My wind druid went with no block as well. He did fine up till act5 hell. I maxed oak, and put most of my points into vit. He had over 2K hp at lvl 80. I also put only 10 points in str, and used items with very low requirements. This was my first HC ladder char, and I didn't really plan on getting things like Jalal's with him. I also put nothing into energy, and had no problem with mana at the higher lvls. A ring or 2 with ~+100 mana made me have plenty of mana to spam tornado(fixed cost is really nice).
With a fully synergised tornado and hurricane, I could kill pretty fast in 1-2 player hell, but any more than that really started to drag down my killing speed. I very rarely had to tank; as most opponents die in just a few casts of tornado(doing almost 2K per cast, and tornado appears to be able to hit than once per cast). Leaders or champs was a retreating game; retreat about a screen away, spam tornados. Repeat as needed untill leader falls. Often the leader does not have bad enough mods to even need to retreat once. Just stand in place and spam tornado, and it will die with only getting a couple of hits in.
I strongly suggest a few items with fast cast. It is not really not essential, but vs any high hp leaders or act bosses it will greatly increase your killing speed. I used an act1 merc to give me fire damage to deal with phys/cold immunes, and it seemed to work(though slow). I now think I would have been much better off with a tanking merc though.
This char died in act1 helping a friend save cain. :( I don't like to blame deaths on lag, so perhaps it was my decision to not have a tanking merc that allowed treehead to kill me during a big lag spike. My next rebuild(the previous one died at lvl 72 due to bad playing) will use an act5 merc.
EDIT: Numerous ptyos
With a fully synergised tornado and hurricane, I could kill pretty fast in 1-2 player hell, but any more than that really started to drag down my killing speed. I very rarely had to tank; as most opponents die in just a few casts of tornado(doing almost 2K per cast, and tornado appears to be able to hit than once per cast). Leaders or champs was a retreating game; retreat about a screen away, spam tornados. Repeat as needed untill leader falls. Often the leader does not have bad enough mods to even need to retreat once. Just stand in place and spam tornado, and it will die with only getting a couple of hits in.
I strongly suggest a few items with fast cast. It is not really not essential, but vs any high hp leaders or act bosses it will greatly increase your killing speed. I used an act1 merc to give me fire damage to deal with phys/cold immunes, and it seemed to work(though slow). I now think I would have been much better off with a tanking merc though.
This char died in act1 helping a friend save cain. :( I don't like to blame deaths on lag, so perhaps it was my decision to not have a tanking merc that allowed treehead to kill me during a big lag spike. My next rebuild(the previous one died at lvl 72 due to bad playing) will use an act5 merc.
EDIT: Numerous ptyos