Need Druid past life

[MorteCerta]

Hi all,
Continuing my path to be a completionist im going to TR as a druid very soon. But heres the problem: i really dont know anything about these wild fellows (bought the class recently), and thats why i need your help.

I need a druid build to play heroic and maybe a few epic elite content (just for fun, not soloing).

Some notes about the build:

- Im F2P, so i dont have access to half elve, warforged or artificer - im poor ok? dont judge.
- I really enjoy the wild shape feature - humanoids are too mainstream.
- I would like to go pure or multiclass into monk (if viable), but its not a must.

Beside the build any tips are welcome, like which equips i should get before tr, the best animal form to use, or how to make people think i know what im doing.

[Rofaust]

First of all you should decide now whether you want to go caster or melee druid. If you go caster, you'll pretty much never be in wildshape except at higher levels when you get elemental shapes, because the increased cooldowns in animal forms make it not worth it. I prefer going melee so I can save all my sp for buffs, healing and emergencies - as melee you will spend virtually all your time in wolf and winterwolf forms: waay better dps, all around superior to bear.

The biggest problem I have with melee druid is it's so feat starved; on all my melees power attack, cleave, great cleave and improved critical (bludgeon in the case of the druid, because of the weird way wildshape works, all natural attacks regardless of indicated damage type count as unarmed/bludgeoning for feats) are musts; on druid though there some other really attractive choices: natural fighting (starting at 9th) can be taken 3 times and gives you stacking 6% double strike with each, quicken spell is practically a must if you expect to use reincarnate during a fight on elite because it takes so long to cast and it only one good hit to waste your concentration and then you have to wait for a more than double cooldown in animal form; augment summon is a no brainer - you get a wolf and free summon spell slots at every level and applies to any hires you might have; twf doesn't work in animal form (bug exploits not withstanding), neither do swf feats it seems (edit: they do appear to be working, so that's 3 more feats to consider juggling) and 2hw waste one of your hands so more than likely you're going sword and board, and as such shield mastery and improved shield mastery are super sexy since they give you both prr and doublestrike; lastly dodge gives you access to 4 legs good enhancement which makes you immune to knockdown. My current (human) druid will probably look like this at 20: pwr atk, cleave, completionist, great cleave, quicken spell, improved crit, augment summon, natural fighting. You might choose to splash fighter esp if you're going melee and don't care about spells as much, 2 or more monk is good too.

Flame blade is a great spell esp. if you've min maxed con and wis - I'd recommend 16 str con and wis and the rest in int for skills on a melee build. I like concentration, balance, a few in jump (though you get the spell too) UMD, heal, and spellcraft; intim, diplo and swim are icing. Keep any good scimitars you find, low min level paralyzing, vorpal, disrupting, banishing weapons and a mace of smiting are all in my toolbox - adamantine or any qualities on the weapon in your PRIMARY hand apply to your attacks; secondary weapons and shields don't apply active abilities like flaming to your attacks, but they can add passive bonuses like seeker, vertigo, stunning, sundering and backstabbing - if you're like me you'll be spamming the wolf innate spell takedown whenever it's not on cooldown - if you do cannith crafting id make a couple vertigo/seeker heavy wooden shields of various levels. Another handy trick with weapons is throwing weapons aren't consumed when you attack so if you have say a stack of 20 really good throwing daggers you wouldn't want to waste otherwise, you can use them forever in wildshape. Or if you have a good bow but no arrows bam! it applies to your bite. Got a weapon with good special qualities but you're not proficient with it? bam! Non proficiency penalties disappear in wildshape. I haven't tested that to be certain but that's what it says on the wiki. Arrow and bolts though, sadly will never apply their qualities to your weapons. If you're a dwarf and have throw your weight around, you should be able to use con for your damage modifier though I haven't personally tested that either. I do know you shouldn't do a Harper Int build - it doesn't seem to work with wildshape.

Caster druid is pretty much like sorc; id min max wis and con; get max, emp, heitn, quickn, etc. for SLAs; Magnetism and glacation items are your friends, combustion too for some. Acid and sonic are used very scarcely. Devotion. It takes some getting use to using vigor/regenerate instead of cure and heal, though you get those at higher levels too. No mass cure is weird to get used to if you've been a cleric. Cast vigors earlier than you would cures because they take time to work.

As far as race, I'd either go Human (most likely), Dwarf or Elf. Human is straight forward, if you somehow make the room for another feat dragonmark of travel can be handy ddoor, teleport and speed at low levels. Dwarf con is nice as are some of the enhancements. Elf with dragonmark is really nice for invis stealthing (should you need to sneak soulstones - for best result combine with pass without trace and a move silently item) and for having displacement in tough battles - extend spell would augment both these abilities but unlikely you'll have room for it. One thing too remember is druid has only has 2 enhancement trees and they don't synergize very well so you have a few options to deal with that: 1) (not recommended) spread points over both and try to walk both paths at the same time, 2) make the most you can out of your racial tree to support your primary tree 3) multiclass and use a better tree, 4) if you have it, take what you can from harper. Because I'm a purist in terms of not liking to multicalss I'm opting for options 4 and 2.

So to recap you want to decide caster or melee; then decide whether or not you plan to multiclass; pick a race that harmonizes with that choice; if you're melee decide where to emphacize your enhancement points (if you're castor you can spend most of your points in season's herald); pick up some weapons and armor to prepare and you're good.

My strategy for melee is spam cleave, great cleave and takedown cycling through normal attacks during cooldowns. At higher levels I use cold breath and howl of terror to control mobs as well as the occasional ice storm.
For caster I spam SLAs and use DoT AoEs like firewall and icestorm. Some of my favorite druid spells are: jump, rams might, takedown; resist energy, flameblade, align fang, gust of wind (situational); protection from energy, cure mod, quench, sleetstorm (only if I have FoM prepared); FoM, cure serious, icestrom; panacea, firewall, deathward, reincarnate, coldbreath; fireshield, frostbite, greater creeping cold, fireseeds (for caster); regenerate, true seeing, body of the sun (amazing if you're already standing in a firewall); heal, howl of terror, finger of death, fires of purity, earthquake is good but I don't use it often enough, icy flowers; snowslide and mass regenerate.

Melee is pretty easy and straight forward.
Caster is very versatile and forgiving (since you can change spells at rest shrines).

You'll do fine, happy hunting.

[Vooduspyce]

Hi all,
Continuing my path to be a completionist im going to TR as a druid very soon. But heres the problem: i really dont know anything about these wild fellows (bought the class recently), and thats why i need your help.

I need a druid build to play heroic and maybe a few epic elite content (just for fun, not soloing).

Some notes about the build:

- Im F2P, so i dont have access to half elve, warforged or artificer - im poor ok? dont judge.
- I really enjoy the wild shape feature - humanoids are too mainstream.
- I would like to go pure or multiclass into monk (if viable), but its not a must.

Beside the build any tips are welcome, like which equips i should get before tr, the best animal form to use, or how to make people think i know what im doing.

Multiclassing with monk tells me that you want to do melee, so check out my guildie's build here (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/454134-The-WoodChipper-Drunker-(druid-fighter-monk-melee)-Build-v2-0).