My failed attempt at a druid....

[HalcyonLister]

So Verashi was so nice to me when I started on here. And hooked me up with some wonderful druid things to help me at top end (some very nice Aldur's set, etc. [Thanks Verashi!!])

So I thought long and hard about what to try for my PvM Druid to make him worthy of being able to handle his own during Baal runs and possibly (at least not get blicked) Uber runs. I decided to use the equipment and spend stats to make him a melee druid.

So I chose the Werewolf/Rabies approach. At level 77, I had the following Skills

Level 20 Rabies
Level 20 Oak Sage
Level 20 Poison Creeper
Level 1 Fury (with some +skills)
Various skills that were needed for pre-reqs etc.

On the avg. I was pulling about 7.9k-8.5k Poison damage with rabies over a period of (I think) 130 seconds or so.



This is WAY too long to be effective in Hell difficulty. I found that I was able to kill things faster using my piddly level 5 or so Fury than I was with Rabies even though my Rabies was way more damage.

I could attack 2-5 times with Rabies and it would damage them more, but it still took forever to drain them. It essentially made my druid worthless for any kind of speed and I found myself routinely getting jumped by packs of monsters only to have to quit and start a new game.


Maybe I'm just a moron, and maybe I'm just a noob, but the rabies wolf didn't seem to do what I needed it to do.

The only druid I see online that seems to be effective in Baal runs in hell or Chaos runs seems to be the WW ele druid.

So I guess that's what I'll make. *sigh* Maybe I should try the bear, I dunno.

[HaLoPhReAk]

A few pointers, what about lycanthropy and were wolf? I understand 1 point in Wear wolf, but lycanthropy should be maxed (unless I'm overlooking a way to do rabies druid). I haven't ever tried a PvM Rabies druid, but PvM Fury/rabies hybrid druids should be pretty good, I know that fury combined with dual leech and perhaps an occasional life tap curse would really kick butt (watch out for Iron maiden in act4 though). It might be too late for this particular druid, maybe try remaking him, maybe try giving it a go....

Also one last thing, level 77 is pretty low level to be solo'ing hell or anything, even if you have a perfect build. The level itself does some weird complicated things.

Best of luck :thumbsup:

[MYK]

Rabies is a much more effective PvP skills than PvM.
There's a good uber guide for WW druids that uses the skill "fury" which is a much more effective PvM skill.

Edit: I don't think I used the word "effective" to effectively effect this thread.

There's also a guide by stoutewolf that would/will/does rock both pvm and pvp if that's you're thing. So check the stickies for it!

[HalcyonLister]

Hey, thanks both of you. You're right, I forgot to tell you my WW and Lyca levels, they were both 10+ (I don't remember exactly what they were but I knew they were both over half maxed) so I was doing alright there.

Maybe I didn't give it enough time, or maybe Aldur's just isn't the right kind of eq to be using for a melee druid for PvM.

Also, admittedly my Fury was no where near what it needed to be, but I didn't see any extra potential in the way my druid was really progressing.

Perhaps I just needed some better melee eq in addition to more patience.

This won't be the last time I try a SS/Melee druid, but my first attempt ended with such abysmal failure that I think I might go in a different direction for a while.

[Jek]

Rabies can be pretty effective in PvM, but it requires quite a bit of +SS to do so. Trang'Oul Claws will boost the damage tremendously too.

I once saw a decked out rabies wolf along side a necro with high level LR.. It was pretty. :-P