Evoker

[SirValentine]

So the (Greater) Spell Focus augments stack with spell focus items. What is a spell focus item?
Are you referring to spell penetration items?

What about the (Greater) Spell Focus feats? Do they stack with the augments or spell penetration items?

Spell Penetration is caster level check to overcome Spell Resistance. It only applies to certain spells (does NOT apply to most damaging spells; only a few Druid spells need Spell Penetration), and only to certain mobs (those with Spell Resistance). It is totally separate from your spell Difficulty Class ("DC") which determines how hard it is for enemies to "save" against your spell. Spell Penetration does not "stack" with Spell Focus because they are two different things.

Spell Focus, be it from items, augments, or feats, increase your DC. The items, feats, and augments all stack with each other. Currently, you can get up to 3 from feats (Epic Spell Focus), 2 from an augment, and 5 from an item. Those are all only for a single specific school of magic, such as Evocation. Examples of spell focus items would be The Nether Orb or the Sage's Locket, though there are many such items, and it also drops on random loot.

[Michele]

So the (Greater) Spell Focus augments stack with spell focus items. What is a spell focus item?
Are you referring to spell penetration items?

What about the (Greater) Spell Focus feats? Do they stack with the augments or spell penetration items?
I just want to confirm whether or not there are any redundancies.

For end game and EE content, what would you say is the best area to concentrate on (Ice, Fire, Lightning, etc ...)
What weapons do you usually equip at end game?

BTW, even though I'm currently only at level 16, I picked up a +250 spell point augment from yesterday's sale because of your suggestion


Thanks for the feedback.

spell focus items are not spell penetration items: a spell focus item could be "sage's locket", a necklace that you can get as end reward by doing "Friends in Low Places" quest.

spell focus feats stack with spell focus items and spell focus augments.

a druid should increase ice (creeping cold), fire (body of the sun and wall of fire), electricity (call lightning) and untyped (word of balance).
I tipically equip silver ingot arcanum for ice, epic cloak of flames for fire, epic bracers of wind for electricity, flawless blue dragonhide armor for everything else (scoring critical hits is important).

[Rhaphael]

a druid should increase ice (creeping cold), fire (body of the sun and wall of fire), electricity (call lightning) and untyped (word of balance).

Doesn't Word of Balance fall under Light & Alignment i.e. Radiance type?

[Michele]

Doesn't Word of Balance fall under Light & Alignment i.e. Radiance type?

it would be nice because I have 3 sun elf past lives... but... NO.

it's untyped damage so it's affected by impulse and kinetic lore items.

[Rhaphael]

it would be nice because I have 3 sun elf past lives... but... NO.

it's untyped damage so it's affected by impulse and kinetic lore items.

That shows that you can never trust spell descriptions .

[thomhas_of_mabar]

spell focus items are not spell penetration items: a spell focus item could be "sage's locket", a necklace that you can get as end reward by doing "Friends in Low Places" quest.

spell focus feats stack with spell focus items and spell focus augments.

a druid should increase ice (creeping cold), fire (body of the sun and wall of fire), electricity (call lightning) and untyped (word of balance).
I tipically equip silver ingot arcanum for ice, epic cloak of flames for fire, epic bracers of wind for electricity, flawless blue dragonhide armor for everything else (scoring critical hits is important).

Thanks for clearing that up for me (thank-you Sir Valentine as well).

Both Word of Balance and Finger of Death are subject to Spell Resistance. I love WoB but have not used FoD. Are these 2 viable for end game without Spell Pen?
Is it worth taking just the first of the Spell Penetration feat chain?

[Feralthyrtiaq]

Word of Balance is affected by Impulse and Kinetic Lore

You will severely hamstring your DPS w/o Maximise and Empower for SLAs.

Word of Balance hits about 80-90% of mobs in game for 2 ticks. A large majority of these mobs also have SR.

FoD is useful but expensive to cast even without metas versus many other Druid spells that can kill just as quickly.

After 3 Druid Caster lives I cannot undervalue the usefullness of Word of Balance. So much so that it is worth an investment in Spell Pen because I hate seeing Blue.

With Mantle of Icy Soul, Solid Fog Clicky and a situational Vertigo Item you can Debuff mob reflex saves by -14.

That more than offsets the potential loss of a couple DCs investing in Spell Pen, Greater Spell Pen, Epic Spell Pen Feats.

10 Character Feats on a Helf Wiz Dille 2 Monk/18 Druid Specced Just for Casting it is easy to fit...

-Empower, Maximise, Quicken
-Spell Pen, Greater Spell Pen, Epic Spell Pen
-Evocation Focus, Greater Evocation Focus
-Insightful Reflexes
-One of Enlarge/Heighten/Epic Evocation Focus/Empower Heal Spell Based on personal playstyle.

2 Monk Feats: Lightning Reflexes/Deflect Arrows

2 ED Feats: Spell Power Force, Spell Power Cold

36 Point Build: Wis 18+ Level Ups, Int 16, Con 16 rest are at 8
Skills: Max Ranks in: Concentration, Balance, Heal, Spell Craft, UMD, some Jump etc etc.

Season's Herald First 4 Cores
Tier 1
W&S 3
Seasons Greetings Cold 3
Beguile 3
Wax & Wane 1

Tier 2
Produce Flame 3
Spell Pen 3
Spell Power Boost 2
Wax & Wane 2

Tier 3
Wisdom
Creeping Cold 3
Wax & Wane 3

Tier 4
Springs Resurgence 3
Call Lightening 3
Wisdom
Wax and Wane 4
Tier 5
Crown of Summer
Winter's Heart
WoB 3
Time and Tide
Strength of Solstice

Henshin Mystic 1st Core

Helf
Core 2 Human Adaptability Wis
Core 3 SP Boost
Core 4 Human Adaptability Con
Tier 1
Improved Dilletante Wizard
Tier 2
Arcanum 3
Improved Dilletante Wis
Improved Recovery
Tier 3
Wiz Dille +1 Int
Action Surge Wisdom 3
Improved Dilletante Wis=>95% use of level 6 Arcane scrolls

Those are the "Basics" for me give or take a point or 2 here and there goin from memory.

[SirValentine]

Both Word of Balance and Finger of Death are subject to Spell Resistance. I love WoB but have not used FoD. Are these 2 viable for end game without Spell Pen?

Since most mobs don't have sky-high Spell Resistance, or, indeed, in many cases, any Spell Resistance at all, sure, they're viable. Just don't try to use them on Drow, for instance, which DO have sky-high Spell Resistance.

Is it worth taking just the first of the Spell Penetration feat chain?

Doing so gives you the flexibility to Twist in +6 more Spell Pen from Magister & Draconic if needed.

[unbongwah]

Doing so gives you the flexibility to Twist in +6 more Spell Pen from Magister & Draconic if needed.

Piercing Spellcraft is tier 3 in both; are you really gonna spend 21 Fate pts (min. to unlock two tier-3 Twist slots) for +6 Spell Pen? Whereas the DC twists are tier 2s, which can be had for 11 Fate pts.

[SirValentine]

Piercing Spellcraft is tier 3 in both; are you really gonna spend 21 Fate pts (min. to unlock two tier-3 Twist slots) for +6 Spell Pen? Whereas the DC twists are tier 2s, which can be had for 11 Fate pts.

2 Tier-3 Twists are 15 fate points, not 21, BTW. 18 Fate Points gets you, for example, 3-3-1.

You pick your twists to fit the quests you're going to run. You can change them for free between every quest if you want.

I don't NORMALLY use either Piercing twist, but I have in the past and plan to again when I know I'm doing a Drow-heavy quest.

My point was having that flexibility, not saying you should run with both Piercings Twisted in at all times.

(I normally use School Specialist, Precise Casting, and Acute Instincts, if you care.)

[unbongwah]

2 Tier-3 Twists are 15 fate points, not 21, BTW. 18 Fate Points gets you, for example, 3-3-1.

Ah, I see, I misread the ED Twist spreadsheet on the wiki.

That said, I still don't consider Spell Pen to be worth the investment on a caster druid, just to buff two spells (FoD & WoB). But that's why we have Fred...

[Michele]

Feralthyrtiaq, you should try to solo epic elite gianthold tor with this build just to realize that you will burn all your spell points without even finishing the first ambush part... I have 3500+ spell points and I have to pay attention to how I spend my spell points... how many spell points has your druid? I guess less than 2000 (especially since you wasted 2 levels with monk levels).

hamstring dps without metamagic? so, how much damage per second (dps) do you do with your empowered and maximized 15 seconds cooldown word of balance and 8 seconds cooldown call lightning single target SLAs?
I wrote in a previous post the difference of damage between spells with and without metamagic, and doesn't make the difference when playing in epic elite content.

Word of Balance DOESN'T hit 80-90% of mobs in game for 2 ticks: I say 31% of them are hit twice because many of them are lawful evil, neutral evil, pure neutral, etcetera, and those are hit once or are not damaged at all.
Read "http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Monsters_by_alignment" if you want to be more accurate:
Chaotic Evil monsters? (595)
Lawful Evil monsters? (602)
Neutral Evil monsters? (256)
Chaotic Good monsters? (11)
Lawful Good monsters? (7)
Neutral Good monsters? (4)
Chaotic Neutral monsters? (47)
Lawful Neutral monsters? (25)
True Neutral monsters?? (388)

1935 : 602 = 100 : x
x = 31%

Sunbeam deals about the same damage if you have all 20 druid levels and a primal epic destiny (sunbeam and WoB deal about 500 damage without metamagic and without critical when cast at level 25), and against undeads it deals double damage (1000+ damage without critical and without metamagic, but usually WoB hits twice against undead).

Finger of death is absolutely useless in epic elite content because mobs will save 80-90% of times with or without considering spell penetration check, and in epic hard content is useless because mobs usually go down with 1 WoB + 1 call lightning + 1 sunbeam without metamagic.

Also, if you need an epic past life different from a primal one, your spells will deal less damage because you have only 18 druid levels and you are running an epic destiny that doesn't give you additional druid caster levels.

Spell penetration line is absolutely useless for a druid because finger of death is useless (for the reasons I mentioned above) and word of balance can be replaced by other spells (sunbeam, call lightning, creeping cold spells, body of the sun, wall of fire, etcetera).

Druid shine when a lot of mobs are packed together in an earthquake with body of the sun and shiradi that procs a lot with these 2 spells, otherwise epic elite mobs will laugh on your single target damage with huge cooldown SLAs.
Try "Breaking the Ranks" epic elite and tell me how many kills you do with your single target SLAs, and how many kills you would do with my build when using earthquake and body of the sun, in a group with melee and arcane shiradi casters.
say goodbye to mantle of icy soul if you want body of the sun, and just focus on evocation DC: my crowd control dominated in every epic elite stormhorns content when I was in fire elemental form (even against epic elite shadar-kai assassins)... I don't need icy mantle debuff or any other debuffs to crowd control with earthquake (of course you need to heavily invest in evocation DC, and you didn't).

Your feat selection doesn't include past life wizard feat, nor completionist feat, nor great ability wisdom, "maybe" epic spell focus evocation...
Tell me, what's your base evocation DC without debuffs? because many mobs don't wait that you debuff them, or they don't stand still in your "very slow to cast solid fog clicky", your earthquake have to crowd control RIGHT NOW or you and your group are dead.

you didn't mentioned your epic destiny twists choice: I hope at least magister evocation specialist + draconic precise casting evocation + magister evocation augmentation, otherwise I really don't know how useful you are in epic elite stormhorns quests.

There are many reasons for not splashing monk levels in a caster druid: unbalanced when wearing scepters, unbalanced if you wear armors because you want prr, hundreds less spell points, less caster levels for sunbeam/regenerate mass/creeping doom etcetera...

You said: Those are the "Basics" for me.
I say: these are the "Basics" to make a "gimp druid".

Word of Balance is affected by Impulse and Kinetic Lore

You will severely hamstring your DPS w/o Maximise and Empower for SLAs.

Word of Balance hits about 80-90% of mobs in game for 2 ticks. A large majority of these mobs also have SR.

FoD is useful but expensive to cast even without metas versus many other Druid spells that can kill just as quickly.

After 3 Druid Caster lives I cannot undervalue the usefullness of Word of Balance. So much so that it is worth an investment in Spell Pen because I hate seeing Blue.

With Mantle of Icy Soul, Solid Fog Clicky and a situational Vertigo Item you can Debuff mob reflex saves by -14.

That more than offsets the potential loss of a couple DCs investing in Spell Pen, Greater Spell Pen, Epic Spell Pen Feats.

10 Character Feats on a Helf Wiz Dille 2 Monk/18 Druid Specced Just for Casting it is easy to fit...

-Empower, Maximise, Quicken
-Spell Pen, Greater Spell Pen, Epic Spell Pen
-Evocation Focus, Greater Evocation Focus
-Insightful Reflexes
-One of Enlarge/Heighten/Epic Evocation Focus/Empower Heal Spell Based on personal playstyle.

2 Monk Feats: Lightning Reflexes/Deflect Arrows


Those are the "Basics" for me give or take a point or 2 here and there goin from memory.

[Rhaphael]

@Michele

How do you feel about a Druid 18 FvS 2 split instead of pure Druid? Taking Just Reward should solve your SP problems, but do you feel the loss in caster level and lower evocation DC is worth it?

[Feralthyrtiaq]

Feralthyrtiaq, you should try to solo epic elite gianthold tor with this build just to realize that you will burn all your spell points without even finishing the first ambush part... I have 3500+ spell points and I have to pay attention to how I spend my spell points... how many spell points has your druid? I guess less than 2000 (especially since you wasted 2 levels with monk levels).

hamstring dps without metamagic? so, how much damage per second (dps) do you do with your empowered and maximized 15 seconds cooldown word of balance and 8 seconds cooldown call lightning single target SLAs?
I wrote in a previous post the difference of damage between spells with and without metamagic, and doesn't make the difference when playing in epic elite content.

Word of Balance DOESN'T hit 80-90% of mobs in game for 2 ticks: I say 31% of them are hit twice because many of them are lawful evil, neutral evil, pure neutral, etcetera, and those are hit once or are not damaged at all.
Read "http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Monsters_by_alignment" if you want to be more accurate:
Chaotic Evil monsters? (595)
Lawful Evil monsters? (602)
Neutral Evil monsters? (256)
Chaotic Good monsters? (11)
Lawful Good monsters? (7)
Neutral Good monsters? (4)
Chaotic Neutral monsters? (47)
Lawful Neutral monsters? (25)
True Neutral monsters?? (388)

1935 : 602 = 100 : x
x = 31%

Sunbeam deals about the same damage if you have all 20 druid levels and a primal epic destiny (sunbeam and WoB deal about 500 damage without metamagic and without critical when cast at level 25), and against undeads it deals double damage (1000+ damage without critical and without metamagic, but usually WoB hits twice against undead).

Finger of death is absolutely useless in epic elite content because mobs will save 80-90% of times with or without considering spell penetration check, and in epic hard content is useless because mobs usually go down with 1 WoB + 1 call lightning + 1 sunbeam without metamagic.

Also, if you need an epic past life different from a primal one, your spells will deal less damage because you have only 18 druid levels and you are running an epic destiny that doesn't give you additional druid caster levels.

Spell penetration line is absolutely useless for a druid because finger of death is useless (for the reasons I mentioned above) and word of balance can be replaced by other spells (sunbeam, call lightning, creeping cold spells, body of the sun, wall of fire, etcetera).

Druid shine when a lot of mobs are packed together in an earthquake with body of the sun and shiradi that procs a lot with these 2 spells, otherwise epic elite mobs will laugh on your single target damage with huge cooldown SLAs.
Try "Breaking the Ranks" epic elite and tell me how many kills you do with your single target SLAs, and how many kills you would do with my build when using earthquake and body of the sun, in a group with melee and arcane shiradi casters.
say goodbye to mantle of icy soul if you want body of the sun, and just focus on evocation DC: my crowd control dominated in every epic elite stormhorns content when I was in fire elemental form (even against epic elite shadar-kai assassins)... I don't need icy mantle debuff or any other debuffs to crowd control with earthquake (of course you need to heavily invest in evocation DC, and you didn't).

Your feat selection doesn't include past life wizard feat, nor completionist feat, nor great ability wisdom, "maybe" epic spell focus evocation...
Tell me, what's your base evocation DC without debuffs? because many mobs don't wait that you debuff them, or they don't stand still in your "very slow to cast solid fog clicky", your earthquake have to crowd control RIGHT NOW or you and your group are dead.

you didn't mentioned your epic destiny twists choice: I hope at least magister evocation specialist + draconic precise casting evocation + magister evocation augmentation, otherwise I really don't know how useful you are in epic elite stormhorns quests.

There are many reasons for not splashing monk levels in a caster druid: unbalanced when wearing scepters, unbalanced if you wear armors because you want prr, hundreds less spell points, less caster levels for sunbeam/regenerate mass/creeping doom etcetera...

You said: Those are the "Basics" for me.
I say: these are the "Basics" to make a "gimp druid".

YMMV for sure....Thanks for stating your opinion

I did not post an EE solo anything Druid build....but I'm happy you saw it as enough of a challenge to get aggressive....

/golf clap

That build and the others I've done have been viable valuable assets to the many EE Full and Shortman groups...

But see it however you like....to know and see gimp you must be the gimp....

[Michele]

I solved my spell points problem with mental toughness feats, and I also got +3% spell critical chance.
I heal myself and the others with regenerate mass: without druid capstone that spell suffers too much.

I also make heavy use of sunbeam.
I would loose 2 spell penetration, the capstone...
too much, sorry :P

@Michele

How do you feel about a Druid 18 FvS 2 split instead of pure Druid? Taking Just Reward should solve your SP problems, but do you feel the loss in caster level and lower evocation DC is worth it?

[Michele]

completely changed the build in the initial post to go with draconic epic destiny.

I extremized the cold spellpower (400+), reduced the evocation DC (earthquake is still no fail even in stormhorns epic elite quests).
I make large use of creeping cold dots, energy burst and energy vortex (3 pieces of abishai set give +3 levels to energy burst and energy vortex; 3 pieces of abishai set give about 500 more damage "non critical").

replaced past life arcane prodigy with maximize spell because it's useful to give +150 spell power to creeping cold sla against bosses, while it's not a big difference having 145 more spell points (and no +1% spell critical chance like mental toughness feats).

[Panzermeyer]

as far as mass frog, I still have to decide if it's better than +20 spell power fire (my current main tactic against trash is earthquake + body of the sun + firewall without metamagic; earthquake and body of the sun both proc shiradi on each tic).

Out of curiosity, it would seem you are mainly in Fire Ellie form. And using body of the sun and firewall, why choose ice for the Draconic Incarnation then?

[Panzermeyer]

I decided to change my build in order to be more epic elite oriented, by removing maximize and empower spell and by increasing the amount of spell points.

my tactic consists in massing a lot of mobs and casting earthquake + body of the sun + firewall without metamagic.

against bosses creeping cold + greater creeping cold (without metamagic).

I used to apply maximize and empower on call lightning sla and on word of balance sla and on storm of vengeance sla, but I find their cooldown too long for my play style, so I'm now killing faster then before (when I had maximize and empower I used to wait the cooldown of those sla, and this slowed me down).

Just increase your spell power as much as possible and this build will be ok.

How have you changed the build since you originally posted it?

You originally had this listed. So it sounds like you dropped maximize and empower, what did you put in it's place since you already had MT and IMT?

1) maximize spell
1) quicken spell
3) completionist (or empower spell)
6) mental toughness
9) improved mental toughness
12) past life arcane initiate
15) spell focus evocation
18) greater spell focus evocation
21) epic mental toughness
24) epic spell focus evocation
26) epic spell power ice
27) great ability wisdom
28) epic skill focus spellcraft

Also what twists are you using if you are running in Shiradi and no longer using Energy Burst?

[Panzermeyer]

I don't like the cool down time on the SLAs. Have you tried quicken? Does it have any effect on the SLAs?
What's your view on the Spell Penetration/chain feat?

Quicken definitely works on the SLA's however it does not change the time of the cooldowns.

[Panzermeyer]

completely changed the build in the initial post to go with draconic epic destiny.

I extremized the cold spellpower (400+), reduced the evocation DC (earthquake is still no fail even in stormhorns epic elite quests).
I make large use of creeping cold dots, energy burst and energy vortex (3 pieces of abishai set give +3 levels to energy burst and energy vortex; 3 pieces of abishai set give about 500 more damage "non critical").

replaced past life arcane prodigy with maximize spell because it's useful to give +150 spell power to creeping cold sla against bosses, while it's not a big difference having 145 more spell points (and no +1% spell critical chance like mental toughness feats).

I am a bit late to the game reading this thread. Awesome thread though. Particularly since I am new to druid, but loving it.

I see your first post has been updated with your new build specs. Water Ellie form dealing direct damage then? Is this mainly predicated on gear?

Being new, I don't have the greatest caster gear. So wondering if the fire ellie shiradi proc route would be better.

Going that route from your previous posts it sounds like I should not take Maximize and I don't have the completionist feat. What would you recommend in their stead? It sounded like in your fire ellie/shiradi build you have both the wizard and sorc active past life feats. Both of which I can get.