Questions about fire claws (PVM)

[jhtvman]

When using fire claws, is the damage of the weapon taken into account at all? If so, is it converted to fire damage, or does it remain physical? And if it remains physical, can it be used as a source of leech?

If there's no way I could get leech out of fire claws, is carrion vine an effective alternative?

Also, how good a job does Infinity do of destroying fire immunes in Hell difficulty?

I'm kicking around the idea of making a PVM shifter, but I'm not really sure which skill to specialize in. Fire claws seems cool and the fire skill synergies would make me able to play a fire druid in the early stages of the game, which is pretty effective, but I don't want to get to Hell and suddenly get overwhelmed by mobs because I can't leech effectively, nor do I want to run into immunes I can't break everywhere.

[lumpor]

Fire claws deal weapon damage + the listed fire damage. The fire damage is not affected by your weapon damage. Fire damage does not affect leech.

Carrion vine is a good skill, but it cannot replace leech. They have kinda different purposes. Carrion vine is mostly for healing inbetween battles and disposing of corpses. It's mid-battle healing is quite limited.

Infinity has a good time vs lightning immunes, but a harder time vs fire immunes. It will certainly break alot of them, but alot of them won't either. You can check moster resistances at the arreat summit (battle.net/diablo2exp). If they have 120% fire resist or ore, they're unbreakable. Remember that you'll also need -enemy resistance or your fire will deal like 2-7% damage.

A thing you could do is use a strong physical weapon on switch, or even as main weapon, so every attack is a mix of physical and fire. Less total damage, but more versatile.

As for which build to choose, I can't say. I'll let Verashiden answer that

[Verashiden]

Lumpor covered just about everything I have to say >.>.

FC can do Hell on its own especially if you're a bear. SW is teh nutz.

[jhtvman]

Another question: Would I get better damage by maxing fire claws, or by putting one point into it and maxing one of the synergies?

[Verashiden]

Max FC. The AR bonus is too good to pass up.