Patriarch Henry - Summon/Hunter Druid

[sirpoopsalot]

... maybe that should read max-summons-damage / Hunter. Henry's another pat/mat using the Faith bow, probably my fifth or so since I made it. I have at least one more build idea in mind, then I'll probably start soliciting other ideas for what to build around it. Anyways...


Level82
Str: 136
Dex: 144
Vit: 256
Ene: 40

Life: 1033
Mana: 262
Resists: 75f / 31c / 77l / 31p

AR: 9437
Damage: 895 - 4017


Skills (with Equipment):
Dire Wolf: 25
Grizzly: 25 (only a synergy, 'twas never actually used)
HoW: 25
Carrion Vine: 6
Cyclone Armor: 25
Twister: 12+


Equipment:
Faith Crusader Bow
Fortitude Archon Plate
Jalal's Mane (IAS)
Highlord's Wrath
Laying of Hands
Nos' Coil
GoreRiders
Ravenfrost
BKWB
charms: Sharp/Shimmering/Fine of Life/Balance/<damage>

Switch: Naj's Puzzler (telebomb, ftw!)

Might Merc, Durga, level82
Reaper's Toll (Shael)
Guillaume's Face (fire res/IAS)
Duress


Notable Finds:
Pul/Lem Hellforge
Jalal's Mane (199%, and probably the first time I actually got a very good class specific for the class I was actually playing)
Dwarf Star
Crescent Moon (the ammy)
Chance Guards (39%)
Skullder's Ire (popped from the sparkly chest in Underground Passage2)
eth Goblin Toes
Shadow Killer (Hell Baal actually dropped something!)
Greyform
Gull dagger (dropped in Act5 Hell)
Ruby SC of Balance (10/5)
Serpents GC of Sustenance (44/25)
Aureolic Jewel of Fervor (+3 = perfect)
7% MF small charm

<--- pretty decent haul, really


Notes/Review:
1. I guess he wasn't quite a max-summon-damage character. Since I wanted Henry to be able to kill things too, I didn't load up on +summons skill equipment like I could have. I could've used Enchant charges too. :P Still, with Fanaticism and Might auras, the merc's Decrep going off regularly, and a high level HoW, the wolves packed a pretty good punch.

2. That said, this character is better suited to someone with a different playstyle. I'm a lead-from-the-front kindof player, and have never really enjoyed babysitting summons. In fact, this is my first summons-based character that I didn't give up on out of boredom (not that I didn't want to at times with this one, but I decided to stick it out). The wolves were valuable, and sped things up a lot, but still it felt like they held me back unless I went full-bore with telebombing.

3. Speaking of telebombing, it's simply awesome with strong minions. Hell Baal took about 10 seconds to kill. Single monsters were never any problem, it was swarms that would break up my pack that were troublesome. Enigma would make this build a lot more tolerable, as switching weapons to teleport, then switching back to reactivate the Fanat. aura is a little tedious... I like my weapon switches to be for prebuffing, and that's it. And 69 charges of teleport on Naj's really isn't enough to maintain this strategy - you have to go to town too often for my taste.

4. Cyclone Armor came last, and for the most part, it wasn't quite strong enough. But it did help a lot near the end, especially in the WSK.

5. Physical Immunes weren't really a huge problem - the merc's Reaper's Toll plus his good Crushing Blow and a swarm of Dire Wolves took care of those pretty easily. And we had enough combined hitpoints to wear down any unbreakables with relative ease. Act2 got a little tedious by the end though - enough to make me actually look forward to reaching Act3 :shocked:.

6. WSK was simply brutal:
- WSK2 was Horadrim Ancients + Burning Souls, and they kept spawning in huge double/triple boss packs. Everytime a Soul would get killed by my wolves, it seemed like the HA's would resurrect it before my Carrion Vine got to it. Durga couldn't stay alive for long here, so I progressed without him for much of this level.
- WSK3 wasn't much better with Hell Temptresses (the Physical Immune ones) spawning left, right, and center, and my merc always seemed to be the one targeted. There were a lot of town trips for resurrections on this level.
- The Throne was a revisit of WSK2, but with OK's thrown on top of the mix. However, the passages are a little more narrow, so I was able to hide behind pillars and walls a little better to just focus on keeping my summons up and dealing damage. Again, Durga got a little break before being resurrected.
- The minion waves were actually a nice, easy change after that, and I didn't have any problems with them.

7. Probably ~8 deaths all through, most of them from Souls in WSK2. But there were a couple before that where I simply got too far ahead of my minions and got stuck in hit recovery. If I'd teleported more, or simply been a little more cautious, it's quite a safe build. But it's not quite so safe when I'm carelessly running (shieldless) around a corner into a bosspack and my minions are lagging a ~screen behind.

8. Overall, I didn't enjoy him as much as I'd hoped. This build is simply the wrong playstyle for me, so Henry's going straight to the retirement bin. With telebombing he's a real steamroller, but it's just too tedious/costly to keep telebombing continuously with Naj's Puzzler. At least I can finally say I finished a summoner (3rd try) without giving up.

[neumein]

Summon/Hunters will always have a special place with me, as my first D2 character was one of these. Glad to see that someone had the patience to stick with it (I'm sure your hax loot helped :P). Mine got parked in NM somewhere, and has been lost for many years now. I might give another one a go sometime.

Oh, and of course, congrats and gieb!

[Insane Wayne]

Although I prefer Dire Wolves to Grizzlies, I was never a fan of using them for damage. But I suppose with maxed Grizz synergy/Fanat/Might/Decrep/HoW/enraged bonus(!), they certainly made their presence felt! That's over 1000 damage per bite, before factoring Decrep.

[Grisu]

gg on your iron will to finish this character although you didn't seem to like him that much...

So, when you do get that Enigma, you are going to take him out of the retirement bin?

[Dark Matter]

OOh,

I always forget the druids can be summoners!

Gonna try one of those

Thanks for the write up.

DM

[sirpoopsalot]

Thanks Everyone!

Although I prefer Dire Wolves to Grizzlies, I was never a fan of using them for damage. But I suppose with maxed Grizz synergy/Fanat/Might/Decrep/HoW/enraged bonus(!), they certainly made their presence felt! That's over 1000 damage per bite, before factoring Decrep.

They definitely had some snap.

But then again, if I spent those 40 or 60 points into my own melee skill and had similar (riches) for the equipment I was using, I could probably get my own damage to be comparable to, or better than, the combined efforts of the 3 DireWolves. And since I'm softcore, it's not like being my own tank would be much of a problem either.

So, when you do get that Enigma, you are going to take him out of the retirement bin?

Probably not, but at that point I might think about a rebuild with a shield/weapon combo (so I'll probably have to make a 'Beast' to go with the Enigma... and since it's Beast, I'd probably make Death in it first for the indestructibility bug... but I'd probably want to use the Death a couple of times first...

... I think that project is still a little ways down the road ).

[Nightfish]

Congrats! I almost considered including summons in my last guardian druid but somehow reading about yours doesn't encourage me... Lack of shiny uberaurarunewords and stuff wouldn't help either...

[Stony]

Congrats! I also get bored of pure summoners, but making a hunter of one sounds like a nice thing to try. Man, this game still hasn't exhausted its potential for me, after all these years. There's just so many ways to do it...

Stony

[HCmasterjay]

Grats!

But this is single player right? Alot of people seem to be using mods to get ladder items/RW's.

pfft

[naittiII]

Runewordmod and Redrunemod are perfectly fine here.