Fire Claw attack speed, anything but weapon?

[munroebagger1]

Firstly does anyone know if the "who's in this forum" thing is getting turned back on, it is REALLY annoying not being able to see if anyone else is in here...

Okay the real question:

Can a werebears fire claw attack speed come from anything other than his weapon? I am using a 6 shael phase right now but I really lose out when dealing with fire immunes as I do like 300 damage with maul.

Is there anything else I can use, not on switch but as a regular weapon that will get me to 4fps shael'd, or does it really matter if i am at 4fps when I can't deal with fire immunes, as in every second monster?

I also want to check my stats and gear as I seem to die too much and I am only on NM Baal runs:

My bear is level 72

Maxed fire claws (26 with items)
maxed volcano
19 fissure
5 boulder
7 firestorm
They all get +4 with skills for now

1 Oak (7 with skills)
1 in each of the fire claw pre req's (6 each with items)

My gear is:
Jalal's open socket as I have no fire facet and don't know what else to use

Shaftstop until I can wear Valor

Crescent moon for the leech but I still don't leech for crap. If 5 monsters swarm me and I don't take them down fast I go down instead, leech is essentially nil it seems. I do have rising sun but then no leech at all for mana

Ravenfrost and dwarf star

magefist now, maybe soul drainers later

2 pdiamond moser until next level then storm with pdiamond

Sandstorm treks

6 shael phase blade

Nos coil (more leech and yet I still haven't seen my bubble go up from leeching

2 summon charms to help oak sage and they are all the GC's I have anyway

anni (18/12/8)

resis charms and with the FHR on them, Jalal's and nos I am at 64. maybe too much but I can't ditch the charms they are also resis all.

my damage is around 5000 right now, but maul is only 150, what am I doing wrong to die so much?

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Tor]

your physical damage it too weak for leeching

pumping vit/oak would keep you alive much longer and the phase is the only 4fpa weaon available to a bear

[munroebagger1]

Thanks for getting back to me. So if my phys is low, how do other fc's get around that??? change weapon, etc...?

4fps is so sweet to watch, i love it but could i get by just as well doing more damage with another weapon at a slower rate, and if so what would that weapon be and how fast?

[Strid]

For my FC Bear, I use a double Shael Cruel Giant Thresher of Quickness. With the range 5 and 5 FPA attacks, its the next best thing to range 2 4FPA attacks, in my opinion. With all the +skills, you have a decent level Maul, so you have a useful secondary attack against Fire Immunes. I also recommend putting on Dracul's Grasp gloves in these situations. They really help you leech alot of your life back.

If you can't afford a CGToQ, use one of the other cheap weapons PvM Werebears normally use. Even Buriza works great.

[munroebagger1]

Yeah i was told to equip buriza at level 41 and it was working awesome. The thing is that as much as I play I never got into the intricacies of things such as pre-buffing and perfect ias. I thought I would try it with this guy as I had the phase blade and 6 shaels but as you can see that isn't quite working out.

Can someone tell me what my attack fps will go down to with buriza (shael) on, and if this is still decent speed, It can't be any worse than not leeching and taking forever against fire immunes I think.

Also, if my gear is kind of similar to what everyone wears for fire claws then how does everyone else deal with not leeching. I have tried 5% life and 5% mana, 13% mana and 11% life through different gear switches and still not a single bulb jump to show for it in act 1 hell or Ball nm runs. How the heck do ya'll do it?

[Burnt_toasty]

Yeah i was told to equip buriza at level 41 and it was working awesome. The thing is that as much as I play I never got into the intricacies of things such as pre-buffing and perfect ias. I thought I would try it with this guy as I had the phase blade and 6 shaels but as you can see that isn't quite working out.

Can someone tell me what my attack fps will go down to with buriza (shael) on, and if this is still decent speed, It can't be any worse than not leeching and taking forever against fire immunes I think.

Also, if my gear is kind of similar to what everyone wears for fire claws then how does everyone else deal with not leeching. I have tried 5% life and 5% mana, 13% mana and 11% life through different gear switches and still not a single bulb jump to show for it in act 1 hell or Ball nm runs. How the heck do ya'll do it?

I am not going to write a text-book response since this topic has been covered very often, check the guides.

Your missing some basic game concepts:
1) Leech - Leech works off physical dmg that you deal. Therefore a fireclaws bear should not be leeching becuase your physical dmg is going to be piddly.

2) Other ways to leech - Not leech but same result. Use Dracul's or Life Tap wands. These effects allow you to heal the damage you deal. Therefore when Dracul's effect goes off, it takes into account not only the physical dmg.

3) There is a calculator here on Druid Forum, book-marked. Learn how to use it because your gonna end up asking millions of questions which can be answered if you took 5 minutes to plug in numbers on the calculators.

4) The reason why your not working out is because you proably didnt take the time to read and research the guides. Basically speaking Fireclaws gets uber powerful when its fully synergized. Depending on the skill selections you have chose, that makes a huge impact. being low-level that would obviously mean a weaker character cause you have not synergized fully yet. That is why early on buriza is a great choice because it adds alot of dmg for you.

[munroebagger1]

Toasty thanks for the info. There is a single (1) guide that is part of the guides thread that deals with fire claws and I read it. I do quite well at comprehending things I read, so I will assume that as it was written mostly for PvP it just passed the authors notice that these elements were missing. Maybe now that the search option is back I can find all the old threads, many containing guides of some sort i'm sure, that will cover my questions but I was unable to find them since the day I started my druid as the search function was not there.

[Burnt_toasty]

Toasty thanks for the info. There is a single (1) guide that is part of the guides thread that deals with fire claws and I read it. I do quite well at comprehending things I read, so I will assume that as it was written mostly for PvP it just passed the authors notice that these elements were missing. Maybe now that the search option is back I can find all the old threads, many containing guides of some sort i'm sure, that will cover my questions but I was unable to find them since the day I started my druid as the search function was not there.

1) Weapon Speeds - There is a thing called OIAS and WIAS. Weapon Speed on Weapon and WEapon Speed from and OUTSIDE source.

OIAS has caps and diminishing returns. On certain weapons you need certain speeds to reach the next level breakpoint, swing faster that is.

WIAS has no caps but it must all come from the weapon. Same thing applies where certain speeds are required to hit next breakpoint.

In a nutshell 110% IAS to hit frame 4 on a phase blade should come from weapon because if it is OIAS hit 4 fpa even if it is 110% OIAS also. You might then ask the logicl question of what it hits and I would answer use the calcualtor on this forum. But FIRECLAWS stress attack speed. Therefore you want frame 4 or 5 for a pure Clawer.

2) Fireclaws
The act of creating a fireclaws is easy. but what is your goal? you still havent answered. Argh.. The only reason I ask is because A pure fireclawer will get his bear up to 13k dmg easily. Hybrid settle for less at the gain of versatility.

For example: you can build Fireclaws with Maul, or with Rabies, or With Shockwave, Or with Summons. Each version overall has strengths and weaknessess. In a Pure Fireclaws your weakness will be Fire-immunes.

3) Roles of Fireclaws.
In my experiments I find Fireclaws to absolutly devestating in certain sceanrios but a total wimp in others. Makes soloing near impossible or at the very least very difficult. Theerefore if you amde this guy, your only route is to paly with friends or go pubby alot of times. Hybrids again fare better but your talking a sacrifce in DMG.

4) Ways to Counter the Weaknessess
If you PvM your best bet as a Pure you have:

Gore riders - for the Crushing Blow, you hit so fast this will activate alot.

A merc - You know already, Holy Freeze is PVM best

Shockwave - Stun, maxed is crazy but still effective with
plus skills if not maxed

Grizzly meat shield - Can Soak up dmg enough for you to close the distance and kill them

Finally Dracul - PvM must item. Its that touch to make you near invincible. Allows you to kill everything without dmg. Thus when facing a Fire immune, it gives yout he chance to solo the monster.

Weapon Switch to Lightsabre - its one handed and great elemtal dmg. The speed of it makes me pick it over baranar's. With Dracul's this keeps you in teh fight agaisnt fire immunes. May take a while but you'll get him