Druid5/Shifter10/DwD25 Undead Defender

[louisvilleslugger]

I've played a Druid 5 / Shifter 10 / Dwarven Defender 25 on other not as epic servers, and they make very nice tin cans due to Risen Lord 50% immune to slash/pierce & the damage reduction from DwD.

Has anyone done this type of build on HG? If so, are they as nice?

Does the dwarven defender damage immunity come from the STR naturally, or from the form?

My concerns:
-No evasion
-STR/CON set by Form
-Legendary creatures using exotic damage, rather than typical physical

[thedomicron]

i think that the limited uses/day, and the need to drink harm potions in order to heal also reduce plausibility of this form. also your ab will not be great. as a pure tank, you might do alright.

currently shifters have problems with melee. if you wanted to sacrifice unarmed AB progression you could try this and focus on dragon, but i'd be very impressed if you got that to work.

[sabregirl]

AC on Risen Lord is pretty horrible and with no monk level it will be abysmal and you'll take far too much damage regardless of any immunities. AB on it is in the toilet, even with GMW, in the mid 50s iirc (most fighters are shooting for 70). You could go with dragon form but I think it's pretty pointless to try and make a melee only dragon of any sort on HG but without a monk level the whole thing is probably sunk on AC. Will get shield AC I suppose but I think would be extremely fragile and limited, when you could have just built a DD.

-S

[drunkenboaster]

I tried a Blackguard 25 Druid 5 Shifter 10, pure charisma build. It worked great pre LL, but it got very weak compared to almost every other LL build out there.

You hardly take any damage from non-blunt attacks that hit, but you will be hit a lot. Anything with a save effect will murder you because no matter how high your saves are, ones happen and you will be hit a lot.

Three shifts per rest also hurts. Die a few times and you become useless until able to rest again. And it is also a problem when the rest of your party is dying and you can't raise them from the shifted state. In my opinion it is one of a tanks job to raise the generally weaker but much higher damaging party members.

Although there are harm potions available to be used to heal with, they have a much longer delay between after drunk and when they heal. Have to make sure you have no other actions qued up or the heal effect may not happen.

Your AB will be very low for a tank. Most of the damage my BG build did was from kickback on his divine shield. The dwarven defenders defensive weave cannot be activated while shifted so that kills the nice kickback damage.

I will admit my BG build was sort of effective in some areas, like the maze or fighting dragons. But fighting is a loose term because I would just stand there and cancel all fighting to help make it easier for things to hit me so they would die quicker on my divine shield.

[louisvilleslugger]

for the damage immunity from STR in LL, did it use your STR from your natural form or from the shifted form?

[sabregirl]

Since I'm pretty sure LL abilities such as damage immunity are given on server login or death and rez - both of which you are unshifted, it will almost certainly use your unshifted strength to deterrmine it.

-S