Elemental Druid

[Vash]

Going to build my first elemental druid. Got any advice for me? Some specific questions:

1) Which of the elemental skills are actually worth using?
2) How can I deal with the randomness of some of the Druid's skills?
3) How does Armageddon work?

[NeoLunar]

1) I like molten boulder, because it pushes back, and leaves a crude firewall behind it, and explodes when it attains a certain time. It's lika a ground based meteor basically.

2) The only random spells are Hurricane, Tornado, Armageddon, and Twister.
For Armageddon and Hurricane, just run about madly.
For Twister and Tornado, just spam it. However, beware because the double Ts deal physical damage, and their damage will be chopped by 1/4 and 1/2 in Nightmare and Hell respectively.

3) Armageddon is like an aura that lasts for 10 seconds, and in that 10 seconds, rocks will drop from the sky. Each rock has a small AOE IIRC, but it misses more that it hits. I'm not against the spell, I'm just stating facts. However, it does an INSANE amount of damage, and can be very strong if it hits the enemy.

[Bun-Bun]

For Twister and Tornado, just spam it. However, beware because the double Ts deal physical damage, and their damage will be chopped by 1/4 and 1/2 in Nightmare and Hell respectively.

I don't think so, not under 1.10. They'll be affected by critters' physical resistance, but the global physical resistance is gone as of this patch.

Spamming Tornados with a bunch of fast-cast is quite viable. Using Hurricane as a secondary skill works well with Tornado/Twister due to the synergy bonuses. I can't speak to the fire side of the tree with any authority, not having used it myself, but I understand Volcano is usable.

[TheDragoon]

I think there are mostly three schools of thought on this matter.

The first (and the one that I'm a big advocate of) is to build an entirely wind-based Druid. This build is nice because it provides two types of damage, a timered and a spammable skill as well as some good defensive mechanisms. This build would be something like this:

Cyclone Armor - 10-20 points
Tornado - Max
Hurricane - Max
Twister - 1-20 points

Additional Points spent in Oak Sage, Carrion Vine and the various summonables.

The basic idea is to cast Hurricane (with a REALLY long duration) while spamming Tornados. Only Cold/Physical immunes would be untouchable by this build. Other nice things about this build is that it has good defense with Hurricane slowing down the monsters (and maybe a Holy Freeze Act II merc slowing them even more). In addition, a Druid of this type can cast a powerful Cyclone Armor which essentially leaves the Druid impervious to all but the most potent elemental attacks.

Drawbacks of this build is that, with so many points thrown into the wind skills, the other skills (Oak Sage and the other summonables, in particular) can suffer. Thus you end up having to re-cast stuff a lot later in the game. Also, Tornado's semi-random flight path can be a pain but once you learn roughly how they behave, you can aim them fairly well. You might still have to move around a lot to find a good spot against single enemies.

However, this build is fun to play from what I've seen/heard and, when combined with an actual tank character, can tear through just about anything.


The second build idea is to focus on the Fire side of the Tree. The Druid fire skills are actually fairly variable. Often, a character will use Armageddon as well as either Fissure or Volcano. Sometimes Molten Boulder can also be used though the reports I've heard about its damage vary quite a bit (some say it works well, others are NOT impressed in the least).

Armageddon - Max
Volcano or Fissure or Molten Boulder - Max
Others - 1-20 points

Other points into the summonables.

Obviously, the stronger you want your elemental skills, the weaker your summonables are going to be. In this way, I think it'd probably be best to resist the wish to use all of the above skills.

Rather, I would personally probably break from most ideas and use Fissure + Volcano without Armageddon to save points on the pre-requisite skills. Also, Volcano tends to work better against stationary targets (since they take ALL of the damage) while Fissure works better against moving targets (which walk across multiple vents). Thus, you could pump the rest of the points into Oak Sage and either Grizzly or Dire Wolves to make a big beefy tank (plus a high-level Grizzly can dish out some serious damage making it a potential source of a secondary type of damage, physical damage).


The final method of Elementalist construction I've seen has been the combination of the above. People will take Tornado as a source of Physical Damage, Hurricane as a source of Cold Damage, and one of the Fire skills for Fire Damage. This usually ends up as follows:

Hurricane - Max
Tornado - Max
Fire Skill - Max

Other points go into synergies for the above skills or summonable minions.

The obvious drawbacks of this approach is that you lose out a LOT on synergy bonuses from either method #1 or 2. In addition, you tend to have fewer skill points to drop into the summonable minions which can be the difference between life and death in 1.10. Thus, I personally, don't believe in this philosophy, but if you are playing in a group with a good tank character then this method can be a great way to get lots of varied elemental damages to deal with the physical immunes of Hell.

[NeoLunar]

(and maybe a Holy Freeze Act II merc slowing them even more)

This might be a mistake, as the merc will draw many enemies to you, possibly even more than you can handle. IIRC, it also draws cold immune monsters, and that would be a huge problem.

[Guest]

These guys saying hurricane druids are good are making a strech IMO. But I guess preformace is relative.

Currently at 78

20 + hurricane
20 + twister
20 + tornado
14 plus cyclone armor
1 oak
1 in everything up to bear.


The damage just isnt very good in hell compared to a sorc. As Im adding skills with items the damage increases do seem like they will be enough.

Some notes.

-Oak seems to be a total waste in hell, I wouldnt spec it.

-I would stop Cyclone at 10. 30 seconds or hurricane is pretty long and it plenty for actual defense.

-Tornado and twister damage is weak.

-Hurricanes chill effect makes for nice defense(I use it with a freeze merc and like it).

-The bear helps a lot. Even with 1 point hes great for holding agro in hell. Done again I would put less in cyclone and more in timber wolf(to help the bear)

[TheDragoon]

True enough, but then he'd die as I run away leaving him to tank the monsters. :)

[Guest]

In damage-per-second:

Hurricane
20+20 Synergy = 600
20+30 Synergy = 793
20+40 Synergy = 986

Arctic Blast, synergy = Cyclone Armour/Hurricane
20+20 Synergy = 582
20+40 Synergy = 1018
10+30 Synergy = 385
10+40 Synergy = 490


Arctic Blast can hit 5+ monsters, the range at level 20 is pretty insane. You'll also see at level 10 (with free synergies if you've maxed the other two) the damage is pretty good. With the range you can spam it all over the screen to chill everything (good chill duration even in hell), very useful.

[Baajikiil]

However, this build is fun to play from what I've seen/heard and, when combined with an actual tank character, can tear through just about anything.

I second the hurricane/tornado/twister/cyclone armor build. I have one running right now with my friend's meditation pally(the tank). With enough mana to spam tornado *constantly*, we've been cleaning up. It's also alot of fun to play.

[Guest]

Has anyone tried to use Ravens (10+) for crowd control (now that they blind targets)?

[Guest]

Some of your synergies dont add up.

I didnt consider artic blast in my build at all, maybe it would be useful. Although conncerning the chill effect hurricane all ready does that.

[Guest]

Yeah but Arctic Blast at level 20(+) has range of a whole screen, when I was testing out a level 99 (excuse me!) with no equipment I had no problem killing things (with help from grizzly, ~15 points in summoning) with -100 resist and 0 points in vit. Sure I had problems, but far easier than a melee character.

Also consider high cold resistants, while even with 99% cold resist the cold duration should be 1 frame, so AS always slows things down. While hurricane if it has say 1/8 duration won't slow down monsters a lot, and they easily run out of radius.

I've noticed though that with Oak Sage (which you have to cast a lot, obviously) and with most points in vit I'll have huge hitpoints (300 under level 20, just started a ladder Druid), so standing next to monsters (tanking even, with help from CA) shouldn't be a problem, and then Hurricane will be good.

You can easily though with level 20 AB hit just as many monsters on average as Hurricane (not an expert or heavily tried theory though), and you can chill monsters all over by shooting with it crazy (like a water hose, it's so much fun :D).

A shame you couldn't do say 20 OS and 75% block, if only AB was un-interuptable, block messes that up all the time. :(

I used this which is updated for 1.10f, I might of connected some numbers to wrong places though?


Edit > The damage for Hurricane in-game I'm pretty sure displays per-hit damage, as if it hit once per second; it hits once per 0,8 secs though (20 frame delay), or if you will 75 times per minute.

Also if you're tanking monsters even a level 1 AB will be good, since even with insane cold resists you'll chill them every frame, meaning in cases where Hurricane would chill them 10-20% of a second, AB even at level 1 would chill them 100%.

[swirly]

I was also thinking of a build that uses arctic blast. It would be a cold wind druid and a pure elementalist. So the skills would be like the following:

max arctic blast
max cyclone armor
max twister
max tornado
max hurricane

All the skills are synergized together in some way. So the way I was thinking of playing this build was that the first levels would go into arctic blast. Once you get high enough for cyclone armor to be available then switch to investing in that. Then when twister comes available switch to it (or do both cyclone and twister for a bit or some such). Then switch to tornado, then probably one in hurricane and back to max tornado. Then eventually when you have tornado, twister, hurricane, and cyclone armor maxed you would go back to work on arctic blast.

Since you are having no summons (not even a spirit) then I think a defiance merc will help alot. He should be able to live decently and help keep you alive.

I figure adding arctic blast in should help you deal with physical immunes even easier. Most of the time you will be using tornado and hurricane, but against physical immunes you can switch to arctic blast and hurricane.

I've not played the build any, but thats the idea I have been toying with doing eventually.

[Guest]

It seems i'm creating among the coolest Druids there is. When I got to act 3 a merc change was in order, and what doesn't beat a cold mage, both for low amount of immunes and the freezing: you don't want to be confused whether there's an LEB or your merc there, fire are too many resistants/immunes, the rogues are too stupid, the act 2's too overpowered, and the act 5's grunt too much.

So he won't be effective vs immunes, but there's very few of these in nightmare (oops.....ignore uniques with magic resistant/cold enchanted) and I don't care much about the silly de-balance of hell. At least he'll be good for chilling out with (oh please, stop me).

Oh BTW, the first unique (or good item for that matter) this guy just got (in act 3 normal) is.....Hawkmail :) I predict a Raven Frost (or two) will kindly drop for me in nm. :D

[swirly]

Just thought I would give an update on this build and the thoughts I have now from playing with the character.

Attempt 1: Hardcore with arctic blast

The plan was to max arctic blast, twister, tornado, hurricane, and cyclone armor. He ended up dieing to a fire enchanted Lister in nightmare. Mostly because of my own bad play, but I'm sure he probably would have had troubles getting through hell without dieing anyway.

Attempt 2: Hardcore with oak sage instead arctic blast

I decided to give in and not be a pure elementalist. I figured that the benefit of maxing oak sage would be more than the benefit of maxing arctic blast. This build was doing decently. He got up to the maggot lair in hell. I was soloing it and wasn't paying enough attention so a scarab killed me. Overall though I was pretty happy with how the build was going.

Attempt 3: Same as two basically, but with maxing oak earlier.

This one I have just started. Hopefully I will have learned to play a little more careful by now and so he might live longer than the previous ones. While playing Attempt 2 I did come up with some ideas though.

The first one revolves around the fact that I am using a defiance merc with all these builds. Since I am going for higher life, but no blocking I figure I will need the defence. This got me thinking about upgrading items that I end up using. If I use Vipermagi and Jalal's Mane and upgrade them to their elite version then I should get quite a defensive gain combined with the defiance merc. I could also use Ravenlore, but I think that I have a better shot at finding Jalal's Mane. So thats my first idea, to try and get as much defence as possible from the items that I use while still using the items that are best for the build.

The second one is about how much strength is needed for the build. I've come to the conclusion that the optimal strength is 118. This is how much you would need to wear an upgraded Jalal's Mane. It would be slightly more than what a Ravenlore needs, but I don't want to bet on getting one of those. This would also give you enough to be able to use a good variety of other items that you may run across (like the earthshaker).

The third one is about energy. Originally I had thought that about 50 energy would be a good idea. I've since decided that you really don't even need that. So I think that leaving energy at base for a wind druid is perfectly fine.

For some reason I am still resisting the idea of blocking on a wind druid. From the reading I have done, most seem to suggest getting max block. I am still of the opinion that putting the points that you would have to put in dex for max block into vit is a better idea. I haven't tried a blocking wind build though yet so I could be wrong. In the end though I just feel more comfortable with the idea of higher life and no block than I do with maxed block and lower life.

Anyway I just thought I would share some of the thoughts that I have currently on this build.

[Baajikiil]

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

[Guest]

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)

Yeah, this was something I was going to make a thread about, as I hadn't heard any mention of it.

Eventhough the NextDelay reported of 25 (1 second delay between hits) is correct, the game can override seemingly any values. In the case of tornado it has an override (sub-delay?) variable of 15 frames (Param1), so one hit every 0.6 secs.

With the way it moves linearly from where you aimed (or the average linear travelling path if you will), and with it being large in size (3x3 tiles), it gets to hit even Fallen (1x1 tile critters) two times (could of sworn I observed a tripple hit, but then it could theoretically hit a monster ~10 times if it was moving away from the Tornado).

Also since it has a custom variable for when the next hit occurs (which could work as customized usage, or just another place to mention the NextDelay....I know I'm confusing now), this can mean it's not affected by the bug/feature (however you see it) of several missiles/fast casts not working, although multiple casts working can be confused with a single Tornado hitting several times.


It's a shame with Twister's stun not being useful (mainly because of its NextDelay prohibiting it from stunning a target 100% of the time) since crowd control without pets would of been fun (although a single point in Molten Boulder does give some of this, but I've only found it of use for comedy value).

[Sir Goatscelot]

Well hi all. Sorry to be late. I have a druid lvl 82 with max windtree..well workin on it. AB is bugged still as far as I know in that it does 36% of listed dmg. Well Adamantine knows better than me lol. He does well in Hell and I am hoping that the the AB bug gets fixed. So assuming fixes: 20 AB, CA, TW, Tor, Hur, is in mho, a great build. With the help of Adamantine and others, I advised my friend on a current build thats also been talked about: max the same skills but only 1 in AB and 20 in OS.., as well as a current lvl 73 cold merc lol, he is lvl 75 in NM and is moving to Hell at lvl 76. Cold merc helps greatly and does not die often.., died 4 times since he was lvl 6. Just try what you like and have fun. These are just some observations that may interest you. Have fun.

[BEEFMOTRTON]

I have a level 85 wind druid on softcore ladder and figure I'd give some tips.

First, I highly recommend maxing oak sage. At levels 20 and above, it's actually fairly sturdy and doesn't need to be recast much at all. It's good to max because that way even in games where you don't have much killing power, you can still be of great benefit to your party and you personally can get over 2000 life without too much equipment dependancy. A merc can get above 5000 life.

I maxed hurricane and tornado, and have about 12 each in twister and cyclone armor and will continue to pump these if I level more. I also put a point in grizzly and a couple in dire wolves to boost its life. Basically you cast it in front of the monsters and say "Here, attack this" while you get in position to tornado spam.

Fast cast is your friend. Getting a suicide brand (unique burnt wand) is good in that it has +1 all skills and 50% fast cast.

As far as defensive measures go, wind druid is quite impressive and dies significantly less than most other characters I've played. Cyclone armor can easily get over 1000 damage absorbtion with +skills, which in my opinion makes poison your most valuable resistance.

Carrion vine is a godsend, put a point in it. What I like to do when I'm low on mana is to let a monster hit me, which causes my nightsmoke belt to recharge a huge portion of my mana ball, and then kill the monster and regain the health with carrion vine.

[Nantuko_Primus]

I dont dig around in mpqs much, but I can speak from actual experience that it DOES hit more than once. How? I was doing some arcane sanctuary runs, and I encountered a LE Ghoul lord boss. I spammed tornado at him, and instead of the sparks with some space in between them, I saw worm-ish things of lighting come out of him. The only other time I saw this was when I was playing with a Zealot, and we encountered a LE boss and the same thing happened.

-Nantuko_Primus