What's your favorite druid?

[Garbad_the_Weak]

Not best pvm, not best pvp, just which is your favorite (ie most fun to play)?

Post and tell us why, especially if you pick a non traditional druid!

Garbad

[Asheron]

One that can kill.



LOLOLOLOLOL!1!!!!1

ok maybe a Weresorc.

[Tastychiken_europe]

I think Fireclaw druid are best..

the reason is beacuse there fast and strong and look.. like giant teddybears (that gives em style points for me(grr teddybears ;) ))

they pack a big punch too so speed, dmg & style is my character indeed..
btw who dosnt think so?


//cheer's Tastychiken

[jordy666]

fury droods, hunters and maul bears, but i can only pick 1.
so il pick my most succesfull char :D

-jordy :rolleyes:

[Forcefeedback]

Maul bears are fun in PvM and I don't(can't) play PvP so I guess they are best. All the stunning makes it viable even when the monsters otherwise would be way over your head.

Huntermentalist was fun until killing speed(thus progress) slowed, fireclaw/maul bear was good but I haven't found a good weapon for it, windy was fun in the beginning when the monsters just keeled at the slightest touch. Pure fury and fury/rabies wolves had "too much excitement" involved in playing them.

[Garbad_the_Weak]

No love for our unshifted kin?

Garbad

[Tastychiken_europe]

No love for our unshifted kin?

Garbad

Doesnt look so :p

dang on an ironscrew that's a bummer ^^

yay L337 P0W4H!1!!11111one one :)

[excorsist]

I like windy the best but then again im a nub lol

[sam_manzanza]

Fire Druids pwn j00.
By far the most enjoyable character to play and they hold their own in the PvP arena.

[TheGreatDivorce]

1. Windy
2. Fury

Only Druids' I made so there isn't really a whole lot I can say about the other ones.

[Death_Frog]

What, no Shockwave Druid? :scratch:

I voted other, because Shockwave/summoner is the most fun i've had pvp and pvm. Who doesnt like to stun a whole group of monsters, then sit back and let ur pets do the killing ;)

Ya, the Bear looks the best out of all 3 types... RAAARRRR

[electricblue]

poison creeper variants.

just nice to do hellcows with 'something' :)

[Aerath]

Haven't tried the Fire Druid yet - looks to be fun from what I can tell from the one in our group game.

Maul bear is okay...
Fury and/or Rabies wolves are fun. Gotta love em. Bite n dash or just paw em to death.
Windy is boring - just not a fan of casters.

Haven't tried a Hunter or Shaman, but those seem way too passive to me.

My fave so far has to be the Fire Claw bear though.

[Beowulf]

Now you must die you....you.....you.....grrrrr HUNTERMENTALIST!!!

[Tor]

fury
10 chars

[inkanddagger]

Green druids with suggestive names.

[Valvolux]

Shockbear is great fun to play and the killing power of a rabies wolf is nice, bah all druids are fun to play!

[Garbad_the_Weak]

Thanks for the comments, keep em coming!

Its interesting to see the heavy shifter preference. I wouldn't have guessed that. I figured we would have many more windy votes.

Garbad

[skilledlord]

fireclaw bear. fury druid.

[k0d3]

meel huntermentalist all the way

[TeKmInIbI]

Melee Pure Fury is the best ~~;
GM Duels are awesome

[haTe™]

In 1.09 my favorite pvp char was shaman..
thet remains still...
shaman is best :)

[ahcw]

Maul bear is my favorite, followed closely by fire druid. Both were incredibly fun to play, but I just love the look of the bear :).

[corax]

Fire Druids pwn j00.
By far the most enjoyable character to play and they hold their own in the PvP arena.

hold their own? mine pwned. then again it was against mil, so my view is void.

1. Hunter
2. shifted druid
3. casters

[det]

Windy gets my vote..no fan of melee classes.

Fire Druid (I am the one Aerath talked about) is fun in normal and NM, but hard work in Hell, especially untwinked....

[Uzziah]

What no dual elemental druids?

You mentioned windy and fire but not dual the most versitile of the elemental builds.

[Voice]

I voted shaman/summoner ... mainly because I am stuck between which was the most fun to play.

2 favorites to play were:
shockwave bear w/ geddon + pc

and

hunter druid

Basically any build that doesnt kill well in hell is a fun build to me because I like a challenge.

In 09 an duel elemental would definitly be my choice but I havent played on in .10 so I wouldnt know how fun they are.

[prion]

gem mule.
he'll be a bowler after ladder ends

[proudfoot]

Geomancer, of course, but in lieu of that Shaman. Grizzly summon is the best ever (ok, was, 1.09 was way better that 1.10) and Shockbear was tons of fun to play. Backing that up with Volcano was just such a thrill.

[theBlackKnight]

A dead one.


























Im KIDDING!!! Grief fury.

[psuedoenviro]

My favorite char is 2-handed fury wolf. I can't remember how many I made over the years but I'm sure I have played at least twice as many fury wolves as any other class build. I would find a new weapon and have to make a completely new build around it. Buriza, Bonehew, Ethereal Edge, IK maul, Ribcracker, upped Bonesnapes and Steeldrivers, ect have inspired me to build numerous 2-handed fury druids since the patch was released.

Fire druid is the 2nd most enjoyable druid for just playing through untwinked. I max grizzly, fissure, firestorm, and volcano with 1 to oak and mb being endgame point sink and a might merc. It was slow in hell but I enjoyed the fact that I couldn't just breeze through like the most popular builds.

Windys are endgame more powerful but so boring until lvl 30. I like my hunter and summoner but at times I can be bored and feel weak compared to my minions. Huntermentalist though is quite enjoyable and was hoping one of the new runewords would have volcano charges.

Sadly, I have never got a shifter bear past lvl 24 so I have no real late game experience with fc or maul.

[corax]

hahah no love for flaming/rabies wolves.

[logger120]

hahah no love for flaming/rabies wolves.

i loved my flaming rabies wolf up until hell when i found his attacks too weak and slow(i think i wasted too many points). so my vote goes for wind/fire hybrid. never met a monster i (me not my merc) couldn't kill (FI/PI is pretty rare i guess). bears come in close second.

[Redman681]

hahah no love for flaming/rabies wolves.

I also find that they are kinda hard to use in pvp if you go with the wolf rabies bite then switch to bear for fc. In my experience, it's extremely difficult to switch forms in the middle of a duel.

[MrGoth]

I vote for pure summon druid; my fav. character class of any on this game. My 2nd vote would have gone for hunter. 3rd for pure fury wolf.

[Garbad_the_Weak]

AND WINDY TAKES THE LEAD!

Garbad

[Vasteel Original]

Should Huntermentalist go under "Hunter" or "Other"? Once I know, I'll actually place my tally...

Basically, Huntermentalist involves my favorite sort of strategy...

1. Attacking from a distance.
2. Having escort fighters to KEEP those pests at a distance.
3. Artillery (i.e. Fissure and Volcano) to support the escorts and/or handle large crowds quickly.

{wonders if this sort of method could also work with an archer Necromancer}

I tried out a melee type recently (Tesladin) and didn't really like it as much as the Huntermentalist. Melee combat doesn't have the same vitality that missile combat does for me...

[dogs best friend]

Windys by far the best but I love hunters too I've tried to make fury wolves and fireclaws to boring probably because I'm brutal with melee.....

[prion]

it is interesting that nobody voted for flaming rabies, i think i'll have to make one now. But I can guess why no one voted for that, I find that poison by itself is not much fun, it is neither as visually appealing as lightning bolts nor is it as viscerally satisfying as just walking around and smashing up the monsters.

[Garbad_the_Weak]

Windy and pure fury and neck and neck! It will be interesting to see which druid reigns supreme!

I suprised at the bear/summon love. More than I figured. And no love for fire...

Garbad

[prion]

ha, I'm an idiot

I figured out why flaming rabies got no votes, it's too item dependent. well i only wasted about an hour playing before i was able to check the guide

[lucrativelyrics]

ive made armageddon druids , rabies( 09 , lol was curious), fury , fury/rabies, fireclaw bears, summoner, windys

i have to say that if someone doesnt use absorb fireclaw bears are very very powerful in 1.10.

i know some fire fans will get upset but armageddon is a waste ( not just powerwise , overall usefulness ... aoe sucks:( ).

wind druid are the new powerful build for all those bnet sheeps out there .

but i have to say , ive spent numerous hours trading and trading doing all i can to build the perfect fury/rabies druid... after i lvled my druid to 94 in the second week of ladder i took him to duels and i must say it is the most beautiful feeling in the world to be able to beat all those ungrateful classes( were good in 09 , had everything and then was given more yet they still complain about their skills I.E , those damn PALLYS ) and then have them complain about you being a hacker , cheater or whatever. i dont complain about their smite , zeal , massive d , lifetap on exiles .. all that crap - oops im ranting *blush*

in the end i love all my fellow druids but from my personal experience these are my picks

(this is in order base on my personal enjoyment and view on overall(pvm,pvp, all acts) power)
1. fury/rabies
2. windys
3. fireclaw ( sorbers ruin this for me , but then i guess thats what i get for making a 1 dimensional char, would be second if no fire immunes in hell :) )
4.pure fury ( maxed feral :) heh)
5 and that sexy big grunt the maulbear

thanks for your time , GET OUT AND MAKE THOSE DRUIDS PEOPLE !

[rickcarson]

Normally I can't seem to get anywhere with a Druid, but I've got a build which is a bit odd, and kind of fun.

I'm at level 30+ now. I've been totally owned in PvP so I'd say this is PvM only.

Here's what I've done so far:

5 Raven (Dim Vision good)
1 Spirit Wolves (defense bad)
1 Po Creep
1 Life stealing Carrion Vine
1 Oak
4 Heart of Wolverine
Max Dire Wolves
Max Grizzly

(of course, the skills listed as max aren't maxed out yet (I'm too low level) but what I mean is that once they become available they get a point at each level).

At level 30 my grizzly had like 3k hit points. (!!!)

Normal Diablo was a complete pushover, barely got a shot off.

My Merc is Act 1 Rogue with 4 PEmerald bow. My weapon is Edge bow for the 810% Thorns (which is why defense is bad)

I like the Ravens for their Dim Vision. Had on a +3 Raven hat at one stage, so they were doing 10 points of damage a time (nice in normal, but sucky everywhere else)

I'm hoping the Dire Wolf + Edge combo does alright later on. It seems to work okay, but its hard to tell, since the Dire Wolves do too much damage themselves. And by maxing them they get a high elemental resist much earlier than the Grizzly would.

Heart Of Wolverine gives me a nice AR boost, which helps a lot with the bow. After I max Grizzly, I might max HoW. I don't need Oak Sage, the minions have got plenty of life.

Having Thorns means I don't get upset if the stupid vines and spirits wander off into combat. At least they contribute something before they die.

Hmmm... I've just seen that extra levels in Grizzly add a mere 5% damage, whereas HoW adds 7%. Maybe I should have only put one point into Grizzly, and the rest into HoW. Darn.

[Garbad_the_Weak]

1 Po CreepI love it ^^ I want to make a po creeper druid!

Garbad

P.S. Grizzly is much better, it adds to base damage as well.

[lucrativelyrics]

Thanks for the comments, keep em coming!

Its interesting to see the heavy shifter preference. I wouldn't have guessed that. I figured we would have many more windy votes.

Garbad

my guess garbad would be you said whats most fun to play .. if you took this question to public games you would be called noob for even mentioning anything but windy druids .. to quote my comment ( AND NO OFFENCE TO WINDY LOVERS , JUST IN GENERAL ) WINDYs ARE THE new sheep of 1.10 .. everyone hated them b4 1.10 . oh look they powerful now lets all jump on the band wagon .. same with necros - i never remember a necro being good in 09 .. but the blizzard gods fullfilled their wish heh.

anyways i enjoy being the underdog ( no pun intended )

thanks again for the post garbad :)

im happy to see its not 95 % wind and alot have taken to summoners etc

[Garbad_the_Weak]

Well, as we near 100 votes, some stats for you:

Top 3:

Windy 19
Pure Fury 17
Fury/Rabies 13

By "group"

Shifters - 43
casters - 24
Summoners/Variants - 25

Interesting numbers, eh? Who would have thought the old fury wolf is still the hands down favorite. It seems people just can't get enough of doggy style love. And again the number of variant lovers is pretty surprising. It seems pretty much no one likes the fire skills, both fireclaws and casting.

Keep it coming!

Garbad

[Forcefeedback]

The reason why wolves have so many votes is because they are good at melee PvP. They can also be equipped cheaper than a maul bear. The fact that they can also have insane amounts of ar compared to bears tips the scales to the wolves favor.

Btw, rickcarson, some call the build hunter.

[Redman681]

I also think people like the werewolf because that they are pretty versatile in the chars that they can duel. It isn't really that hard to chase down some casters with a full orb of feral rage because when they stop to cast something, you're right on them and can hopefully deal a lot of damage with one hit. Also, I like fury/rabies because they offer a way to deal some serious damage with out doing much (rabies) along with fury. Plus killing popular cookie cutter builds with a class many people seem to feel is weak or forgetten is always fun.

[Aron Figaro]

Hehe. I love the fire skills, mostly casting but I might build some kind of Fireclaws druid at some point. I'm just coming into the Druid for pretty much the first time now, so I decided to go pure Fire and use him to farm Nightmare (I have a skellymancer for Hell, but so many things spawn more easily in nm for levelling builds, and I find it very easy to find truckloads of pgems in NM WSK).

I think my Fire druid build will do one of these two:
10 Firestorm
10 Molten Boulder
20 Fissure
20 Volcano
10 Werewolf
10 Lycanthropy
20 Fury

Everything else in summons...

OR

20 Firestorm
20 Molten Boulder
20 Fissure
20 Volcano
20 Grizzly
Rest in Dire Wolves.

[rickcarson]

Btw, rickcarson, some call the build hunter.

Yeah, I can read the stickies too. :D

Is it a Hunter? I'm not sure.

Hunter:

Uses a bow
Mainly uses Grizzly, with some investment in Dire (if not going with Oak Sage)


But the reason I've been (painfully) levelling up the Act 1 merc is so that I can hand her the bow (will do so when I mule off the 400 po dam bow).

And I'm looking at my skills allocation thinking... hmm... 70ish points in summons...

The Hunter guide(s) were useful because they point out the main weakness of the summons is when they run into Physical Immunes. Now, I've hit a few of those already, and they were annoying, but killable because of misc elemental damage from charms.

The 'solution' I remember is either Volcano or Fissure. Now the main thing going for Fissure is apparently crowd control, which isn't a problem for me (Dires + Thorns) so far. And Volcano is okay, but half its damage is physical, and its very clumsy and random.

Initially I'd looked only at the Fire skills, after all, if I chill or freeze the monsters then they won't be 'Thornsing' as often, which would be bad. However the phys immunes won't be taking damage from Thorns anyway.

So here's my current thoughts on solving the problem:

Fury + weapon with lots of elemental damage (lightsabre etc)
And/Or Hurricane (could be handy if I'm going in hand to hand)
Some other runeword, eg:
- Hand of Justice (Holy Fire)
- Kingslayer (Vengeance, Open Wounds (not sure if it works vs PIs))
- Passion (For Berserk, saves me from having to do Fury)
- Stone (+ lvl 20 Fire Claws for Fire Damage over 1k)
- Famine
- Crescent Moon
- Duress
- Brand + Marrow (for that authentic Hunterist smackdown)
- Death
- Destruction (would also have made a good merc weapon if I was going with an act 2 merc)
- Dragon (Holy Fire, Hydra, Venom)
- Double Dragon of great Justice (for a level 42 Holy Fire aura (and now I really am dreaming)
- Dream (for Holy Shock - can also be doubled)
- Harmony
- Ice (interesting combo with Hurricane, also preserves Hunter theme)
- Lawbringer
- Oath
- Obedience
- Phoenix (see also Stone for Bowling bonus to Firestorm)
- Rift
- Voice of Reason
- Wrath


Realistically hoewver, anything more expensive than a Passion or Crescent Moon is out of my reach.

Also my first priority if I ever did get a Jah + Ber or Ohm + Sur would be to make Engima or Bramble (for even *more* Thorns).

Though certain of those runeword combos are quite appealing. *drools*

Anyway, the point is that I'd probably end up having to not to be a bow using 'Hunter', in order to deal with PIs.

I guess I should figure out how to do some serious rune farming...

[Mage-Scholar]

Before 1.10 came out, it was an Armageddon/Hurricane druid. Nothing more fun than just walking and watching cows behind your feet. Whats irritating is maneuvering around to get that one meteor to hit the last cow. Just click and walk...so fun.

For some reason now...I like using the poison creeper build. I have no idea how to get by Act 5...::sniff::...

[amaz0n.]

A bit late on this post .. But I've build about three different wolves in 3-4 weeks. First Fire Claws, second Fury/Rabies, third Fire Claws/Rabies. Always 1handers.

Fury/Rabies or Flaming Rabies for me .. 10-11 Fire Claws, 34-35 Rabies for Flaming Rabies .. I love 1 hit kills for PvP. I also get a lot of "wtf is that phase blade." (4xShael, 2x40/15)

For Fury/Rabies .. GM melee duels is fun. The thing I don't get is how I take on Zealers with CoA, Valor, Rends, etc. Same damage, yet they have more speed.

I found Fury/Rabies to be most efficient in PvP and PvM so far. That's why out of the three, I'm remaking my Fury/Rabies as my previous one had 270+str. 4k life without Oak. o_O

[Black_Dog]

When it comes to Most Fun druid, well... let's be honest, i had the most fun with my Hunter. Sure my windy made it easy for mf runs, but c'mon... up until i got Tornado my playing time was like torture.

When it came to Baal runs though, my Fury/Rabies wolf always had a nack for hooking up with fun people to run with... he was a pretty decent tank come to think of it.

But yeah, i voted Hunter. SOOOOOO much fun.

EDIT: FYI: The hunter was a pure summoner, no ele skills... and it was still a friggin blast getting him through nightmare (Never tried tackling hell, had to sacrifice most of his gear for another build)

[alainpp66]

I've got 2 words for ya....

Sacrificial Lamb

[RetroStar]

I like Wind Druids.

[Kosmos]

poison creeper variants.

just nice to do hellcows with 'something' :)
its really slow to kill cows with rabies even if u have 60 k rabies.

60k over 20 secs = 3k over 1 sec wich is a very slow way to kill cows. Especially in 8 party. So i still think that its better to let the javas, blizzyz.. do the jobb :p

[RyldArgith]

Persoanlly i think all of those builds are too easy. swamp all the way to hell then you slow down a bit but still make good progress an time. I like a very unused method. The Boulder Thrower!!!! Seriously, Max out molten boulddr and its synergies and it gets pretty frickin effective. Get a good cast rate with some mana reg. and you can make an unstopable like of boulders. granted the cooldown that is set to it is annoying but it is no problem when they are doin a couple hunerd dmg in act two while knocking em away!! good thing!! and also stuning them. Lol. Not many people do this build. ive seen me and one other so far. its awsome. try it if you will. its kinda hard. but then its fun and challenging for a good d2 player. not for someone who relies on cookie cutter sheets.

[Kosmos]

Persoanlly i think all of those builds are too easy. swamp all the way to hell then you slow down a bit but still make good progress an time. I like a very unused method. The Boulder Thrower!!!! Seriously, Max out molten boulddr and its synergies and it gets pretty frickin effective. Get a good cast rate with some mana reg. and you can make an unstopable like of boulders. granted the cooldown that is set to it is annoying but it is no problem when they are doin a couple hunerd dmg in act two while knocking em away!! good thing!! and also stuning them. Lol. Not many people do this build. ive seen me and one other so far. its awsome. try it if you will. its kinda hard. but then its fun and challenging for a good d2 player. not for someone who relies on cookie cutter sheets.
Tnx for idea, thinking of making one now =)

[bohne]

my favourite druid is an off-topic-posting, natures-brownies-ing SOB with hair.




lots of hair.


everywhere


please,
aka