hunter's last skill

[swirly]

Well I have a PvM softcore hunter druid that just reached the canyon of the magi on hell. I've maxed all the main skills that I wanted to by this point and I'm wondering what I should work on next. I figure it will be either volcano, cyclone armor, or poison creeper. I should tell you about the character first though so let me start there.

So he just turned level 58 and as I said is in the canyon of the magi on hell. His stats are (not counting items)

str: 55
dex: 195
vit: 100
energy: 20

and he has 5 points unspent right now. The next several levels will probably go to str cause he should probably get to where he can at least wear Jalal's Mane. His resists are

fire: 23
cold: 5
lightning: 36
poison: 21

Which are pretty low. Those should go up some as I find better equipment, though it is getting kind of late in the game to be expecting to find stuff. His skills currently are (with 4 unspent points)

max dire wolves
max grizzly
max oak sage (well whatever it took to get it to 20)
1 carrion vine

and of course any prerequisites (god I hate spelling that word) those skills require. His merc is an act 1 cold arrow merc. As for items, I have given him a kuko bow (which I put a nef in), a raven frost, and 2 summoning skill grand charms that I have found and never had a use for. Everything else that him or his merc uses has been found while playing him through the game. I could boost him by giving him better items than he has found, but I figure that can wait till after he gets as far as he can as is (which will probably be beating the game).

Now for playing style. Typically I like to have my dire wolves out to attack and distract things while me and my merc stand back and attack. If I run into a bad lightning enchanted boss or some other monster that kills my wolves too quick I summon a bear to hold them back long enough for me to get some hits in. I went with oak sage over heart of wolverine, because I don't tend to like recasting my summons as much as I believe I would have to with heart of wolverine being out. I also keep the carrion vine out most of the time so it keeps my health up from any odd attacks I may take and also gets rid of corpses (which is important in act 2 which I am in, but less so in later acts).

Okay so now back to my original question. Which skill to work on now. So lets look at the ones I am debating individually.

Volcano
This fits the play style well enough since I am standing back already and my summons are holding monsters still. So far I haven't had too much trouble with physical immunes though. I've been holding onto any elemental damage charms I find and my merc has a bow full of 4 orts and 1 ral. That seems to be doing the job well enough at this point, though I only usually play in 1 player games. At higher player counts I'm sure it would get slow. I also sometimes do run into the odd physical immune special that takes longer to kill than I would like. Thats always going to be a problem though. I just don't know if this skill will be enough of a benefit at this point. I do know that fenris loves to recommend this as a skill for a hunter though. : )

Cyclone Armor
As I said earlier, my resistances are pretty low at the moment. So putting points into this would help that problem. I don't usually get hit by attacks though since I am standing behind my pets. Also I try and get out of the way of any attacks (elemental or not) that are coming my way. This means that typically I don't have too much of a problem with dieing from elemental things. Of course bosses (like diablo) are tough, but with enough running around I have done alright so far. Also my 100 points in Vit with having maxed oak sage make it so I can usually take a little damage. This seems to be the default extra skill for a hunter though, so it has that going for it.

Poison Creeper
Well I have read Alram's posts on this skill and it sounds interesting. It's use in hell sounds a little limited though. It would distract some monsters from my wolves, which is good since wolves don't have an amazing amount of life. I would have to alternate it and carrion vine though since I can't steal from using kuko as my weapon. It does also get brownie points for being different.

Currently I am thinking those are the best options. I could also max heart of wolverine, but I think these would be better choices. I can't make up my mind as to which to go with though. Currently I think I am favoring either cyclone armor or poison creeper. I'm just not sure how much benefit volcano will give me, though extra damage is always good and I can shoot my bow during the casting delay. So does anyone have any recommendations? Any advantages or disadvantages to skill choices that I left out. Something to sway me from one skill to the other. I am just hovering undecided and letting the points build. Oh and this build was meant to just be something to play with till 1.10 comes out, so consideration for changes that might be made in 1.10 that would effect the character don't really matter. I plan on playing ladder (and possibly switching realms) when the patch comes out. So holding the points for the patch makes no sense.

[ShadowHM]

Hello swirly,

I have made a couple of Hunter Druids. I used the same basic skills for both - maxed Dire Wolf and maxed Grizzly, with one point in Carrion Vine. Both used Might mercenaries, to boost the minion damage.

One maxed Heart of Wolverine, wore a Pelt with the Visionary prefix on it and used Condensing/Shocking bows to take out the PI's.

One maxed Oak Sage and used a Kuko as his main bow, just as you have. Since your rogue mercenary is dealing out your third source of damage type, you have all three types covered.

I ended up putting the extra skill points for both into Cyclone Armour. Resists for any non-shield user are always low, and Cyclone Armour made quite a difference. I know it made a significant difference when facing Hell Diablo, as that ring of fire wiped out his Cyclone Armour every time, but he didn't die and had time to re-cast. That is where I would put my vote for your next skill to pump. I got mine to slvl 10 and that seemed sufficient. YMMV

Best wishes. I sure had fun with both of the Hunters.

[kandrathe]

If you care about playing him after 1.10, Molten Boulder would add knock back and synergy to volcano.

[WarBlade]

You haven't mentioned Spirit Wolves so I can only assume you may not have maxed that. Afterwards, consider that a number of hunters in the past were successful falconers. Ok, so the Druid's birds have a darker plumage than you'd expect, but at least they're in keeping with the idea of a hunter. ;)

[swirly]

WarBlade,

Spirit Wolves only have the one point needed to get to dire and grizzly. Ravens are the same way so far. I've never found ravens all that useful so I doubt I'll go with those. Spirit wolves are a possibility, but I'm doubtful the added AR and Defence would really be a noticable thing.

edit: added who I was talking to ; )

[swirly]

kandrathe,

Sorry, don't care about 1.10 with this character. : )

[swirly]

ShadowHM,

So far I think I am siding with you. Since I don't know how many levels I will get past where I am, the fact that cyclone doesn't have to be maxed to be useful is a plus for it. It also helps in places that are tough for the character already. So it seems like a good choice. If nobody else steps forward with any other comments or suggestions to change my mind then its looking like I'll go with cyclone armor as you recommended. : )

[FenrisWulf]

Heh, I seem to be a bit late. A pox upon my slow internet connection and my lack of spare time, verily! :P

Luckily, it seems as though I'm not needed, as I concur with the analysis presented thus far. :) If your only problem currently is dealing with ranged Elemental damage, then Cyclone Armor would be a great choice, as ShadowHM suggested. Since your resists are already fairly decent (heh, better than my Hunter, at least), a good level of CA should give you a more than adequate shield against Oblivion Knights and the Prime Evils, at least enough to not take damage between castings.

My personal inclination towards Volcano stems from the problems that I usually encounter against PIs and Act Bosses, where Volcano's elemental damage and suitability toward a cast-and-run approach are quite useful. But yeah, if you're doing well against those monster types already, then you can probably go without splurging on this skill.

As Alram has said, Poison Creeper is a great Normal/Nightmare skill, but it is pure Support in Hell. Cyclone Armor (or Volcano) would be more useful at this point in your Hunter's career.

EDIT: Remember, though, if you choose to focus heavily in an Elemental skill, then we have to kick you out of the Hunter's Club. But you can hang with those delinquent Huntermentalists in that corner over there. :D

[swirly]

Well I actually did decide to go with cyclone armor for various reasons. One of course was the support for it from here. The other reasons would be more negatives for the other two skills than positives for cyclone armor. So let me explain those.

Volcano
This is a skill that you need to cast under a creature for it to be most effective. My kuko has a nef in it though which means that most monsters would be knocked off of the volcano. Of course it would still be useful against bosses, but I figured that cyclone would be better all around.

Poison Creeper
1 of the 2 summoning skill grand charms I put on this character has poison damage on it. Combine this will the explosive arrows the kuko shoots and you get alot of poisoned monsters real quick. Alram has said though that the poison creeper will not attack poison immune or already poisoned monsters. This would mean that in alot of situations the creeper wouldn't do anything because the monsters would already be poisoned. Thus my choices were to go with a different skill or to not use that grand charm. I decided I would just use cyclone instead. : )

As of now I have cyclone armor up to about level 12. My character has just finished the nihilthak (how do you spell that?) quest on hell. He only died once doing it as well so I was rather happy about that. Anyway the hardest part for him so far has been the council members in act 3. I thought I was never going to kill one of them. He was cold enchanted, lightning enchanted, extra fast, stone skin, immune to physical, and immune to fire if I remember correctly. I eventually had to pin him between some buildings in travincal and shoot him from off screen in order to kill him. It worked out well though cause like within the next 10 minutes of killing that guy a vex dropped, the necro class specific unique dropped, and the spirit shroud armor dropped. I think the game was apologizing or something. I was in shock. : )

Anyway thats how my charcter is doing now and also I would like to say that I have no regrets about putting the points in cyclone armor and now even would have no problems recommending it to other hunters. It has worked out very well. : )

[WarBlade]

EDIT: Remember, though, if you choose to focus heavily in an Elemental skill, then we have to kick you out of the Hunter's Club. But you can hang with those delinquent Huntermentalists in that corner over there. :D

:D Hence my earlier post. Adopting any of the Elemental skills equates to forfeiture of the "hunter" name. That's why I like my summoned critters. No self-respecting hunter would run around pulling volcanos from the ground to spoil the hunt! :P :D

[BD_Mfwic]

My hunter has with +skills: Oak and H.o.w at 20, Dire wolf and Grizzly at 26, and Cyclone Armor at 20 so far. I'm at level 73 so far.

My only question would be : After Cyclone Armor is maxxed, what skills would I want to invest into aferwards?

Thanks

[swirly]

Well at this late point in the game you can't expect to get many more points for skills. Therefore you need to go with things that will help you with small investment. So carrion vine if you don't have it yet could be a good idea. Also you could go with spirit wolves as well. Normally I don't bother with spirit wolves, but with you having all the other skills you want already then I can see using spirit wolves as a sink for any more points you get. Also if you are planning on using the char after 1.10 then you could put more points into your spirits since hopefully the bug with them should be fixed. If it was my character I would probably go ahead and top off the spirits even though its not entirely useful at the moment.