fire druid question

[Tim B]

i'm building a more or less pure fire druid (+1pt grizzly/oak/prereqs), and as i'm sure many of you will know the build will max out the fire skills at lvl99. given that it'll take quite some time to get to lvl99, which fire skill would you choose to max last between firestorm and boulder?

[deathwinger]

Max armageddon last.

The damage on it scales nicely in that even with 1 point in it, it gives an easy 5000+ damage, so its still effective even before you've maxed it out. Not having a maxed boulder means your volcano is weak and you have no way to deal with absorb, and firestorm loses you that fissure damage. As the physical portion of volcano > the fire portion, in terms of importance, you can afford to lose the small synergy from geddon until its maxed. Between boulder last & geddon last, by losing geddon beyond 1 point, you get approximately the same volcano damage, with less geddon, BUT, you shift the damage from physical to fire. And since physical damage on volcano will be reduced less, hurts absorbers more, etc etc, as well as giving you an additional attack (boulderwalk vs things like hammerdins), its better to just go 1 geddon.

For example, with +30 skills and geddon last (1 point), you get:
5100 fissure
1250/1500 volcano
8000/1500 geddon

with firestorm last, you get:
3100 fissure
1250/2500 volcano
11000/2000 geddon

with boulder last, you get:
5100 fissure
400/2500 volcano
11000/2000 geddon