The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

[onderduiker]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

You don't have to make fissure full physical damage, I know if you did that would be TOO overpowered; however, I see nothing wrong with giving it a percentage of physical damage to improve it's ability and speed to kill FIs.

It would be easiest to add physical damage to Fissure and then have other skills supplying +% damage synergies. However, it might be better to improve the skills which already apply physical damage (Molten Boulder, Volcano and Armageddon).

It shouldn't be too overpowered. a 1000 physical and 2000 fire at skill level 35 sounds pretty good, but boring.

The mechanics of Fissure mean that its displayed damage can be applied up to a maximum of once every 6 frames, so 1,000 physical and 2,000 fire damage at level 35 could result in approximately 4,167 damage per second and 8,333 fire damage per second.

It could probably be solved by giving Cano 20x physical damage and something like 1 second next delay(monsters could only be hit once per second) making it more of an AOE spell though.

The volcano already has 10 frame Next Delay, and the fires spawned by debris on impact have 5 frame Next Delay: the volcano's damage to a single target would be almost doubled if its Next Delay were 5 frames like the fires. Better yet, its Next Delay could be reduced to 1 frame so that its damage was applied every 2 frames, which is the same rate at which it produces the debris which spawn the fires on impact.

Removing the volcano's Next Delay altogether would result in its displayed damage being applied every frame, or 25 times per second: at level 35 with 20 points in MB, that would result in approximately 17,675-17,850 physical damage per second.

Hurricane@slvl 25 does 1200 Cold Damage per second to all monsters in it's radius. It's also passive and cost 20 sps(I assume synergies are free since windy is going to get them anyway)

Level 25 Hurricane with 40 points invested in damage synergies applies 1,232-1,347 cold damage every 0.8 seconds (20 frames), resulting in approximately 1,540-1,683 cold damage per second.

 

[Kretschmer]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Flayed: You would also note that I said the Fire Tree is not a tree that's not particularly meant to stand on its own. Single element trees rarely are. However, Fire Druids can sit behind a Merc and let it handle the FIs while Windies need to chip a phys immune down with Hurricane. The proximity required for Hurricane coupled with the fact that the freeze is non existent in Hell makes it a very dangerous solution for a pack of phys immunes. I wasn't saying that Boulder and Volcano are ideal solutions. I was saying that you would have to chip them down with those skills. I'd appreciate you reading my posts before you comment on them .

I've done the untwinked Windy thing through to guardianship, and hurricane is a sufficient solution for the measly PIs that you run into.

"Fire" casting isn't a single element tree any more than "physical" casting is a single-element tree. Volcano and molten boulder offer physical damage (like hurricane and arctic blast offer cold damage), but they're poorly designed for the purpose.

Maybe make Armageddon a fire/physical skill with physical synergies from molten boulder and volcano? Reproportion the volcano damage to be heavier on the physical end and it'll help quite a bit with FIs in hell.

Not every build is expected to kill like a hammerdin, but making more builds less frustrating in hell would add enjoyment to the game.

 

[Verashiden]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Mmm I guess we've had different experiences running untwinked Windies but okay.

I still hold that the Fire tree is meant to be more of a hybrid than pure build. I find Summon/Fire fun and engaging, not frustrating.

 

[onderduiker]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Maybe make Armageddon a fire/physical skill with physical synergies from molten boulder and volcano? Reproportion the volcano damage to be heavier on the physical end and it'll help quite a bit with FIs in hell.

Armageddon already applies both fire and physical damage, but the latter isn't displayed (watch it damage and even kill Immune to Fire monsters, and notice the discrepancy between the damage displayed by its skill description and the character screen).

I agree that Armageddon should synergise more than Volcano's fire damage though (for starters, it should synergise the physical damage of Molten Boulder and Volcano, and its own physical damage should be synergised by those two skills in turn).

 

[Ed from Russia]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Nice discussion so far.

I think the common mistake is that people are looking for a build that is as strong as a Hdin or Meteorb; otherwise it's not viable.

This is just wrong. There are a couple of cookie-cutter builds (maybe 8 in total depending on whether you look at PvP, PvM, Ubers or MFing) that are better than others, and then there are dozens of others that are viable, but just a bit more challenging.

The Fire Druid is one of the latter; it presents players with a challenge. If you're used to playing a Hdin you'll be disappointed because not every monster dies in 1 second; sometimes you need to play tactically /slowly to get through an area.

I admit that there are a number of drawbacks to the Fire Druids, but there are also benefits. The drawbacks are that all Druid Fire skills have timers and that they aren't as straightforward to use as (say) Chain Lightning or Fireball. The benefits are that some of them deal physical damage (Volcano deals with FIs quite well), and that you can easily combine the fire skills with a Grizzly or Dire wolves, which will do reasonable damage.

A fully equipped Fire Druid will go through Hell at a comparable speed to other builds, with the exception of a few areas (Hell Ancients, Hell Act 4). An untwinked Fire Druid will have a harder time getting through Hell solo, but will finish it if he gets past the Ancients. In that respect he's the same as for example a Poison Necro, Trapsin or Bowazon.

My 2 cts.

 

[Flayed One]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

The mechanics of Fissure mean that its displayed damage can be applied up to a maximum of once every 6 frames, so 1,000 physical and 2,000 fire damage at level 35 could result in approximately 4,167 damage per second and 8,333 fire damage per second.

And that's all right for a lvl 35, fully synergised skill, right? It could also be done differently - new synergies - Molten Boulder and Armaggedon, which gives "convert 1% to physical damage" each level. It would top at 40% convertion, but require 100 sps to get to a good state.

The volcano already has 10 frame Next Delay, and the fires spawned by debris on impact have 5 frame Next Delay: the volcano's damage to a single target would be almost doubled if its Next Delay were 5 frames like the fires. Better yet, its Next Delay could be reduced to 1 frame so that its damage was applied every 2 frames, which is the same rate at which it produces the debris which spawn the fires on impact.

Removing the volcano's Next Delay altogether would result in its displayed damage being applied every frame, or 25 times per second: at level 35 with 20 points in MB, that would result in approximately 17,675-17,850 physical damage per second.

My memory must be getting rusty, since I could've sworn it was 8 frames, which would mean 1 hit every 10 frames. Reducing Fire Delay would make it a better skill against single target, while simply making it deal more damage would make it a better AOE skill. Both solutions look good for me.

Level 25 Hurricane with 40 points invested in damage synergies applies 1,232-1,347 cold damage every 0.8 seconds (20 frames), resulting in approximately 1,540-1,683 cold damage per second.

If the damage is applied every 20 frames, hurricane is even better than I thought.

Flayed: You would also note that I said the Fire Tree is not a tree that's not particularly meant to stand on its own. Single element trees rarely are. However, Fire Druids can sit behind a Merc and let it handle the FIs while Windies need to chip a phys immune down with Hurricane. The proximity required for Hurricane coupled with the fact that the freeze is non existent in Hell makes it a very dangerous solution for a pack of phys immunes. I wasn't saying that Boulder and Volcano are ideal solutions. I was saying that you would have to chip them down with those skills. I'd appreciate you reading my posts before you comment on them .

No, you didn't say you could use Volcano and Boulder to chip down FIs. You said that "they are a solution":

You have skills that deal physical damage (Volcano, Molten Boulder). Granted, they're not the best at killing groups but it's still a solution.

A then you went on to say Hurricane is not a PI solution for windies:

Hurricane is not a solution to PIs. It does piddly damage and the slow is non existent in hell.

Granted, you also said that both of those can be used to chip down immunes, which could suggest you treat them as about equal immune solutions, but above quotes suggest otherwise, that's what I found funny. It does not mean I don't read your posts. It means I read them more carefully than you write them .

Mmm I guess we've had different experiences running untwinked Windies but okay.

I still hold that the Fire tree is meant to be more of a hybrid than pure build. I find Summon/Fire fun and engaging, not frustrating.

Do you really find summons killing speed satisfying when dealing with hordes of FIs? Hybrid builds are all fine, as long as there are good other trees. I never saw summons as more than meatshields, even when I tried.

@Ed from Russia - While, if you look at fire druids in the context of performance you are 100% right, but if you look at them in the context of the skills it stops working like that. Fire skills are really good by themselves, what they lack is skills that they would well hybridize with. You can overcome trapsins weaknesses by making them a trap-kicker hybrid. You can overcome bowas weaknesses by making a bow/jav hybrid, or using different bow skills. You can't really overcome Fire Druids weaknesses, because you only have to possibilities to hybridize them with - wind which requires a lot of skill points, and summons that are slow killers.

 

[mysticc]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Why does everyone think builds need to be equal to each other in order to be viable?

Fissure as physical damage would make the game way too easy. You have skills that deal physical damage (Volcano, Molten Boulder). Granted, they're not the best at killing groups but it's still a solution.

The Fire Tree is not a tree that can stand on its own, much like single tree Sorcs. It needs to be combined with another tree in order to become viable. I don't see a problem with that.

But, since we're talking about buffs, my only suggestions would be to increase the KB capabilities of Boulder and to buff the physical damage it and Volcano deal.

I think there's some merit to the points being raised.

The real problem is how the elemental tree is structured. There are a few problems.

1) Armageddon, which is primarily a fire skill, requires a massive amount of prerequisites that eat away at the available skill points you have. This is why it doesn't see a lot of use, not to mention it's hard to aim it.

It's not like a sorc, but the sorc has 3 separate trees. You don't have to invest 6 points in lightning tree to unlock frozen orb for example.

2) With the way the elemental tree is structured, it is hard to do a dual wind/fire build. You really need to synergize all the wind stuff to make it effective, and then you have nothing left over for fire skills.

3) The synergies are also a bit odd. It actually would have been better to have all of them synergize with each other, but the pattern of synergy is a little strange, and actually makes building them more difficult.

In the end, fire can work as pvp character, but pvm is questionable. You get to focus on fire skills... and then you gotta spread the rest of your points to vines or summons as the shapeshifting skills don't really complement the fire skills in play style at all.