The best legal pure animal form build

[BigErkyKid]

This is work in progress.

For the purpose of theory crafting (and actual gameplay in the future), I am trying to come up with the best possible pure druid build that relies on animal form and melee combat. I do have some experience with animal form builds which is captured in my previous thread on animal forms. However, here I want to restrict it to strictly the WAI combinations. This involves, for instance, not using ANY combat style feats in animal form (SWF, TWF), as it is a long standing not-WAI feature.

I will update the thread as I chew through the details. Contributions are welcome!

Questions:

- Does the inherent hand wrap dice increase work in animal form?

- Does the capstone improve bear form attack speed significantly or do the slow animation still cripple it?

[unbongwah]

- Does the inherent hand wrap dice increase work in animal form?
If you're talking about Reinforced Fists: no, AFAIK, though I've never tried on a druid w/out monk splash before.

- Does the capstone improve bear form attack speed significantly or do the slow animation still cripple it?
Still abysmal compared to wolf form, I'm afraid. I had a pure druid who was intended as a bear tank, but I LR'ed out of that pretty quickly; the defensive benefits simply weren't enough to offset the low melee DPS. :(

Pure druid who doesn't use TWF exploit has two options: Shield Mastery + Natural Fighting focused on doublestrikes (aka the old-school approach); or SWF+NF (I've not seen dev confirmation whether SWF is WAI in wolf form). Due to high feat reqs, human is the obvious choice.

[BigErkyKid]

Thanks for the answers!


If you're talking about Reinforced Fists: no, AFAIK, though I've never tried on a druid w/out monk splash before.

I meant the base +W that at least hand-wraps have coded in. For example the adamantine knuckles. AFAIK (been a while...), and thunder forged hand wraps (+4.5W). I really hope it does, but without testing there is no assuming. Does anyone know?



Still abysmal compared to wolf form, I'm afraid. I had a pure druid who was intended as a bear tank, but I LR'ed out of that pretty quickly; the defensive benefits simply weren't enough to offset the low melee DPS. :(

Pure druid who doesn't use TWF exploit has two options: Shield Mastery + Natural Fighting focused on doublestrikes (aka the old-school approach); or SWF+NF (I've not seen dev confirmation whether SWF is WAI in wolf form). Due to high feat reqs, human is the obvious choice.

I was thinking that if you can use hand wraps for +W, then it would be optimal to use NF and not a shield, least DPS wise. Even without monk levels. I was going to go for whirlwind attack (seems a must nowadays for monks).

I am sorry to hear that even after the capstone the bear sucks so badly...

[Amundir]

I'm currently doing the wolf monk swf build so I'll have to test it at home about the +W on the weapon, but I want to say that wolf form does not get that bonus. The only things they get are the effects. Nothing about the weapon damage, crit chance, die roll, any of that, but they get the other stuff. Again I'll have to confirm when I get home.

As far as SWF working with WF being WAI, I believe I read that it is not, as the whole point of NF was to compensate for the form not (intently) having access to any of the weapon fighting forms.

But I love the attack speed + double strike chance paired with a vorpal weapon and the healing fist.

[lifestaker]

Bear with capstone sucks, splashing more then a few levels of monk and using swf works to make it about the speed of a S&B pure wizard with no speed item or haste. I also failed to see an increase in attack speed with capstone and any cleaves (did not have whirlwind) save alpha strike. If you desire to run the dire bear, gear up and play wolf. Use bear for the times when you truly need it. Keep your intimidate high, for you will need it.

Pure built animals formed druids at this point in the game are much lower across the board in near every factor that people look at for a good build. If you were to splash monk, fighter, or ranger you would increase your dps. Splashing wizard, fighter, or sorc could increase your ac. Warlock, fvs, fighter, or cleric increase prr/mrr. Barb, arti, rogue, and bard add things as well, but can be a pain to get it to work right.

I liked the druids I did a ways back, though many of them just failed to be good.
15druid/4 fighter/1 wizard. Ran a high ac, okay saves, and decent dps (in wolf form). Bear form was used just for tanking mode.
20 druid elemental DC build. Was fun to be focused for DC, but found them a bit weaker then I wanted in DPS, and burned more then a few pots to keep up to my play speed.
14 druid/6 ranger Wolf build. Ran this right after DoJ came out to try to get full benefit from hide of the fallen. Was okay, but lacked in many places.
10 druid/6 ranger / 4 fighter wolf build. This was funner then the 14/6 but still used the sfw/twf.
13 druid/7 warlock fire elemental fiend. Was more a flavor build for lols. fun for a past life but not the greatest for epic level. It was nice though to spit fireballs out of my winter wolf's mouth while leveling.
13 druid/3 fvs (might have been cleric, either work though) / 4 fighter was also fun, but again far from a good build in epic. I might have done this for a ML life, was a ways ago.
9 druid/ 9 barb / 2 rogue was just for a past life. I did not enjoy it very much, just to much going on with nothing great from any of it.
8 druid/ 12 monk was another past life build, and was happy it didn't have to go into epic levels.
9 druid/9 monk/2 fighter was okay. Was hard to take a hit on it though, making epics interesting (was done on a piratically first life character, but that was only part of the issue.)

The painful fact being is that pure + druid = behind the curve currently. Regardless of being elemental or animal they are just a pain, though some pull it off (a lot to do with how you play the elemental forms.)

[Rush007]

Wolf form caster based is going to the best animal build you could make as a pure. Capable melee, never ending mana, CC, spell damage, area damage.

Advantages for a caster with 31 in natures warrior and in wolf form

31 hp, thats a feat worth of hp
75 positive spell power
15-18 universal spell power from magic fang for being in wolf form
additional CC with some positioning and practice with Jaw's of Winter
Snowslide as another CC, on call abundant step
Four legs good enhancement, knockdown immunity
6d6 sneak from cores and winter wolf form
SHRIKE for that temp mana

Capable melee will take specialized gear and gearing will not be easy to hit everything. Required for good melee damage:
Dethek Runestone
Hide of the Fallen
Dragonmasq, exceptional for wolf, deadly, negative and insight sneak
Legendary feat with damage - Scion of the plane of air
Magic fang +5 or +6
Wild Growth, more STR
Consuming darkness or some seeker item

Numbers for me are 100 normal hit, 70 sneak, negative damage from helm, (sense weakness damage), (weapon effects), 100 lightning from scion.
Stunned mobs in primal with sense weakness with overwhelming critical for a x5 crit multi, 1400's crit's on 19-20's show up. Only melee feats spent are improved critical and overwhelming.

Melee for a build like this is only the backdrop. The real seller is the fully meta'd double crit word of balances, 2k non crit lightning bolts, glacial burst for helpless into hellball with sense weakness, the crazy ice dots, the amazing CC, MASS regenerate. Pure druid is a caster first. Spending more feats than needed to enhance a hard capped melee is wasted opportunity.

[BigErkyKid]

Thanks guys for the very detailed answers. I am looking forward to the answer on the +W from wraps.

First, let me clarify that I do understand that unarmed combat (and hence animal forms) are a huge mess right now and way behind some of the current top builds. Multi classing is probably the best option, also using combat styles TWF, SWF or both. However, for the most part the power of multi classing comes from non WAI features, and I wanted to explore the power of an animal form build that strictly used things that are solidly WAI.

Finally, when it comes to caster / melee hybrids, I want to clarify that I am aiming for a toon for epics. Not only that, it should hold its ground in hard content. That is why I think that caster is not going to be an option. Either you go full in or I don't think that a few SLAs with somehow long cool downs and OKIsh DPS would compensate for giving up on melee. I understand the idea that pure melee combat druids are very hard capped (again, if restricted to WAI stuff), but that;s the route I want to explore here.

If the unarmed combat in animal form does benefit from +W from wraps, I was going for Whirlwind attack line together with PRR / MRR feats, and the usual melee feats (except for combat styles). Something along the line of (excuse the copy paste):

Heroic Epic Destiny Legendary
dodge 21 combat 26 deific 30 pRR acid
PA 24 whirlwind 28 precision
cleave 27 oc 29 dire charge
completion30 DR
g cleave
quicken
mobility
spring

This yields solid PRR and decent dodge in light amor and focus on melee.

Thanks again for the interesting conversation!

[Rush007]

The hybrid builds get better the higher in level you go because the gear spreads out more, you get more effects and stats per piece being able to cover both melee and spells.

[Amundir]

So I did a few passes at the training dummy in and out of wolf form using some handwraps that gave me an extra 1.3W when equipped. The lower range limit of damage for both was pretty consistent. So either the +W does apply while in wolf form or else I have enough extra perks in wolf form to obscure that it is not applying. Might have to find someone with some wraps that make them have a much higher +W to confirm this.

Edit: Ok I just redid it without the handwraps on at all. Monk min range damage went down and wolf was still the same. So I would think that would lean towards my extra wolf damage was obscuring it and that it is true that the +W from the handwraps does not apply to wolf form.

[unbongwah]

Wolf form caster based is going to the best animal build you could make as a pure. Capable melee, never ending mana, CC, spell damage, area damage.
This is basically what I LR'ed my bear druid into: WIS-based with both metamagics and melee feats. Melee DPS is mediocre at best, but it's almost besides the point; as the real incentive is the temp SPs from EotShrike to offset my spellcasting, which does the heavy lifting of my DPS.

Unfortunately, the Improved Crit nerfs in U28 reduced wolf crit profile from 17-20/x3 to 18-20/x3; so ever since then, I do a bit less melee DPS and I generate 25% less temp SPs. :( I'm finally sick of dealing with wolf-form bugs; planning to TR into a warlock build at some point.

[Therrias]

The best legal pure animal form build

Not WAI does not equal illegal.

That is all.

[unbongwah]

Finally, when it comes to caster / melee hybrids, I want to clarify that I am aiming for a toon for epics. Not only that, it should hold its ground in hard content. That is why I think that caster is not going to be an option. Either you go full in or I don't think that a few SLAs with somehow long cool downs and OKIsh DPS would compensate for giving up on melee. I understand the idea that pure melee combat druids are very hard capped (again, if restricted to WAI stuff), but that;s the route I want to explore here.
The fundamental flaw with wolf builds is your low base dmg; most +[W] modifiers don't apply to wolf form - the only ones I think apply are from monk lvls + GMoF, but not the ones from wraps themselves - which is a serious handicap in epics when everyone else is swinging a +5[W] greataxe or whatever. :rolleyes: Adding to one's woes, most (all?) crit range bonuses like Keen Edge don't work with wolf form, so you're stuck with 18-20/x3 crit profile, which is pretty low compared to most "serious" DPS builds these days. Oh, and forget any fancy-pants notions of using anything other than STR as your DPS stat, because none of them work with unarmed / wolf builds. :(

[Hopefully the Kensei pass in U31 will at least fix Keen Edge to work with unarmed / wolf atks, but I'm not exactly holding my breath in anticipation...]

So since your dmg per hit is kinda hard-capped compared to other epic chars, the trick to doing good melee DPS is maxing out your hit rate by trying to squeeze out as much atk speed (SWF) and proc chances (TWF+doublestrike) bonuses as you can. Unfortunately, pure druids miss out on all the DPS tricks which multiclassed wolf builds benefit from. Heck, even if you plan to avoid the TWF bugs, just having extra feats from ftr can help a lot, as the higher-level Nature's Warrior abilities add relatively little to your melee DPS.

If you're still committed to this idea, more power to you. You'll be TRing into a pure wolf druid just as I'm TRing out of one. But I think as soon as you hit epics, you're going to realize very quickly why people employ so many broken mechanics in their MCed wolf builds...

[Propane]

I have a 17 druid 3 monk. (Lv 27)

Fight in wolf from - centered Grandmaster stance

I use both wraps and two short swords (centered per ninja spy)

The main hand sword is for DPS, the 2nd is a caster stick (Thunderforage for Evocation DC)

In wolf form...

Celestia 4.3 1d10
Duel weidling LV 26 thunder forged 6.3 1d6
Antipode 4.3 1d10
Grave Wrappings 4.3 1d10

Taking Spider Spun Caparison on and off doesn't' seem to make a difference (had Reinforced fists)

DPS seems similar for all above.

I lean towards DC casting earthquake (50 DC) / SLA, mix in some stunning fist (DC 64) and melee for fun.

This is a 1st life character on 1st epic life.

I could drop the evocation feats for double strike if I wanted too.

[Rush007]

Had some Epic Scraps of Enlightenment in inventory that I was just going to pet collar but tried them on to see if there was a base damage increase. Expected result was I should see none. However character sheet jumped to 7.3(1d10) and in game actual I went from 100-110 to 160-170 base damage a hit. It is scaling somehow. Found some new portal beaters, won't be collaring those.

Or its a scaling bug with dethek equipped then switching to handwraps. Wouldn't be surprising, will test that. Theory - dethek gives 2W in animal form and we are unarmed. What if it gave phantom monk levels to make that happen? Basically have monk unlocked then and boom handwrap scaling.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Had some Epic Scraps of Enlightenment in inventory that I was just going to pet collar but tried them on to see if there was a base damage increase. Expected result was I should see none. However character sheet jumped to 7.3(1d10) and in game actual I went from 100-110 to 160-170 base damage a hit. It is scaling somehow. Found some new portal beaters, won't be collaring those.
This is the best portal beater for a wolf build, that doesn't use swf.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Sun_Flask

[dunklezhan]

I keep looking at pure bear, and I keep wishing hard, but no matter what I do (tried squinting, tried turning around three times and clicking my heels, tried standing with one foot in a bucket of custard)... I just can't see a way to make it work. Rage preventing a bunch of fun stuff working does not help either, because I really like the idea of a bearserker, whereas I don't like the idea of a zen-bear or a fighter split. Like the concept of a ranger split but seems entirely redundant if TWF isn't supposed to work in bear form, and it was already mostly redundant due to overlaps in other areas.

/Sigh.

I think wolf is probably your only real option, too.

[Rush007]

This is the best portal beater for a wolf build, that doesn't use swf.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Sun_Flask

Forgot about that item will give it a run. I think on EE it will easily out perform due to light damage and insane DR of portal but EH and EN it might be close. It'd be 3(1d10)+0 light, vs 7.3(1d10)+12 + holy + light.

[BigErkyKid]

Had some Epic Scraps of Enlightenment in inventory that I was just going to pet collar but tried them on to see if there was a base damage increase. Expected result was I should see none. However character sheet jumped to 7.3(1d10) and in game actual I went from 100-110 to 160-170 base damage a hit. It is scaling somehow. Found some new portal beaters, won't be collaring those.

Or its a scaling bug with dethek equipped then switching to handwraps. Wouldn't be surprising, will test that. Theory - dethek gives 2W in animal form and we are unarmed. What if it gave phantom monk levels to make that happen? Basically have monk unlocked then and boom handwrap scaling.

Interesting! Could you please do a few more tests? With different wraps, etc.

I should have tested it in lama but I thought it was settled that it doesn't matter.

[Kuunkukka]

Detheks have nothing to do with it.

I don't have those and still got the +W progression with hand wraps. Stunning fist, handwraps, +damage on stunned should go a long way. Well, anything to add to your attack speed helps to capitalize on the vulnerability period of the target. Still, you can expect 600ish noncrit damage on stunned mob with scraps of enlightenment, 1-3 monk levels, in LD, with Sense Weakness.

Wearing skirts in melee is of course a liability in EE or LE, but maxing earth stance, past lives and whatnot does make up for some reasonable PRR.

I know the OP is hoping for non-twf solution here, but it just is the best way to achieve credible DPS on animal form Druid. Regardless of melee/single target DPS approach, you're probably stuck with spell damage for aoe. Therefore I would suggest 17(or more) levels of Druid to get SoV. That would also leave open either mass regen or snow slide, both awesome spells.

[Rush007]

Detheks have nothing to do with it.

I don't have those and still got the +W progression with hand wraps. Stunning fist, handwraps, +damage on stunned should go a long way. Well, anything to add to your attack speed helps to capitalize on the vulnerability period of the target. Still, you can expect 600ish noncrit damage on stunned mob with scraps of enlightenment, 1-3 monk levels, in LD, with Sense Weakness.

Wearing skirts in melee is of course a liability in EE or LE, but maxing earth stance, past lives and whatnot does make up for some reasonable PRR.

I know the OP is hoping for non-twf solution here, but it just is the best way to achieve credible DPS on animal form Druid. Regardless of melee/single target DPS approach, you're probably stuck with spell damage for aoe. Therefore I would suggest 17(or more) levels of Druid to get SoV. That would also leave open either mass regen or snow slide, both awesome spells.

If you have monk levels it unlocks the W increases on handwraps and reinforced fists. Seeing this apply to a pure druid with no monks levels is different than expected. However did confirm Dethek has nothing to do with it. Bought some random gen lvl 30 handwraps and dice became 4.3(1d10). Impact 2W and Greater Reinforced Fists for scraps make it 7.3(1d10). Logged in and out so Dethek was never equipped and the story didn't change.

[BigErkyKid]

Thanks guys for the fantastic information. It is great that wraps do work, it really should boost survivability a lot.

I will probably put together a build in the coming days.