PVM Fury Skills (beyond base)

[curby]

I'm building a PVM Fury wolf. The plan is to, within reasonable limits (in terms of cost of equipment and maintaining survivability), maximize physical damage and rely on CtC Curses for PIs. So far the plan is:

20 Lycanthropy
20 Wolf
20 Fury
20 Oak Sage
8 total points (1 each in prereqs, summon grizzly, first two vines)

Planned equipment:

Ebotd Great Poleaxe (5 frame, 5 range, reasonably light, tight damage range)
Reaper's Toll Switch (Physical Immunes)
Jalals (Ber or Um depending on endgame needs)
Fortitude
Crafted LL/CB/str/life Gloves
Gore Riders
String of Ears (no dungos yet)
Amulet undecided, perhaps metalgrid or Atmas
Ravenfrost
Ring undecided, hopefully prismatic

I'm likely going with a Might/Pride or Freeze/Pride merc (suggestions/reasoning welcome).

My first questions are sanity checks: it seems most Furies go with Oak instead of HoW; is this still good given my planned equipment? I'm somewhat concerned about my resists, as quests + equipment above would still put me at slightly negative resists, so perhaps the added health would help provide a buffer.

Secondly, I chose to max Wolf mainly to boost my AR, allowing me more flexible equipment choices (Jalals instead of Cerebus, Atma/resist ring instead of Angelics, Gores/String instead of Hsaru's).

With the basic build done at level 77, I have a few more points to work with as I go to my expected final level of 90. My last question is where should these points go? I'm considering Dire Wolves for more tanks and corpse consumption, Grizzly for a bigger tank, or Poison Vine for general crowd control/softening.

If you think that sacrificing Wolf skills for a synergized Rabies is advantageous in PvM, please let me know. It was argued that even with 10k Rabies, high Psn resists and a long duration mean that the DPS added by Rabies is low, esp. as I will not have a Dweb/etc. switch. Therefore, while it may be useful to soften up large groups, it will take a much longer time to kill PIs than a curse with Fury. Additionally, the lost AR from lower Wolf may mean I have to lock in certain equipment slots to adding AR, which might in turn affect my CB/DS chances, resists, etc.

Thanks for the replies to my previous question about PIs and Iron Maiden. Since I'm playing softcore anyway, and after acquiring my eth GPA, I'll disregard the Grief/Hunger route.

[Verashiden]

I'd personally go CoH for PvM.

Also, Oak is better for Wolf because the AR bonus from HoW is additive to WW's AR. It won't be a big increase. Besides, if you max WW, the last thing on your mind should be AR.

Depends on what you want. For something to take the heat off, max Dire Wolves then pour points intoo Bear. For something that might deal damage, do it in reverse. I'd recommend one point into PC

Rabies sucks in PvM without stellar gear. Even then it's really ineffective.

[curby]

I'd personally go CoH for PvM.

I like the built-in BER and resists, for sure. It suffers a little in the defense rating department, but still adds ED agains demons and undead, diminishing one of Fort's biggest selling points. I'll have to give it another look. =)

Also, Oak is better for Wolf because the AR bonus from HoW is additive to WW's AR. It won't be a big increase. Besides, if you max WW, the last thing on your mind should be AR.

How much AR is considered decent for a Fury druid? I noted with some dismay that even with a SL25 Wolf skill, without any large AR boosters like Angelics or Metalgrid my AR is only around 5k. My CL90 Bowazon only has around 80-90% chance to hit hell Baal with 10k AR, so I'm a little concerned. I'm currently using Tomb Reaver while I look for a Zod rune, so I'm missing the -25%def mod that the ebotd will eventually have. Hopefully that will help.

By the way, does the LCS take the -25% mod into consideration when displaying the chance to hit?

Depends on what you want. For something to take the heat off, max Dire Wolves then pour points intoo Bear. For something that might deal damage, do it in reverse. I'd recommend one point into PC

I think it will be a sad day when a shifter has to rely on an unsynergized summon for damage. =) In that light I guess pumping Dire Wolves is the best solution.

Thanks for the reply. =)

[Kirah]

I did a similar build vita/fury type of thing, but instead maxxed lycath, fury, oak, feral (10), ww (10) and tried to max griz (I also did the one point wonders, vines, ravens, & prereqs). It worked well in solo PvM, but was more effective in a party. I'd second the COH route since resists are primo. I got max DR% with stormshield and String of Ears and had a decent dex for close to max block. It was amazing how much damage you could soak up while using the shield. Put on a defensive helm like a delerium on yourself and the merc and it really got crazy. Then when your party members got in trouble you could summon a two ton grizzly to protect them wherever they were. It was pretty fun!

good luck and good hunting!
Kirah

[curby]

Thanks for the reply, i'll likely do CoH then... it seems like a more well rounded armor than the Def+Dmg behemoth that Fort is.

I probably won't be using a Stormshield, though I could certainly have one in the stash. I'm already planning on using either a Tomb Reaver or a ebotd GPA.

Anyone have any guidelines on Attack Rating to shoot for to be effective in Hell?

[Verashiden]

8-10k should be plenty.

[curby]

Wow, I wasn't counting on such an AR boost from the +stats on botd. Now I've got 14k AR, heh. I think I'll start to switch out AR gear in favor of life, etc. Thanks again for the help.