EK + Druid a viable build?

[warioman91]

I'm newish here, but was wondering can you do Tenser's and like Bear or Wolf form at the same time? From what I've read around on forums EK and Bear form don't get a lot of love for a number of reasons, but the two...both being for kinda tanky stuff seem like they might work well together(at being extra tanky lol)?

Any advice is appreciated even if you just shut this idea down lol.

[bartharok]

One problem you will have is a long cooldown on spells. including mauls etc. So self-healing will be somewhat slow.

[warioman91]

Would Quicken metamagic and/or the 2.5>1.5 second cooldown reduc enhancement[Druid] be worth getting to combat that issue?

[bartharok]

Would Quicken metamagic and/or the 2.5>1.5 second cooldown reduc enhancement[Druid] be worth getting to combat that issue?

You will get x2.5 to non-animal spells while in animal form AND an additional x2 to ALL spells with tensers active to all cooldowns for spells. So cooldowns will be long no matter what. But it might help somewhat.

[unbongwah]

Would Quicken metamagic and/or the 2.5>1.5 second cooldown reduc enhancement[Druid] be worth getting to combat that issue?

Perma-Tensers is T5 EK; Natural Adept is T5 NW; and you cannot take T5s from more than one PrE, unfortunately.

I have a BF pal 15 / wiz 5 build which I used to experiment with EK before the U23 overhaul of pallies. I find that EK is a weak tree overall; the main things it has going for it are the defensive buffs: Imp Mage Armor & Shield (+10% AC and +10 PRR, respectively) and Arcane Barrier, which procs a free Radiant Forcefield when you drop below half-health. You can also pick up +3% doublestrike and a little extra DPS from Spellsword. But I wouldn't bother with anything past T3 EK: perma-Tensers isn't worth the AP cost; and EK Tempest has too high of an SP cost and too long of a cooldown to be worthwhile, either.

[If and when I ITR this build, I'll probably switch to pure pally. Arcane Barrier+Displacement have saved my bacon on more than one occasion, but I've given up a sizable chunk of DPS to get them.]

I recently posted a bear tank build based on druid 13 / ftr 4 / barb 3 here; with the caveat that it would have much better DPS as a wolf build (always the case, unfortunately). It would be an easy switch to take wiz 3 instead of barb 3: give up barb enhs for an extra metamagic and some of the EK goodies I mentioned. Supreme Cleave is better than EK Cleave, though, simply because of much shorter CD and HPs are easier to regen than SPs.

[burningwind]

in early level it is totally viable.. in late game the bonus become irrelevant... so no imo