Druid life coming up...

[DrakHar]

Hullo all. I've still got some caster lives to breeze through, but then it's time for the class I dread most: Druid.

Well, actually, I dreaded barbarian more, but it's done.

What kind of advice would you give me? I much prefer melee to casting. This character will have the following past lives: (Yes, it's all of them except druid at least once)
Bard, Sorc, Wiz, Cleric, Fvs, artificer, ranger, rogue, paladin, monk: 1
Fighter: 2 (my first two lives)
barbarian: 3 (I hated this class enough that I never wanted to be tempted to do it again...)

----------------------------------------

I was looking at 18/2 druid monk or 16/2/2 druid fighter monk... these look interesting to me, but I'm unsure as how they work.

I have pretty good crafting levels, really, I'm interested in these melee builds and advice as druids seem to function very... wonky(?), and building a good one just doesn't seem as intuitive to me as every other class.

[Daine]

18/2 Drunk is fun to play.

Did find the mid levels firewall is king, as to be expected I suppose. It is fun to firewall then jump in it and then launch a barrage of stuns and takedowns on your foes before you clean up with melee.

I did myself a favour and made a nice GS quarterstaff before I TR'ed into this build, it's been a blast so far!

As a melee orientated druid I went half-elf for the rogue dili for extra sneak attack on top of all the wolf form sneakiness, so far I have very high survivability and an excellent kill rate, you just have to use everything you have, not just attack. Being able to throw out a res and when necessary switching to my devotion item makes me a (barely) adequete backup healer as well if I want to complete some group content and its not going so well. I'm beginning to see that role switching is key to a good druid.

Best advice is as per usual pick a form you want to play and build to it, I would be a very different beast (pun intended) if I chose bear or elemental form.

Edit: I did pick the active barb past life rather than just toughness, I dont use the rage when I think I might need to (self) heal, but when things are going well and I want to speed things up I use it and a combat boost. It's a tiny little bonus but it's fun to draw on your past lives when it doesn't really cost you anything.

[Bunker]

IMO, druid is a class where you have the choice of playing what you know and like most.

If you like a melee class, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

If you like the caster classes, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

I'm on my 16th life on Mothergoose, the druid life as if is. I myself enjoy ranged, then caster, and last melee in that order. Since druid doesn't really have much in the works of ranged, caster was my next option. Mothergoose was then designed for a caster roll.

So I say to you again, play what you know and like the most.

GL and see you in the King's Forest.

/cheers

-Bunk

edit: P.S. Just reread the OP, and for someone that likes melee, not sure why you are dreading the barbarian class. If you want some tips, let me know. Honestly, I dislike melee classes the most, but out of all of them, barbarian is what I loved the most. They are wicked fun and have some great ability, if you know how to play to thier strengths. Ok, so I don't know much about barbarians, but I know how to survive for 20 levels and do it with fun. /cheers

[Mubjon]

The best part about Druid is that you can build for one thing and still do the other fairly well. Even my caster druid can melee some with all the buffs the druid gets. So do not limit yourself to one aspect of the class and incorporate all of it during battle.

Sleet Storm + FoM = Massive fun Toss an earthquake and laugh at the mobs trying to get up.

So do not ignore wisdom and I would recommend spreading points equally between strength and wisdom after you decide if you are going to go s/b or twf. The best part about S/B is that it works in animal or elemental form (the double strike chance that is) so it is beneficial no matter which way you go. TWF only works well in elemental or human (or whatever race you choose) forms.

If you go TWF think about doing the steel strike feat, the one where long swords count as ki weapons, so that you can stay cenetered. I created a couple level 7 builds with 2 monk, 1 fighter 4 druid and one that was 5 druid/2 monk and the fighter splash one is quite fun with that feat. Granted it is only level 7 so

[Manatha]

IMO, druid is a class where you have the choice of playing what you know and like most.

If you like a melee class, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

If you like the caster classes, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

I'm on my 16th life on Mothergoose, the druid life as if is. I myself enjoy ranged, then caster, and last melee in that order. Since druid doesn't really have much in the works of ranged, caster was my next option. Mothergoose was then designed for a caster roll.

So I say to you again, play what you know and like the most.

GL and see you in the King's Forest.

/cheers

-Bunk

edit: P.S. Just reread the OP, and for someone that likes melee, not sure why you are dreading the barbarian class. If you want some tips, let me know. Honestly, I dislike melee classes the most, but out of all of them, barbarian is what I loved the most. They are wicked fun and have some great ability, if you know how to play to thier strengths. Ok, so I don't know much about barbarians, but I know how to survive for 20 levels and do it with fun. /cheers

I would have to agree with this, and I'll share what I did with my druid (mainly, sharing my mistakes)

Primary thing: Specialize.

I initially made my druid as a melee build, pure str, with a splash of int (enough to let me disable traps) con and wis.

On hitting the higher levels I thought that I'd made a mistake with the melee build being a pure str build with wisdom as an after thought. I wanted a melee druid, with at least passable DC on its spells for abilities. My snowslide(?) and earthquake were regularly resisted and almost not worth throwing onto my bars.

So I took a lesser reinc to test a melee/caster build with a 17 into dex instead of str being maxed (This is with a +3 tome included). I am a rogue splash for traps/eva so I wouldnt 'need' insightful reflexes, something I dreaded needing to take again if I went the caster route, however, weapon finess took its place which left me with a 'wasted' feat (same as I'd initially felt my insightful reflexes may be!) I dropped augument summon since I realised my pet(s) had turned into glorified lever pullers and stone runners in groups, and unlike my druid's past rogue life I wasnt soloing nearly as much as I had been, so keeping it for hirelings wasn't worth it.

I fully regret this now. With trying to do both melee and increase my ability for DCs and casting - I feel I'm spread too thin with feats and stats trying to cater to melee and casting/healing.

My suggestion is to go either full caster and realise you'll potentially be limited to your conjured weapons for melee in whatever forms if you want to run up and smack things (they are actually decent weapons as you level up as they steadily improve and gain more properties, I believe right now mine give two different bursts and an aoe effect and a chance at a blind on rolls of 20 but dont recall right off).

If you want to melee, specialize in the str or dex and take the 3 feats for doublestrike in animal form, realise certain spell DCs will be very low and might not be worth using in elites, much less higher level normal instances. You'll still be fully capable of throwing mass regens to support the healer and give the group something to regen stat/level damage, you just might not have enough wisdom/sp to run as a primary group healer.

Either way, I would strongly suggest focusing on one so you're not hurting for trying to cover all stats later. It's very likely that I will take another LR before I do my second TR so I'll have an easier time running EEs post 22.

The main reason I say not to go too low on either stat is it seems DC for spells falls behind very quickly - as did my hits for melee when I changed away from high str.

@ Mubjon
Curious what build you were running and what level/difficulty you were going at when you were leveling the character that it sounds like you got high enough for ele forms (13+?)

From what I experianced, low DCs in EE were a very big issue with too low of a modifier on them.

That said... my TR was running only to go through elites so...

[Manatha]

Double posted

[kaleid0star]

Whatever build you make, make sure you can atleast keep yourself alive by taking healing spells at whatever level. You have no excuse keeping yourself alive if you solo or in a group and split and stuff.

[DrakHar]

IMO, druid is a class where you have the choice of playing what you know and like most.

If you like a melee class, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

If you like the caster classes, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

I'm on my 16th life on Mothergoose, the druid life as if is. I myself enjoy ranged, then caster, and last melee in that order. Since druid doesn't really have much in the works of ranged, caster was my next option. Mothergoose was then designed for a caster roll.

So I say to you again, play what you know and like the most.

GL and see you in the King's Forest.

/cheers

-Bunk

edit: P.S. Just reread the OP, and for someone that likes melee, not sure why you are dreading the barbarian class. If you want some tips, let me know. Honestly, I dislike melee classes the most, but out of all of them, barbarian is what I loved the most. They are wicked fun and have some great ability, if you know how to play to thier strengths. Ok, so I don't know much about barbarians, but I know how to survive for 20 levels and do it with fun. /cheers

I hated barbarian because I like to be self sufficient. 18/2 barb fighter was not self sufficient. I rogue/ranger splashed the second two barb lives to use heal scrolls, which worked great, I just didn't rage ever. So a fighter would have been superior.

I like melee, but I am *always* self-healing and self-sufficient (I almost always rogue splash. Helf cleric does work, but only for healing, and there's more you can do with arcane + divine scrolls).

[hermespan]

IMO, druid is a class where you have the choice of playing what you know and like most.

If you like a melee class, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

If you like the caster classes, and enjoy them the most, then design your druid around that.

QFT

Druid is excellent at almost any role as long as you fully specialize.

For example, don't go taking spell meta feats on a melee druid. The worst thing you can do is try to build a druid to handle more than one role. You'll end up sucking at all of them.

It's like most other things. If you try to be a jack of all trades you just end up with a character that's not really good for anything.

However with the right gear you can make a few things happen.

Like my melee druid has 10% and 30% healing amp (for incoming heals) items, so even though my healing isn't good enough to raid heal, I can heal myself through just about anything up to and including epic hard using HoTs, and heal in emergencies. As well I have a +2 evocation DC item I swap in when I'm in groups with no crowd control, and my earthquakes knock mobs down even in epic hard, with no metas, enhancements or feats that improve spell dcs.

No matter what, wisdom is your primary stat (_all_ druid dcs are wisdom based, including the melee specials). I roll with a 40 wisdom, 36 str, 34 con (after gear and buffs) and it works out well for me. Naturally I'm working on getting these higher but I'm not done yet

If you don't want to use pets and summons, you can probably flip str and wisdom.
I use my wolf pet for bluffing (drastic increase in SA dps especially when soloing) and a little extra dps and with a 40 wisdom + augment he's very survivable, and I get a LOT of sneak attack rolls without wasting rounds on bluffing myself.

for wolf form melee, my feat/racial recommendations are:
helf
rogue dilletante (+3d6 sneak attack when fully enhanced)
3x natural fighting (+18% doublestrike)
sheild mastery and improved sheild mastery (+11% doublestrike total)

IC bludgeon

I also took augment summons. Controversial as it is, pets and summons really add a lot to your mojo. Without augment, don't bother. If you decide against pets/summons, obviously take another melee feat of some type.

Personally I can't think of any melee feat that will give you as much added dps as a augmented pet + summons which are fully buffed. If you can, use that feat instead of augment. Without augment, your pets and summons are pretty much worthless on anything above heroic hard.

Get a +6% doublestrike item. Use a sheild (so your sheild mastery feats boost doublestrike)

THF/TWF feats do nothing for you in animal form.

I've done all this stuff (except I have a feat I can't swap out, **** you Fred!) but on next TR this is my template. Even with a bad feat choice I can't fix, my druid still does very well compared to other melees in most PuGs. He's not fully geared yet (no lit II or epic weapons) and has a gimped build I can't fix short of LRing, so that should tell you something

Obviously my character can't stand up to a 15th life barbarian (w rogue, fighter, etc past lives) with an eSoS, but like I said, I'm not done yet He's competitive on his first life with an incomplete gear set. Can't ask for much more out of a class.

[LOOON375]

Im leveling up my druid as being melee focused. The only meta I use is empower heal simply to boost my situational group healing. It's not top, but it **** sure helps any group. And I have been the solo healer on elite, at level pugs with spells and scrolls. Even a melee specced druid can heal effectively for most groups.

I use AOE damage spells like firewall or icestorm to add to my melee damage, all the while throwing in DOT's. Throw an earthquake and icestorm down and fight in the middle of it. My melee isn't tops by far, but it is more than enough to be useful and competitive.

I also took augment summoning since I have learned through playing my arty how to make positive, good use out of the pet. And the wolf pet doesn't bug out like my arty's iron defender. It is very tough and survivable and it does great DPS considering.

One of the keys for me has been to take the enhancements and spells that boost your "packs" performance.

When I have to go into healer or back up healer mode, I switch to either water ele or fire ele which allows for faster casting times on spells. And you are boosted to 200% fort with other added benefits depending on current situation or quest, and which form you go in. All of the different forms have their own separate bonuses and benefits.

Im sitting at 19 right now and earthquake has been a monster for me even while doing hard and elite at level. And I have added no evocation feats.

Now granted, I may have to make adjustments after I start running epic, and will LR if and when needed to make proper adjustments.

Overall, it's been one of the most powerful classes that I have leveled up, if not the most powerful.

Good luck and have fun.

[hermespan]

Im leveling up my druid as being melee focused. The only meta I use is empower heal simply to boost my situational group healing. It's not top, but it **** sure helps any group. And I have been the solo healer on elite, at level pugs with spells and scrolls. Even a melee specced druid can heal effectively for most groups.

I use AOE damage spells like firewall or icestorm to add to my melee damage, all the while throwing in DOT's. Throw an earthquake and icestorm down and fight in the middle of it. My melee isn't tops by far, but it is more than enough to be useful and competitive.

I also took augment summoning since I have learned through playing my arty how to make positive, good use out of the pet. And the wolf pet doesn't bug out like my arty's iron defender. It is very tough and survivable and it does great DPS considering.

One of the keys for me has been to take the enhancements and spells that boost your "packs" performance.

When I have to go into healer or back up healer mode, I switch to either water ele or fire ele which allows for faster casting times on spells. And you are boosted to 200% fort with other added benefits depending on current situation or quest, and which form you go in. All of the different forms have their own separate bonuses and benefits.

Im sitting at 19 right now and earthquake has been a monster for me even while doing hard and elite at level. And I have added no evocation feats.

Now granted, I may have to make adjustments after I start running epic, and will LR if and when needed to make proper adjustments.

Overall, it's been one of the most powerful classes that I have leveled up, if not the most powerful.

Good luck and have fun.

remember not to blow your free LR too early... You'll be trading empower in when you hit epic levels and fred is currently bugged for trading in metas (at least for my druid )

[JasonJi72]

Don't dread the druid. It is a strong and fun class to level.

If you only take one meta-feat take maximize, unless you are doing a deep splash, then take empower. Creeping cold is an awesome spell. Use it, and use it often.

The frozen tunic works great for druids too. You can use your better weapons without having to worry about having a scepter equiped when you use ice spells, and the freezing effect is also good to have. Reaving roar is also quite strong while leveling. 13d6 aoe with no sp on kills available at level 7 makes you an efficient killer, and it really shines when you are soloing.

With your past lives, you can make most any druid build work for you. I am currently running my archer through a druid life. Mine is a 17druid 2monk 1 wizard half elf AA/stunner with paladin dillitentte (using ranger until I get the bow str feat). I figured it would be a fun character to go up the shiradi destiny with. The bonus for me is that I can use my greensteel bows in animal form to melee with. Towards the end, I will mainly stay in water form though. Icy mantle / elemental toughness / ice storm / earthquake / slaying manyshot / stunning fist / shiradi... good times! I will have to use an insane amount of divine power scrolls while leveling, but oh well.

[Paleus]

I would consider adding cleave and great cleave to the list of feats along with the natural fighting and shield masteries, and do a monk or fighter splash. Maximize, even on a melee, is probably a good idea for the no save dots. You'll then be rotating spamming your natural attacks and cleaves. Important milestones to reach would be druid 7 for reaving roar. Early on wolf and bear might be more or less equivalent when you're one-two shotting mob clusters with more defense to bear, but as you level and have to hit a mob more often to kill it wolf starts to shine for its attack speed, like ridiculously so. More or less even split in str and wis with the rest in con and you''d be set. I am not saying this is an ideal start for an endgame build, but for the purposes of leveling through the life it'd be good enough. You'll fiind you have enough melee dps with good self healing and the option to do ice dot damage on tough mobs.

Also, while I am no expert, I found my poor wolf dying too much when I tried to treat it like the arty dog of aggro magnet. Switching it to have threat reduction (enhancements and spells) kept it alive and let it add respectable dps/tripping etc.

Hell, you're a self-healing melee specced that can throw down firewalls while leveling, whats not to like? (I actually preferred ice-storms, the firewall spell level was packed with other nice goodies)

[hermespan]

Bluff and threat reduction are the way to go. You can just about permabluff stuff if you bluff in tandem with your dog, on difficulty up to and including EH. This will increase your damage output overwhelmingly since you get nearly full time sneak attack damage. Wait for dog to bluff, as soon as your damage dips, you bluff. Go helf, take rogue dilly, enhance it. Stupid levels of DPS and critting... I crit nearly 1/4 of the time and get SA damage nearly 3/4 of the time.

Feats:
Forget about cleave/great cleave etc. You want doublestrike, SA, HP, a useful pet that can increase your DPS substantially, and useful summons, end of story.

shield & improved shield mastery (+11% doublestrike with sheild equipped)
3x nature's warrior (+18% doublestrike)
augment (for soloing, and making sure your pet lands bluff effectively in EH/bosses that aren't immune)
toughness (melee, duh?)

breakdown on SA:
2d6 total wolf form natures warrior I
2d6 total wolf form natures warrior II
3d6 helf (with enhancements which are cheap by the way)
2d6 druid capstone when in wolf form
----------
9d6 SA damage...

EDs
go fury of the wild and get +5 stacks with everything str and con for 15 minutes total/rest (primal scream twist) cap it for the fate points
go dreadnought and twist haste boost cap it for fate points (8 haste boosts/rest) cap it for the fate points, switch to this to maximize hitpoints if you need to situationally
go shiradi and cap it for fate points, switch to this if/when you get suckered into healing.

go shadowdancer and cap it for final epic destiny.
Do this for:
shadow training I: +5 total SA to hit/damage
shadow training III stance: -20% threat
shadow training IV: shadow walk +3% doublestrike 5x rest (currently not quite bug free. Only works with finesseable weapons in animal form, but should work with anything in animal form) Does NOT end when you attack.
shadow training V: DDoor 5x/rest
shadow mastery: evasion! on vorpal remove immunity to SA, 5% vulnerability

Technician: +2 flanking bonus to attack and prereq for...
Lithe: +6 reflex save

Shrouding Strike (read up on it)
Meld into darkness (real handy when you get into trouble)
Grim Precision (-15% to target's fort, -3% target's dodge)

Improved invis: invis which stays on when you attack. displacement for 1.5 minutes when that wears off.

and so on... for a sneak attack/doublestrike focused druid character it's silly.

Total situational doublestrike is:
+29% feats
+6% item
+3% ST IV
+50% celerity
----
88% situational doublestrike, 35% full time doublestrike

couple that with the base 30% attack speed increase of winter wolf
+10% alacrity from woodsman's set armor bonus (or 15% if someone casts haste, they don't stack)
+30% (legendary dreadnought haste boost)
----
70% attack speed increase (or 75% with haste) 5/rest, or 40% full time attack speed boost.

Situationally, in a big fight, your DPS is simply insane with SA/bluff, haste boost, celerity, and the shadowdancer stuff running.

This character is specialized for boss fight dps, and hairy situation survival, which is really what end game melee is all about.

I have no trouble solo farming either with pets/summons all buffed up.

Sustained self buffed 32 point, first life HP is 672 (15 minutes/rest). you can easily stretch this to 30 minutes when soloing by popping it before big fights and leaving yourself without it when you don't need it. You can get that into the 800s by switching into legendary dreadnought. I recommend this for particularly long/tough boss fights (like caught in the web), where the extra haste boosts and HP are really useful.

Get (craft whatever) a +2 evo item for earthquake which works on EH trash and some named bosses.

All told, nearly all of a melee druid's weak points are straightened out with shadowdancer. You end up with reflex saves in the 40s (as long as you have a +6 save item), evasion, mad sa damage and sa attack bonus (for confirming crits mainly), and sa immunity/fortification bypass. There are an awful lot of 300+ big fat crit base damage numbers, before effects and SA is even calculated in.


buuuuut take great cleave if you want. I recommend survivability, dps, and pets/summons that don't die when mobs sneeze on them, which enable you to get a lot more DPS than you can without them.

[Paleus]

snip

All good advice for taking a druid into epic and epic destinies.

If, however, as the OP indicated this is just a TR passing through life then I would discount the capstone, which makes splashing a little less of a loss, it also means if you want evasion that you would need to splash rather than factoring in epic destinies. In that case, if you have the extra melee feats from splashing I'd say go for the cleave/gcleave combo, you can fit it in with all the other melee feats mentioned. Then cycle through those hitting groups of mobs rather than one at a time. Along with cycling through the other innate attacks its meaningful dps. Again though, its admittedly another story if we're are talking about epic levels.

[Mubjon]

@ Mubjon
Curious what build you were running and what level/difficulty you were going at when you were leveling the character that it sounds like you got high enough for ele forms (13+?)

From what I experianced, low DCs in EE were a very big issue with too low of a modifier on them.

That said... my TR was running only to go through elites so...

I ran my Druid so far on elite streak as well, did not notice a single issue with problems while in elemental form casting spells. Granted I have not cap'd this character yet it is at level 17 now so might change when I get to epic levels or even in the vale and devil battlefield.

From what I gathered the OP was talking about doing this as a TR train so going to the next life as soon as he hit 20. I might try to get my character to epic levels by next weekend, if I can take a few hours off the schedule each day from work that might happen and put the tr cleric on hold for a week to see if I can do it.