Fury Druid

[Minionman]

I'm starting a fury druid which will have 20 points in fury, lycantropy, and heart of wolverine, with some points in feral rage, werewolf, and a point in carrion vine. I know a lot of fury druids use two-handed weapons, so I'll probably do that as well. Mercenary will be defiance than holy freeze when I get there. Beyond that, I was wondering what kinds of monsters cause trouble and what kinds of equipment people get, not particular items, but what magic qualities people like getting on equipment. Any information is useful, though.

[Assur]

You'll have real problems with monsters who can cast IM, unless you party.

[Guest]

Crushing blow is always a nice mod, and can be found on several boots, helms, and gloves.

[Todd]

A major consideration for weapons is speed - the best Fury speed you can get is 4 frames per swing. That's very difficult, however, and is only possible with the very fastest weapon types. But a 5 frame Fury is achievable with a good variety of weapons, provided you have enough IAS. IAS on the weapon works differently than IAS somewhere else (like gloves). The easiest way to figure out what you'll need is to use the Wereform Speed Calculator. The guides at that site also provide good conceptual info on were-druids, though the site is a bit dated.

Big concerns as a werewolf include PI's (you'll really want to party up) and resists (tough to handle without a shield).

[Minionman]

About physical immunes, do elemental damage gems/jewels/runes work fine for fighting them? Otherwise that was all good stuff to know.

[Lelorinel]

Currently I'm running a lvl 66 Expansion Ladder Softcore East Werewolf Druid, and I've learned a few thigns here and there.

Resists: probably one of the more important things, you want these as high as you can. You'd be surprised how fast 1k life can just dissapear, if you have to you can resort to a shield. I'm currently down to using an aldurs mace with The Ward for it's +46% resists

IAS: pump it up. Werebears focus on tanking, having about 10k life, werewolves focus on speed, being able to cover the critical distance between you and your prey and then hit them about 15 times in 2 seconds. If you want some good high-damage weapons with fast attack speed consider things like the IK maul w/2 Shaels, or for low levels consider Steeldriver
(great maul)

Leech: Heck, I'm running over 20% life, over 15% mana, that compensates for the damage you take when you close the distance.

Attack Rating: Fury should take care of this, nuff' said.

If you find a Physical immune, things can get ugly, My method of dealing with it is my lvl 64 Rouge merc using Witchwild String(unique short siege bow) Since it's magical arrows 24/7 you don't have to worry about physical immunes.

I use a few summons, Bear and Heart of Wolverine to back me up.

Hope these tidbits help you out.

-Lel

[LoWang]

I don't know people if you didn't have any problems with fury, but I do and it's so terribly annoying that I would kick some Blizzard butt everytime I see that miserable combat performance of my druid!
You can notice it yet in nightmare but its totaly terrible when you start hell!
I am talking about unbelievable frequency of misses when furying.
I think that's the same bug as in amazon's fend and paladin's zeal (not tested zeal). Common situation:
I encounter 4zombies and start fury. First I hit most of them (I have chance to hit about 80%), but in the next 5hits I often hit nothing! Then I continue fury and I hit about 1 from 4 attacks! This is worst when I hold my mouse over one monster. It can be compensated a little when I target different monster each 5attacks. But its not the end of all bad! It happens when I attack only one monster too! I only hear fast swish but my druid hits nothing! The slow skeleton just leisurely recovers from first (long ago) hit and walks away, while my werewolf druid madly tries to hit him! :wacko: I depend on a life steal from feral rage and when I don't hit any monster for several seconds, I can be dead. Monsters often kill me just because program decided, that now I will not hit anything despite my 4500ar and 80%chance to hit (hell act1) and they just slowly thrust out their bony hands and kill me at ease while I can go mad furying :( I cannot imagine how bad it will (if I manage to get there) be in the 5.act when I meet those bulls with axes (blood,death,moon lords) who do not wait a second to hit.
Tha strange thing is that I didn't see this while killing nigthmare cows (chance to hit 92%)...

I am sure this is a bug because I simply would hit monsters much more often with my AR.
I have the steeldriver martel de fer (made exceptional in a horadric cube) which is very fast.
Sometimes I think a feral rage is bugged too, because sometimes I hit a monster only every second attack. Maybe a program must wait till the stun recovery ends or whatever...
I hoped Blizzard will fix this (and a similar but yet much worse amazon fend bug) in the 1.10, but it didn't happen.
I don't understand someone didn't complain about it more, but I know that some people knows about this...

[Caaroid]

While this "I hit nothing" thing is rather annoying with druids, it is even more so with MA assassins. They don't have the 3k life to survive the lack of hits.

Just play a sorceress :)

[Chesspiece_face]

The "hit nothing" phenomenon is part of all classes. There are areas where it is obviously a bug, but in general you will not hit nearly as much as the % on your character screen says. Most of the characters i play right now say they have a 93% chance to hit in hell. I would say i hit more like 40-50%. What is really funny is my barb has a 90 some-odd chance to hit in hell and even when i throw on an Ignore Target Defense weapon i still end up missing just as much. Ignore target defense supposedly maxes out your chance to hit a normal mob at 95%. Personally i think that last 5% has a hidden 0 after the five. It's possible that it has something to do with the random number generator in the code for generating the hit/miss check. The hit/miss ratio just becomes all the more apparant with classes that attack things very fast.

Another thing i've noticed is that a lot of the times it looks like you are missing (a la not showing a hit through animation or sound) you actually are. you can see this happaning if you square off against a high hit point mob.

[Rinnhart]

Critters can block, too. Realms latency doesn't help, either.

[Fragbait]

Hi Chesspiece,

you will not hit nearly as much as the % on your character screen says.

I disagree, sir! Of course I'm only speaking for me, but my lvl 89 pala with zeal / fana seemed to get along pretty well back when I had 1.10 installed (playing 1.06b nowadays). The LCS would say ~84%, and he would hit 4 out of 5 attacks average. Of course there was this 'bug' sometimes, when I swung 5 times in a row and failed to hit a thing, but I'd rather contribute it to statistics. Given the fact that this happened rarely, a 0.01% chance seems appropriately rare to me (=> once every 10000 zeals I would hit nothing with all 5 attacks).
In short: there would have to be conducted serious testing on this to convince me.
Go ahead, though! :D

Greetings, Fragbait

[Caaroid]

The "hit nothing" phenomenon is part of all classes.

Well, my lev 7x kicksin with ~10k ar missed normal fallens 3 times out of 4 (before she got deleted, that is). Don't tell me this is normal.

[Rinnhart]

Ok, I won't.

[Guest]

What if you went the way of the AR junky? Does this build look swell?

20 Werewolf (+ar)
20 Lycanthropy
20 Heart of Wolverine (+ar)
20 Fury (+ar)

That, with lots of points in dexterity. I'm talking like as much points in dex as you have in vit, if not more, only stopping when you have a 95% chance to hit Hell Lister.


Ok I just maxed out all of them skills on a skill calculator, here are your final mods...

+676 % Attack Rating (multiply your base AR by 7, essentially)
+68% IAS
+115% HP
+153% ED

This isn't counting any plus skills, in consideration for the poor peasents who don't have a Jalals'.

[LoWang]

I have been playing Diablo2 since version 1.00 and noticed this bug very early, maybe in the 1.03 when I made my amazon to level 30 and started using "looks good" Fend. I think this is persistent throught all versions and I really lose all hopes to think once again my characters are good :( Because even if I get the best equipment available - thats obvious, I will not because I play single:) - I think it wouldn't be any better. If some minion zombie from act1 hits me all the time and I nearly cannot hit it at all and I am usually dead if there is more than one such zombie, there can be no Arkaine's Valor or Steeldriver martel-de-fer which can lift me from this misery :(

But its not as bad situation as with my very old level 70 fendazon. She got with big problems to hell ACT3 many versions of D2 ago (I think last it was LoD 1.07:) and now she just cannot manage monsters from cold plains ACT1! :o If someone saw her in action, he would think I cheated and placed her to so high part of the game, because she simply couldn't get here on her own :)
But its nice to look at her extra old items brought to life yet again in 1.10:) Rare lance from version 1.08 classic. Boots from 1.06. Some rare rings and armour from these times too :)
Yes she had quite hard times through that all patches, many skills changes. And even some of her items changed name through Blizzard's patching process:) Memories are nice, but it does not change the fact, she's unplayable now...

[Minionman]

Does fury sometimes do the same thing as zeal when sometimes when holding down the mouse button you attack at regular speed without the extra hits?

If Caaroid was telling people in general to play as a sorceress, I was trying something different.

[LoWang]

The "hit nothing" phenomenon is part of all classes.  There are areas where it is obviously a bug, but in general you will not hit nearly as much as the % on your character screen says.  Most of the characters i play right now say they have a 93% chance to hit in hell.  I would say i hit more like 40-50%.  What is really funny is my barb has a 90 some-odd chance to hit in hell and even when i throw on an Ignore Target Defense weapon i still end up missing just as much.  Ignore target defense supposedly maxes out your chance to hit a normal mob at 95%.  Personally i think that last 5% has a hidden 0 after the five.  It's possible that it has something to do with the random number generator in the code for generating the hit/miss check.  The hit/miss ratio just becomes all the more apparant with classes that attack things very fast.

Another thing i've noticed is that a lot of the times it looks like you are missing (a la not showing a hit through animation or sound) you actually are.  you can see this happaning if you square off against a high hit point mob.

Yes you are right. That hit percentage is a shameful lie! It was obvious immediately when it starts to display (in the version 1.07 classic) and Blizzard "repaired" it in some patch. Now it seems it's bad again. Not so apparently as in 1.07, but it is.
Just look at the version history and you realize, that Diablo2 is one big bug where nothing remained the same as it was B)

And that ignore target's defense probably doesn't make you hit all the time because hit is calculated from your AR, monster's defense and your level and monster's level too. This only discards defense but there is still that level counting. (not sure how it really works)

[Rinnhart]

Does fury sometimes do the same thing as zeal when sometimes when holding down the mouse button you attack at regular speed without the extra hits?

Yes, it does.

Best I can figure is when the initial attack is a miss the "extra" swings sometimes don't take effect. As if you held down shift and attacked.

[LoWang]

ANother interesting thing: occasionally my druid speeds up significantly his fury attack. I don't know why but it lasts only few seconds and then returns to normal. Maybe I have slow computer (Duron 1600@2200) and its some kind of overload which is then compensated this way :)

[Minionman]

That's wierd, since that also happens when I hit, but thanks anyway. This is never a major problem and I just re-click and it goes away.