed a lot. Usually your minions are fighting some melee guys, but take some fire from mages/archers in the background. Moving in among your minions makes you and all your powers shine, but it’s a little kamikazee to me. I prefer to cast my volcano where the enemies are thightest or at the boss. Try get to a spot where minions are in front of you, than melee monsters within range of your hurrycane and armageddon, and let your minions take the damage from afar until melee guys are all down.
Standing as far away from the battle casting volcanoes at your enemies work as well, but it is the way off a volcano/summoner, not a Disaster Master. You’r minions are not to hold their own in battles, but to aid you side by side. They are much safer next to you thanks to your aura-like skills.
If enemies encounter from all directions, than I recommend to hade between your minions. Then you wipe out one side to create a safe spot for yourself. (Standing in the middle of your own volcano with everything activated pretty much ensures that melee encounters will be locked, but its risky)
Act End Bosses: Normal Andariel should fall quickly to your moulten boulder. She has -30 fire resist. If you play in single player 8 player game, you shoul get around level 20 easily. Normal Duriel must be kept occupied with your party. Keep all of them up fighting fit. He will fall to your moulten boulder or volcano if you have. Normal Mephisto can easily be defeated the same way as Duriel. Normal Diablo is tougher. He will wipe out your party in no time. Have ligthning and fire resistance, block, some rejuvenation potions, dodge his attacks, keep volcano active and wait. Normal Baal is not too hard. He will most likely kill your party, but you have one option if you don’t want to get close. Baal can’t shoot across the deep under the bridge that leads to the world stone. You can’t eighter, but you can place a volcano on the other side of it. This is slow. I prefer just killing him.
Nightmare and hell act ends I find very easy.
Minions of Destruction: Lister and co. is just a little bit scarier than any crowd. Do as you use to.
Ancients: I once again refer to someone elses guide. This time it is the fire/summoner guide that was so inspiring to me and probably the closest you can get to a Disaster Master. Originally written by AlterEgo:
“NM & Hell Ancients are by far your toughest foe - aren't they always? Here's where all of the practice in switching skills and evasive tactics will pay off. The basic procedure is to place the grizzly in a position to tank all three and burn them to a crisp. Before the fight, unsummon the vine to keep it from leading one of the big three toward you. Immediately after they spawn & engage the ravens/merc/grizzly, check their mods. If any one of them is Fire Enchanted, cast a TP and reroll. Remember the FE bug I mentioned at the top? It is a one-hit killer no matter how much life you've built up.
After you take care of that problem the fun begins. You have no blocking and cannot let yourself be hit. Keep your merc alive for as long as possible. He may be able to seriously injure or even kill one of the Ancients before dying. Listen for Korlic's leap attack warning - if you hear it, immediately side-step. Keep your Oak Sage up. It will be targeted often, but is critical to keeping your meat shield alive. Try to keep your grizzly in the same position, and yourself clear of the main action. That will attract the three to the same relative area, and a volcano placed near your bruin will hit one or more of them pretty frequently. If you have time, ravens will take some of the hits and keep your grizzly alive longer. Be patient, and careful. Keep this process up and one will soon fall. Then another. Probably one of them will be FI and will take longer, but hang in there, and you will be victorious.”
You will have a little easier thanks to your many defensive skills and block, but maybe more grizzly recasting is needed.
One more thing. Mix full rejuvenations. Lots of them. To do this you need 3 rejuvs, a gem and the cube. A super healing slowly restores only 320 life for druid and wont save you. Fill your belt and drop full rejuvs all around the place before reading the book. This way you can pick them directly to your belt.
Help your mercenery out as well. Hold shift and press 1/2/3/4 to heal him emidatly instead of drawing your potions to his icon. He’ll be just fine...
Equip a Doom axe. 50% slow means double everything, and it has 2 all skills!
Good Luck
Game Progression: If you don’t stick to this guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=512) by Denise or something close you may screw up big time. An important thing for you will be skill point distribution. Here’s my recomandation:
My suggestion for level 99 (110 skill points):
Dire wolves-20
Grizzly-1
Heart of the Oak-1
Moulten boulder-20
Fissure- 20
Volcano-20
Armageddon-1
Hurrycane-1
Cyclone armor-20
Rest-prerequisites
Check out this site if you want to customise or get some numbers:
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~cbradfor/diablo2/skills.html
If you stick to it I suggest this as a GUIDELINE:
Level 2-5 + DenOE skill: 1 point raven, 1 point fire storm. Save the rest.
Level 6-11: 1 point in oak sage, one point in spirit wolf. Rest in Moulten Boulder
Level 12-17: Equalize your Moulten Boulder Fissure with rest.
Level 18-23 + Radament skill: Get 3 points in Dire Wolf. Keep equalizing Moulten Boulder and Fissure with the rest.
Level 24-43: Volcano only
Level 45-68: Go to nightmare. Max Moulten Boulder and Fissure. Keep in mind that even if your minions are dying, you will get summoning charms and more + skills later. Place points in dire wolf if really needed.
Level 69-99: Get to hell at level 71+. Get Grizzly (before Ancients), Armageddon and prerequisites. Pump Cyclone armor. When You get to hell you need protection! After that, pump wolves if you followed this to the letter.
Final words:
I hope to see some more spetacular druids around and hear about your processes. I like any comments, but off course “Great guide! You’re the man, and I wish I was a genious like you.” will be great to hearJ. Interresting suggestions, questiones, notifications on my mistakes, or someone serius saying; “you suck becouse…” are welcome as well. I really like my character, and must thank every guide writer out there helping me out. I’ve read many…
Special thanks to everyone I borrowed information from, or made links to info (you are all mentioned in the guide)!
More updated versions are to come! Please help me out. I know much, but not all…
Oh. If the name is taken or you find it stupid, let me know.
The Disaster Master
the 1.10 PvM elemental druid’s guide for to succes, fun and overpower.
(version 1)
part 1
Introduction
I am known as bruthor, and this guide is a resoult of eternities of playing different classes/subclasses. When I am writing this, few have ever heard of me, but I’ve been around for a looong time, playing, and reding forums, guides and more. It is p/m based and makes it safe and easy to kill every enemy in the game except for fire/physical imune who will fall after some struggle. It is far from impossible to beat them, but most of us just say “Run Forrest, run!” I like guide that do not say “Do that and that,” and have tried to make this one like “You CAN do that, but should consider that, and maybe even something else.” It will cower items, but is not depandent.
The guide provides:
-success (ALL cleared without being hammerdin)
-survivebility in all ways (monsters must get past MANY dangers before they reach you.
-killingpower
-versatality (no really big weaknesses)
-cover of untwinked and rich gameplay and can possibly be used for hardcore
-all this in singleplayer
-a short PvP description (not what its made for, though)
-encouraging for creativity (make your own unique)
-some very usefull links spread around
-All you need to know to make one.
But what is a Disaster Master?
The disaster master is named from his many skills that you will be using. All of them can be active at once, and with auras, moulten boulders, volcano, armageddon, hurrycane, cyclone armor, twisters and minions you are nothing but a walking disaster. With all these skills, he must aim for the higher levels and + skills on equipement, but the charecter can be finished anytime… His main protection will be minions and block, but most important off all¬ – monster hit recovery! To really call yourself a Disaster Master you should also use a Doom axe. You will rain death and destruction upon your foes like no other, and where you enter, there will be a great mess. Therefore I dare claiming that a high level disaster master has the most spetacular in-game look! Unlike a fire/summoner druid, he will focus in many skills for protection and destruction, not mainly wolves. His best defence is offence.
The Disaster Master is great at all the focuses of the guide, but I would never claim that it’s the best. It still has all you need and can be great fun. Since I am a man of nature and a lone wolf, I have not got many insane items, but I`ll mention a few.
Some may say; “Why not make a stun build instead?” Well, stunners are not as versatile and damage dealing. Besides, stun is hard to use against unique monsters and don’t work against act end bosses.
Another says; “You will never get that high on levels” Well, maybe not, but level 85 is easily achived, and with skills from quests you will only be about 10 short. These are not needed to be succsessfull, only to have undefeatable minions. Read on and it will all make sence.
Definations on druid builds:
Wind druid: Max all wind spells and rest in summoning. You know this one.
Fire druid: Max fire spells and little/no summons. Close to disaster master.
Shifter: Any druid that use were-forms or switch between human and were.
Armageddon-bear/wolf: Shifted and using high level armageddon.
Stunner: Any build using stun for safety. DM uses hit lock and slow.
Summoner: Mainly depends on minions for everything. Many sub classes.
Fire/summoner: This is close, but not a disaster master. He use fire, often volcano, for killing from a safe distance, and have high life summons as meat shields.
Disaster Master: Does use mainly fire skills too.
BUT.
He also take use wind skillsof He He does not use high level summons except maybe at the end. His summons are treated like fellow party members, not your meat-shields. You will be fighting next to them, they serve mostly as another source of distraction. Distraction. That is what a Disaster Master is. Massive distraction, confusion, chaos, and slow and struggling around you. Still, you are the only source, and in the middle of the disaster, your foes will never get the opportunety to hit you. He will, if possible use Doom for weapon if possible. The druids elemental skills are nature catastrophies, and you my friend will try becoming DoomsDay itstself.
How does monster hit recovery work:
As far as I know, its dependant on size. Many monsters have different speeds. I’ll try updating this field as I know more for sure. It is important to your survival.
How does slow multiple slow effects work?
I know that they DO add together in some way, and I’ve seen the resoults. It rocks. I do not know exectly how yet, and I will update the guide as soon as I know.
Stats
The stats are not really what is going to crush your character, but all guides must have the next four sentences:
Strength: Enough to wear your gear
Dexterity: Enough for max block
Vitality: Rest goes here
Energy: Base
I strongly recommend to plan out your gear before pumping your strength to high. You have absolutely no use of the 1% damage bonus per level except for maybe level 1-5. Maybe you like earthshaker, but I advise you not to get it.
Dexterity can be discussed. Some recommend no block becouse of block-lock, but I can tell you that blocking can be your best friend. Also some would say 75% chance to block with storm shield is to stat point intensive and recommend 50%. However, out of 100 swings, the 1. would be hit by 25 and the second by 50, wich means the last points in dexterity doubles the effect. Some weapons requires dexterity as well, but not many. Most likely you will be using a axe (low requirement) or a mace (no requirement).
Vitality is a no brainer- the more life the better ( a redused effect from healing potions, but still better. Try a vitabear with insane life and you will understand. Super healing for druid means only 320 hp recovered)
Energy is a very tempting stat early on, but later it is useless to you. Be strong.
Skills
These are what makes a Disaster Master, and to make the build shine, the skill progression will be very important as well. Read the awsome Primal Flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers on fire skills.
Elemental skills: Your arsenal. This will be the most pumped skill tree.
Volcano: 20 points- The main killing skill of this druid. In my opinion it is awsome. Read the primal flame guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=541) for more tactic and numbers. I would like to comment some things though. Unlike many fire skills, it don’t require you to be in the fray playing punching bag style. It kills stationary targets and damages those around. Most enemies become stationary targets if they have a volcano shooting balls of rock and magma up their butt every second frame. The spread radius is great, but few mention the radius of the volcano itself. It does not only destroy a stationary target standing in the middle of the volcano, but every enemy only slightly touching the outer edge of the volcano is hit by every ball. This makes it a devastating skill to multiple hit-locked targets instead of a single target destroyer like many think. I think that each ball to has a small splash radius too, at least they hit enemies that only being slightly touched. Each ball also is piercing meaning they can hit every monster standing on the top of it, and have a chance of hitting others. (This is information I researched myself. If anyone knows something else, bring it on) A dream calculation that never will take place in reality would be:
Screen filled with enemies without resistance. Your synergized volcano deals about 1500 total damage after some + skills. Every ball (75 balls in six seconds according to primal flame guide)hits 6 enemies when fired off and 3 on impact (9 enemies total each ball total).
This gives us: 75 balls*1500 damage*9 hits=1012500 damage
The casting delay of volcano is 4 seconds. Volcano duration is six. That means 2 of 6 seconds damage is doubled (this is not complitely correct. I don’t know if volcano duration is when the volcano dissapears or when the last ball hits the ground. Casting duration and eventually faster cast rate should also be consedered, but I do it simple)
This gives us: 1012500 damage+((1012500 damage/6 seconds)*2 for double damage duration*2 again for the double damage)=1687500 damage over six seconds
Are you still hanging in there=) ???
Damage per second: 1687500/six seconds=281250 damage per second.
Insane numbers, huh, but seriosly, it is not going to happen. Volcano is far from the fastest killer out there,but the best we’ve got. Please let me know if I have made any mistakes in the calculation or said something incorrect about the skill.
Moulten boulder: 20 points- This is a great safety skill and exellent for low levels. The main purpose would be synergising volcano, but it is the best you have for your left qlick, and it will prove usefull. It is the only skill that adds to physical damage for volcano, so I recommand 20 points if possible.
Cyclone armor: 10-20 points- This skill will protect you against elemental damage, wich is what you are most likely to be hit by. At level 20 with one point in each synergy and +10 to all skills it absorbs 469 elemental damage (fire, cold and/or lightning). This is considerably much and may save your life once in a while. It has no “damaged status look” like the necro’s bone armor. That means it can have only one point of absorb left without showing it. Make sure to recast it all the time. The main purpose off the skill is hurrycane duration.
Hurrycane: 1 point- I will just mention the tiny damage you will recieve. About 150 damage per second. But this skill was the only thing I loved about my wind druids. For a wind druid it kills. For us, it is a lovely litlle holy freeze aura giving every monster within range hit recovery and chill status every second (I will add info about all chill effects later). Chill slows monsters by (not sure yet) percent. It also stack with holy freeze which slows enemies by 50 percent at level 12. This means that by equipping a Doom runeword axe your enemies will move, strike and recover from hit (not sure yet)% of what they normally would. Doom also has +2 skills! All this from a doom runeword and 10-20 not wasted points in elemental shield.
Armageddon: 1-20 points- This is a skill that I personally hate. It rearly hits, has short radius, but looks awesome. It still does scary damage with some + skills and may save your life if it hits something close to you, eighter it kills it or gives it a hit recovery. You must have points in fissure in order to make have good use of it. This is synergy to volcano’s fire damage which is worth considering. Can of course whipe out everything that is not fire imune itself. I use it mainly for protection against close enemies giving them hits. If you like the skill and want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway.
Fissure: 10-20 points- Another skill I don’t like. Some recommend to use it as killing skill, but I find that volcano rocks this on in all ways. Still it is one of the keys of your build. It synergizes your volcanos fire damage and adds to armageddon duration. I prefer having this one equal at skill levels to Cyclone armor or maybe one or to lower (before + skills). Hurrycane is much more important as protection than Armageddon. Therefore I can recast my armageddon and than my hurrycane when armageddon wears off. Hurrycane remains active all the time this way.
Arctic blast, Tornado, Twister and Firestorm: 1 point each- Exept for maybe level 1 twister for stun and multi hit at fast rate between each volcano, these are only prerequisutes and minor synergies. Twister can be used as left click along with moulten boulder. It stuns for 0,4 seconds, does tinywiny damage and shoots 3 minor tornadoes in random directions about 45 degrees forward.
Shape Shifting: Nothing. There are armageddon bear guides elsewhere.
Summoning: After all the protection I have told you about now, there is one thing still missing. Meat shields. With lots of + skills these can be very powerfull and are used mainly for protection. I recommend you to read Lothric’s summoning guide for additional information(http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=575). Number off points here must be placed when you feel that you need it. There are lots of time to recast between each volcano. If you are hardcore, definitely place more points here. The reason I would rather use Doom than Heart of the oak weapon is that you already have the summoning skills here. Party is always great!
Raven: one point- With lots of + skills it can be usefull for distraction, and no matter how low the damage is, it can give a monster a hit recovery status. The blind effekt is a curse similar to dim vision. They peck out the eyes of your pour foes. This is both good and bad. The curse is only working if you/your party is not close or already spotted. If monster is hit, than blind will work again even if you were spotted in the first place. The bad thing about ravens is that they need heavy recasting and blind goes over other more usefull curses.
Poison creeper: 0-1 point- this is useless except for the very start of the game, but if you want carrion vine or solar creeper go ahead.
Carrion vine: 0-1 point- At level 15 it heals 10% of max hit points. At level 10 it heals 9%. At level 15 it restores your red ball complitetly with 10 corpses. It removes corpses along with wolves and is usefull. It goes down whithin one or two hits or so, but monsters tend to miss it for some reason. Besides one hit on your vine means one less at you or your party. It heals only you. I did not bother using it.
Solar creeper: 0-1 point- The same as Carrion vine, but it restores mana. I find it useless except for getting rid of corpses. It was never worth three skill points to me, but it is your choice.
Oak sage: 1-20 points- It really helps out your whole party, but you are short on skills. It is probably the best skill in the game for mercenery protection. Your mercenery also helps your party out and cost a lot of money. I find myself only getting hit if my party members start dying, and it helps a lot. As many points as you can spare. If you want points, they should be taken from fissure AND cyclone armor and/or Wolves. You will be a mean killing machine anyway.
Spirit wolf: 1 point- If you like it you can use it, but it is not my favorite minion. The passive bonus is also transferred to your other wolves/bear even with + skills and not only actually spent skill points.
Dire wolf: 1-20 points- With enough + skills one point may be enough. How many to put here is all based on personal preferrance. Place points as you feel like are needed, and don’t consider any to be wasted. Dire wolves is limited to three wolves at a time. More than enough for crowd control (wich will not be a big issue) and they are what makes your minions tanks. They also get a icrease of 50% damage if they eat a corpse. Their damage is not what you want, but about 350 every hit at level 20 with + 10 to all skills and one point in grizzly is not too bad. After eating a corpse, damage will be about 525. Times three wolves they do 1575 while enraged. Not that bad? Life will be about 1000 each wolf.
Grizzly: 1 point- At level 1 with + 10 skills and 20 points in dire wolf, grizzly will have about 6000 life before Oak sage aura. You don’t need more than that for boss slaying and the ancients. He also has some combat skills. You just use him for other purposes than crowds.
Heart of Wolverine and Spirit of Barbs: 0 points- I find them useless, but some of you may want them for versatality and party damage. I recommend 0 points.
My suggestion for level 99 (110 skill points):
Dire wolves-20
Grizzly-1
Heart of the Oak-1
Moulten boulder-20
Fissure- 20
Volcano-20
Armageddon-1
Hurrycane-1
Cyclone armor-20
Rest-prerequisites
The questions are what skills NEEDS to be maxed. Some could probably be at ~15 to increase others. The one I doubt the most is if you should max wolves, armageddon or oak at the end. The suggested setup worked for me.
Mercenary: The last part of your party is your mercenary. I recommend act 2 normal mercenery. He is always close, deals great damage and can take quite a beating along with everyone else close to him. Give him a Reapers Toll weapon. Descriphy will break physical imunity and slow monsters by 50%. Now, imagine that along with hurrycane and holy freeze. Yeah baby. Infinity would also work great if you are ladder. Conviction lowers fire resistance after a wand with Lower resist has broken the fire imunity. Or phoenix would keep him alive and deling damage. If you do not use doom yourself, then do like Halciet. I will refer to Halciet’s great concentrate barbarian guide for the rest of his gear:
Outfitting Your Merc:
Anything with big defense is a plus, and you should try and make sure everything he’s wearing is ethereal, since his gear doesn’t get damaged. He’ll need some life leech from something, but other than that, it’s up to you. Vampire Gaze and Shaftstop are nice for the pdr and leech. Crown of Thieves is very nice as well, and an “Honor” weapon is a powerful, east-to-make weapon for earlier in the game. I’d definitely try and get the runes for “Doom,” just because that will make the merc much more powerful and useful. For the super rich, “Chains of Honor” is a nice choice for body armor, with the +2 skills (which will boost his aura) and life leech, and “Delirium” Rune Word is an incredible helm, with the % chance to cast Confuse. Doom, Delirium, and CoH, all in ethereal gear, would probably be the optimal equipment, though there are certainly many other options.
Read a little in The Mercenary Guide by Sunbearie & Team for more information (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=580).
Gear:
You will be looking for + skills and resists mainly. Cast rate means next to nothing as your fire skills have heavy casting delays. All resist 75% in Hell takes 155. You need to reach 75% or more in hell, at least in fire and cold. After that, get +skills and maybe some damage reduction if needed. Chance to cast whatever when struck is also great, but if you are good, it will rarely happen. There are so many combos, and I leave you with some ingredients. Figure out some yorself;)
I am not the best qualified to tell you about gear, but I will mention a few nice items. Most of them are relative expensive, but if you can’t afford anything, live by the land. Also, I admire anyone creative enough to use something totally weird and different=) Please share any ideas, and feel free to redirect me if I forgot something really nice.
Weapon Suggestion:
I really recommend Doom in a one handed axe. It has the holy freeze aura and + 2 to all skills. That pretty much makes this character. I do NOT like the idea of having Doom on your mercenary. When he’s down, no Holy Freeze. This item rocks, but it lack some resistances. Can’t understand why so few windies use it.
5% Chance To Cast Level 18 Volcano On Striking
Level 12 Holy Freeze Aura When Equipped
+2 To All Skills
+45% Increased Attack Speed
+330-370% Enhanced Damage (varies)
-(40-60)% To Enemy Cold Resistance (varies)
20% Deadly Strike
25% Chance of Open Wounds
Prevent Monster Heal
Freezes Target +3
Requirements -20%
Second choise would be heart of the oak. I don’t think any other one hand weapon can provide plus 3 to all skills. All resistances is nice, and replenish life, dexterity and max mana is OK to have.
+3 To All Skills
+40% Faster Cast Rate
+75% Damage To Demons
+100 To Attack Rating Against Demons
Adds 3-14 Cold Damage, 3 sec. Duration (Normal)
7% Mana Stolen Per Hit
+10 To Dexterity
Replenish Life +20
Increase Maximum Mana 15%
All Resistances +30-40 (varies)
Level 4 Oak Sage (25 Charges)
Level 14 Raven (60 Charges)
+50% Damage To Undead
Third choise is old school now, but it still kicks ass. + 2 skills, 75 all resistances and magic find. Decent choice. We are talking Silence runeword, and it beats wizardspike anytime.
200% Enhanced Damage
+75% Damage To Undead
Requirements -20%
20% Increased Attack Speed
+50 To Attack Rating Against Undead
+2 To All Skills
All Resistances +75
20% Faster Hit Recovery
11% Mana Stolen Per Hit
Hit Causes Monster To Flee 25%
Hit Blinds Target +33
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
30% Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items
Other than that, look for + skills and resistances.
Early on I suggest a wand with +mana/energy and resistances. I mention Eternity as well. This can save you lots of skill points in the summoning tree and leave you with an even stronger army. Has usefull other mods too.
Amulet: Mara's Kaleidoscope would be great with + skills and resistances. The best!
Required Level: 67
+2 To All Skill Levels
All Resistances +20-30 (varies)
+5 To All Attributes
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)
The Rising Sun diserves mentioning. At least you can keep it in your private stash and use when needed. + 2 fire skills, and later on fire attacks will heal you! Not as good and versatile as Mara’s Kaleidoscope though.
Required Level: 65
+2 To Fire Skills
2% Chance To Cast Level 13-19 Meteor When Struck (varies)
+ (0.75 Per Character Level) 0-74 Fire Absorb (Based On Character Level)
Adds 24-48 Fire Damage
Replenish Life +10
+4 To Light Radius
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later)
Seraph’s Hymn is just as good as any + 2 skills amulet.
Required Level: 65
+2 To All Skill Levels
+1-2 To Defensive Auras (Paladin Only) (varies)
+20-50% Damage To Demons (varies)
+150-250 To Attack Rating Against Demons (varies)
+20-50% Damage To Undead (varies)
+150-250 To Attack Rating Against Undead (varies)
+2 To Light Radius
(Ladder Only)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later)
Rare + 2 skills and second mods like resists are great.
Armor:
Guardian Angel is the best if you want safety. If you reach 90% all resist, than your biggest problem will be solved, and that is, my friend, elemental damage. Cast rate is not effected by slow effects eighter. Also, the armor is great on mercenery to keep him allive and increase his aura skill level. No + skills or resists for you though, but still great. In combo with stormshield, it would be much easier to achieve max block too.
Defense: 770-825 (varies)(Base Defense: 252-274)
Required Level: 45
Required Strength: 118
Durability: 60
+180-200% Enhanced Defense(varies)
+20% Increased Chance Of Blocking
+30% Faster Block Rate
+ (2.5 Per Character Level) 2-247 To Attack Rating Against Demons (Based On Character Level)
+1 To Paladin Skill Levels
+4 To Light Radius
15% To Maximum Poison Resist
15% To Maximum Cold Resist
15% To Maximum Lightning Resist
15% To Maximum Fire Resist
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or
Enigma is great with + 2 skill, 8% damage reduction, teleport, run walk, magic find and so on. Great alternative, but no resists.
+2 To All Skills
+45% Faster Run/Walk
+1 To Teleport
+750-775 Defense (varies)
+ (0.75 Per Character Level) +0-74 To Strength (Based On Character Level)
Increase Maximum Life 5%
Damage Reduced By 8%
+14 Life After Each Kill
15% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
+ (1 Per Character Level) +1-99% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level)
Than there is the expensive one. Chains of Honor. This one has what Enigma lacks, and I love it.
+2 To All Skills
+200% Damage To Demons
+100% Damage To Undead
8% Life Stolen Per Hit
+70% Enhanced Defense
+20 To Strength
Replenish Life +7
All Resistances +65
Damage Reduced By 8%
25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Arkaine's Valor is great with high defence, + 2 skills and vitality bonus.
Defense: 1295-1450 (varies)(Base Defense: 410-517)
Required Level: 85
Required Strength: 165
Durability: 30
+150-180% Enhanced Defense (varies)
+1-2 To All Skills* (varies)
+ (0.5 Per Character Level) 0-49 To Vitality (Based On Character Level)
30% Faster Hit Recovery
Damage Reduced By 10-15 (varies)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later)
Skullder's Ire has + skills and magic find. Not my end-game suggestion, but can help you find it.
Defense: 634-732 (varies)(Base Defense: 225-243)
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 97
Durability: 90
+160-200% Enhanced Defense (varies)
Repairs 1 Durability In 5 Seconds
+ (1.25 Per Character Level) 1-123 % Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level)
+1 To All Skill Levels
Magic Damage Reduced By 10
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)
Other than those, grab the best you can find.
Rings:
Stone of Jordan is the best. Dual wield them.
+1 To All Skill Levels
Increase Maximum Mana 25%*
Adds 1-12 Lightning Damage
+20 To Mana
Other than that grab something with + skills or resists or other useful mods.
Gloves:
Magefist is the ultimate if not some insane rare ones. Cheap too.
Defense: 24-25 (varies)(Base Defense: 9-11)
Required Level: 23
Required Strength: 45
Durability: 18
+20-30% Enhanced Defense (varies)
+10 Defense
+1 To Fire Skills
20% Faster Cast Rate
Regenerate Mana 25%
Adds 1-6 Fire Damage
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)
If not, get frostburns or something.
Boots:
Whatever you want. Try filling your needs for resistances if you have them. Fire and lightning is most important. Other then that, I like morrowwalk. Surprise me…
Helmet:
Expensive choise is a non magic druid pelt with + 3 volcano, +3 direwolf and + 3 armageddon or something. As far as I understand it is possible, but the first two is the most important. Than you add sockets from quest and insert Delirium. Ultimate killer helmet!
Jalal’s mane, Nightwing's Veil, Harlequin Crest, Crown of Ages, or +2 skills and other mods rare pelt works great as well. If you use Andariels Visage, consider Rising Sun amulet.
Shield:
I like safety, and I advise you to get stormshield socketed with shael and eventually guardian angel armor. This setup will however require lots of resists on your other items and no + skills. If you’re ladder and don’t want block, go Spirit runeword. If you’re not ladder and don’t like block, go for something with + 1 skill and/or resists if needed. There are many choices.
A Tower Shield socketed with 3 UM runes will grant you 66 in all resistance. With guardian angel it will not be to hard to get 90 in all resistances and 75% block.
If you are using Rising Sun you will be imune to fire. With 3 topazes you will have a lightning resist off 120%+30% from quests=150%. Equip T-Gods belt and you easily achieve 85% in Hell.
Belt:
Arachnid Mesh has + 1 skill. Need I say more.
Other belts would be Verdungo’s Hearty Cord or String of Ears(deffensive options) or thundergod’s vigor or a rare/unique resist belt
Weapon switch:
If your mercenery has Reapers Toll, try to get Call to Arms weapon for the battlecries and + skills, and Spirit (or other + skills shield. If you have more + skills on switch weapon than standard, you should switch before summoning, casting armageddon/hurrycane and maybe even volcano. If your mercenary has conviction or not Reapers Toll, consider a wand with Lower Resist Charges.
Charms:
Do not use Annihilus! It sucks! Seriously, use Annihilus like everyone else. Look for resist charms if needed. Get as many skillers as you possibly can. It’s up to you wether to use summoning skillers or elemental. I’ve heard of + 2 all skills grand charms with second mods. Woah! If you don’t have skillers, use + life charms. Charms is what can make this character very versatile.
Gameplay tips, facts and problems:
Will he be any good for PvP: Let me start by saying; I have no idea. Never ever done that myself, and he is by far made for this. I have read some guides though. Some will guard your corpse for using absorb (elemental shield, rising sun, etc), so now you’re warned. I would max armageddon instead of summons for damage output. Consider spirit wolves only. Many players have Cannot Be Frozen, but hurrycane may still interrupt ( I maybe would recommend no hurrycane for PvP, but do not call you a disaster master if you do ;( ). You are almost based on hit-lock, but players often have very quick recovery duration compared to monsters. If you can hit-lock a player, you are most likely victorious (some attacks like barb’s consentration makes him imune to hit-lock if he’s constantly swinging). You are a fragile character if when you first get hit, so don’t get hit =). Use Moulten Boulders instead of volcanoes if the enemy is not holding his ground. A melee character can be fooled into your armageddon if you run. Enouch PvP, guess wind druids are better anyway.
Fire imune/Physical imune: Option 1: Run. If you have a volcano on him, you may have a 6 seconds headstart. This is a easy and common solution.
Option 2: Use your cold damage sources to kill him. Doom may reduse his cold resistance by 60%, and it will be even lower with conviction and Lower resist. There are still enemies imune to both fire, physical, and cold, but these are a rare sight.
Option 3: Take advantage of descrephy or lower Resist and kill him with all you’ve got.
Option 4: Be creative=)
Act 5 minotour lords: These big bullies are often physical imune in hell, move quickly, swing hard and rappidly and they are imune to most if not all slow effects. The fact that they are large in size also gives them a redused chanse of getting hit recovery status. They are not undefetable, but be carefull. Just give them all you’ve got and they will fall like flies to your overpower. Theese also have a special AI (artificial Intelligence). It suits their description of making their own decisions on the battlefield. They may run past your party just to hunt you down… Other then theese, mostly rangers, enemies with physical spells (diablo and Stygian Fury), fetishes and other fast moving monsters will ever hit you with physical damage. Most melee enemies, even fetishes, will still be put in hit recovery.
Willowisps: Often known as gloams or burning suns theese undead creatures can tear appart most characters. They are scary to you too myfriend. But not if you have 90+ lightning resistance. Keep your elemental shield up and hit-lock/kill them as quick as possible. There is one safer option: Any blind effect, eighter from raven, dim vision or Cloak of Shadows, will make all mage/ranger creatures go to melee mode if they can see you at all. If they have no melee mode, they tend to do nothing at all.
Thight Quarters: “I hate the Maggots Lair and the Summoners sanctuary” This is not the case for you. Nothing is easier than maggots lair. Place a volcano around each corner, move behind your moulten boulder and if enemies comes towards you, cast volcano in front of them and they’ll be locked. For even more safety, keep everything active.
Where to stand in a battle open field battle: This can be discussed a lot. Usually your minions are fighting some melee guys, but take some fire from mages/archers in the background. Moving in among your minions makes you and all your powers shine, but it’s a little kamikazee to me. I prefer to cast my volcano where the enemies are thightest or at the boss. Try get to a spot where minions are in front of you, than melee monsters within range of your hurrycane and armageddon, and let your minions take the damage from afar until melee guys are all down.
Standing as far away from the battle casting volcanoes at your enemies work as well, but it is the way off a volcano/summoner, not a Disaster Master. You’r minions are not to hold their own in battles, but to aid you side by side. They are much safer next to you thanks to your aura-like skills.
If enemies encounter from all directions, than I recommend to hade between your minions. Then you wipe out one side to create a safe spot for yourself. (Standing in the middle of your own volcano with everything activated pretty much ensures that melee encounters will be locked, but its risky)
Act End Bosses: Normal Andariel should fall quickly to your moulten boulder. She has -30 fire resist. If you play in single player 8 player game, you shoul get around level 20 easily. Normal Duriel must be kept occupied with your party. Keep all of them up fighting fit. He will fall to your moulten boulder or volcano if you have. Normal Mephisto can easily be defeated the same way as Duriel. Normal Diablo is tougher. He will wipe out your party in no time. Have ligthning and fire resistance, block, some rejuvenation potions, dodge his attacks, keep volcano active and wait. Normal Baal is not too hard. He will most likely kill your party, but you have one option if you don’t want to get close. Baal can’t shoot across the deep under the bridge that leads to the world stone. You can’t eighter, but you can place a volcano on the other side of it. This is slow. I prefer just killing him.
Nightmare and hell act ends I find very easy.
Minions of Destruction: Lister and co. is just a little bit scarier than any crowd. Do as you use to.
Ancients: I once again refer to someone elses guide. This time it is the fire/summoner guide that was so inspiring to me and probably the closest you can get to a Disaster Master. Originally written by AlterEgo:
“NM & Hell Ancients are by far your toughest foe - aren't they always? Here's where all of the practice in switching skills and evasive tactics will pay off. The basic procedure is to place the grizzly in a position to tank all three and burn them to a crisp. Before the fight, unsummon the vine to keep it from leading one of the big three toward you. Immediately after they spawn & engage the ravens/merc/grizzly, check their mods. If any one of them is Fire Enchanted, cast a TP and reroll. Remember the FE bug I mentioned at the top? It is a one-hit killer no matter how much life you've built up.
After you take care of that problem the fun begins. You have no blocking and cannot let yourself be hit. Keep your merc alive for as long as possible. He may be able to seriously injure or even kill one of the Ancients before dying. Listen for Korlic's leap attack warning - if you hear it, immediately side-step. Keep your Oak Sage up. It will be targeted often, but is critical to keeping your meat shield alive. Try to keep your grizzly in the same position, and yourself clear of the main action. That will attract the three to the same relative area, and a volcano placed near your bruin will hit one or more of them pretty frequently. If you have time, ravens will take some of the hits and keep your grizzly alive longer. Be patient, and careful. Keep this process up and one will soon fall. Then another. Probably one of them will be FI and will take longer, but hang in there, and you will be victorious.”
You will have a little easier thanks to your many defensive skills and block, but maybe more grizzly recasting is needed.
One more thing. Mix full rejuvenations. Lots of them. To do this you need 3 rejuvs, a gem and the cube. A super healing slowly restores only 320 life for druid and wont save you. Fill your belt and drop full rejuvs all around the place before reading the book. This way you can pick them directly to your belt.
Help your mercenery out as well. Hold shift and press 1/2/3/4 to heal him emidatly instead of drawing your potions to his icon. He’ll be just fine...
Equip a Doom axe. 50% slow means double everything, and it has 2 all skills!
Game Progression: If you don’t stick to this guide (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=512) by Denise or something close you may screw up big time. An important thing for you will be skill point distribution. Here’s my recomandation:
My suggestion for level 99 (110 skill points):
Dire wolves-20
Grizzly-1
Heart of the Oak-1
Moulten boulder-20
Fissure- 20
Volcano-20
Armageddon-1
Hurrycane-1
Cyclone armor-20
Rest-prerequisites
Check out this site if you want to customise or get some numbers:
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~cbradfor/diablo2/skills.html
If you stick to it I suggest this as a GUIDELINE:
Level 2-5 + DenOE skill: 1 point raven, 1 point fire storm. Save the rest.
Level 6-11: 1 point in oak sage, one point in spirit wolf. Rest in Moulten Boulder
Level 12-17: Equalize your Moulten Boulder Fissure with rest.
Level 18-23 + Radament skill: Get 3 points in Dire Wolf. Keep equalizing Moulten Boulder and Fissure with the rest.
Level 24-43: Volcano only
Level 45-68: Go to nightmare. Max Moulten Boulder and Fissure. Keep in mind that even if your minions are dying, you will get summoning charms and more + skills later. Place points in dire wolf if really needed.
Level 69-99: Get to hell at level 71+. Get Grizzly (before Ancients), Armageddon and prerequisites. Pump Cyclone armor. When You get to hell you need protection! After that, pump wolves if you followed this to the letter.
Final words:
I hope to see some more spetacular druids around and hear about your processes. I like any comments, but off course “Great guide! You’re the man, and I wish I was a genious like you.” will be great to hear. Interresting suggestions, questiones, notifications on my mistakes, or someone serius saying; “you suck becouse…” are welcome as well. I really like my character, and must thank every guide writer out there helping me out. I’ve read many…
Special thanks to everyone I borrowed information from, or made links to info (you are all mentioned in the guide)!
More updated versions are to come! Please help me out. I know much, but not all…
Oh. If the name is taken or you find it stupid, let me know.
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2: enigma. This is a must for SP. Give it to your merc and all of the sudden nothing is dangerous.
3:the earthshaker maul. Simply amazing with +7 fire skills, just too bad it isnt of any use