Diablo 2: Resurrected
Cernunnos - Level 90
Druid Summoner
Cernunnos was a Celtic God associated with nature. He was often depicted with an antlers surrounded by animals.
This Druid is definitely one of his ancestors caring on his legacy!
Summoners in every game are usually an entertaining build allowing you to control random minions to do the hard work for you. The different routes a player must take to invest in the strength of the pack rather than the character itself is already promising you a unique build. With the 2.4 Patch, Druids are now able to summon all of their minions, eventually making a Druid Summoner a viable build. But how effective a Druid Summoner can be especially when compared to a Necromancer? Let's find out!Cernunnos - Level 90
Druid Summoner
Cernunnos was a Celtic God associated with nature. He was often depicted with an antlers surrounded by animals.
This Druid is definitely one of his ancestors caring on his legacy!
Positive
+ High Damage Summonings
+ Can Summon anywhere, anytime
+ Fragile but Untouchable
+ Strong Hireling
+ Unique build
Negative
- Completely Passive Gameplay
- Slow at Players 8
- No support Skills
- No flexibility in skill choices.
- Need to re-summon Army
- Small Quantity of Summonings
Stats
Having a completely passive gameplay and with the whole purpose of improving our Summonings you need just enough Strength to equip our gear. Dexterity for block is not necessary because it would require too many points and because the Summonings protect you pretty well. As we also don't have any mana issues nearly all of our points can go to Vitality.
- Strength: 156
- Dexterity: None
- Vitality: Rest
- Energy: None
If we want to keep it a pure Summoner build and put a priority in maxing all the Summonings Skills that we are going to use, the build can be completed at level 90. Unlike most builds, you will only start getting spare points past a point where it will be hard to level up your character.
After level 90 (or much sooner if you won't max your Summonings) there are 4 Skills that you can invest your remaining Points.
Those skills are:
- Cyclone Armor - For extra protection against elemental damage
- Hurricane - For Chilling your enemies
- Carrion Vine - For healing your character
- WereWolf / Werebear - For extra Health
Gear
Even at maxed levels, Summonings can prove quite weak especially at higher player Settings. Thus, the gear plays an important role to strengthen the Summonings as much as achievable. And Strengthening the Summonings is all that should matter. Killing as fast as possible is the number one priority so neglect everything else and focus on the highest possible + Skills to every gear slot.
Weapon: Beast
Shield: Spirit
Armor: Enigma
Helm: Magic Pelt (+3 Summoning)
Gloves: Trang-Oul's Claws
Belt: Arachnid Mesh
Boots: Sandstorm Trek
Rings: Soj x2
Amulet: Magic (+3 Summoning)
Switch: Call to Arms + Spirit
- Beast is definitely one item that can't be neglected for this build. Fanaticism Aura will greatly improve the damage output and attack speed of all your minions. Moreover, by providing +3 to Werebear and Lycanthropy it saves you some skill points in case you would like to Shape Shift for extra safety.
- Spirit is the best available shield. Spend that strength to equip it, it worths it.
- Enigma may not seem that necessary for this build but apart from the Teleport, everything else it provides are still very useful. Telestomp works pretty well with this build as well and sometimes it's very important against bosses or sturdy units. In any case, there few to none better alternatives.
- Any Circlet/Pelt with +3 to Summonings will do. Magic Pelts, being Druid's unique helms, can roll with extra Skills to some Summons.
- Trang-Oul's Claws for the Resists and FCR are usually the best gloves you can get.
- Arachnid Mesh is the only belt that provides + to skills.
- Sandstorm Trek are usually the most solid choice for most builds. FRW, FHR, + Strength, + Vitality, + Poison Resist pretty much sums it up.
- Two Stone of Jordans for a total of +2 to all skills and a mana boost is your best possible choice.
- A magic Amulet can roll with +3 to Summonings and that's all we need. It can also spawn with some extra mods so just equip the best one you can find.
- As usual, CtA and Spirit will cover your switch but for this build CtA plays an important role of adding two extra skill points.
Fill your inventory with at least seven Druid Summoning Skillers. That will leave you with a space of 2x2 including a Torch, an Anni, Horadric Cube and Tome of Portal. Plain Small charms with life are a cheap yet very good choice to fill the gap between the Skillers.
Breakpoints to aim:
Faster Cast Rate: 68%
Faster Hit Recovery: 99%
Block Chance: N/A
Resistances: Any
Meet the Team
Since this build is still quite fresh let's make a quick introduction of the Summonings we are going to use and see what they are capable of. By allocating the Skill points as mentioned above and using the gear demonstrated you will have close to +25-27 to all skills. The description below refers to the Summonings being at least level 47.
The Raven received a significant buff in its damage and is capable of killing enemies in Hell with 2-3 hits. They deal such a high damage which is only beaten by the Grizzly Bear. The maximum number of Ravens you can summon is 5. Ravens can't be targeted, hence they are immune to any source of damage. They can only be killed when they reach their number of attacks limit which at levels close to 40 are over 50 hits. This is very annoying in the early levels since you will have to constantly Summon them. One of the biggest flaws is that they are not considered "minions" and auras do not affect them.
Spirit Wolfs are perhaps the weakest members of your party. Their damage is decent but unfortunately it is elemental and without a proper boost to their Cold Damage it will remain quite mediocre. They tend to be the first ones to die and their teleporting ability seems completely irrelevant. Still, they can all add some damage and chill enemies with their attacks. Spirit Wolfs are limited to 5.
Dire Wolfs are definitely an improved version of Spirit Wolfs and a much more reliable summoning than the Ravens. They deal quite high damage which can be increased even more with their ability to consume corpses. They are affecting by all the auras so their damage can significantly increase. The only drawback is that you can bring only 3 Dire Wolfs into play. 
Focusing completely on the Summonings for the kills, there is no question that Heart of the Wolverine is your choice for the Spirit. By increasing the Damage and Attack Rating of your minions, you can secure a Stronger and more reliable force to deal with the enemy mobs. Even though Heart of the Wolverine is quite fragile, it can survive quite some damage and usually stays out of trouble.
The Grizzly Bear is your ultimate Summoning. Having a massive amount of damage this Grizzly Bear can probably deal more damage than even some well geared Physical builds. The large health-pool it has guarantees that it will never die and even if it does you can just re-summon it instantly without any delay every time. The Grizzly Bear is limited to only 1 and it's biggest drawback is that it's often found to stay idle. It doesn't attack constantly like the Mercenary does and that can greatly slow you down.
Prebuff Gear
Since Summonings maintain the level at which they are Summoned, as a consequence their advanced stats, using some "prebuff" gear to increase your skill points even more would certainly create a stronger army. For such a build which already uses the highest possible +skills gear in every slot it would be hard to have any prebuff gear. However, there are two items that can help in this case, HotO and Ravenlore. Heart of the Oak is a nice choice in this scenario because you can expand the level of your Summonings by 2. Ravenlore has a crazy +7 to raven which will increase their damage by a large amount. However, since the army is not maintained after exiting the game, repeating this process becomes a tedious procedure. Prebuff gear can only be effective if you are questing or planning to do some long runs or complete a hard event like the Ubers.
The most effective way to ensure some stronger party members without changing gear all the time is by using the CtA. The CtA provides Battle Commands which adds +1 to all skills. On top of that the CtA itself grants +1 to all skills. So, whenever you start a new game, make sure to switch to CtA, cast Battle Commands and then Summon your army while wielding the CtA. This is an easy way to summon all of your Summons with an extra +2 levels. Once you are done, switch to Beast and run any area you want. Wheneever a Summoning dies, switch back to Cta and Summon it to always take advantage of the extra skill point.
Mercenary
Weapon: Ethereal Reaper's Toll (Shael)
Armor: Fortitude
Helm: Guillaume's Face (15% IAS, 40% ED)
Many consider the Mercenary as a support unit for the minions but this should not be the case. Your Mercenary is your highest and most reliable source of damage so instead of using him as a support tool you should invest in him for damage. An Act 2 Might Mercenary will provide a Might aura increasing the party damage by a significant amount. The Reaper's Toll has decent damage but more importantly Decrepify will make a huge difference for all the party. Fortitude is a perfect armor for extra damage while Guillaume's Face is an excellent helm which will provide enough Crushing Blow. This setup will make your hireling not only a great damage dealer but also a superb party leader.
Final Result
Eventually your party members should be consisted of the minions below.
- Ravens - 5
- Spirit Wolfs - 5
- Dire Wolfs - 3
- Heart of the Wolverine - 1
- Grizzly Bear - 1
- Act 2 Mercenary
- Fanatisicm Aura
- Migh Aura
- Heart of the Wolverine
- Decrepify Curse
- Battle Orders
Druid vs Necromancer
With the Druid now being a viable Summoner it raises one of the most fundamental questions. How does the Druid Summoner fare against the Necromancer Summoner? The first thing that I would like to say is that I am quite happy that both builds are very different from each other. The winner however, is hands down the Necromancer. There are too many advantages the Necromancer has over the Druid. The Druid seems to be just a passive Summoner without any form of flexibility.
The Necromancer is a lot more active, with amazing support spells, more versatile and with a much bigger army. Amplify Damage is already enough to crown the Necromancer as it's the best curse there is by a long shot. Corpse Explosion is deadly at lower Player Settings and with the proper gear viable at Higher Player Settings. Skeletons alone are more than the whole Druid's Army. Revives can be lethal if picked correctly. Golems can form a new strategy with Glay Golem offering slow while the Iron Golem an extra aura. The only thing that a Necromancer lacks is that single Summon which deals very high damage such as the Grizzly Bear.
Conclusion
A Druid Summoner is a very fun build which can easily complete the game from Normal to Hell. Gear plays an important role to make it possible to farm at P8. The playstyle is very passive since you have nothing to support your minions while they fight. If you plan to create the strongest possible Summonings, the skills that need to be maxed are too many leaving you no choice for much experiments. Ιn any case, it is very efficient to farm in any area of the game and with this new and unique build the entertainment value is at its highest!
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