LF advice- caster druid who dabbles in animal forms

[psteen1]

Does this build make sense for a druid who will primarly be caster but also supplement with some animal form fighting when SP gets low? Also, what improved crit feat do you take for animal forms?

Male, Human, Druid 20, AL N
34 Point Build (1 PL: Barbarian)

STR 14/24 (+2 Tome, +6 Item, +2 Ship)

DEX 8/12 (+2 Tome, +6 Item, +2 Ship)

CON 15/26 (+3 Tome, +6 Item, +2 Ship)

INT 12/16(+2 Tome, +2 Ship)

WIS 18/38 (+3 Tome, +1 Human, +3 Druid,+5 Levels, +6 Item, +2 Ship)

CHA 8/12 (+2 Tome, +2 Ship)

Feats:
1 Toughness (H), Augment Summons

3 Extend Spell (Perhaps Empower Heal instead?)

6 SF: Evocation

9 Power Attack

12 Improved Critical (Animal form weapon type?) (if not needed then perhaps Maximize Spell)

15 GSF Evocation

18 Spell Penetration

[Chobo]

I think you might be spreading your lines too thin. You can really only do one thing effectively and you must spec almost completely for it.

Is your build for leveling? Or is it for endgame epic elite?
You might want to consider taking Extend Spell (for body of sun), take all the spellfocus: evoc, and pumping all your enhancements into Fire and Fire Critical in order to get the strongest Body of the Sun? I've found I don't really run out of mana as an aoe level grinding build.

The other option is to play fulltime in Wolf form and take advantage of Essence of the Shrike 2.
"When you melee critical, gain +20 temporary spell points"
Then take Improved Critical: Bludgeoning, then pump all your enhancements into Cold Spell Power and Cold Spell Crit, and use the 20 free mana to do maximized, empowered greater creeping colds each time it procs.
If you're doing that, be sure to take 'Natural Adept' capstone. http://ddowiki.com/page/Natural_Fighting

Spell Penetration is not useful for a druid, because it only affects word of balance and finger of death, for which you would have picked Wizard if you wanted to finger people.

Augment summoning is a strong choice for leveling. At epic levels its usefulness fades.

I wouldn't take power attack, a lot of your damage comes from sneak attacks. Landing hits is more important.

In the end there is no real reason a caster druid would use an unspecc'd wolf form because swinging your mace almost does the same damage (if not more damage).

[smeggy1384]

Currently leveling my druid on the 3rd life as a wolf form caster with a focus on cold and lighting. For enhances build up to natures warrior and reaving roar, 13d6 sonic damage when you get a kill. I went with toughness, augment summon, Empower Heal, Mental Toughness, Maximize ,Improved mental toughness, spell focus Evoc in that order. Can't recall what comes after those.

With the wolf form abilities using various combinations of wisdom and druid levels in the DC, and spell focus evoc covering most of your offensive/crowd control stuff landing them shouldn't be a problem as you level, asides from things with evasion. Those fellows you just drag the others to and trigger a reaving roar or two on top of them, always seems to hit.

Have to agree about not needing spell pen, i found i landed finger of death with my druid less than i could land a lvl 4 lightning bolt on a mobs head, and probably half the time it did land it only did damage, where the lightning bolt or greater creeping cold would have done more for less SP.

Early on extend won't be worth it, shrines are so frequent and quests so short its hard not to pass up a few without needing them. And of course as you get higher level and shrines become less frequent your buff durations go up. It might be handy with body of the sun, never tried that route. I had planned to do a fire focused caster this life but my dislike for firewall once again drew me to the cold/lightning lines. I did play a bit as a fire caster at the end of my second druid life.. i found the frost spells to be more fun. Gather mobs up and use ice flowers every 4 seconds or so for piercing and cold damage with reaving roar triggering on each kill.

[hermespan]

I think you might be spreading your lines too thin. You can really only do one thing effectively and you must spec almost completely for it.

Yep, since pets are useless in EE end game, you can do something like take maximize on your melee druid, instead of augment. You have basically one feat to play with as a 20/5 S&B wolf melee druid. Your feat selection is almost predestined. Toughness, power attack, IC:B, shield masteries, natural fighting x 3 and that leaves you with 1 feat.

Caster druid is same deal, different feats.

Very little wiggle room if you are specialized enough to be competent at something.