How viable is a rogue wolf?

[Mc-Murphy]

I've been prowling the forums for the last couple days, as well as other places, trying to wrap my mind around what the decent wolf druid builds are. More or less new to the game; haven't played since before druids were in, and I didn't play THAT much before.

Currently I'm running a druid/monk/fighter (9/9/2) with TWF, only at level 7, it's not bad. But I'd really like to be able to handle traps and whatnot for myself next go around, so I was wondering how well a rogue/druid (wolf form) plays "end-game"? Do you stack SA, do you just splash rogue?

I've gathered that a pure or mostly pure druid wolf build is "meh", because there's really little reason not to take other classes to up your melee damage/potential, so would a build similar to the monk be good, but with rogue instead? You lose out on feats though...

In a nutshell: are there any solid, viable rogue wolf builds? Heavy or splash.

Maybe some kind of druid/ranger with a couple rogue levels? 12/6/2 Dr/Ra/Ro?

[Tilomere]

Currently I'm running a druid/monk/fighter (9/9/2) with TWF, only at level 7, it's not bad. But I'd really like to be able to handle traps and whatnot for myself next go around, so I was wondering how well a rogue/druid (wolf form) plays "end-game"? Do you stack SA, do you just splash rogue?

Both splash and main rogue work.

The only consistent way to land sneak damage against everything in the game is Tier 6 shadowdancer, which requires attacking with a weapon, and not unarmed as a monk or druid. A 3 Druid 4Fighter 13 Rogue would generally tear everything up that is not immune to sneak damage, but only be good against sneak immune mobs with a MF weapon. This also requires enough twists for self healing (consecrate/sacred ground) and Balanced Attacks helpless effects (3-3-2 twists). Probably also want to be an elf with extend feat and displacement dragon mark enhancement.

With lower twists, you need to rely on Druid healing or divine crusader, which means less rogue levels or melee power sneak dies.

[Blackheartox]

Both splash and main rogue work.

The only consistent way to land sneak damage against everything in the game is Tier 6 shadowdancer, which requires attacking with a weapon, and not unarmed as a monk or druid. A 3 Druid 4Fighter 13 Rogue would generally tear everything up that is not immune to sneak damage, but only be good against sneak immune mobs with a MF weapon. This also requires enough twists for self healing (consecrate/sacred ground) and Balanced Attacks helpless effects (3-3-2 twists). Probably also want to be an elf with extend feat and displacement dragon mark enhancement.

With lower twists, you need to rely on Druid healing or divine crusader, which means less rogue levels or melee power sneak dies.

For non sneak immune content /undead a simple dragon masque with ring of anvi, or any source of decpetion item coupled with fatal harrier wolf att speed will do the job.

For new players easiest to get is en backstabbers since they appear in end reward for ghold chain.
The other 2 i named are rather exclusive.

Going shadowdancer is quite dumb since it locks you out from scaling to sneak you get from rogue splashing that is provided from dreadnought or crusader.
Personally some kind odd build, ranger druid rogue works fine since you can use exposing strike as well to make enemies vulnerable to sneak.
Split would depend on what you want to focus on.
More druid gives access to wolf form and natural fight line, more rogue gives fortification bypass, minimum of 6 ranger for exposing strike.
So work your way from there.
Personally from the top of my mind some kind of human leg dreadnought 10 druid 6 ranger 4 rogue might be quite ok.
Sneak from rogue, sneak from wolf, sneak from nature warrior, sneak from assasin tree.
There are many other options like 9 druid 9 rogue 2 monk, 8 druid 8 rogue 4 fighter.
Generally it depends what you want to do.
Stanced wolf for survival? (4 fighter)
Evasion wolf with dodge/conceal? (6 monk at elast)
Imp evasion wolf with dodge and sneak?(10 rogue at least or 9 monk)

Basically wolf doesnt depend on sneak damage as it does on helpless and thus the focus on balanced attack and sense weakness +dreadnought combo for most wolf builds.
Most common issue people have when playing a wolf build is that they want to trade survival for dps, and as we know a dead wolf is 0 dps.
I would suggest a harmorerd wolf to all wolf players.

Hope those little pointers help out to find a build you might consider fun

Also opener, you are quite low level, do you want traping for xp?
I strongly suggest to level your split to 20 and test it out in epics, its a quite nice build and split that works very good in epic content.
things you can consider is to drop couple monk levels lose imp evasion but gain prr/mrr from fighter basic stance.

[elcagador]

A druid/rogue/fighter seems cool, can combine druid animal form, self heal and some spells with fighter stalwart stance, haste boost, extra action boost and feats and be a tank with rogue abilities with evasion in light armor or medium armor with greater stalwart stance.

For example a Druid 13/rogue 3/fighter 4, with some few int invest, gives you easily acces to trap skills, umd, greater stalwart stance in medium armor or evasion with light armor and stalwart stance. I prefer precision over power attack because druid low BaB but could use both depending the situation.

Edit: Forgot about the possibility of shields for extra prr, doublestrike and meele power with shield feats and evasion with greater stalwart stance

[Lonnbeimnech]

Druid gets 4 skill points + int mod, so its easy to get trap skills.

The sneak dice do stack.

As far as going deep into druid being pointless, I dunno. I suppose on a wis dumped pure melee there isn't much point in those higher level offensive spells since you wont have the DC for them. But I think it's still nice to have the heal spell, and snow slide.


Edit: I think your idea for 12 druid 6 ranger 2 rogue would work out well. Dance of death does work in wolf form.

[Mc-Murphy]

Thanks for the tips guys.
Currently I am/was set to go 12 druid/6 ranger/2 rogue (since it took a while to get responses, I just went for it and I couldn't tolerate not being able to trap any longer).
Sitting at level 10 with 6 druid and two of the others each. Been working well so far, considering I usually solo hard/elite on every run now with a cleric hireling.
I think when I inevitably rez him I might try fighter over ranger for the little bit of added defense.

I mostly wanted trapping because I pretty much solo everything, and I got sick and tired of getting one-shot on epic traps. I have some high search + disable device items so I rarely have trouble detecting them now, makes life a lot easier.


Is going the shield route superior to TWF? Less doublestrike traded for superior defense, I gather?

[unbongwah]

Is going the shield route superior to TWF? Less doublestrike traded for superior defense, I gather?

Here's where wolf druids get weird because of the not-WAI mechanics:

• Bears & wolves will always benefit from TWF feats, regardless of what is equipped in your hands, because they count as unarmed attacks.
• Dance of Death apparently works while in bear / wolf form.
• If you take the SWF feats, you will gain the +atk speed (but not the +150% dmg bonus) if you meet the SWF requirements: i.e., offhand empty or holding a (non-metal) orb. [Runearms break druidic oath, so they're a no-go; and Swashbuckling doesn't work in animal forms.]
• If you take the Shield Mastery feats, you will gain doublestrike bonuses with a shield or orb in your offhand.
• If you play a centered monk / druid wolf, you can use monk stances and benefit for monk abilities like Stunning Fist; I believe Deft Strikes will also work, but not certain.
• Natural Fighting (req's druid lvl 9) is still +6% doublestrike per feat.
• Oh, and if you have a wooden weapon equipped, the +[W] modifier bonus from Shillelagh will carry over; but other +[W] bonuses on weapons do not.

So as I outlined in this post, you have two approaches to maxing out your wolf DPS: SWF+orb+Shield Mastery for max +15% doublestrike with LSM Twist; or SWF Drunken Wolf using Earth or Wind stance. In either case you also want the TWF chain; note that SWF and TWF are anti-requisites, but you can bypass this (for now) with a rgr splash as long as you take SWF before rgr 2. [In your case, since you're already druid 6 / rgr 2 / rog 2, you would have to feat-swap something you took prior to rgr 2 to SWF if you wanted this approach.]

[Mc-Murphy]

Very confusing...
So I should always get TWF with Wolf, and I should ALSO be picking up SWF?
Since I'm not a Monk anymore right now, I'd want to swap something out for SWF, AND pick up the Shield Mastery feats, and then I should be using one weapon, and an orb? I don't need to, or shouldn't, use two weapons while shifted?

[Munkenmo]

Very confusing...
So I should always get TWF with Wolf, and I should ALSO be picking up SWF?
Since I'm not a Monk anymore right now, I'd want to swap something out for SWF, AND pick up the Shield Mastery feats, and then I should be using one weapon, and an orb? I don't need to, or shouldn't, use two weapons while shifted?

If you've already got TWF you can't get SWF, so pick up TWF and natural fighting.

If you haven't taken 2 ranger levels, get SWF first, then get TWF free.

[Mc-Murphy]

I weaved single weapon fighting in. So I have that no issue. But man that's a lot of feats. Do you just ignore natural fighting when you get Shield Mastery + Improved, and SWF and TWF feats?

And also: in the Ranger Tempest tree, to get all the way up to the AoE... none of the TWF bonuses or benefits appear to be working in form. So is it just a bunch of dumping into uselessness to reach that AoE? Or does SOME of those things work?

[Munkenmo]

I weaved single weapon fighting in. So I have that no issue. But man that's a lot of feats. Do you just ignore natural fighting when you get Shield Mastery + Improved, and SWF and TWF feats?

If I'm going for shield masteries I'd be looking into a heavy armor build incorporating fighter levels, I'd likely give up ranger and the 2wf feats too, since without swashbuckler I'm restricted to orbs.

[Mc-Murphy]

So for a max-melee-DPS wolf build, I figure you've got two options:
Drunken Wolf (druid / monk / rgr): SWF x3, TWF x3, IC:Blunt, Power Atk or Precision, Master or GM of Forms (Earth or Wind stance)
SWF+orb (druid / ftr / rgr): SWF x3, TWF x3, Shield Mastery & ISM, IC:Blunt, Power Atk or Precision - this build exploits doublestrike bonuses from Shield Mastery applying with orb equipped, +15% w/LSM maxed out. [May not be WAI, so caveat emptor etc.] Apart from extra feats, the ftr lvls also let you take defensive stance: 6 APs gets you +25 PRR, 13 APs also gets you +3 saves & +20% HPs (or +6 STR) if you use med/hvy armor.

Well with shield mastery + SWF + TWF, I was looking at this, which was mentioned above. Which includes all of those for higher DPS. The difference is I was going a couple rogue over fighter for trapfinding, so I'm down a few feats, obviously.

[unbongwah]

But man that's a lot of feats. Do you just ignore natural fighting when you get Shield Mastery + Improved, and SWF and TWF feats?

Well, this is part of why most wolf builds go rgr / ftr or rgr / monk; to get the extra feats you need to squeeze everything in. But you wanted a rog splash for trap skills, so you're just gonna have to make some compromises. Ironically, Natural Fighting, the "official" DPS feats for shapeshifters, probably provide the least amount of DPS overall; so they're probably the first ones I would skip.

[Mc-Murphy]

That's what I figured.
What I have now is Shield Mastery, SWF, ISWF, and the first TWF (from 2 Ranger levels; I'll get Improved for free and have to pick up Greater myself). So at level 10 as-is, I need one more SWF feat (unless I'm supposed to take the Perfect as well?), another ISM, and GTWF... squeeze in NF if I can somewhere, but otherwise not worry about that so much.

It's a lot and kind of confusing at first but I think I got it, thanks.

Couple more things though: are there any low-level orbs...? Lowest level I could find listed on the Wiki and A/H is like level 12. Which isn't too far off for me at least.
And on the Ranger Tempest tree: do you know if ANY of the passive enhancements are useful there? Do any of them work with wolf form, or should I just be taking what DOES work (such as the reduction percentage chance in item damage, +to skills, the one that improves you in light armor, etc)?

[unbongwah]

Couple more things though: are there any low-level orbs...? Lowest level I could find listed on the Wiki and A/H is like level 12.

AFAIK, HN Madstone Skull is the lowest-lvl orb in the game, so you can delay the Shield Mastery feats until you can equip it.

[Mc-Murphy]

Good to know. I won't bother taking improved shield mastery 'til then.

Any idea about the Tempest enhancements?

[Munkenmo]

Good to know. I won't bother taking improved shield mastery 'til then.

Any idea about the Tempest enhancements?

Here's what I went with on my build.

[Mc-Murphy]

Here's what I went with on my build.

The Whriling Blades Enhancement didn't seem to apply while I was shifted. Are you sure it works? Maybe I wasn't looking right.

[Munkenmo]

The Whriling Blades Enhancement didn't seem to apply while I was shifted. Are you sure it works? Maybe I wasn't looking right.

It does when you have two weapons equipped. I often swap between orb / a healing amp off hand weapon, since I want t5 in the tree anyway there aren't much better options in tier 1/2. In tier 3/4 I guess you could pick up strength instead.

I wanted to pick up improved mobility which would allow me to reach 28dodge in my light armor, but I couldn't fit the feat in.

[Mc-Murphy]

So if you do the one weapon + orb thing, it won't apply?