The idea of the build is a combat druid in werewolf shape using mainly fire claws and rabies as the main attacks (to make sure that I have 2 elemental attacks). I also plan to use Fury for a physical damage alternative and armageddon because it can be used in wolf for anyway and uses largely the same synergies as fire claw.
The entire game will be on /players 1.
Current Character:
Stats:
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Fire Claw (level 6): 110-120 fire damage
Rabies (level 21): 381-409 poison damage over 4 second
Armageddon (level 3): 30-36 fire damage per second / 66-129 fire damage
Weapon 1 (thank you Nilhathak!)
Weapon 2 (for fury on weapon switch)
Shield (finally some resists
)Armour I wanted to get some magic find early on
Helm (what more would a werewolf druid want so early in the game?)
belt
boots
Gloves (-10 vit is a price, but the other mods are cool enough).
Amulet (found near Bloodraven, and still the best I found)
Ring 1 (decent I guess)
Ring 2
Normal, Act 1
Nothing really special here. A werewolf druid doesn't get any of the special attacks until level 12, so I used a double-handed weapon as soon as I could. Coupled with Feral Rage you can get through this act pretty easily. I placed no statpoints in vitality because 2 skillpoints in Oak Sage and some in lycantrophe gave me upwards of 200 life very quickly.
I did have some luck with the item drops here. I found a unique amulet in bloodraven's area (amongst others it gave +35 life, +25 mana, +6 maximum damage). In addition, somewhere near the forgotten tower I found Rennbuu's gloves. The skill triggers on this item are very helpful. I also found a druid staff with +3 to oak sage which is great on the weapon switch
Skill division was based on all the skills I wanted to use eventually, so one point in werewolf, and a couple (2 or 3) in lycanthropy for the added duration/life were the basis. One skillpoint in werebear, maul and feral rage for prerequisites. Two skills werer placed in Oak Sage for some added life for me and my mercenary. Finally, every elemental skill until level 12 got 1 point as well (for armageddon and fire claw synergy).
Normal, Act 2
Somewhere here I became level 18, so I could use fire claw and rabies. Like most skills, they are not that great when you only have 1 skillpoint in each, but when I reached level 20, I had three point in each and they were starting to hurt (although rabies also hurts my mana pool at 10 mana/attack). I found 2 skill potions right after eachother here (or was it in act 3?) and used it mostly to continue working on my rabies level. Also continued filling up the elemental tree for armageddon.
In terms of items I found Rennbuu's amulet, and with 2 parts of the set, I was a pretty trigger-happy druid. Especially the Confuse on striking makes some area's easy. Even more so when Rabies is damaging them as well.
Normal, Act 3
This is truely the area where Rabies shines. Especially in the Flayer Jungle there are enough enemies to spread, and with their relative low life, they actually die on the poison alone. It's still quite hard to time the attack, as rabies takes inflicts it's damage for 4 seconds, and after that, no-one is poisoned anymore. It also continue to drain on my mana so much that I'm starting to place more points in Energy as well.
The Counsel members were difficult as always, mainly because of the fact that my resistances are very very bad and the poison is killing me pretty darn fast. In addition, getting hit by armageddon isn't fun either. Still, there was nothing I couldn't handle eventually.
I found a nice unique blade with good damage, attack rating, and some cold and poison resists. Overall a good weapon that complements my current skills.
As for skills, I continued working on Rabies mostly (with the prerequisites for armageddon as well). Also placed one point in poison creeper because the synergy to rabies at that point was better than the added damage of a skillpoint in rabies.
Normal, Act 4
The enemies in this act are always more difficult than in the previous acts, and it shows. Rabies, although still dealing damage, now does considerably less and I'm starting to rely more and more on my mercenary and my fire claw skill. No extremely useful items were found here though, which made my life just a little bit harder.
Izual was a pain to get rid of. My still low poison resistance was making my attacks hurt me more than it hurt him, but after a number of deaths and numerous trips to town I eventually got him singled out, cornered, and his attention directed at me (with anti-poison potions to keep my poison resistance up, and constant use of healing potions). His life isn't too high, so he went down.
Entering the river of flame, Rabies suddenly became useful again. Many fire immunes made my fire claws useless. Luckily, the magmamen only needed one hit from rabies to die out of it. Still, being surrounded by fire elementals isn't too ideal either.
Diablo was a very hard and long fight though. My Oak Sage and henchmen didn't last long enough against him, and I finally started to run out of money for health potions and town scrolls. In addition, with low enough resistances to die from his lightning storm, and often not able to run away either because I was slowed I died many more times than I bothered to count. Eventually, I took the prevent monster heal sword that I found somewhere in act3 and used it to gradually take him down. No particularly good drops though, but the big man was out of the way, and we were on to act 5.
Normal, act 5
The beginning of Act5 is always relaxed, although it did pepper in that I really need to concentrate on certain skills and not spread the points out too much. With more and more reliance on my mercenary I moved the rennbuu's set to him and gave myself his amulet and gloves. I think this is for the better though. Area by area difficulty goes up, and faster than my experience too. My mixing of skills certainly is costing me damage output now, but on the other hand, I haven't found an area yet where I was slowed down considerably because I could deal with both the fire and the poison immunes.
I finally got armageddon as a skill, and the mana cost never fails to catch me by surprise. Short duration + high mana cost = large mana expendure. I got the skill on my way to Anya, and fire damage there is just a nice thing to have.
I made a new shield since I found some decent diamonds, so that I now, combined with the resistance scroll from the Anya quest, have some decent resistances. This is where I currently am, and I'm very much not looking foward to meeting the ancients in battle...
I finally did Nilhathak today, and I must say that it was an odd battle, but great fun nontheless. Rabies is starting to do some damage again, and the various Halls were a relief from the frozen river monsters (all that cold damage that slows you down...). My health was good enough to keep me alive against the charges of the dread knights etc. which made all the difference, and the magma golems (or whatever their name is) were dying in 4 seconds from my rabies again (which is good, as fire claws doesn't worl against them).
Nilhathak himself was also odd. His holy freeze aura and teleporting is a combination you don't want to see too often as a combat character. I had a lot of trouble getting any hits on him at all. Luckily, my cold resistance was up to par and I had enough health of my own to deal with the corpse explosions, so I could take him down bit by bit. Advatange is that rabies deals damage over 4 seconds time, and since I couldn't get hits on him any faster than that anyway, this was a pretty good skill. Other than that, armageddon and the Rennbuu's skill triggers also helped a great deal. A long fight that lasted at least almost as long as against Diablo, but with the difference that Nilhathak is actually survivable.
Question remains, was it worth it? It most definately was! Nilhathak dropped Regis' set weapon which gives +2 skills and +35 mana. Two properties I can really use to the best (as the druid is a skill fighter), and I'm looking forward to testing out my new weapon in the Frozen Tundra
.The Frozen Tundra was next, and with my new weapon ready I was looking forward to it. The area itself has some of the nasty enemies (although there are much worse out there) with the armoured disciples and lesser raptors. The Raptors were poison immune, so I had to rely on fire claws, armageddon and my henchmen for that. But that was no real problem as with my new weapon my fire damage is pretty decent. In addition, rabies will infest anything it touches, and that includes poison immunes! They won't take damage, but they'll continue to spread it onto the yeti's and armoured disciples that are close. It's also great fun to infest a barred door or tower
and watch the desease spread to the enemies behind it, hehe... I also found a new weapon for my mercenary. He used to have an ethereal pole axe with +8 max damage, and I found an ethereal pole axe with 3 sockets now (also superior, but only +2 attack rating). With a flawless Jasper in there it also gave +8 max damage, and I decided to add 2 flawless sapphires in there too to give me some cold damage as well. Not the best in these regions, but it adds to the mix of damage types that are dished out.Also in the frozen tundra lies the hidden factol, and rabies was awesome there. And with awesome I do mean AWESOME. The desease spreads through the enemies at high speed and all the rioters die of it. Only backdraft is that enemies need to survive your attack to be able to spread the rabies, but there are always harmoniums there that can do that job. As for the damage dealt, by the time the 4 seconds were up, at least 15 rioters and some harmoniums were dead on the rabies damage alone. These are the areas that rabies is meant for: the crowded areas.
I've found the waypoint in the Ancient's passage, but nothing worth mentioning has happened there as I've found it without too much trouble. The ancients themselves are getting scaringly close now, although my confidence is a bit up again. Although I have no doubt that the ancients will take care of every bit of confidence that I will build up until then.
Time to clean out the Ancient's Passage (actually, time to postpone dealing with the ancients themselves...). In teh Icy Cellar I found the Remorah's and their Queen, which I had almost forgotten about. Caught a bit by surprise here as I was already dealing with a big pack of Lords of Winter when the Remorah's joined in the fight. A quick retreat followed by a new (prepared) assault saw to the end of them. Ever since I bought the 2nd edition monster manual, the Remorah has been one of my favourite creatures, so I really liked the surprise here (although I knew that they were in the game). Someone from that combat had dropped a potion of skill, which was very welcome
.I cleaned out the ancients passage without much special happening, so I went on to the ancients (with an inventory full of potions). After 3 deaths I got the feeling that they were doable, and as I went back to pick up my body I noticed that I was only a small bit away from levelling up. I went to teh frozen tundra again to get some experience and got that extra level.
Also, I bought +20% cold resistance gloves to temporarily replace my unique ones (as I wanted all the life I could get, and mine gave -10 vitality). I also picked up the Sylvan Warrior unique armour that I had found somewhere in act 3 if I remember correctly, but which I never used because I wanted to use the magic find on my current one. The ancients don't have drops however, and teh +5% poison skill damage and +10% damage on the armour were also welcome. I also bought my mercenary a +35 life armour to keep him alive a little longer.
With this new equipment and preperation I went to the ancients again. I don't know if it's smart or not, but I always tend to kill Honour first. I think it's because in the original game, the ancient there is the one with the least life and uses warcries that boost the other ones as well. My mercenary was actually alive when Honour died. To gather some life again, I started running around using potions on me and my mercenary and refilling my belt with fresh potions as well. Loyalty was next. He uses lightning skills which are always damaging, and coupled with armageddon my mercenary eventually died. I started running again to refill my health and discovered that Loyalty had only a little life left, so a few hit-and-run attacks later he died from rabies, fire claw and armageddon.
Although the ancients become progressively easier as you kill them, I was left with Truth, and there were 2 problems with him. First of all, he is fire immune, which means that Fire Claw and Armageddon don't do anything against him. The second problem is that he uses armageddon himself and 2 consecutive hits from that can kill almost anyone. This is where Rabies came in again. With a high rabies skill level and the new armour I killed off Truth eventually with hit-and-run tactics again. Initially I was waiting for him to stop casting armageddon for a moment, but that happened only once. After that he kept refreshing his skill so I was forced to run away from him anyway.
The ancients are now dead, I gained the level, and headed down into the Worldstone Keep. In the first level I got a great new weapon for my mercenary ... when he turns level 45 that is. Uthegental's Trident dropped from a cyclopse.
Level 2 of the worldstone keep was a bit harder because I encountered two packs of the berserker types. The first one was cold enchanted (ouch!) and the second one extra strong (ouch again!). Let's just say that getting surrounded by those minions when they get double swing going is not too high on my things-I-really-like-to-do list. I also found an ancient plague sensor here with +25% poison skill damage and -45% enemy poison resistance. I'm not using it now, but I'm sure that this one will come in handy at some point
. I found the waypoint eventually and the next target is going to be Baal...
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). They could be sold though for a combined total of 15000 gold, so I had some starting money again.
