TankDruid

[Albion Child]

I'm planning a build of a Tank Werebear. His goal is massive life total, high defense, and decent resists.

I have Corpsemourn and a ribcracker that I plan to use.

I also want to max Oak sage, Werebear, and Lycanthropy.

Also, to mae him better able to serve his job as a tank, I may put a good number of points intowerebear and the wolves to givehim bonuses.

However, I don't rebearally know what skill I should use for My main attack.





Also, I've considered making a tank Barb also, as hewould be better able to dish out some damage in return, and the amp damage from corpsemourn would work.

Easy build, Max BO, Shout, Iron Skin, some in nat resist, some in warcry, and probably berzerk.

Which would serve his purpose (to stand in the middle of massivegroups of baddies while zons etc pick away a them) better.

Is Warcry more effective for stunning than, (Shocwave???) the werebear attack.

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Albion Child,

Umm... Werebears only have one real primary attack, so it's a choice of Maul, Maul or Maul. Shockwave for good measure, and a little Hunger at times may be handy too.

As for your Barbarian...Berzerk kind of negates the whole defence orientation of your build. Use Concentration.

Warcry has a lower duration than Shockwave, but effects critters at all sides.

If you merely wish to talk for Amazons, become a Valkyrie ;) Seriously, what kind of a pathetic Amazon player *needs* someone to tank for them? Most of mine stand their ground, and have no more trouble than a Paladin does; the rest summon a Valkyrie and stand behind it in complete safety.

[Occhidiangela]

Pure Tank?

Right.

Max Lyc. Max WereBear. Get a Grizzly. Act II Merc, either Defensive, Thorns, or Might. FOr Hell, you might want to consider Act III Fire or Lightning, who attack while you stun with Shockwave. Tricky to control, but I suppose it is doable.

If you are just a meat shield, there is no need for Might, either go for Defiance which will keep your DR way up there, or for Thorns and let the DR Slide. IF you are building him for a team, HF will work fine, since it just slows the monsters down.

As you find + skill items, they will help round out your summons.

Max Oak Sage. (remember the bug, though) You are a tank. Or are you intending to kill things?

Two weapons: One Maul/Axe/Pole Arm class weapon
Second is a socketed Maul/ Axe /Pole ARm with as many sockets as you can get, filled with elemental damage to address PI's.

Shockwave at 10 or so, to keep the enemy standing still while you whack them. I would use a few points in Maul for attack skill. YMMV.

Werebear Tank is a very simple Build. Finding boots that make you move more quickly is nice.

See The_Dragoon's excellent Werebear guide for some detailed discussion on how to make a good one. :)

[swirly]

Just a few things that came to mind when reading the replies.

1: If you are going for pure tank you could go with a single handed weapon and a shield. That would give you some blocking which would help you tank even more. It would hurt your damage though.

2: I don't think a thorns merc is such a good idea. Since you are aiming for having alot of defense monsters will probably miss you more often than they will connect (and a shield would lower the chances even more cause you might block). Of course any extra damage is good so a thorns merc would hurt them when they do connect, but I think a defiance merc would be more along the lines of the idea for the build.

3: It sounds to me like this build is actually not to different than a pvp werebear. I've never made one, but the idea is for them to stun lock things with shockwave or a fast 1 handed weapon and let their grizzly kill the person. At least that is what I have gathered from what I have read. So you might try looking for a good pvp wearbear guide. I think somebody did have one over at the diabloii.net druid forum, but I don't remember for sure.

[TheDragoon]

I've often found that the ability to kill much more quickly with a two-handed weapon often overshadows the need for a shield, even if you want to build a "tank." Shockwave and the +% defense associated with the Werebear skill are powerful enough to basically shut down any non-boss monsters you encounter. For those boss monsters, just a minor level of life leech or liberal use of Hunger easily makes up for the use of a shield. Keep in mind that if you want to have a shield's blocking percent high, you will likely need to invest ability points in dexterity that might otherwise go toward vitality and keeping yourself alive.

Now, you compare a PvM tank druid to a PvP Druid and I find this to actually be a bad comparison. In PvP play, you basically assume that the other player will be using a shield and a high blocking percentage. When you are confronted with someone who will only allow 75% of your attacks through, you need to be a bit more defensive since your hits (which will leech back life via Hunger or Life Leech) will connect much less often. However, for most of PvM play, you are confronted with monsters who have little or no blocking capability. In this situation, leeched life will be less sporadic than if blocking is used and so you are not threatened by the bad luck of having multiple attacks blocked in a row, resulting in no leeched life to sustain yourself.

Most important, however, is that Shockwave is MUCH more effective than against other players since the duration of the stun is at its full value (though not the listed value, chock that up as another display bug). In this situation, you can happily wail on the monsters without fear of reprisal. When this happens, the main threat is that the stun will wear out before you kill the monsters. To minimize this threat, a larger, faster weapon (a Two-Handed Axe, Staff, Maul or Polearm, in particular) can be wielded to tear through the monsters more quickly.

In all honesty, I believe Shockwave to be the most powerful PvM skill in the game. It can single-handedly disable every monster within range for several seconds, allowing you to knock them down. If you want a super-powerful tank, build a Werebear with maxed out Shockwave and huge resistances. In my opinion, using Oak Sage is somewhat unnecessary since, if you play the Werebear correctly, nothing save the occasional ranged attacker should even touch you. :) It's not as if Werebears don't already have a ton of life from the Werebear and Lycanthropy bonuses. However, if your main choice of Oak Sage is to help out your fellow party members, in case they get themselves mobbed just off your screen, it would be a good choice. In other cases, I would, personally, use Heart of the Wolverine to boost attack ratings and damage to all physical attacks (again, ending battle more quickly).

If you have any other questions, feel free to check out my Werebear guide and, if it doesn't cover your question, don't hesitate to ask. B)

EDIT: It just occurred to me that I referred to multiple "You"s in this post. Early on, I was addressing Swirly, later I was talking to Albion Child. I also noticed that Albion Child said that his weapon will be Ribcracker which is a very effective defensive weapon for PvM, perhaps even as effective as using a shield.

Now, as for a comparison between a Druid's Shockwave and the Barbarian Warcry, I would have to say that I prefer Shockwave. The longer duration of stun means you can get in several additional attacks before having to use Shockwave again. Now, I might be mistaken, but in my experience, the range on Shockwave also seems to be a bit greater than Warcry, which can help out, too, as you can often hit every monster in a group with a single Shockwave while Warcry may only hit the first couple monsters in the group. In addition, Werebears will tend to get more life than a Barbarian and so would tend to be a better tank, in most cases. Also, Hunger can be a life-saver in most situations and can also help you to take down LEB's with little difficulty.

[swirly]

Actually I do agree with you in that Shockwave changes everything for a Werebear. The werebear I play uses it all the time. With my reply though I was thinking of more of a stands and get hit type of wearbear. Shockwave makes it more of a make them stand and get hit thing. Not a bad deal at all really. Now that you meantion hunger though it occurs to be that that is another option he could take. Go with high defense and the huge life steal of hunger. Also might consider some faster hit recovery since even with a high defense you might have trouble getting off attacks if you become overly surrounded though that shouldn't be a problem in most areas of the game. My Werebear uses an IK Maul and with only 1 point in hunger he can just use it and pretty much never die. Granted killing things slows quite a bit, but he still is able to. So that is another option he could try.

[Kharohz]

Werebear Tank is a very simple Build.

Bah, how offending. Although that statement doesn't apply to my druid build. It offends me regardless. :(

Ignore me.

Edit: Did something stupid with quotes.

[TheDragoon]

Ah the beauty of Ribcracker...

Two-Hand Damage: (57-66) To (146-173) (101.5-119.5 Avg)
Required Level: 31
Required Strength: 25
Durability: 130
Base Weapon Speed: [0]
+200-300% Enhanced Damage(varies)
Adds 30-65 Damage
150% Damage To Undead
50% Chance Of Crushing Blow
50% Increased Attack Speed
50% Faster Hit Recovery
+100% Enhanced Defense
+100 Defense
+15 To Dexterity

You've got to love that 50% Faster Hit Recover! :) Combine that with a shaeled Jalal's Mane and you're almost to the 125% Hit Recovery breakpoint! Also wouldn't the Crushing Blow work with Hunger, too?

[swirly]

Okay I admit it, for a hunger build with the various stuff we have been talking about a ribcracker might be the better choice. : ) I've only ever used it on a Wolf (my Bear used a buriza till he could use the IK Maul). I would assume the crushing blow would work with hunger. You should steal for any physical damage you do and crushing blow is physical damage. A maxed hunger with a ribcracker could keep a person alive through alot of things.

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Swirly,

Firstly, Crushing Blow is not standard Physical Damage: it's a game effect. Secondly, you cannot leech from, it. It merely allows you to kill with Hunger, which is not known for it's uberness in that department ;)

[swirly]

I stand corrected then on the use of crushing blow with leech. I did not realize that you couldn't leech from it. Still, it should work well enough even without that since hunger steals so much. It would just take a long time to kill anything. Killing speed wasn't exactly a focus of the build though. : )

[Occhidiangela]

No one said it isn't fun in its own right, why is simple 'bad'? Why are you offended?

The KISS principle has a beautiful elegance all its own. :D