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Post by StrykerOfChaos on Aug 1, 2008 16:54:13 GMT
May I ask what your gear set up is? I just hit 55 and am currently looking at this (with tia)
Weapon: Tia Staff Armor: I want Hide of Andoril Landscape...do they give dex? Shield: Pinwheel Helm: Elemental Crown Gloves: Touch of Mockery Belt: Song of the East Amulet: Tia Ammy Boots: Aasgart's Aversion Cloak: Tia Cloak Ring 1: Other Ring 2: Mallek's Answer (the mord with 10% elements)
Anything I have over looked?
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Post by exeli on Aug 11, 2008 5:59:01 GMT
My druid was done back then when Rilminai gave you +4 to charisma instead of constitution so I guess I have to re-incarnate it. Before I start doing it I'm going to ask few questions because I haven't played for a while. I notices that both Yue and you did take empower spell and not the silent one. I'm wondering why. I'm thinking about druid 38 - monk 1 - bard 1 build. Level progression is 1 druid, 1 monk, 37 druid and 1 bard. Feats: Greater spell penetration Luck of heroes Spell focus evocation Greater spell focus evocation Spell focus transmutation Extend spell Lightning reflexes Epic spell penetration Epic spell focus conjuration Great wis I Empower spell Great wis II Epic spell focus evocation Great wis III Epic spell focus transmutation Great wis IV-VI LL spell penetration Ledendary reflexes Legendary luck Legendary spell focus transmutation Legendary spell focus conjuration Great wis VII-VIII Wondrous tome of Abjuration. Saves should be around 62-63-80. I hope I didn't make too big miscalculations here, I'm a bit rusty. I guess this should be ok in any runs but I like to hear some comments on this one until I'm more familiar with all the changes in the server. [Edit] Skills are pretty much the same as Tyrants build aswell as starting stats too. And I haven't really tested this so far, only thinking about it.
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Post by bort on Aug 12, 2008 14:26:40 GMT
Personally i'd swap extend for silent, as extend is nice, but not amazing, whereas silent lets you cast in some situations you wouldn't otherwise be able to.
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Post by tyranlthixis on Aug 12, 2008 15:22:07 GMT
You can do extend or silent. Both have uses. Silent is nice for Elysium and last map of Nessus and may be the better choice for druid atm. Empower is very important for spell variety. It allows you to optimize your spellbook for a given area. You can do 3 tiers of a lower level spell like drown for example. More likely you're going to want a variety of spells from a single tier in a given area (crumble, drown etc) will need three tiers just to effectively cover them all. You can also go into super heal mode and heal with 3 tiers of healing circle and one tier of mass heal. So, your druid can take up a number of different roles depending on the party you have.
Tyran
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Post by Chaos on Aug 12, 2008 18:13:11 GMT
How would you adapt this to Half-Celestial? I know the 40% penalty will hurt but thats the only subrace I have that will be viable for this build.
HawkeZ
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Post by bort on Aug 16, 2008 12:42:38 GMT
I recently reincarnated my Druid using Half-Kyton and i would suggest the following:
Get Greater Ruin. It's great fun, it helps if the ploder in your party is busy somewhere else or KD (or you don't have one and don't have time to spam crumble) and as a side effect of having 50 points in Spellcraft you can Counterspell certain mobs that cast EQ in a particular area in the mod where you are unable to do anything else useful.
Drop the Conjuration line. A druid's primary role is SR lowerer, Crumbler and Drowner and by the time you're done with those spells everything bar minibosses and bosses (and big bad crit immunes like PFs) is usually dead. The epic is nice, but pathetically short anyway. You can still use Elemental Swarm and other Conjuration damage spells, they'll just do half damage most of the time.
You still need ESF Evocaction for Immute and ESF Abjuration for Frailty (with the added bonus of boosting Energy Immunity). Personally i also took ESF Illusion for the boost to Creeping Doom (great for bosses) and handy +20 natural AC epic which means I get decent AC without Armor Skin or LSA tumble, even after the Druid AC change.
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Post by Stormchaser on Aug 16, 2008 15:35:19 GMT
How would you adapt this to Half-Celestial? I know the 40% penalty will hurt but thats the only subrace I have that will be viable for this build. HawkeZ My HC druid is my favorite toon (has been for a long while now). Since the 40% penalty hit, its not really a great idea to use that subrace now. If you do go with it I would suggest taking a paladin splash instead of bard to take advantage of the nice CHA bonus that HC gives. This will free up some feats for more spell focus feats, which is always a good thing.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Oct 29, 2008 18:59:22 GMT
Going over this and noticed a few things that don't make sense to me: Fort save pre-feats should be 58, not 59: 11 druid + 2 monk + 10 epic + 5 LL + 10 con + 20 items. Correct me if I'm forgetting something. Legendary Reflexes would boost Reflex to 59, not 58... sum of pre-epic and LL feats for saves is 9. With this in mind, if you plan to take three save feats it is better to go with Leg Reflex and Epic Fort, netting 1 more to Reflex than if you took Leg Luck and Epic Reflex. Why Legendary Evocation? I've played Druid for a long time and the only spell I can remember it affecting is Firestorm. I thought Evocation was mainly for Immutable Force - again, correct me if I'm missing something. With that extra feat you could afford Great Wisdom X, extra saves (maybe get Reflexes past 60!), or maybe even gimp your saves and take a fifth epic. My preference would be Illusion just because I favor Creeping Doom so much; Veil of Mists is only gravy. The first two look like math errors and should probably be corrected - even though I admit this is necro-posting, this build is on the Wiki as the foremost caster Druid.
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Post by Rain on Oct 29, 2008 21:21:06 GMT
Firestorm is not that an effective spell in hell unless in min/stygia/cania. i donot have LSF:evocation on druid too but i may think this mainly helps boost the dc for the druid gust of wind which does help killing wind, fumes and colds. and i just donot actually bother to care that 2 dc in a damage based spell. however druids' effective spells mostly are dc based like nb, drown, cast in stone. i'd agree maxing the greater wisdom is more important. personally i'd drop the LSF:conjuration too for greater ruin since the epic overvalues the 2 dc in es, stonehold and grease for me.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Oct 31, 2008 3:58:55 GMT
I made some changes to this build in building a new Druid for myself. Of course it's not really possible to make a Hells-viable Druid build that does not greatly resemble this one; so while I really built from scratch, my build's pretty darn close.
Dropped all save feats and non-essential skills, especially Heal as Druids are no longer good frontline healspammers. With the drop in INT, I was able to boost CON to make up a little for the lack of saves and pick up more HP... I'll just be real careful around Arachills. Monk/Bard splash as has been the norm for me, and took Abj/Conj/Evo/Illus to Epic, only Trans went to LSF. All 10 Great Wisdom feats means my build will have the maximum possible DC on NB without going pure; I'll be darned if I'm going pure on a Druid. So far things look very promising!
It seems worth mentioning that given my experiences in the Hells as a Druid, Druids seem fairly difficult to hit compared to other classes when knocked down by a check. Most of the time my Druid got back up even under attack by a PF. Veil of Mists may not seem like such a great epic, but that extra 3-4 AC might help you survive under fire while on your knees. I don't know the exact numbers, but I know flat-foot plus KD is something on the order of 32 AC loss, given 20 dodge, 40 tumble, and the KD penalty. That doesn't hurt so much when you clear 150 with Girding! But before you take me at my word, I should probably go type !list ac while KDed in Hells, eh?
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Post by tyranlthixis on Oct 31, 2008 5:24:22 GMT
I disagree about sacrificing saves. Druids are front line casters. If you're floating around the back of spawns like a wizard, imho you're not playing your druid to its potential.
I also disagree about heal. It is true that healing circle has been changed. But, the variants on the mass heal spells are still being balanced. The changes were made to balance these not to obliterate them or the value of the heal skill. Groups still need front line healers.
Evocation was a choice I made WAY back before Greater Ruin was an instant kill spell. I did so for two reasons.
The first was the damage of evocation spells depends on beating monsters saves. The more often you can beat a monsters saves the more damage they will take, from a spell like firestorm, over time. There are bosses and monsters where firestorm is the damage spell best choice. In the world of P3s and beyond evocation has become more useful, since its no longer enough to be able to spam elemental swarm. If damage spells ever get tweaked to be more prominent again, this will be even more important.
The second was future consideration. Focusing in a spell school is never a useless thing in the long haul. There will always be improvements based off of specialization. I was right to think this way. Aside from spell changes since that time, we have recently seen the birth of a whole new type of caster gear. The druid amulet from Aboleths, for example, turns your earthquake spell into a mass knockdown earthquake spell. The DC of this knockdown ability draws from your level of spell focus.
The only question in my mind is extra spell focus or greater ruin...not two more wisdom. I don't see saves as an option. There's only one spare feat in my mind. What I do need to update is the skill list. I picked lore based on changes that never came about. That could be swapped for spellcraft so you can take greater ruin. Greater ruin is a solid choice now and for the long run. Its definitely even more useful now that Aboleths is open since it can instant kill the Aboleths themselves (with a little luck).
The saves posted I lifted from an actual level 60 character. Its possible I may have mis-read the screen. I'll have to recheck them.
Tyran
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Post by johannhowitzer on Nov 1, 2008 4:19:20 GMT
I didn't say I'd be hanging back. There are other ways to avoid making saves... in the case of Arachills, they can be emped, the webs gusted, and you can move to the side often, or even ahead a little without spawning, in order to avoid webs. There are always other mobs to be turned green, if the only mobs remaining are Arachills, well then I would expect NB isn't a crucial spell at that point! Being out of the webs also provides my StF scrolling ability to help others who get petrified - in HC desert/DB I've gotten a lot of practice watching for stoning. Also, Fort isn't going to be that low, you yourself named a lower number than my Druid will have as acceptable. Stinks about reflexes, but if I have trouble with webbing and such, I suppose I'll go correct that with reincarnation. In my experience playing Druid in hells I was constantly being asked to use NB almost to the exclusion of all else. Druid is the healing-capable class I would look to LAST for healspamming. If it turns out this is needed, I can swap the CON back out for 2 more INT and bump DEX by 2 as well; however, the extra 2 CON does make sense given Druid's frontline role - the extra HP is very handy, especially for Druids since they get more mileage out of CON than other classes via Blood Frenzy. My HP already pops near 1200 and I just went immo. Evocation is not the only viable school for dealing damage; I have found consistently laying down CD is very party-friendly, and if you want to debate bosses, I would think the lasting effects of bugs would be more helpful in the long term than Firestorm spam - ESPECIALLY since you can cast other stuff while CD is working. Baal of course an exception. I am not in the loop about changes soon after they take place, really. This amulet is news to me, I've never been to Aboleths, having been playing Hardcore for about the past year. Seems like an interesting consideration, but I'll reincarnate if needed when I figure all this stuff out! Was the 60 you examined a demi? +2 DEX/CON from demi grants saves. I've never been much of a fan of Greater Ruin, or any spell that gets so few uses with possibility of failure. Just not in my play style; I would prefer pumping NB to the limit, to make it as reliable as possible. I know wizards LOVE green PFs/Malebs. I feel Ruin is better left to the pure wizards and such who can cast it from further away with greater DC. My style as Druid is very heavily on the party-support side - helping casters land spells, increasing tanks' physical output, dropping machines' fort saves, stuff like that.
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Post by mishimayukio on Nov 2, 2008 2:33:29 GMT
Greater ruin is wipe protection, plain and simple. The more people in the party that have it, the better the protection, especially for aboleths and elysium.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Nov 2, 2008 8:40:27 GMT
Man, I'm feeling an "I told you so" coming from Halfwing's corner, so I'll pre-empt it. I'm suddenly finding myself with the desire to take up his banner. A while ago in Hardcore he proposed a Druid design to me which I thought was a little silly. Pure, robe-wearing, essentially a nature-based Wizard. Unconventional epics, he even toyed around with losing Shunt. But I think the reason Halfwing and I are friends is because we both have this intense desire to figure building principles out and use them to be creative. Further back, I remember proposing a Paladin build that dual-wielded bastard swords. It was purely for coolness factor, and Raj saw fit to call it out for being less than perfect for Hells... he actually got downright angry with me. You just made me realize why I really dislike Ruin. Back when I stopped playing shortly after my first Nessus due to video card problems with NWN, Ruin was just beginning to become popular. Now I come back and everyone and his grandmother has it on their builds, and you're telling me that every caster in every party ought to have it? The more "must-haves" this server introduces, the less enjoyment I get out of creative building. Not that this server exists for me, mind you. Sorry, this wasn't meant to be a rant; I guess I just see things progressively tunnel-visioning. Tyran's attitude toward this brief discussion is the same "my way or the highway" attitude I showed toward Halfwing's build ideas. (To Tyran's credit, he did sprinkle it generously with "in my opinion" and "the way I see it"!) I don't want there to be only one way to play a class; I'm glad we have quasis, or this would be even worse, huh? It's actually what I dislike about WoW most - I play a mage, and mages are mages. They're carbon-copies. That said, I don't intend to take Greater Ruin on my Druid, and I'll see if I can make these saves work. Of course I'm not telling Tyran he's wrong! I was a little curious why he bothered with LSF evoc, but that was all. I do feel a bit like he's telling me my ideas are wrong and won't work. Thing is, if he's right, any Hells Druid has about three or four two-way choices to make, beyond that, Druids are all the same, right down to the leafy undergarments. Of course, like I started out by saying, I'm guilty as anyone of being one-dimensional. Now I've got to swallow that.
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Post by Acaos on Nov 2, 2008 9:07:47 GMT
Thing is, if he's right, any Hells Druid has about three or four two-way choices to make, beyond that, Druids are all the same, right down to the leafy undergarments. Many druids choose to go commando. Closer to nature, you know. Acaos
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