Druid weapons

[Bacab]

I have a question about druid weapons while in wild shape (Bear)

My knowledge about druid is like at least 5 years old; so I am unsure what has changed.

Back in the day, a druid could use a sword and board style or 2 hander as long as they had proficiency.

And they get the crit profile of the equipped weapon.

I am unsure if Druid specifically Bear form gets the 2 hand strike through buff and the Stat buff.

My idea was doing a pure Druid melee Bear. And using Q Staffs (I have a lot of really good q staffs and Shillaleigh would be good).

OR I can take Great Axe proficiency and use a Carnifex until 10 and then feat swap into Great Sword and use a SoS and ESoS until cap.

Do either of these ideas make sense or seem really bad?

Also have a buddy who was gonna start playing the game. He hasn't played since 2006 I think. I was thinking druid would be a solid first choice.

[LightBear]

Used to run a lot like that as a bear, then I switched to one hander and a shield.
Made life so much simpler.

Your DPS sucks ofc.

[FuzzyDuck81]

The Ursa's protection line doesn't require 1hander & shield any more, you can go 2hander so long as you're wearing medium or heavy armour & still get the stat boosts so that's a great damage boost. You'll still need the natural fighting rather than regular weapon style feats though.

Stick option is a great bet, take swords to plowshares & use elemental bloom until mid heroics, between it's fantastic critical profile, paralysing effect & using savage roar you'll be tearing through things with no difficulty. Later on, if you have Breeze that's fantastic but if not go with bonecrusher at 18, though sticking with elemental bloom or theurgic stave is perfectly fine & at 20 the mighty stout oak walking stick is perfectly capable of seeing you through until you get the raid/legendary weapons at 28+ if you don't have sireth or epic bone crusher.

Pro tip; if you're a shifter then maul in the racial tree is on a separate timer to the spellbook version but still counts for building roar charges, making it very easy to get the triple stack for maximum damage in addition to the stun.

[unbongwah]

https://ddowiki.com/page/Wild_Shape#Animal_Forms
https://ddowiki.com/page/Natural_Fighting

The short version is:

• Your base damage stats, crit range, etc. is determined by your equipped mainhand weapon. If it's a 1H weapon, you get 1x STR bonus to damage; if it's 2H, you get 1.5x STR. This carries over to other stats with e.g. Falconry's Killer Instinct.
• Natural Fighting feats increase the Melee Power, Physical Resistance Rating, and Doublestrike for wolves and bears. Additionally, it increases the Strikethrough for bears; and if you're using a 2H weapon, bears get +0.25x STR bonus per NF feat. Whereas wolf DPS is mostly boosted by attack speed bonuses from Winter Wolf form + Swift Hunter. [Perfect NF also gives +20% Competence HPs to wolves to compensate for not getting it elsewhere.]

As such, you'll definitely want to use whatever's the best 2H weapons you have available. Normally staves are mediocre at best - 17-20/x2 with Swords to Plowshares + Improved Critical which is no better than the average greatsword (but with lower base damage) - but some of the named ones have better crit ranges and/or special effects. [E.g., Broken Oar and Chieftain's Spear with +2 crit range.] If you decide to multiclass with monk and/or rogue, note that some of the staff-specific bonuses don't work in animal form (Quick Strike, Acrobatics), while others do (Staff Specialization).

Obviously, pure druids have very limited weapon proficiencies; the easiest ways to get more is either half-elf with fighter dilettante (martial weapons proficiency) or dip a martial class like barbarian. But you can also take a single weapon proficiency feat manually, as I did on my Ursine Cub build.

[Dilbon]

Pure bear has many feats to spare so getting a martial weapon proficiency is no problem. Falchions are cool for bears.

[Bacab]

Thanks for the info fellas! In pen and paper if I remember, Druids could lose their version of being centered, called breaking their oath if they used certain weapons/gear. Sounds like its just metal shields and armor that I need to worry about?

Thinking I will roll with Dragonscale Armors*

Excited to give this a whirl. Going to be doing some racials and originally I was gonna just do only Cleric or Bard, but would like some variety.

[FuzzyDuck81]

Thanks for the info fellas! In pen and paper if I remember, Druids could lose their version of being centered, called breaking their oath if they used certain weapons/gear. Sounds like its just metal shields and armor that I need to worry about?

Thinking I will roll with Dragonscale Armors*

Excited to give this a whirl. Going to be doing some racials and originally I was gonna just do only Cleric or Bard, but would like some variety.

Yep, metal armour of any weight, metal shields (including certain orbs) & runearms will break the oath. There's a couple of other specific items too but they say in their effect descriptions (bloodrage chrism comes to mind). If you're a bear form druid, there's an enhancement in tier 5 that will let you use metal armour & shields without breaking the oath though.

Also, handy thing to note is that if you have the shadow imbue from feydark illusionist, it changes the material of wielded items (swords & shields) to force, meaning they're no longer metal you'll need to cast it, remove then reequip it to make sure that it applies properly though & that'll happen every time you rest or the spell times out, but it works.