Patriarch doctorclaw the Fire Claw-mageddon Werebear

[little birdy]

Hello and welcome to another rambling character write-up from yours truly. Today's topic is a Werebear that I just finished questing.



I'd been kicking around the idea of a Fire Claws Druid for a while. The main obstacle was that I'm not a massive fan of the Druid. So it took me forever to get around to this guy. But I'm glad I did, because I had a lot of fun with this character.

What I envisioned was basically a big, dumb bear that could kill any monster with one swat of his big ol' paw. And I think that is more or less what I achieved!

The original plan was to use an Earth Shifter as the end-game weapon, but that seemed like a lot of points in Strength... I actually thought about a lot of different weapons for this character, too many different ideas, before what should have been the obvious choice occurred to me: 'Obedience'. -25% enemy fire res., ctc Enchant, solid ED and FHR boosts, Crushing Blow, resistances, defense. Wowee zowee! I felt kinda dumb for considering nearly every other weapon in the game before this

I started Normal with a bit of crummy twinking gear and I was off to the races. At level 31 I equipped a Ribcracker and that really supercharged my character. I flew through NM. Normal/NM were /p8 all the way.

This build becomes very strong in NM. Fire Claws is a powerhouse skill on its own, and then Armageddon starts to get very strong as you pump more points into synergies. Killing stuff is effortless.

After defeating NM Baal, I spent a hot minute in NM Terror Zones to get to level 76 to equip Aldur's Deception. Having achieved my final form, I set off for Hell.

In Hell, there really isn't much of a drop-off in speed with the Sunder GC equipped. Killing sundered Fire Immunes takes more hits, but it's not slow by any means with the fire pierce from 'Obedience'. I played at /p3 until about Travincal, and then dropped to /p1 the rest of the way.

This character was considerably more fun than I expected him to be! The AOE damage from Armageddon is very helpful since Fire Claws is a single-target skill. Both are very strong. This character plays fast even without summons or a strong mercenary. And mixing in Maul is great too. There's a rhythm to playing this character that feels very satisfying when you get a good feel for it. Cast Armageddon, build up Maul, get to work with Fire Claws, re-cast Armageddon just as it's running out of time, back to Fire Claws, mix in a Maul every so often, etc.

Interesting finds along the way: Pul rune and Pally Combat skiller while levelling in NM TZs; Druid Summon skiller; +33 all res. Vipermagi.

STATS
Level 84 Druid
Strength: 105 (177 w/ gear)
Dexterity: 120 (205)
Vitality: 265 (302)
Energy: 20 (62)
Life: 884 (2140 as Werebear)
Mana: 310
Fire/Cold/Lightning/Poison res.: 51/35/75/24

SKILLS
Firestorm: 20 (29 w/ gear)
Molten Boulder: 20 (29)
Fissure: 1 (10)
Volcano: 8 (17)
Armageddon: 20 (29)
Werewolf, Lycanthropy, Feral Rage, Werebear, Maul: 1 (13)
Fire Claws: 20 (32)
[nothing in the Summoning tree]

GEAR
'Obedience' Thresher
[no weapon on switch]
Jalal's Mane
Aldur's Deception (for the tasty 150% AR 2pc set bonus with Aldur's boots)
Laying of Hands
String of Ears
Aldur's Advance
Mara's (+27 all res.)
Raven Frost, rare ring with mana steal
17/14 Druid Torch
Flame Rift Sundering GC
2x Shape Shifting skillers
1x Elemental skiller


Since I was so happy with the Iron Wolf (Fire) mercenary I used with my recent Holy Fire Zealot, I decided to go with another Iron Wolf, but this time the Cold skill variant. I gave him some pretty good gear and he repaid me by being an all around awesome dude. Hardly ever died, and he was legit pretty helpful. I am developing a strong appreciation for Iron Wolves. Next character I play is going to run with a Lightning Iron Wolf.

MERCENARY
Geshef, level 84 Iron Wolf (Cold)
'Spirit' Broad Sword
Visceratuant
Skin of the Vipermagi
Eth. Nightwing's Veil
lvl 28 Glacial Spike, lvl 34 Chilling Armor, lvl 33 Ice Blast


Thanks for reading I hope you found it interesting.

 

[TheNix]

Nice Pat. Did you ever use Molten Boulder or was it for the synergy?

 

[little birdy]

Nice Pat. Did you ever use Molten Boulder or was it for the synergy?

Thanks! I only put points into Firestorm and Molten Boulder to synergize Fire Claws and Armageddon. (And then some extra points into Volcano at the end to further boost Armageddon.) I played as a Bear the whole time and only used Maul, Fire Claws, and Armageddon as my primary skills.

 

[TheNix]

Thanks! I only put points into Firestorm and Molten Boulder to synergize Fire Claws and Armageddon. (And then some extra points into Volcano at the end to further boost Armageddon.) I played as a Bear the whole time and only used Maul, Fire Claws, and Armageddon as my primary skills.

Ah, another grey moment, of course you didn't use MB, you were a bear!

 

[snickersnack]

Nice character! Do you think that Flickering Flame in the right base could be better than Jalal's?

 

[little birdy]

Nice character! Do you think that Flickering Flame in the right base could be better than Jalal's?

Thanks! Yes, I think ‘Flickering Flame’ could potentially be a very nice choice in a good base. Jalal's was something I had readily available though, and it’s a great helm. I actually wanted to use Ravenlore for more -enemy fire res., but Jalal’s ended up being nicer overall for this build IMO. It was a pretty easy choice to stick with Jalal’s.

 

[SirName]

Nice pat! According to one calculator I found you were attacking at 8fps. Does that seem correct?

I’m sure that that other a bit more expensive polearm that also lowers enemy resistances and also has CB would work well too on this character.

 

[little birdy]

I think it was slower than that. ‘Obedience’ doesn’t have IAS and I think weapon IAS is important for wereforms..? I dunno how any of this works The attacks were noticeably faster while levelling with Ribcracker, that’s for sure. But the ‘Obedience’ Thresher attack speed was still comfortable IMO. YMMV.