Meet Rhabarber, the Summoner

[Kruemelmonschda]

• Preamble

For each Mat/Pat i endeavour upon, i have a few restrictions i place upon myself. Nothing too fancy, just to keep the experience fresh. Those restrictions are:

• Get every waypoint
• Kill every superunique
• Do every quest
• Completely clear every lvl 85 area (hoping for shiny loot!)
• End-game gear has to be used solely by this character (meaning no other character has to part with items)
• Spec should be kept the same throughout the whole game (e.g. a blizzard sorceress shall not start as a fireball sorceress)

Contrary to that, outrageously twinking is allowed. It just would be a shame to NOT use those shiny items at the early stages. Players settings can also be changed at will. I will try to keep those settings mostly the same, but doing baal at /players 7 is not my definition of fun. So baal is often done at /players 1 or 3.

• Introduction

That being said, let's start with my first Pat thread: Rhabarber, the summoner Druid! Just a short note regarding the name: I try to give my toons names (in german) that refer to things to eat. Yummy! In this case he is named Rhabarber as his main skill - raven - is "Raben" in german. To clarify, Rhabarber is the german word for rhubarb.
Rhabarber is a pure summoner druid, with the same skill point allocations as suggested by Excalibur in his great Pat thread 'Meet Cernunnos - The Druid Summoner!' a few days ago.

Spoiler: Final gear + progression (maybe much too detailed but i like to look it up when planning a new toon)

Level	Head	Body	Main Hand	Off Hand	Hands	Waist	Feet	Neck	Finger#1	Finger#2
2		Arctic Furs	Rixot's Keen		Arctic Mitts
3	Biggins's Bonnet			Hsarus' Iron Fist		Hsarus' Iron Stay	Hsarus' Iron Heel
5								Corruption Eye(10% FCR, +13 AR, +2 Str, +10 Life, +5 Mana)
6	Sigon's Visor	Sigon's Shelter		Sigon's Guard	Sigon's Gage	Sigon's Wrap	Sigon's Sabot
7			Blood Crescent						Nagelring	Nagelring
9			Deathspade
12		Angelic Mantle	Angelic Sickle					Angelic Wings	Angelic Halo	Angelic Halo
15	Tarnhelm				Chance Guards		Threads of Cthon
20						Nightsmoke	Sander's Riprap
23					Magefist
27						Goldwrap
28	Peasant Crown
29		Skin of the Virpermagi		'Rhyme' (Bone Shield)
30								Telling of Beads
31									Garnet Ring of Fortune(25% MF, 29% FR)	Nagelring
32							Waterwalk
41				Lidless Wall
42	Jalal's Mane
45					Trang-Oul's Claws		Aldur's Advance
49		'Rain' (Dusk Shroud)
52								Shadow Emblem (+2 Summoning Skills, 8% FRW, +17 Life, 30% PR)
54				'Spirit' (Monarch)
55			'Heart of the Oak' (Flail)
58										Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band
63						Verdungo's Hearty Cord
67								Mara's Kaleidoscope
80						Arachnid Mesh

For charms he used one of my two torches, which is a Druid Torch (Hooray!) (3/17/18) and 5 Summoning Skillers. Somehow i found a lot of those. One of the reasons to do this pat. In total that gave me +21 to his zoo.
After equipping arach at level 80 i had the following stats (yes, i went overboard with resistances, i know... Maybe i should change the Mara's (+20@) in the future)

• FR: 104%
• LR: 94%
• CR: 96%
• PR: 66%
• FHR: 30%
• FCR: 113%

As a merc i used a Might merc with Reaper's, Kira's and Guardian Angel.

Spoiler: Stat allocation

Stat allocations was simple: Str and Dex enough for gear, rest in Vit. I tried to allocate the points without doing a respec but supplying the missing 18 Str and Dex through charms till i could equip the torch was a bit of a nuisance. In the future i will do a respec i think.
For the skill allocation i went the following way:

• At first i maxed ravens
• The next skill to max was grizzly
• Afterwards i maxed spirit wolves
• Then dire wolves
• And last was heart of the wolverine

In hindsight i would have given dire wolves and spirit wolves at least enough points to get the maximum amount of minions (3 and 5) before maxing grizzly. But as i had plenty of +skills to play with i was not far off.

Somehow the "Dump" Tab of GoMule is not working for him, so no readout. I have the same problem with a few other chars. For some others the "Dump" works though.

• Playthrough

Normal and Nightmare was done on players 8. No problems whatsoever. Going to Hell i toned down the difficulty to players 3. I didn't know how he would fare against physical immunes. The start of Hell was easier than expected though. I got bold and increased the difficulty to players 7 in act 2 just before the arcane sanctuary but soon realized that this was a bit too much. Boy, i hate those wraith monsters. The pogress turned to a slog and i decreased the difficuly to players 3 again.
Some small notes regarding physical immune monsters:

• The cold damage from the spirit wolves is better than expected (good).
• Ravens can be a real nuisance as the blind overrides the decrepify from the merc (bad). At times i even let the ravens expire to better handle the physical immunes. Even if it meant that i lost a whole lot of punch against the non-immunes. That ravens cannot be unsummoned can also be annoying.

As the monster got tougher through the acts and the druid being quite squishy i resorted to using the grizzly as a scout: Casting him far ahead and letting him engage those pesky monsters. That is another (great) difference to the necro summoner: One can summon the minions wherever they are needed. If they get stuck somewhere just resummon them somewhere else. This is great! I stayed at players 3 till baal, no real difficulty (expect nihlatak, but that was expected). It was a very laid back playstyle. Just ocassionaly repositioning the summons and directing the ravens. I quite liked that.

Spoiler: The only monster i had to park was this one

Decripfy could not break the physical immunity and being cold immune there was no way i could overcome him (or her?).

He beat Baal (and the Cow King afterwards) at level 86.

• What is next?

As with every toon i will level him to level 90. In fact i am doing just that at the moment, he is nearly 89 running (or better: walking) the Stony Tombs at /players 7. Then he will get some rest i think. To start my next toon: A Trang-Oul's poison necro.

• Finds

Spoiler: Rune from hell forge was an IST

Spoiler: And.. *drumroll* he found this beauty on his way to nihlatak

My first ever unique legendary hammer in D2R and then schaefer's !!!! I was quite excited!

In the alvl 85s he didn't find any items of note except a perfect rune master from Snapchip Shatter. Interestingly the increased area level of the icy cellar now leads to Snapchip Shatter being level 88 as you can see in the readouts. I also found a 431% ED Hand Scythe, a lvl 26 Wrist Blade with +401 poison damage and two sockets (who knows, maybe some build could use it), a 5 Socket Superior Phase Blade and a MA Skiller.

Spoiler: Readouts of the Finds

Eagle Claw
Wrist Blade
One Hand Damage: 5 - 27
Durability: 49 of 52
Required Level: 26
Required Strength: 33
Required Dexterity: 33
Fingerprint: 0x71dad6f5
Item Level: 48
Version: Resurrected
+18 to Maximum Damage
+36% Damage to Undead
+38 to Attack Rating against Undead
Adds 401 Poison Damage Over 10 Secs (250 Frames)
6% Mana stolen per hit
2 Sockets (0 used)

Shogukusha's Grand Charm
Grand Charm
Required Level: 42
Fingerprint: 0x869614dd
Item Level: 61
Version: Resurrected
+1 to Martial Art Skills (Assassin Only)

Superior Phase Blade
One Hand Damage: 33 - 37
Indestructible
Required Level: 54
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 136
Fingerprint: 0x90ee2e78
Item Level: 81
Version: Resurrected
8% Enhanced Damage
+2 to Attack Rating
5 Sockets (0 used)

Schaefer's Hammer
Legendary Mallet
One Hand Damage: 113 - 288
Durability: 45 of 65
Required Level: 79
Required Strength: 189
Fingerprint: 0xdc8dd37
Item Level: 84
Version: Resurrected
20% Chance to cast level 10 Static Field on striking
Indestructible
+20% Increased Attack Speed
127% Enhanced Damage
+150 to Maximum Damage (Based on Character Level)
+600 to Attack Rating (Based on Character Level)
+150% Damage to Undead
Adds 50 - 200 Lightning Damage
+50 to Life
Lightning Resist +75%
+1 to Light Radius

Gale Razor
Hand Scythe
One Hand Damage: 87 - 196
Durability: 47 of 72
Required Level: 48
Required Strength: 73
Required Dexterity: 73
Fingerprint: 0xdc196309
Item Level: 87
Version: Resurrected
5% Chance to cast level 3 Ice Bolt on attack
431% Enhanced Damage
+3 to Minimum Damage
+180 to Attack Rating
6% Life stolen per hit

Ist Rune
Required Level: 51
Version: Resurrected
Weapons: 30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Armor: 25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Shields: 25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

Rune Master
Ettin Axe
One Hand Damage: 122 - 244
Durability: 15 of 24
Required Level: 72
Required Strength: 145
Required Dexterity: 45
Fingerprint: 0x323c7231
Item Level: 88
Version: Resurrected
270% Enhanced Damage
+5% to Maximum Cold Resist
Cannot Be Frozen
5 Sockets (0 used)