rabies druid viable dueler?

[macdaddy]

hi this is my first post and im kinda a noob at dueling, but i was wondering since the druids rabies skill can do over 10k dmg does anyone think that it could be a viable dueling char with the right equipment?

[mepersoner]

Hah, rabies can do over 70K damage.

You'd have to be able to hit with it...

[Inuyasha]

Well, the short answer is no.

The long answer is no because you should be using fury which is immediate damage and much faster attacking. Not that you'll be able to hit anything with that against a skilled dueler anyways, who will walk/WW/tele out of the way of your attacks unless you are extremely fast and considerably more skilled than them. Druids really don't make good duelers do to the fact that they have no chasedown skills like WW or charge. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[mepersoner]

Rabies is faster than fury. Use hit and run tactics.

[wahjot]

fireclaws/rabies druids are one of the most effective pvpers in the game

[aznbboi16]

You can't really say rabies werewolves aren't viable duelers. Have you ever dueled one? They're pretty dangerous.
Fury druids are out now because of the advantage that all melee duelers now have over them, which is more defense.
Rabies is probably the most viable WW dueler right now. For Fireclaws you're better off going for a bear since they get a 4fpa attack.

With rabies you also don't have to chase or tank your opponent. You can just run away from them until they die (rabies kills), or come close to death. Then you can fury them or whatever. A rabies druid, therefore, won't need a "chasedown" skill.

[Hells]

How the flippin heck can you achieve 70k rabies dmg???

[Rauth]

If you can hit someone with it, they will probably die, but possibly not before killing you first. Anyone with deathgloves and treks will probably live long enough to kill you(depends who you're dueling).

The hardest part is getting that first hit. If you can get past all the super high damage spammed missiles, then you have a chance at a hit. Any decent teleporter will probably be able to avoid you though, even if you have very high frw.

Fortunately for you, most people are idiots and try to tank rabies, or don't have the hand-eye coordination to click Away from you to dodge.

[raiderjb]

Hells

The most I've ever seen is 60k to be precise and dont forget its over 20 secs.

But around 25k base with all skills synergies and 10 x 5//5 psn facets add trang gloves for 25% and Bramble at 50% and hey presto

60 and a bit k damage

Bite and run rabies is one to be feared but it needs godly eq if you want to fury as well

Whats more they are really good fun. You need enig BTW not to tele to just run away!!!!

Raider

[SnowBlind]

-psn length reduce doesnt work vs rabies because the red glow thing stops it or something, dont know exactly how it works but i know it isnt effected by -psn length reduce :<

1 hit on the avrg pubby caster with good dmg rabies is usually a run to town/use antidote or die in 20 secs situation.

[Hells]

Hells

The most I've ever seen is 60k to be precise and dont forget its over 20 secs.

But around 25k base with all skills synergies and 10 x 5//5 psn facets add trang gloves for 25% and Bramble at 50% and hey presto

60 and a bit k damage

Bite and run rabies is one to be feared but it needs godly eq if you want to fury as well

Whats more they are really good fun. You need enig BTW not to tele to just run away!!!!

Raider


Ah.. But % poison dmg work before synergies and adds dmg after synergy :D

[Rauth]

20 seconds is a suprisingly long time window to kill someone. Once someone has been hit, they will no longer have any fear of you, so they can tele(or run I guess) right next to you and kill.

Some classes won't be able to catch you like windys and hammerdins, so if you hit them, you're probably going to win. Best bet for windy or hammerdin is to just not get hit(fairly easy).

[aznbboi16]

I do 35k Rabies damage at slvl40 with Trang gloves and none of that other fancy stuff. If you can get a hit off on a Pub caster, they usually run to town or die in 5-10 seconds. They usually don't last a full rabies. High life, high resist opponents are a different story. You're gonna want to fury them a bit if you can do so safely.

Also against windy's try infecting their bear if it strays too near. Then watch them teleport and infect themselves. It's fun. A lot of pub windys do that for some reason...

[Rauth]

Oak may be poison immune, but he can still be infected. Keep that in mind. Minions are a great way to kill teleporters. Works great on bone necs that summon golem(If you can stay alive long enough).

[Olio]

This build suffers from proximity problems, in that you have to slowly run up next to someone and hit them in order for them to die, and then you have to slowly run away in order for them not to instantly kill you. This limits the people you can kill to those who are afk, asleep, or not very good.

On the other hand rabies can kill people and it's funny to bite a pet and watch it spread around and pop someone who is unaware of how it works. And it's not a real expensive build to make since you cannot enigma with wolf form on.

Olio

[Wurzak]

Rabies druids are fun to play, especially in pubby. Infecting one character and ending up killing 3-4 is hilarious. With 10 skillers and anni you still have enough room for 9 5%frw charms, add boots with 40%frw to that and you aren't that slow anymore. It's not the ultimate pubby "owning" character, but who cares?

[skilledlord]

rabies are like pwnage. if you can't kill them before rabies take most of your life, you dead.

[~YouThinkYouKnowMe~]

Yeah rabies owns if it gets close enough to hit. You just need some faster r/w and a fast weapon.

But 70k dmg??? Never heard of that much. Never of even 60k... what's that with? Bramble, TO gloves and..?

[Olio]

Yeah rabies owns if it gets close enough to hit. You just need some faster r/w and a fast weapon.

But 70k dmg??? Never heard of that much. Never of even 60k... what's that with? Bramble, TO gloves and..?

According to the calculator, rabies hits 30k at 22 skill points added (42 total). This means that you could hit 60k with bramble, TO, 5 facets, 10 charms, anni, and 11 points from other random gear. Jalah + 3 skill ammy would give you 7, so bk, bk, web, lidless and a phase blade with 5 jewels would get you over 60k damage. You could probably hit 70k if you put 6 jewels in your phase blade and tossed a few more in a shield. It seems unlikely that anyone would actually dress this way though as you want to hit your IAS rabies breakpoints and have the proper resists and absorbs correct. If I were building it I'd go with SS over lidless, reuse a mara for the ammy, etc.

Olio

[Los Sin Nombre]

Just for the heck of it tested on SP. Managed to get 91-92k Rabies damage. Tho he wouldn't win anyone due crappy resists and no dr.

This is what he used:

Plague Bearer (facet)
4x facet Monarch
Bramble (50%)
+3 ss +3 Rabies Pelt with (2x facet)
Trangs Gloves
Arach
+3 SS amu
2x BK
10x ss skillers
anni
and +1 from CtA

All facets were 5/5.

I believe that is max, unless you take skill shrine. With Skill shrine damage you would break 100k mark (100-101k). That's one nasty poison damage.

Do tell if I made some mistakes.

[angl2k]

i've had a nice rabies dueler for a while before ladder 2.

his gear:
6 shael phase
Jalals Shael'ed
Bramble
Stormshield pdiamond
Trang gloves
Tgods
Raven/Raven/Mara
Aldurs Boots
Anni
rest was skillers and/or res/life charms.

on switch:
demon limb for enchant
Deaths web / 4 facet monarch.

tactics were simple: run to your opponent and bite.. then switch to your weapon switch.. you can see their health drop REAL fast :)

btw malah doesnt cure rabies... you'll have to sit and wait in town until it stops.

[Olio]

Just for the heck of it tested on SP. Managed to get 91-92k Rabies damage. Tho he wouldn't win anyone due crappy resists and no dr.

...chop...
Do tell if I made some mistakes.

Is it better with BK/Carrion Wind and the synergy bug?

Olio

[Los Sin Nombre]

Nope. BK + Carrion gives few k's less damage than 2xBK.

[raiderjb]

Guys Guys Guys

Some of you are missing the point here. Rabies does 25k base damage at level 42 ish.

So add trang gloves taking you to 31.25k ish. Now here is the rub. Rabies druids bite and run. Add enig, 40rw boots 10//7rw ss charms and 9 x 5rw//xx scs and you hit 200 faster run walk break point.

1 bite and NO ONE can catch you.

Now as enig gives 45rw and 2 skills you can decide to swap out Enig for a bramble. Now we do 62.5k damage however FRW drops to 155 so the very fastest assas and charge palas may catch you but hit? No.

Hells, The deal with facets is quite simple man. You have 10 5//5 facets on the switch ONLY. So your primary weap and socket slots handles speed DR and res. For rabies only all you need is a 6 shael phase. As for fury well I could write n zillion pages as to the best weap. Leave this out for the time being.

Rabies has the unique quality that once administered to said nasty opponent you can run then switch. The resulting effect is an additional +50% psn damage AND -50% psn resist over the 20 sec duration.

This char is unbeatable in normal first encounter non Map Hack duels.

The only real issue here is whether you actually like biting and running when duelling.

Now as for the guy wearing trekkies and venom ward etc. Does anyone keep this in their duelling char stash? Na dont think so. We bite and run, oh no damage must be all psn res. Well cuz of the carrion bug we resort to fury. Ownage against fully stacked psn resist players.

Hells man dont underestimate the fully eqd rabies druid.

Raider

[Los Sin Nombre]

Only char I see having problems hitting is another druid (wolf/bear). Others can use tele. Assa and Barb could even outrun 155% FRW druid. BoS and IS helps alot. Vigor + Charge catches too.

Rabies/Fury druids are ok duelers but not anything super.

[Rauth]

Anyone with teleport and some range can easily crush a rabies druid on the first encounter. Most of the time you can tell by a persons name what kind of druid they are, and react accordingly. Even if you can't, you have a good change of killing them with any caster before they even touch you.

As for fury owning, that is ridiculous. I can switch out death gloves, a wiz, and treks easily(I keep these in my stash, right along with hotspurs and tgods on almost every dueler) and have no problems killing a fury druid. In fact, you could probly take off all of your gear except some fast cast and enigma, and STILL kill a fury druid with most classes.

On my windy, I don't even have to move to beat a fury druid, so venom ward would be a viable option(although not needed, and a waste of space IMO). Tornado simply does more effective pvp damage than fury. Same with bone skills, just about any sorc skill, and a ton of others.

[Olio]

I just pop on cleansing in the rare event that I get hit by rabies with my pally. It doesn't seem to hurt all that much. Dunno what the damage of the random public duel rabies builds is though.

Olio

[raiderjb]

Rauth M8

Just to claify I'm in no way saying fury will own in its own right. The point being we are discussing rabies here. As such, should an opponent be fully stacked psn resist for whatever reason then, and only then, fury with a 4//7 weap will be very viable.

Casters use range 5 weap, 1 bite, run

I dont want to say its the best PVP build in the game. I personally believe there is no such thing. The name of this thread is and I quote "Rabies druid viable dueller".

I think I can answer that thread question in the afermative

Raider

[Rauth]

Yep. rabies is very viable. Fury is viable, but only against other melee(and maybe one or two non-melee I forget).

[WuffWhacker]

When facing rabies (or poisonmancers), I just swap out my White wand for a Jade Tan Do kris. I've found three of them while playing D2 and initially thought it was one of the crappiest uniques ever.

Once I discovered resistance, +20 max poison resist and +95% poison resist along with a bonus CBF made me change my tune quickly. All non-meleers should keep one in stash. ;)

[Rauth]

Jees why didn't I think of that. I get tired of killing a poison nec with only 1 life left and getting killed by a stray arrow. Never actually been killed by a quill rat(except a badass pack of them in act5 with multiple auras against my no block sorcy :(), but I can see that happening too.

Now I gotta go overpay someone for their godly jade tan do. :)