MeleeMental Help

[Aduro86]

MeleeMental Help

Well i didnt fet much help in my first post.....but maybe ill have more look this time.

anyways ive heard a little bit about these guys and they perked my interests...

dose any one know how to build one of these?

 

[BFD]

Well i didnt fet much help in my first post.....but maybe ill have more look this time.

anyways ive heard a little bit about these guys and they perked my interests...

dose any one know how to build one of these?

Hmm, I think a little more information about just what it was that perked your interest and then there would be more for people to go off of and consequentially reply to. (OT: wow, I never realized how big that word was)

 

[Uzziah]

What is your initial thought?

What are you calling a melee mental?

Do you have any starting plans for your build, stats, skill layout?

You can not expect us to read your mind, be a bit more direct in questioning the build then let the forums take tangets to find the more diverse ideas. being vague does not allow for good answers or ideas we all need something to work off of. I'll check here later to see your details then I may be able to help a bit.

 

[Forcefeedback]

Hi!

As Uzziah said, there are many ways to building a meleementalist so some more info on what kind of character you are looking for would allow us to provide you with much more precise advice.

I will list a few "builds" off the top of my head:
Armageddon werebear with maul
Armageddon werebear with shockwave
Armageddon werewolf with fury
Armageddon and hurricane druid with a melee weapon
Fire elementalist with a melee weapon

Hope you can come up with more specific questions.

 

[aragorn-18]

Hi there :clap:

you can also look up some guides to come up with some ideas, of course you have your own thought on how to build, but the guides can change some mistakes you had in your mind, and if you are not certain, you always can ask in the forums, there are always people helping you out.

 

[Shaperla]

You may also want to help us out by letting us know if this is going to be pvm or pvp, ladder or non, hardcore or req. All of these are somewhat crucial as far as telling you what equipment, strategies, etc.

 

[Aduro86]

Well im sorry for the un specific questin ill give u a little more this time....

I was leaning twoards

Armageddon and hurricane druid with a melee weapon

or

Fire elementalist with a melee weapon

Thanks to Forcefeedback fot thoes :worship:

But originally i wanted a druid who didnt hafe to rely on shifting skills for damage and was able to hold his own on ladder and pvp

Oh and im on east coast if any one cares

 

[Forcefeedback]

Ok, since you want to stay away from shapeshifting you will need another enhanced damage source -> heart of wolverine(HoW) spirit.

The armageddon hurricane druid should be easy enough to build, basically you max armageddon and two of its damage synergies, firestorm, molten boulder or volcano. Add maxed HoW to the mix and you've got yourself quite an unique druid. The reason it's so rare build is that it doesn't cut cookies if you catch my drift. :innocent: It's also tiresome to keep up both armageddon and hurricane without putting points in their length adding synergies, cyclone armor and fissure.

A fire elementalist would most likely fare best if you chose fissure and volcano as the main skills and add either molten boulder or firestorm. HoW would be included in this build too.

As to equip, well you certainly need a good weapon to make up for the slow attacking speed of a druid in human form and low ed of HoW. Something like Griswold's redemption with one shael and 3 Lo's.
Other suggestions:
Helm: Jalal's
Shield: Stormshield
Armor: Duress or Lionheart runeword
Gloves: Magefists, Bloodfists
Boots: Goreriders, IK boots
Belt: Trang oul's girth, Thundergods vigor
Amulet: Highlord's wrath, Mara's kaleidoscope
Rings: Bul katho's wedding bands, Ravenfrosts

Hope this helps.

 

[Aduro86]

Thanks Forcefeedback

But why not add in the length syrengys

It theory it would not to as much damage directly but over tim it would do more

I dont mind waiting a little for a kill and a can live without a god-like pvp char

what do u think :scratch:

 

[Uzziah]

Hurricane Armageddon if thats what your looking for than you'd really like my single tree elemental druid. Here is his setup:

20 firestorm
1 artic blast
10 cyclone armor
20 twister
20 tornado
20 hurricane

the rest in other trees if you wish.

Wait a minute I said armageddon/hurricane but armageddon isn't mentioned in my build. Thats because I am taking advantage of the charge/synergy bug.

Take a look at my main pieces of equipment.

Armor - Stone runeword
Helm - (this is important) a pelt with +armageddon, +elemental tree (+3/+3 is best no matter the other affixes. The +armageddon is the only place you'll get this skill.
Weapon - (this is a hard one to find trust me I have been looking for one for weeks) +elemental club of fissure (peferably slvl 7 charges of fissure, needed for duration of armageddon.

The other equipment is completely your choice, whatever works best for you. I am wearing 2Pdiamond mosers, snowclash and other rares that get my resistances up.

The real question is how well does this build work. I have +7 elemental skills and only ~10 points in tornado the rest of the build is complete. I deal 1000+ damage in each skill with the exception of twister. I can handle players 8 hell act 1 (thats where I am at currently) fairly well. firestorm alone got me through the first 30 levels of the game, hurricane was a welcome skill at that point, it got me to clvl 47 for my stone armor to be put on the stone armor raises the firestorm damage to 1000 at a slvl 26 firestorm, use leaf staff while leveling if your playing alone (hexfire works well also) by clvl 60 my hurricane and firestorm were my main 2 skills I used twister while the timer for hurricane was counting down. Now that I am in Hell I use hurricane and armageddon with tornado the combo works well on all enemies they can not be immune to all 3 forms of damage. having the clay golem is nice it cost about 5K per casting but last for a really long time if you keep within range of it. Metalgrid would increase the Clay golems chance of surviving extremely well. The clay golem almost replaces your merc.

 

[Forcefeedback]

Uzziah's suggestion sounds very tempting, but you will have a hard time finding a damaging, fast club with lvl 7 fissure charges. Your damage and attack rating will also be lacking and tornado will be much more convenient mode to damage enemies than melee. Thus you will be building a windy with armageddon, not a meleementalist. If thats okay with you and you are able to attain such gear, go for it!.

 

[psuedoenviro]

Uzziah,

That club is quite amazing if it spawned +3 ele +7charges fissure; I was thinking about shopping 1handed clubs looking for exactly that.

Another option if you could go without a shield, the earthshifter's +7 ele and level 16 volcano charges would seem like a nice weapon. Since you are caster only, you could hel it.The short range of hurricane almost demands a shield, but with a merc and golom maybe you could do without. I guess it just depends what you want more damage for, firestorm or armageddon, and if you don't mind the 10 sec duration. Just realized you might wnat to duel with this guy hence the shield.

I'm working on almost the exact same build skill point-wise and have a nice +2 druid skills +1 armageddon helm with resists and life stashed away. My only fear it that he will become just a weak windy with armageddon occationally hitting.

General question: Is skill level 7 the highest attainable for charged items?

 

[Absolutian]

Uzziah's suggestion sounds very tempting, but you will have a hard time finding a damaging, fast club with lvl 7 fissure charges. Your damage and attack rating will also be lacking and tornado will be much more convenient mode to damage enemies than melee. Thus you will be building a windy with armageddon, not a meleementalist. If thats okay with you and you are able to attain such gear, go for it!.

I agree with this completely. First, getting this club from a vendor means a 'blue'. The odds of getting +3 ele, 7 Fissure and ELITE club are approximately 0.000000000001. If you try to melee Hell with a normal club, you'll be disappointed.

Gambling for this club is a little better, cuz it's a cheap gamble, and a rare could be upped...but the odds of getting +3 elemental, +7 Fissure and a rare are still extremely low.

One option I've played with is the Hit Power crafting recipe. Works on clubs, so take a blue Truncheon, a Tir, PSaph and a junk jewel and try your luck. Your odds are 100x better, which makes it 0.0000000001 :uhhuh:

Seems to me that if you're not going to melee from wereform, that means a 'normal attack' on your left click. There are very few builds of any class that can get away with that. The Ranger is the only one I can think of. Enchantress?

If you are willing to allow wereform though, then many possibilities open up.

 

[Aduro86]

Thanks for the ideas but not exactly what i want

Im thinking useing armegeddon and huricane while fighting melee

curnetly im lvl 3 with isenhart set

not much skill wise so hes still moldable

 

[Voice]

Why not passion for zeal action?

 

[lextalionis]

Some ideas

Well if you are meleeing then you won't be spamming elemental skills: so that means you won't want to be casting Tornados, Twisters, Artic Blast or Firestorm. (Now I said casting, I didn't say you wouldn't want to put points into any of these skills).

Now what gear do you have access to? Let's list all the gear that can help you with skills:

Stone is appealing for the molten bolder charges, but that means you can't put points into Armeggedon, Fissure, or Volcano. A DOOM weapon might make for a very good weapon if you are trying to use Hurricane as your elemental skill, since DOOM will boost your cold damage significantly. When you do cast Volcano you can make the damage really worth something by putting some hard points in Firestorm if you have them to spare. But you can have some significant boost from STONE Armor's charges of Molten Boulder, also don't forget you'll get a decent Defense boost, which might even make a Defiance Merc worth something.

ITS REALLY HARD TO GET GOOD DAMAGE IN HELL WITHOUT MAXING THE BASE DAMAGE DEALING SKILL. -- I mean that a +3 Armmeggedon, or Volcano, delerium helm will not get you enough base damage to allow your synergies to bring the damage up. Even if you decide to ultimately Armeggedon for a little extra damage it will be small damage.

Stormlash -- This is a really interesting item for druids. First its fast. Second its got great mods like Crushing Blow, Chance to Cast Static. Decent base damage. This an all around great weapon. But it also casts Tornado 20% of the time. You can synergize the Tornado by putting points into your Tornado synergies. -- However realize that this would be like casting Tornado at 1/5 (worse than this if you figure in AR) your attack rate. Far far slower than you would normally be casting Tornado in a windy. So I don't recomend this either for anything more than novelty.

I really think you're really going to have to put hard points into everything. I would look for something similar to this:

20 Armeggedon
1 Hurricane (Hurricane Damage isn't that great and you'll get decent chill/slow from it at one point
20 Fissure
20 Volcano
20 Heart of the Wolverine
20 Grizzly (Don't completely forget about your summons for damage)

Might Merc

Make sure your attack rating is high enough to hit since you aren't going to have a lot of problems with that since HoW isn't that big a bump to AR. You might even want to use a BEAST WEAPON, not for any bonus to your Lycanthropy or WBear, but simply for the Fanatism Aura to help your AR, your Mercs AR, and your Bears AR.

 

[Aduro86]

Now were getting somewhere thanks lextalionis :worship:

 

[lextalionis]

Stone is appealing for the molten bolder charges, but that means you can't put points into Armeggedon, Fissure, or Volcano. A DOOM weapon might make for a very good weapon if you are trying to use Hurricane as your elemental skill, since DOOM will boost your cold damage significantly. When you do cast Volcano you can make the damage really worth something by putting some hard points in Firestorm if you have them to spare. But you can have some significant boost from STONE Armor's charges of Molten Boulder, also don't forget you'll get a decent Defense boost, which might even make a Defiance Merc worth something.

If you did go this route you'd want your skills to be more like:

20 Twister
20 Tornado
20 Hurricane
20 HoW -- Is the bonus here really that good? In the Assassin Forum we have the same thoughts about Claw Mastery. It neither adds a lot of damage or a lot of attack rating, Druids don't get a chance to get Critical Strikes, but HoW will help minions and party members.
20 Firestorm might be better. You'd have Molten Boulder, and possibly even decent Firestorm damage for Physical Immune/Cold Immunes.

I think DOOM would probably get your Cold Damage to pretty decent with Hurricane, which isn't really a huge damage spell in my opinion. It sounds sacreligious (since its not a pelt), but you also might want a Nightwing's Veil or the +2 Skills +Cold Damage Helm as well. I'm not sure how they compute that cold damage boost, as to whether that's worth it.

Also for this build a Carrion Wind Ring might be fun. No, not for the Rabies damage, but for the chance to cast Twister. Twister damage never getts too high, but it is more damage, than any other ring can probably provide to your build.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: If you are tight points skimp on the +Time Synergy Skills (Cyclone Armor and Fissure) unless you are actually trying to run Armmeggeddon and Hurricane at the same time (I don't recommend this, since both will be terribly under synergized, and while the timer skills do add time they dont' add actual damage) and it will be easy to break from melee to recast one of them if you aren't trying to keep them both active, I do it all the time on my Wind Rabies Build.

 

[psuedoenviro]

So many possibilities. Just remember you are going to be unshifted melee and that druids only get 2 life per 1 pt in vitality. They options for fixing this problem are Oak Sage and/or a large party. Oak means no HoW. I am leaning toward the option of getting HoW and a large party. I figure with a might merc, bear, ravens, HoW, and a golem from the Stone armor my party will limit the number of baddies pounding on me. I'm thinking that I may give my merc some slow gear so that I have slow from hurricane plus 2 of my companions and maybe even myself. One of my big concerns is actually hitting things in hell. Hopefully HoW and enchant will be enough.

CA may be worth a 10 point investment. A 30 second hurricane and not having to worry too much about resist gear much better than a few hundred more damage and a 10 second duration. You have to worry about maintaining a balance between caster gear and melee gear, forgetting about resists will make your life much easier. Forget about the fissure synergy to make up for the CA.

 

[Uzziah]

I agree with this completely. First, getting this club from a vendor means a 'blue'. The odds of getting +3 ele, 7 Fissure and ELITE club are approximately 0.000000000001. If you try to melee Hell with a normal club, you'll be disappointed.

Gambling for this club is a little better, cuz it's a cheap gamble, and a rare could be upped...but the odds of getting +3 elemental, +7 Fissure and a rare are still extremely low.

One option I've played with is the Hit Power crafting recipe. Works on clubs, so take a blue Truncheon, a Tir, PSaph and a junk jewel and try your luck. Your odds are 100x better, which makes it 0.0000000001 :uhhuh:

The chance to get those 2 affixes together is ~1/300,000 well its 278,xxx but close enough. you don't have to worry about it being elite its not for attacking just for the +skills and the charge bug synergy. Oh and by the way its not a cheap gamble clubs able to spawn with those mods (especially the +elemental tree, are going to cost about 14,000+ believe me trying to get fissure charges is hard enough I have only found 3 weapons with fissure charges 2 staves fissure slvl 1, and 1 club slvl 3. My hexfire adds more than the fissure slvl 3 to firestorm.

As for being a weak windy well its only weak because you lose your +skills on your armor. 2 skill points for a 1000+ point additional skill is not that big of a waste. In fact versatility will allow you to be a better PvP or PvM. In my case this was a PvM build and it will only use elemental skills no others. For that goal this build is plenty strong.

Oh and crafting only allows for +2 skill tree so your cutting your max +elements. Also you are looking for skills here not melee attacks I did not mention melee anywhere in my build that is because at clvl 6 onwards I never used melee I didn't have to. 4 mana for a 1000 damage skill is cheap thats why firestorm is so nice.

I looked into using earthshifter, 3 things hit me:
1) str requirement way too high even with a hel rune socketed your near 200 my build only uses about 100, whatever is required for the stone armor.

2) volcano does not synergize with firestorm which is your secondary fire skill and is very effective if your in melee range. You will use this as much as tornado for most of the game.

3) +7 skills with slvl 16 volcano boosts damage for hurricane and armageddon significantly, but you lose a shield so you get hit alot more, and you lose your duration on armageddon so your casting it more. more mana usage, less run time, more waiting between castings = harder build even though the damage would be higher.


Oh and I have more trouble finding +3 elemental clubs than clubs of fissure. I shop at clvl 75 right now so I should be able to get +3 skill trees but they are still rare on clubs since it shares with the barb +skill trees.

I don't have the +3 elemental club of fissure yet but I will keep looking.