Skill census/analysis of the SPF Mat/Pat/Guardian build compilation

[maxicek]

I actually used the csv a few weeks ago to check out Druids who have used Carrion Vine (I had to read ahead as you hadn't got that far). It was very useful to help find peoples thoughts on specific skills.

This is really interesting work, a couple of thoughts (to everyone, not just @Swamigoon )
- Would be amazing if we can compile all the sheets into one Excel workbook and hyperlink to the posts.
- Is this going to be sustainable to maintain going forwards?

 

[Pyrotechnician]

@maxicek I mean, I'm not going to say I'm an expert with excel or anything, but I do use it a lot for my work. Would the attached work?

I think we would also include the links to the pat/mat/guard threads as well, but I'm not sure if that's redundant since we have the mat/pat/guard thread already.

 

[Swamigoon]

Thanks, @Pyrotechnician and @maxicek ! Very kind of you, and I'm happy you have found these data useful. I have been noting a few errors in the spreadsheets as I go. I should soon go back and edit some posts in the thread with corrected data.

Leap


Oh, lookie, fourteen bouncy-trouncy-flouncy heroes that put more than one hard point into Leap! No other class can mass knock-back monsters quite like a ponderous hopped-up hopping barbarian. (Only the paladin's Sanctuary aura comes close, and that pulse-aura only works on a minority subset of monsters.)

If you're a fan of beefy haunches, here are those with the sexiest 20-point leaping legs:

• whirlwinders Gripphon's Vegeta, maxicek's Bane, and Pyrohemia's FluffyKitten;
• horkers Cyrax's LeapOffFaith and Tupsi's Rigel, and
• double-swinger friedbananazzzz's Sazabi.

Dec 2022 Update: Leap received distance and speed improvements in the D2R 2.4 patch.

Leap Attack


Some players noted that Leap Attack can be a nice one-point wonder for transportation purposes, because unlike Leap, it gets a very long range right away at skill level one.

Max leap-attackers: patriarchs Ninefingers by maxicek , Dozer by stephan, Lawrence by sirpoopsalot, and guardian Izzor by Maltatai.

Dec 2022 Update: a splendid new Leap Attack/Whirlwind build, Pb_pal's Stg_Meowenstein, "super fun, super powerful, would recommend." -- There are improvements to Leap Attack's speed, damage, and attack rating implemented in D2R patch 2.4. Furthermore, Leap Attack now deals area-of-effect damage to other enemies near the attacked target. Also, if an enemy is in melee range, Leap Attack now actually leaps up and attacks. (In legacy patches this situation results in a normal melee attack.)

Whirlwind


I knew that I would find lots of maxed Whirlwind barbarians in the compilation. It gets very high damage compared to most other combat skills; moreover, each attack can damage multiple enemies (or one enemy multiple times), because of the way it transforms the barbarian himself into an area-of-effect giant piercing missile weapon. It can be challenging to master, though. The whirlwinder doesn't seem quite as invulnerable as we might like him to be during his attacks, and unfortunately we can't force-feed him any poitons while he's spinning. I was surprised to see four players use this skill as a one-point wonder, but when I though about it, it makes sense to have a handy utility for escape when the hero is hemmed in by a surrounding mob.

As you have probably already seen, the SPF Mat/Pat/Guardian Compilation organized most of the maxed-Whirlwind successes in their own big category. It appears to be the most popular skill among those that collected and used the Immortal King set, such as GooberGrape's Halciet, Crazy Runner Guy's Immortal_King, Kitteh's Steve and Worusk, TheRebel22's TheGeneral, and more than a dozen others. Other players produced high damage numbers using runewords, such as allenive's Elder, asdfgah's teh_LiZarD, dutes' Ulfsark, Pucho's Godric, Milb's Lomax, and plenty more. There were some inventive dual-wielders, including Nightfish's Butzull, PandaDudeSP's Whirler, and nermind's Rocky. There were also some interesting one-weapon-and-shield whirlwinders, such as SkaMan's Deckard_Pain and maxicek's Kastagir. Also, check out some players that supplemented WW with other combat skills: TevashSzat by Xdeathfire, CrazyIvan by TheWorkingBoor, and Leichenbombe by D2DC.

Personally, I have not yet succeeded with a whirlwinder, so when I try again I'll be sure to study the whirlwinders here - over ninety of them, not counting the chaos assassins.

Dec 2022 Update: new sword whirlwinder Hastings, by SirName.

[Update: corrections, formatting, new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, builds, D2R patch notes]​

 

[Swamigoon]

Bash and Stun



Bash provides extra attack rating and damage, and knocks most targets back. Points in Bash also provide a damage enhancement synergy to the Stun, Concentrate, and Double Swing skills.

Stun provides extra attack rating, and renders most targets stunned for a time. Points in Stun also synergize Bash's damage.

Just one patriarch focused on these skills: Vang's Volgram. Vang made him as similar to his act 5 mercenary as he could - same skills, same weapons, same gear, same ethics, etc.

[Update: my work on this census project inspired me to build a fully-synergized Stun barbarian earlier this year. It was a fun and worthwhile playthrough.]

Concentrate


A barbarian using the Concentrate skill gets extra attack rating and damage, and also enhanced defense during its attack animation. It's also the only skill that gets a big damage synergy from the most popular barbarian warcry, Battle Orders.

Some Concentrators worth browsing: Thyiad's Corebar, TopHatCat64's Triton and Sledge, Colony's Scooter, Naab's Odnarkinnas, zaphodbrx's Ralf, DeathMaster's Conan, and Bewitch's Mayhem.

Dec 2022 Updates: Pb_pal's Gold is a quirky new Concentrate build in the compilation. -- As of the D2R 2.4 patch, Concentrate is no longer the only skill that gets a damage synergy from Battle Orders (see below).

Berserk


Berserk provides extra attack rating and magic damage, but at the expense of defense for a brief time. Maxed, with maxed synergy skills Howl and Shout, it can convert any melee weapon's damage into very high (well over sevenfold) enhanced magic damage. Berserk is also a popular one-point wonder, because it provides a way to dispatch monsters immune to physical damage. It also provides a magic damage synergy to Concentrate and Frenzy.

You can find plenty of berserkers throughout the compliation, particularly since the Passion runeword makes Berzerk available to all of the other hero classes. Among the barbarians, I found thirty-four that maxed 'Zerk. Here are a few recommended reads: D2DC's recent patriarch Konig, AJK's JackTorrance, PhineasB's Midrian, bcoe's Cepphus_Grylle, kanonfutter's Kroth, RIP's Berzerker, Luhkoh's Tormund, Pyrotechnician's The_Punisher, Miron's Heimdall, Stony's Tearlach, and crawlingdeadman's Crawlingdeadman.

Dec 2022 Updates: new berserkers, patriarch Barabbas by SirName and guardian McGregor by Russel.s. -- The D2R 2.4 patch removed Berserk's Shout synergy, and replaced it with Battle Orders.

[Update: corrections, new histograms, shameless self-promotion]
[Dec 2022 Update: new histograms, buids, D2R notes]​

 

[Swamigoon]

The right and final column in the barbarians' combat skills tree are those that require dual-wielding; they cannot be used while carrying a shield, or with just one weapon.

Double Swing


If there is just one enemy in weapon range, Double Swing attacks the target twice in rapid succession; if there are two enemies in range, each Double Swing quickly attacks each target once. The mana required to use this attack decreases with additional skill levels, with no mana cost at all at skill level nine and beyond, so if a player just wants an enhanced attack that doesn't cost mana to use, they player might consider the skill sufficiently "maxed" with nine points invested, or even fewer if the barbarian equips some +skills gear. Attack rating is enhanced with each skill level, so Double Swing specialists often invest more points for increased chances to hit; however the only ways to increase Double Swing's damage are with stronger weapons, weapon mastery, and synergy points in the Bash. Therefore, some heroes are considered double-swingers, even if they didn't try to max Double Swing. (Um, does "double swinger" carry the wrong connotations? Perhaps I shouldn't call them by those words...)

Most that maxed Double Swing did so for the damage synergy it bestows on Double Throw and/or Frenzy. I found five that fought with DSwing itself: LoudestHeard by TheNix, Gunner by DeathMaster, Dougal by drmalawi, Sazabi by friedbananazzzz, and Freddie by Grape.

Double Throw


In the same pattern as Double Swing, points in Double Throw only boost attack rating, but the only way to enhance its damage is with points in Throwing Mastery and with synergy points in Double Swing. Thus, a character might be a double-thrower even if he didn't try to max Double Throw. An interesting bit of trivia I learned while studying this skill: javelins have a slightly longer range than do thrown daggers and axes.

Some of the double-throwers are linked in the earlier post about the Throwing Mastery skill. Here are others: Troubled_W. by TheReadMenace Trim , Navajas by uglyFred, Gunner by DeathMaster, Madawc by Kitteh , an earlier Madawc by roninDOG, and Alaric by Milb.

Dec 2022 Update: After D2R patch 2.4, Double Throw now has damage boosts in addition to attack rating boosts.

Frenzy


Frenzy adds many features to Double Swing's gameplay mechanic. Each skill level increases attack rating. (For example, it doubles AR at skill level one, almost triples it at skill level 15, or adds 240% to AR at skill level 21.) Of course, a weapon mastery skill can increase attack rating further. Each Frenzy skill level also increases damage with each skill level. (Examples: a 90% bonus at skill level one, raised to a 190% damage bonus at skill level 21.) A weapon mastery skill, as well as synergy skills Double Swing and Taunt, lift the damage bonus even higher. Also, points in Berzerk convert some of Frenzy's damage to magic damage.

But I think the most interesting Frenzy features are its temporary bonuses to attack speed and movement speed. Each successful hit ratchets up both attack and movement rate. According to a formula I found, first strike adds 7% increased attack speed and 47% faster run/walk, and for as many subsequent strikes as Frenzy's skill level, IAS and FRW bonuses ratchet even higher, up to maxima of 50% bonus IAS and 200% bonus FRW. Just hurry and find another enemy to hit, because after six seconds, these bonuses wear off and the barbarian cools down to his normal IAS/FRW.

Frenzy was given its own categories in the compilation, and they're all worth perusing. For this post, I think it appropriate to link to the untwinked frenziers: Milb's Tomili, Pugmh's Dimitrios, SunsetVista's Silumgar, Nibiru's Hrrrrrrrgh, RobbyD's eponymous barbarian, and a very curious tournament guardian named Artie Lang, who was played and leveled independently act-by-act by a dozen different SPFers, culminating in a hell act 5 completion by purplelocust.

Dec 2022 Update: new Frenzy builds in the compilation: Pb_pal's Violet and TheNix's Superluminal. -- The 2.4 D2R patch added an Increased Stamina synergy to Frenzy.

---

Okay, that's all of the barbarian skills. Coming up next will be the Druid's elemental skill tree, starting with the first column's fire skills.

[Edit, 5 Dec 2020: Fixed histogram image display]
[Update, Aug 2021: new histograms, grammar fixes]
[2022 Dec Update: updated histograms, D2R notes]​

 

[Maltatai]

The thread in continuously interesting, especially how several skills have had so few characters using them.

In the last post the pictures don't show, only the name of the picture (in white, no link either).

 

[Swamigoon]

In the last post the pictures don't show, only the name of the picture (in white, no link either).

I'm not sure what happened, but I think it's fixed now. Perhaps the server move this week somehow glitched those pictures at the time I posted?

 

[Swamigoon]

Regarding druid fire spells, almost fifteen years ago, Garbad_the_Weak posted here his Primal Flame tour-de-force build guide. I enjoy very much the chaotic nature of most druid elemental skills; it's one of the reasons that the druid is my favorite hero class. Many players that use these fire elemental skills seldom focus on just one, but instead tend use two or more fire skills together as a package.

Dec 2022 Update: A very influential change in the D2R 2.4 patch affects cooldown casting delays. In legacy patches, skills with a delay timer all shared the same timer. For example, after casting a Volcano spell, a druid could cast no other timered spells (Firestorm, Molten Boulder, Fissure, Hurricane, Armageddon) until after Volcano's four-second timer expired. But now all timered spells have their own separate cooldown timer, so in this example, the druid may cast each of the other spells at least once during the four-seconds after Volcano is cast. Although this change applies to all skills with casting delays, it's probably most noticeable to fire druid players.

Firestorm


Firestorm sends three streams of ground-based fire toward enemies. One of the flame tendrils travels straight, but the other two move chaotically; they meander at an oblique angle from the straight flame, and often cross over the straight stream at least once. All of the druid's fire elemental skills trigger a casting timer, which must time-out before any other timered skill may be used. Skills without casting timers, which can be repeated as frequently as cast rate allows, are often referred to as "spammable" spells. Firestorm's cast timer is just 0.6 seconds (fifteen animation frames), so it's close enough to feel spammable even though it isn't.

Firestorm itself gets a healthy fire-damage synergy bonus from each of the next two fire spells (Molten Boulder and Fissure). One of the five druids that took advantage of a fully synergized Firestorm was BhutJolokia by Colorless Green, who bragged that "non-FI hell ancients went from full health to dead within a couple seconds of firestorm." Two druids, Nightfish's Regret and zaphodbrx's Fervous, seemed less satisfied with only one maxed Firestorm synergy (Fissure).

The other reason to invest in Firestorm is for the fire-damage synergy that it grants in-turn to Molten Boulder, Fissure, Armageddon, and Fire Claws. Here are some of the shapeshifters that chose to max Firestorm as their Fire Claws damage booster: Contagion by Nightfish, Cerebus by winmar, Smokey by JihadJesus, and seven more that used the complete Aldur's Watchtower collection: Foulflame by PhineasB, Wesley by Thirty-Thirty, TheHobo by Arkardo, Danson by Colorless Green, Mizor by Stony, Lycastus by Milb, and Getafix by Cygnus.

Molten Boulder


This exploding bowling ball slowly travels in a predictably straight path, so in that sense, Molten Boulder doesn't behave chaotically like most other elemental spells. However, its cast timer delays successive attacks by 50 frames (two seconds), which ensures that the usual battlefield chaos keeps things challenging and fun. It also seems to be the only fire elemental skill that can reliably damage the swamp monsters in act 3.

It gets two distinct synergy boosts: enhanced fire damage from points in Firestorm, and enhanced physical damage from points in Volcano. A very recent patriarch that used Molten Boulder extensively while maxing just its fire synergy is Pb_pal's Orange. Twelve years earlier, Colorless Green had this to say about BhutJolokia's fully synergized Molten Boulder: "[It] can consistantly take down a single FI with two or three casts, but it's really difficult to hit more than one or two at a time because of how slow it rolls, and the fact that the knockback angle screws up multiple hits if you move after casting it."

Molten Boulder in turn provides physical damage synergy to Volcano and fire damage synergies to Firestorm, Armageddon, and Fire Claws. Among the heroes that chose to max MB as a Fire Claws synergy were Cormallon's werebear Bratulix, Neksja's werewolf Amanu, Sir Lister of Smeg's werebear Aldur, and T72on1's Fireworks, who also reveled in synergized chance-to-cast effects from gear with Doom and Phoenix runewords.

Dec 2022 Update: After the D2R 2.4 patch, a Molten Boulder rolls twice as fast as it used to. Also, its casting delay is shorter, and the physical damage synergies between Molten Boulder and Volcano are stronger. -- Bowler Annihilation by Vang is one of our first D2R Fire Druid guardians. (I don't know the skill point counts on him, but the context suggests he invested heavily in Molten Boulder, Volcano, Armageddon, Summon (spirit or dire) Wolves, and Summon Grizzly.)

Fissure


The delightful chaos in the Fissure skill lies in its seemingly random pattern of "vents" or "cracks" in the ground that appear and disappear under enemies. I think its gameplay mechanic is similar to the sorceress Blizzard skill, which has a seemingly random pattern of ice shards that fall from the sky over an area-of-effect. However, Fissure requires "ground" through which the fire can rise, so unlike Blizzard, it won't work against monsters that aren't over some patch of passable ground, such as act 3's swamp monsters, or flying/floating monsters that are moving across rivers, pits, or other empty spaces.

Fissure gets synergy fire-damage enhancement from Firestorm and Volcano. Some of the builds that specifically maxed all three of these skills include Cormallon's Iruma, Cyrax's ReignOfFire, Doctor Clock's Ragnarokr, buraz's Artemis, and zaphodbrx's Lex Luthor. Two curious fissure casters that also invested heavily in wind skills were Regret by Nightfish and Shib by Stephan. TopHatCat64's Dendron was a unique build that combined fissure with Grizzly and Poison Creeper summoned minions.

Fissure gives a synergy duration bonus to Armageddon, and adds synergy fire-damage to Firestorm, Volcano, and Fire Claws. Several of shapeshifters chose to max Fissure as a Fire Claws synergy. I'll just link to a few: bcoe's Tyto_Alba, PhineasB's Ember, Grape's Mitya, and Nanomist's Ash.

Dec 2022 Update: ffs' Bruce is a new innovative hybrid elemental/shapeshifter druid, who frequently shifted in and out of werewolf form to use Fury against non-PIs and Fissure against non-FIs.

Volcano


Volcano is a reliable damage dealer at the exact point it is cast. Every other frame, for for 150 frames (six seconds), it spews fiery rocks up out of the ground from a single point. Any monster that happens to be over the volcano may suffer physical and fire damage from each of those rocks. Then each rock that spews upward must also come down, and that's where the chaotic aspect of this skill's happens. The rocks fall back down in a seemingly random pattern around the volcano, and occasionally they strike another enemy, causing more physical and fire damage.

Volcano receives a physical damage synergy from points in Molten Boulder, and fire-damage synergy from points in Fissure and Armageddon. A few Volcano casters that maxed one or more of these synergies are: Predator by Pyrotechnician, Beast by Corax, Septimus by PhineasB, Rusull by AlterEgo, ricrestoni's Meltdown, Tanis by scwormy, and Trim's Fallen_Eremite. Also, be sure to look at Pb_pal's summary of the long epic journey of Klaus, who maxed every fire elemental skill.

Volcano bestows a physical damage synergy to Molten Boulder, and fire-damage synergy to Fissure, Armageddon, and Fire Claws. Some shapeshifters that chose to max Volcano as a Fire Claws synergy: ViralInfection by Cyrax, Naturallog's Jeor, Fiesta by Liquid_Evil, Lucas by Low Key, Beethoven by maxgerin, Calorique, Jeltz and ImmolateKing by purplelocust, DrJekill_MrHide by Vorbiss, and Grisu's Oberon.

Armageddon


I think this is the most chaotic of all of the elemental fire skills. Armageddon's fire bombs randomly appear somewhere around the druid, and then take a few moments to fall to the ground. During those moments, he may choose to stay, fight, and observe some bombs explode on nearby enemies. He may instead choose to run, and lure enemies to chase him into the field of falling fire bombs.

I was surprised to learn that Armageddon's bombs deliver both physical and fire damage. Three of its synergies (Firestorm, Molten Boulder, and Volcano) only boost its fire damage. The other synergy skill (Fissure) increases the amount of time the bombs continue to rain down.

Armageddon is the only fire skill that does not grant a synergy fire-damage bonus to Fire Claws. However, since it's the only elemental skill that can be cast while shifted into werewolf or werebear form (or under the Delirium runeword's strange bone-fetish curse), it's no surprise that all of our patriarchs and guardians that maxed 'Geddon were shapeshifters. A few are: Syrtis_Major by TopHatCat64, Vanya by Grape, Yunno by NagisaFurukawa, Death by Brak, and Cleglaw by D2DC. There were still more that equipped an Earthshifter unique thunder maul weapon to use with Armageddon: Vlooienbaal by Arkardo, Allanon by Mordalles, Solid_Good by VoX Dei, Alcohol by Neksja, and Wolfredd by dryzalizer. Also noteworthy is Farnham by Vang, who only put fifteen skill points in Armageddon, but chose to max its Volcano and Firestorm synergies.

Dec 2022 Update: Shortly after completing Bruce, ffs built ZodDruid, a more traditional shapeshifter/elemental hybrid that focused on Armageddon and Fury. -- With the D2R 2.4 patch, Armageddon drops more bombs per second. Each bomb causes more physical damage and causes splash damage in a larger area-of-effect. Its Volcano synergy now boosts physical instead of fire damage, and the Hurricane skill is no longer a prerequisite.

[11 Dec 2020: edited to fix a link]
[Update, Aug 2021: new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, D2R notes]​

 

[Swamigoon]

The other five elemental skills are air/wind related. They are organized into two columns, "offensive" and "defensive" wind spells. They have a straight prerequisite chain as rigid as the fire element spells, so I think I will exhibit them in that order, starting with the right column's "defensive" skills.

Arctic Blast


A cold skill variant of the sorceress' Inferno spell, Arctic Blast chills and inflicts a bit of cold damage every other animation frame to each enemy caught in its stream. Higher skill levels increase its range and chill duration, but unfortunately do not improve its damage rate as much as I would have liked. Thus, it appears to be more effective when it is used as a defensive monster chiller rather than an offensive monster killer.

Arctic Blast does not grant any synergy bonus to any other skill. However, it does get cold damage bonuses of its own from Cyclone Armor and Hurricane. Over eight years ago, two SPFers defeated Hell Baal with a fully synergized Arctic Blast spell. An experiment by scrcw with Doomed was summed up like this: "First things first: You can kill things with Arctic Blast. "

Shortly thereafter, we got another fully synergized arctic blaster, a guardian named Seffel from a random tournament challenge inflicted on Grisu . Happily, you can still see several action screenshots of Seffel's Arctic Blasts, if you click on the Photobucket links in his report. Grisu slowly and carefully depleted monsters' hit points using an "open wounds" weapon in addition to Arctic Blast. Here's a favorite Grisu quote: "I had to draw away Bartuc the Bloody, too, because he instantly killed my merc on spawning. He only took 5 hits or so to finish him, and AB actually did some noticeable damage to him "

A few years later, I was honored to contribute the third maxed Arctic Blast toon in the compilation, my own beloved Zasz.

Dec 2022 Update: In the D2R 2.4 patch, Arctic Blast does a lot more damage by itself, but no longer enjoys Hurricane's cold damage synergy. It also now provides a stun-duration synergy to Twister.

Cyclone Armor


Cyclone Armor absorbs cold, fire, or lightning damage. If you don't have any "cannot be frozen" gear equipped, cold attacks will still chill your druid, but CA will prevent (or at least reduce) the damage from that cold. At skill level one, it costs five mana to cast, after which the armor absorbs 40 hit points of elemental damage. Each higher skill level increases its mana cost by one and its damage reduction by twelve, so a level 20 CA costs 24 mana and absorbs 268 damage points. For every point in three synergy skills (Twister, Tornado, and Hurricane), the amount of damage it will absorb increases by seven percent. With all three synergies maxed, that's a 420% boost, so casting a fully synergized level 20 CA is almost like getting 1393 more life in an instant! (Unless his enemies cause physical, magic, or poison damage, of course. Those ignore CA and deplete his life bulb straight away...)

Noted above, Cyclone Armor provides a cold damage synergy to Arctic Blast. It also provides a damage synergy to Tornado and a duration synergy to Hurricane, and almost every character that maxed CA also maxed one or both of those two skills. I found three exceptions:

• Henry by sirpoopsalot was a summoner with maxed CA, but only a dozen or so points in a synergy. Regardless, Henry found that even this relatively weak damage absorber was useful, "especially in the WSK."
• The fury werewolf Aether by TopHatCat64 maxed Cyclone Armor to synergize chance-to-cast Tornado procs from his Stormlash weapon. Due to synergies, he observed: "From what I could tell, the tornados were taking off pretty big chunks of damage, usually around a quarter or a third of regular monster life on p1."
• Hunter by PhineasB invested heavily in summoned pets, and "maxed cyclone armor and ended up putting points into Hurricane for some extra damage when running around, largely because there wasn’t anything better to spend them on."

Dezrok also had nice things to write about this skill in the report for his tournament wind-druid guardian Naruma: "A first time for me to use Cyclone Armor. I'd always thought of it as a buff type skill, the sort you cast and forget about until the timer is up. However, I had it mapped to my prime skill key and cast it every time Naruma looked like taking elemental damage. Maxed Cyclone Armor with plenty of synergies also protects from lots of elemental damage ... over 1000 points. As a result, Naruma took almost no elemental damage for the entire game. Super nice in HC!"

Dec 2022 Update: When snickersnack's new hunter/summoner Dedekind achieved patriarch, he was just two levels shy of being able to max Cyclone Armor. -- After D2R patch 2.4, shapeshifted druids can now cast Cyclone Armor without needing to un-shift first.

Coming soon: the "offensive" wind skills.

[Update: new histograms]
[Update: new histograms, build, D2R notes]​

 

[Swamigoon]

Twister


Just like most druid elemental skills, Twister also behaves chaotically! The little whirlwind missiles zig and zag unpredictably as they approach the druid's enemies.

I'd like to indulge in some dry number-crunchy comparative analysis of this skill. Twister gets improved damage from skill levels, and a 10% synergy damage enhancement from each point in Tornado and Hurricane. Maxed but unsynergized, Twister delivers 68-72 physical damage. This amount seems on par with the two assassin spells that cause direct physical damage per cast:

• Level 20 Twister inflicts more damage than a level 20 Psychic Hammer (56-79 total damage, about half of it physical).
• Without synergy investment, Level 20 Twister's damage is a bit lower than that of a level 20 Mind Blast (96-106 damage).

If maxed and fully synergized, Twister causes a few hundred damage per cast. (Example: at skill level 20, a fully synergized Twister gives 665-710 damage.) Let's compare that synergized damage with the other spells that cause physical damage per cast:

• Level 20 Twister does much more damage than a werebear druid's level 20 Shock Wave (198-218 damage, fully synergized).
• Level 20 Twister does slightly more damage than a barbarian's level 20 War Cry with two maxed synergies (510-544), and it does slightly less damage than a fully synergized level 20 War Cry (690-736).
• But level 20 Twister's damage is small when compared to a level 20 Tornado with two maxed synergies (1255-1357), and very small compared to a fully synergized level 20 Tornado (1747-1888).

Measuring its damage potential, we see why a wind druid would focus on Tornado rather than Twister as his main offensive spell. So let's next examine three features that make twister distinctive from Tornado and other spells:

• It's a "multiple shot" attack, like a necromancer's Teeth spell, except that unlike Teeth, they're always limited to just three whirlwind missiles.
• It's a "piercing" attack, in that each whirlwind missile continues to advance and affect other monsters in its path.
• When a missile collides, its stun effect immobilizes the enemy for ten animation frames (0.4 seconds).

None of these distinctive features are improved in any way with additional skill levels. They are as equally operative on a one-point wonder Twister as on a maxed or synergized Twister. So as you might expect, for most wind druids in the compilation, Twister is either a one-point wonder or a synergy, but not a widely used attack spell. They prefer to attack with Tornado and Hurricane instead.

Regardless, I still found a druid that used and admired Twister situationally. In the report for Brenvol, Low Key wrote: "Twister was a rather suprising engame skill I ended up using over Tornado during the last two acts of Hell. It hit more accurately than Tornado and carried stun with it. Lifesaver vs. Balrogs, Frenzytaur and other big nasties."

Also noteworthy are shapeshifters that pumped Twister's synergies in order to enhance chance-to-cast Twister procs, such as Twisted by friedbananazzzz and Jimi by Grape, and others that pumped Twister itself to synergize chance-to-cast Tornado procs, such as Neksja's swind and VoX Dei's Howling-wind.

I may have overlooked a higher one, but the highest level Twister I found in the compilation was Friedrich by maxgerin. He wore enough +skills gear and carried enough Natural grand charms, that he could cast a fully synergized level 36 Twister! Maxgerin even speculated about whether it would have been worthwhile to get even more +skills gear, with questions such as: "Is it better to drop the Tgod's for a Mesh?"

Dec 2022 Update: After the D2R 2.4 patch, Twister's physical damage was increased.

Tornado


Tornado is the staple skill for almost all wind druids. It is "spammable" (has no casting timer), and inflicts the highest physical damage of any casted spell in the game. And it's chaotic! Similar to Twister, Tornado has a bigger and wider funnel cloud which zigs and zags unpredictably away from the caster. The surest way to aim the spell is to cast it at point-blank (melee) range, before it has a chance to meander away from its intended target.

Here's how Colorless Green learned to be effective with Tornado's chaotic missile, on guardian Katrina: "Tornado aiming is a bit annoying, but I've done a few different hard-to-aim skills in the last few months, so I didn't find it to be too much of a problem. My favorite tactic against groups was, rather than trying to find a good tornado path to hit a bunch of enemies, to just shift click and then slowly move the mouse across the back of them. Plenty of the [tornadoes] I released this way only hit one monster (or sometimes none in the weird times where tornado decides to go about 120 degrees away from where I was aiming), but the general effect was a cone of pwn over the group, resulting in pretty quick pwnage. For single monsters, the easiest was usually to just run right up on top of them and namelock and not worry about the tornado path."

Some druids used gear with Teleport to get to point-blank range with an enemy, then spew 'Nados at 'em. Liquid_Evil's Ghost_Factory did this, and also brought along a maxed pet grizzly, so that he also dropped an attacking meatshield at point-blank range. Telestorm by scrcw did the same with a one-point-wonder grizzly, and Manígulat by Baltha did the same without any summons.

Some other nice windy write-ups: JoeBruce's WalksWithStorms and purplelocust's Sanguine (both are meaty and detailed progress walk-throughs), Kitteh's Gwynt (this guardian write-up included some entertaining screenshots), arrethyn's Gwaihir, and D2DC's Civerb, Tropell, and Gant-Entan, who used Berzerk as his PI solution.

Hurricane


Hurricane is the "other" staple skill for almost all wind druids. I found a great summary of the skill in the report for patriarch Manilow by nubikoen: "A few words about what a wind druid is. Windys are casters through and through. A caster dealing 2 types damage - Physical (Tornado and Twister) and Cold (Hurricane). Hurricane is an AoE skill centered around the character. Very [useful] for slowing monsters when they get close. It deals cold damage once a second to everything non cold immune in its radius. It's got a duration of 50 seconds (when fully synergized by Cyclone Armor. CA adds duration to Hurricane, its other synergies add [cold] damage)."

Several other nice reports included thoughts about their 'canes. PhineasB's Morgan enjoyed Hurricane among the wind skills. Luhkoh's Zacharus did not. Lupin by Maxgerin used the full Aldur's Watchtower set with maxed Hurricane and Tornado, along with some significant investments in summoned pets. Patior by maareek was an 0skill berzerker who kept a Hurricane blowing about while he swung his beatstick. And there were even some Hurricane shapeshifters. One was guardian Arcturus by VoX Dei, a "polar bear," usually shifted into werebear form, but unshifted and used wind skills in certain situations. Another was patriarch Drugs by Doctor Clock, who frequently unshifted, cast Hurricane, and re-shifted, in order to try to keep his Hurricane up and blowing as much as possible while fighting in werewolf form. I smiled at Doctor Clock's comment: "My favorite part about him, though, was Hurricane. It is very soothing to listen to. Sometimes I would just stop fighting and listen to it for a while. Reminded me of the waiting room in the doctor's office I used to go to when I was little. There was a dragon painted on the wall and lots of toys." Contrast that with Jason Maher, who said of Wetherill: "The biggest drawback to the build is honestly the noise of Hurricane. It does get on your nerves after a while."

Dec 2022 Update: new wind druids in the compilation: Miroku (1.10, 2005) lately recovered by Serdash, and TheNix's curious wind/werebear hybrid BearlyThere, who shifted in and out of werebear form to melee and cast Hurricane and other wind spells. -- The D2R 2.4 patch now allows casting Hurricane while shifted, without having to first un-shift.

---
Okay, that's all of the druid's elemental skills. Coming up: a post about the first column in the shapeshifting tree, the skills unique to werewolves.

[2022 Dec Update: D2R info, new histograms]​

 

[Swamigoon]

But first, here's a cheeky dubstep tribute to all of you awesome elemental druid players out there.

Spoiler: Liquid Stranger - Play

It has lyrics for the fire casters: "The fire burnin'! The fire burnin' burnin' burnin'! The fire burnin! The bad man runnin' runnin'!"

Also, for the windy casters: "I never knew you could dub so slow. I never knew you could make me flow. How to survive, I just can't let go. You've got me wrapped up in your tor-nad-o!"

 

[zemaj]

Excellent work and a really cool project! Been keeping up with new posts, but decided to do an entire re-read in an attempt to battle insomnia last night and noticed a slight inconsistency:

<snip>
No other class can mass knock-back monsters quite like a ponderous hopped-up hopping barbarian. (Only the paladin's Sanctuary aura comes close, and that pulse-aura only works on a minority subset of monsters.)
<snip>

<snip>
Dragon Tail and Mind Blast are the two assassin skills that inherently knock back many enemies at once. Other classes have attacks that can knock back a single target, but to my observation, no other class has a skill that instantly knocks back a group of monsters.
<snip>

(Those are backwards, obviously... editing multi-quotes is weird on a phone...)

Not really a problem of any magnitude, but thought it worth a mention...

Anyway, love the thread and keep them coming! If nothing else, which I doubt will ever be an issue, it did a wonderful job of keeping me occupied enough I don't feel so groggy this morning, despite only getting ~5h sleep last night.

EDIT: tried to fix formatting... unsuccessfully.

 

[Swamigoon]

Good catch, @zemaj . You're right, I hadn't even thought about leap or sanctuary when I was writing about the assassin skills. I predict it won't be the last time corrections will be warranted in this little thread. I hope you get the sleep you want.

Regarding werewolves: there's a guide by Electric Blue hosted here at PureDiablo. It was written for 1.10, but still appears pretty relevant.

Dec 2022 Update: The D2R 2.4 patch applied various minor but impactful improvements to Werewolf, Rabies, and Fury.

Werewolf


This skill lets the druid transform temporarily (40 seconds) into a werewolf. While so transformed, the werewolf gets 25% more life and stamina, and his carried weapon is also converted into a "claw swipe" melee attack. (Even missile weapons are converted to melee claw swipes. Certain weapon attributes or magical modifiers on bows and crossbows can produce to some curious melee effects.)

The Lycanthropy skill increases both life and transformation duration. Lycanthropy is more of a "mastery" than most other synergies, because its total level after +skills determines the bonuses it grants to Werewolf, and not just "hard" invested Lycanthropy points.

As a one-point wonder, Werewolf also grants 50% bonus to his attack rating, and also adds 20 increased attack speed. [Update: Maltatai clarified that attack speed in werewolf form is actually slower than in default human form; the 20% IAS at skill level one merely compensates for this, bringing attack speed back up to unshifted speed.] Higher skill levels improve these; for example, at skill level 20, a werewolf gets 68 more IAS and +335% AR. That's just for normal attack. Every other werewolf attack skill in the shapeshifting tree (Feral Rage, Rabies, Fire Claws, Hunger, and Fury) also has its own attack rating bonus, so the Werewolf skill is an indirect "synergy" that boosts those skills' attack ratings even further. For example, look at Aconite's write-up for Malfurion. He maxed Werewolf, along with Feral Rage and Fury, and gained a whopping 9235 AR for his Feral Rage attacks and 8744 AR for Fury.

I found 29 patriarchs and guardians that maxed Werewolf. High attack rating and attack speed were key ingredients making it possible for maareek's BurritoOfFury to go from level 1 to patriarch in less than 24 hours of intense gameplay. Maxed "Ww" also helped four hardcore werewolves achieve guardian: Michael by DeathMaster, Beowolf by Kstil3227 , Reuben by Kitteh , and Drystan's maxed-vitality werewolf Fenris.

Feral Rage


Feral Rage is the werewolf's "charge-up" skill, comparable to a barbarian's Frenzy. It grants a minor attack rating bonus (20% at skill level 1, 210% at skill level 20), and each successful hit grants two additional "charge-up" bonuses temporarily (up to 20 seconds) to successive attacks. One of those bonuses grants life stolen per hit, starting with 4% for the first successful hit "charge-up." At skill level 1, its "life leach" climbs to 12% LL per hit after two more successful charge-ups, and at skill level 20, up to twelve more charge-ups can bring it up to 52% LL. The other bonus is faster run/walk speed: 31 FRW at skill level 1 at the first charge-up, or up to 55 FRW at skill level 20 after all thirteen charge-ups. Gear that provides +skills can boost these charged-up effects even higher. During the twenty second duration, the charge-up effects also apply to other werewolf attacks (Rabies, Fire Claws, Hunger, Fury, or normal attack).

Here are some remarks other SPFers made about their maxed Feral Rage druids:

• jonnyphive's Cameron: "I really enjoyed having both Feral Rage and Fury maxed – it was much less redundant than I thought it would be. The general strategy was to use Fury to do most of the damage, switching to Feral Rage periodically to keep it charged. Feral Rage was also fantastic for sniping specific enemies within packs, whereas Fury just causes you to take turns swiping at everything in range. That was especially useful for taking down dangerous aura-enchanted uniques quickly."
• Colorless Green's Lon: "This char was a blast to play, but I'm a sucker for anything that moves fast."
• friedbananazzzz's Angry Slayer: "I love a skill that grants a speed bonus."
• IronCrown's Umankwa: "Made for a great secondary attack especially against mana burn monsters."

Rabies


This is a unique skill that recruits enemies to damage each other, but without converting any of them! For the initial Rabies attack, the werewolf gets an attack rating bonus (+50% at skill level 1, +183% at skill level 20). A successful attack infects the target, causing poison damage (18-43 over 4 seconds at skill level 1, 924-996 over 11.6 seconds at skill level 20). Any enemies near an infected target will also become infected, and infections will continue to spread throughout the initial target's poison duration. One synergy, the Poison Creeper skill, adds 18% poison damage per invested skill point. Maxing the synergy adds 360% poison damage. I reviewed a rabies werewolf I played a few years ago, who sports a fully synergized level 29 Rabies skill. His lying-character-screen lists about eleven thousand poison damage over fifteen seconds! Of course, poison immune monsters don't suffer that poison damage. However, even a poison immune foe can still get infected, and such a "symptom-free carrier" will still in-turn infect other nearby enemies for the poison's duration. I have seen non-poison-immune enemies fall dead a few seconds after they strayed too close to a poison-immune disease carrier, without ever getting hit even once my my werewolf or a minion.

Two werewolves in the collection, Bremen and Iscandel, both by Miron , spent sixty points to max Rabies, its direct synergy Poison Creeper, and its indirect synergy Werewolf. Most of the rest of the Rabies builds were content to max Poison Creeper, but leave Werewolf at one point. Most of these combined Rabies attacks with either Fire Claws or Fury (typical examples of these are Nightfish's guardians Contagion and Wolf, respectively), but a few used Rabies alongside summoned pets, such as OldSoldier's untwinked guardian Deerslayer and SunsetVista's untwinked patriarch Garruk. MukTuk's Paws had fun exploring a "sick puppy" build, in which "Hit Causes Monster to Flee" gear is employed to try to make infections spread as far as possible.

A notable Rabies build that did not fully synergize poison damage was Swiller's Mbwun. He proceeded with equal investments in Poison Creeper and Heart of Wolverine summons, with sixteen points in each by the time he achieved patriarch. I liked Swiller's assessment of Rabies: "Not only did it provide a safe way to wear down a pack's health, but I was also able to clear half a screen's worth of monsters within seconds. The Far Oasis was especially epic. An absolute TON of the physical immune locusts would spawn. I would switch to Rabies, infect one of them, then retreat away. Take a sip of my beer, then return. YAY! No more locusts."

Dec 2022 Update: a recent Rabies/Fury druid named LupusVelox amused me, but failed to amuse its builder, TheNix.

Fury


This is the most popular attack skill among our SPF werewolves. Fury rapidly attacks multiple targets. If only one target is within weapon range, then that target gets attacked multiple times. At a given skill level, Fury has the exact same AR bonuses as Rabies; moreover, its damage bonuses and multiple attacks really make this top-tier skill shine. Double damage and two attacks at skill level one. Each additional skill level adds 17% damage and another attack, up to skill level four: +151% damage and Fury's maximum of five rapid attacks. At skill level twenty, one Fury attack deals 423% extra damage on each of five rapid potential hits.

There are dozens of very interesting write-ups around this skill. I'm just going to link a "top ten" list here. A Fury druid was Pugmh's very first patriarch, Minechar. LprMan's Lachdanan cautioned: "Anything with stun attack is really dangerous. Almost every time I was in great danger there [were] monsters with stun attack hitting me." There was a different warning from SunsetVista's Lafferty: "The greatest challenges were physcial immunes and anything with mana burn." But there were also celebrations. DingleBarry by sirpoopsalot exulted: "Bosses drop very, very fast," and MukTuk's patriarch Talbain boasted: "I never once died," which I believe would encourage any player trying a hardcore Fury druid. Also good reads: a roleplaying backstory for bassen's Odin Firehand; some 100% Deadly Strike equipment collections for Liquid_Evil's Trifecta and AJK's DeadlyDoormat; an embedded gameplay video of PhineasB's Reaver, and a recommendation by purplelocusts's Skoll for gear with Chance to Cast Frost Nova, which helps when you jump in and get surrounded. Finally, there's an interesting use of Fury as a secondary skill in Neksja's Amanu, who preferred Fire Claws but fell back on Fury against fire immunes.

Sigh, my top ten turned into a top eleven, and there are still so many good reports unlisted here. I encourage you to look for other Fury builds that I didn't link here. You will find a wide variety of nifty gear setups to browse and admire.

Dec 2022 Update: one of our recent new Fury druids is Danikel by snickersnack.

---

Those are the four skills which are exclusive to werewolves. Next up: the middle column of the shapeshifting tree, featuring skills usable by either werewolves or werebears. Then after that the right column, which has the werebear exclusives. (But my next updates might be delayed a bit longer, as I have a work project due in January that I expect will take up my spare time until then.)

[Update: new histograms, corrections]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, D2R info]​

 

[Maltatai]

One thing perhaps worth mentioning with werewolf is that the druid attacks slower by default in werewolf form than in human form. The IAS from the skill is IAS compared to werewolf form with no speed increase (which can not appear in practise since the skill has some IAS from its first skill point). The skill is a one point wonder for attack rating and life but it will not be 20% faster than normal attacks in human form. You will need some investment in the skill to offset the inherent slowness of the claw swipe.

 

[Swamigoon]

Lycanthropy


Lycanthropy works like a passive defensive mastery skill. A shapeshifted druid without this skill returns to human form after forty seconds. At skill level one, Lycanthropy boosts wereform hit points by another 20%, and lets the druid stay shifted for 80 seconds. Lycanthtropy level 20 adds an additional 115% to hit points, and makes a wereform last eight full minutes.

Remember that a druid gets a paltry two hit points for each stat point invested in vitality. Maxed Lycanthropy's life bonus magnifies that into more than four hit points per vitality point while in wereform! The only minor drawback I have noticed regarding this skill relates to healing potions: they heal a fixed amount of hit points, regardless of shapeshifter status. One red flask may fully heal a badly injured druid in human form, but he might have to guzzle two or three such potions to get fully healed while in wereform.

Most werebears and werewolves in the compilation maxed other shapeshifting skills in addition to Lycanthropy. Nevertheless, I did find three that only maxed Lycanthropy:

• Dezrok's guardian werebear Kodi briefly experimented with the Hunger skill, but later settled on a one-point-wonder Maul as his main attack. "Large life and Shockwave - does it get much safer?"
• Jcakes built a shockwave summoner named SpiritWalker, with "loads of life" due to maxed Lycanthropy.
• Reflector by Vang was a very unique and interesting build focusing on thorns-style "attacker takes damage" gear and skills. So of course his maxed Lycanthropy was essential, to be able to take lots of damage and return it back. Vang wrote that Duriel "died faster than I've ever witnessed, literally killed himself in about 10 seconds." But in most areas, it looked like Reflector progressed a lot more slowly.

Fire Claws


Fire Claws gives a werewolf or werebear a healthy boost to attack rating: +50% at skill level one, +335% at skill level twenty. It adds fire elemental damage: 15-20 at level one, 247-260 at level 20, with a +22% synergy boost to fire damage per point in each of the first four fire elemental skills (Firestorm, Molten Boulder, Fissure, Volcano). One SPFer, maxgerin, built a fully maxed and fully synergized fire claws werebear named Beethoven. Although he called it a "solid build," he didn't enjoy it so much.

I noted several Fire Claws patriarchs and guardians previously, in the discussion of the fire elemental synergies. The most common werewolf skills used alongside maxed Fire Claws were Rabies, such as saracen85's Cyrus, and Fury, such as Cygnus' Getafix. For werebears, it was common to see Fire Claws combined with Maul; Purkaat by Milb shared a few negative words about that build.

Dec 2022 Update: new Flaming Mauler build, Fartohld by SirName. -- The D2R 2.4 Patch rebalanced Fire Claws by limiting its synergies to just Fire Storm and Molten Boulder, but at the same time greatly boosting Fire Claws' inherent fire damage.

Hunger


Hunger is a simple but strange attack skill. I'm not completely certain about this, but as far as I can tell, it often plays two attack animations for each actual Hunger attack. Depending on increased attack speed mods on equipment, Hunger appears to me as if it's an eight- or ten-frame-per-attack skill, even though the repeated animations make it look like the shifted druid bites an enemy every four or five frames. It has an attack rating bonus which is a little weaker than that of Fire Claws: +50% at skill level 1, +240% at level 20. When it hits, it delivers 1/4 of the physical damage than a normal attack, and steals life and mana from "leechable" foes: +72% at skill level 1, +176% at skill level 20.

The community adopted the term "Kodiak" for werebear shapeshifters that use Hunger as a main or frequent attack skill. There are three Kodiaks the compilation that maxed Hunger: Gaki by Vulpine, Ronald by RssDiablo, and Famine by Vang. I did not find any werewolves that maxed the Hunger skill, but there was one patriarch that used it extensively with just two skill points in it, and that was shawf's Masticator.

[Update: new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, D2R notes]​

 

[d2lover]

loving this thread,

keep it up

 

[Swamigoon]

Werebear


With this skill, a hero may shift into werebear form for forty seconds. While shifted, life is boosted by 75%. Werebear form also grants bonuses to damage and defense, which improve with each skill level. At skill level one, normal attack damage increases 55% and defense gets 25% better; at skill level 20, these bonuses are +207% damage and +139% defense. Werebear has no prerequisites, but most druid players also put a prerequisite point into Werewolf, so that they can invest in Lycanthropy to augment Werebear's life and duration. Unlike almost every other shapeshifting skill, Werebear doesn't do anything for attack rating, so these heroes often compensate by collecting equipment that boosts AR.

Patriarch JeremiahYoder, the shockwave/summoner by RobbyD, is a worthy exhibit of what twenty hard skill points in Werebear can accomplish. Using a Rogue mercenary to cast Inner Sight was a nice way to handle JeremiahYoder's moderate attack rating. Liquid_Evil's fire-claws fighter Fiesta and Low Key's fire/mauler Lucas are also impressive maxed Werebear patriarchs.

Maul


Werebears get a charge-up skill, too. Each successful hit adds damage and stun length to all subsequent attacks for the following twenty seconds. The first strike charges damage up +20%, and targets are stunned for 42 animation frames. At skill level one, Maul can be charged up twice more, bringing damage up to +60%. At skill level two, Maul can be charged up four times, to get damage up to +80% and stun length up to 49 animation frames. After that, two skill points in Maul are required to get higher charge counts: +100% damage and 55 frame stun at skill level four, +120% damage and 59 frame stun at skill level six, etc. Skill level 20 allows thirteen charge-ups, which would then add +260% damage and 77 frame stuns to the werebear's attacks for the next 20 seconds.

Maul also gives an attack rating bonus, which increases with every skill point (unlike the charge-up limits, which increase at every two skill points). Skill level one adds +20%, and each subsequent skill level adds ten percent; that's +210% at level 20. Each point invested in Maul also provides a synergy boost to the Shockwave spell.

Some maxed Maulers: another guardian named Tank by Krikke, and several patriarchs. Doctor Clock confessed about Hugs: "Wouldn't change anything about this character." "This character really embodies my general feeling about life. If you have a problem, throw a big bear at it. Two if possible." Xdeathfire wrote about UrsaWarrior: "I maxed out Maul, Werebear, and HoW to actually make the physical damage significant." Keep some tissues nearby to wipe away the tears as you read TheNix's report about Unrak, "a heart-warming story of a boy and his bear!" Dos_Osos by poopie_pants had melee fun with a missile weapon: "This character was a hell of a lot of fun to play with a Buriza equipped (one-shotting baddies and watching them shatter into small shards of ice is always fun)... Overall, fun character, certainly worth giving a whirl if you're looking for something a little out of the norm." Antonio liked the voice of Ursus Magnus: "the sound of a bear roar when getting hit by a fast attacking monsters, or when walking in the fire. He gets all angry and furious, gurgling and roaring while slapping monsters around." Colorless Green rendered final judgment about Urcwyn: "Great pindle runner, good pit runner, *boring* quester."

Shock Wave


Okay, we found another skill that was never maxed in the compilation. Shock Wave is the only spellcaster skill in the shapeshifting tree, so it benefits from "faster cast rate" equipment. Although it does a little physical damage (10-20 at skill level one, 99-109 at 20), werebear players cast it more for its stun effect than for its damage (1.6 seconds at skill level one, ten seconds at 15, and the stun length never gets longer than ten seconds at skill levels fifteen or higher). Starting with patch 1.13, Shock Wave gets a damage synergy boost from Maul (+5% per Maul skill point, +100% if Maul is maxed), but I suspect even that build still makes Maul a faster killer, one-foe-at-a-time with just about any weapon, than Shock Wave's area-of-effect damage.

Notable shock-wavers: RssDiablo's Ronald, maxicek's Beowulf, Crawlingdeadman's BartholomewKuma,
Grisu's Oberon, and also a shout-out to Allanon by Mordalles, who (surprisingly to me) made Shock Wave and Armageddon work well together.

[Update: new histograms, formatting fixes]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms]​

 

[Swamigoon]

Dec 2022 Update: Every druid summoning skill was significantly modified in the D2R 2.4 patch.
---

Now that I have arrived at the druid's summoning skills, I should be fully transparent about my editorial biases: the druid is my favorite class, and his summons are my favorite skills.

Also, I have read and re-read this site's Druid Summoner guide by Lothric many times, and recommend it. It was written almost sixteen years ago, but I believe most of its information is still accurate.

With that, here's an exploration of the first column, the aura-bearing ghostly phantoms. Only one of them may be summoned at a time, so a player usually invests in just one of them. I found an exception to that pattern: @Kitteh maxed both Oak Sage and Heart of Wolverine for his guardian Cymru, and "flipped a lot between [them], depending on circumstances." (Interesting unrelated fact: "Cymru" is Welsh for "Wales." As a native English speaker, I was quite surprised when I was taught its proper Welsh pronunciation.)

If you summon any of these three apparitions, and then select the "unsummon" skill and hover your mouse pointer over the spirit, you'll see that it has no immunites in normal difficulty, but is immune to physical and poison in nightmare, and immune to poison (but not immune to physical) in hell difficulty. Each also gets 25% inherent resistance to magic, fire, lightning, and cold damage, in all difficulties.

There are items that let any hero class summon one of these spirits, so you may occasionally find these in non-druid write-ups. A Nature's Peace unique ring and "Heart of the Oak" runeword has Oak Sage charges, the "Passion" and "Oath" runewords have Heart of Wolverine charges, a "Bramble" runeword has Spirit of Barbs charges, and a Wisp Projector unique ring has charges for summoning any one of these three.

Oak Sage


At least 170 druids put a point or more in Oak Sage; there were only thirty or so that didn't. That's not surprising; not only is Oak Sage a prerequisite to the other two spirit summons, it's also a prerequisite to the most popular minion pets, Dire Wolf and Grizzly. A summoned Oak Sage produces an aura that boosts life. Within the aura's range, the druid and his allies and pets get their hit points increased. At skill level one, the range is 20 yards from the Oak Sage, and the bonus is +30% to life. At skill level 20, the range extends to 45 yards, and the life bonus to +125%. The Oak Sage itself also benefits from its own aura. At skill level one, the spirit's base life is about 60 hit points (give or take a few), which the aura increases (by 30%) to about 78 hit points. At skill level 20, its base life is somewhere near 400, boosted (125%) to about 900 hit points. (The only summons which do not get the aura's benefits are ravens, vines, and the temporary "returned" minions that sometimes appear for users of the unique Tomb Reaver pole arm or a "Faith" runeword weapon.)

The diary of Insane Wayne 's Cosmo takes a long time to read. If you haven't read it, you'll feel tickled when you do, but if you're impatient and want to skip to the end, here's Cosmo's after-hell-cows status update. I shall let you figure out for yourself why he decided to maxed Oak Sage.

Several Fury werewolves used Oak Sage as an indirect synergy to maxed Lycanthropy, lifting life to loftier levels. These incude: Fenris by Drystan , Michael by Deathmaster, Lafferty by SunsetVista, DingleBarry by sirpoopsalot, Lachdanan by LprMan , and Cernd by javcek. Another was Jobo by Obdob, who shared: "I really felt like I accomplished something when I pat'd him, more so than with most of my other characters (even other untwinked chars)."

In the write-up for his maxed-Oak-Sage wind druid, guardian Godsmack, ron also mentioned: "The ancients died pretty quickly without doing anything besides making me recast Oak Sage a few times."

Heart of Wolverine


This is the most popular summoned spirit. If "damage is king" is your motto, Heart of Wolverine is an attractive option, because its aura increases damage (physical) and also increases chances to cause that damage (attack rating). At skill level one, the Heart of Wolverine has approximately 136 hit points, and its bonuses are +25% AR and +20% damage, applied to all allies 20 yards or closer. At level 20, it climbs to approximately 782 hit points, +158% AR, +153% damage, up to 45 yards away.

At least 38 of our druids maxed Heart of Wolverine. Here are four interesting quotes from some of them: Corvus_Corax by bcoe flaunted: "A level 41 Grizzly, with might, fanaticism, and HoW buffing him is a force to behold. He was one-hit-killing most of his victims even into late hell." Here's what sirpoopsalot reported about Henry: "with Fanaticism and Might auras, the merc's Decrep going off regularly, and a high level HoW, the wolves packed a pretty good punch." HarryPalms was another sirpoopsalot project: "As for the HoW, even with 20 points it died so much that it was the justification for the Grizzly and Ravens (read: more targets for monsters = safer HoW)." And regarding UrsaWarrior, Xdeathfire wrote: "Now, this is what happens when you have a Blessed Aim merc, Heart of Wolverine spirit, Fanaticism Aura on you, and have used a Combat shrine: 125k AR." (To illustrate the feat, Xdeathfire linked a screen capture of UrsaWarrior's LCS. Please go see it for yourself!)

Gaki by Vulpine was a Hunger "Kodiak" werebear with maxed Heart of Wolverine, who used every Immortal King set piece he could equip. Some other werebears with maxed HoW: VoX Dei's Arcturus, Naab's Teddy, and Antonio's Ursus Magnus.

Colorless Green's Lon maxed Heart of Wolverine to assist with Feral Rage attacks. I also found a large collection of werewolves that maxed HoW as an indirect attack rating and damage synergy for Fury: SimontheBulletFreak's JanosSkorzeny, RobbyD's Lucian, Naab's Hallivatimees, Jonnyphive's Cameron, bassen's Odin Firehand, and AJK's DeadlyDoormat. But my favorite of these was Jaffa Tamarin's Wolf. I thought it was an encouraging, motivating Fury werewolf account. It was Jaffa's very first solo patriarch experience. He maxed HoW, and Feral Rage was a one-point wonder, but he put no skill points at all into Fury - instead, he got that skill from a pelt's staffmods!

Spirit of Barbs


"Attacker takes damage" skills and item mods don't have very good reputations in Diablo II communities. Only physical melee attackers get damage returned to them, and even then, damage is only returned when their attacks actually hit and cause damage. And even then, if they're immune to physical, that also makes them immune to returned damage. At skill level one, a Spirit of Barbs has approximately 213 hit points, and its aura returns 50% damage to allies within 20 yards. At skill level 20, it has about 1224 life, and returns 240% damage, with aura radius of 45 yards. In my opinion, its large life pool is the only feature that a SoB seems to have in its favor, compared to the other two spirits.

Vang shared his story of an almost maxed Spirit of Barbs in his narrative about Reflector. The only other build I could find that had a purpose for SoB was HolyPade's Druidus, who wanted to "test drive" on one character almost every possible skill that a werewolf could use.

Dec 2022 Update: I was recently privileged to advance one of my favorite builds to patriarch: a "tank-pets hunter" named Jumby, which featured maxed Spirit of Barbs.

[edit: correction]
[Update: more corrections, new histograms]
[2022 Dec update: D2R 2.4 changes, new histograms, shameless self-promotion]​

 

[Swamigoon]

Dec 2022 Update: Every druid summoning skill was significantly modified in the D2R 2.4 patch.

Raven


There were just two builds in the compilation with maxed Ravens: Insane Wayne's Cosmo and and scrcrw's Doomed, who defied his own pessimism and enjoyed his difficult build: "I chose ravens as backup, because, similar to Arctic Blast, they are not the biggest damage dealers." Also notable: GrizzleyAddams by Shagsbeard came close to maxing his ravens.

At skill levels five and below, the skill level determines how many ravens a druid may summon; at higher levels, up to five may be summoned. Each raven seeks out and "swoop attacks" enemies. On average, each successful attack inflicts two more hit points of damage than the raven's level (1-3 points damage at skill level one, 21-23 damage at level 20, with 5% of attacks doubling their damage with a critical hit). Each raven attacks once every 43 animation frames - that's approximately four attacks in a seven-second period of time. After its maximum number of attacks (twelve at level one, 31 at level 20), a raven just disappears. So if a druid spends 30 mana to summon five level-20 ravens (6 mana per cast), the entire flock can cause an aggregate of about 3,400 damage over a 55-second time period. That is a pretty low damage rate, yet still noticeable if you're patient. (Unless, of course, the targets replenish their own hit points, or have a comparatively large life pool).

More interesting and useful is a raven's chance to blind its target. Higher skill and character levels increase the chance to blind, while higher monster levels decrease that chance. (If the druid's and monsters' levels are the same, the chance to blind ranges from 45% at raven skill level one to 100% at skill levels twelve and higher.) The amount of time a monster remains blinded is random, but monsters seem to regain their sight twice as quickly in nightmare difficulty than in normal difficulty, and four times as quickly in hell.

Raven has may distinctive quirks. Once summoned, a raven cannot be unsummoned or attacked; it will only disappear after it has attempted all of its swoop attacks. It neither receives nor provides any synergy. Ravens are also unaffected by any curse, aura, war cry, or shrine. Finally, although there are a couple of items that provide Raven charges (a Heart of the Oak runeword and a Cranebeak unique war spike), only a druid with at least one skill point invested in Raven can make use of the charges. A raven summoned by any other class will disappear before it can attack.

Summon Spirit Wolf


The other summons (phantoms, vines, and ravens) play supporting roles, but if a druid wants effective damage dealers in his squad of beasts, he must call forth either spirit wolves, dire wolves, or a grizzly. Each is mutually exclusive; for example, if a druid already has dire wolves or a grizzly at his side, summoning a spirit wolf will automatically unsummon the dire wolves or the grizzly.

Each of the Spirt Wolf, Dire Wolf, and Grizzly summoning skills is a synergy to the other two. However, in practice, each operates more like a mastery than a synergy, because it's the efffective skill level after +skills, rather than just invested points, that determine bonus amounts. For Summon Spirit Wolf, the "mastery" synergy bonus increases the attack rating and defense of spirit wolves, dire wolves, or a grizzly.

A spirit wolf has approximately 70 hit points, but a point in Summon Dire Wolf adds 50% more life, and each level thereafter adds another 25% to its maximum hit points. At skill level one, a spirit wolf will bite for 2-6 damage; at level 20, 41-45 damage. A point in Summon Grizzly adds 25% damage, and each level after that adds 10% more damage.

At skill levels five and below, the skill level determines how many wolves may be summoned. At higher levels, up to five may be summoned. In my opinion, the best use of spirit wolves are to engage, distract, and tie up large numbers of enemies at several (up to five) nearby locations, so that the druid and his mercenary can more safely attack and dispatch them without getting overwhelmed by the mob. Also, if a druid uses teleport charges to travel blindly to a new area, five spirit wolves can provide a five-layer-deep defensive "meat shield," to protect himself from whatever danger he might suddenly find next to him.

Although the skill description advertizes that spirit wolves have the ability to "teleport," I have never actually seen one do so, at least not in the same way that an assassin's shadow master might "dragon flight" teleport/attack a monster. But like mercenaries and most summoned minions, spirit wolves will reappear next to the druid's side if the druid travels far enough away.

Myrrdin by dkthomas29, Townshend by aman, GrizzleyAddams by Shagsbeard, Aardvark by HBeachBabe, and Turo by Neksja were patriarchs who maxed Summon Spirit Wolf.

Dec 2022 Update: 2010 druid summoner Callis, by mir, was recently re-linked into the compilation. Maxed spirit wolves formed a notable part of his build. -- One of the salient changes in the D2R 2.4 patch is that Spirit Wolves now deliver cold damage, including the ability to chill enemies for a time.

[update: spelling, formatting, new histograms]
[]update: D2R patch info, new histograms]​

 

[Swamigoon]

Dec 2022 Update: Every druid summoning skill was significantly modified in the D2R 2.4 patch.

Summon Dire Wolf


The Dire Wolf "mastery" synergy bonus boosts the life of spirit/dire wolves and grizzlies. A dire wolf's base damage is 7-12 at skill level one, 69-74 at skill level 20. A skill point in Summon Grizzly boost's damage by 25%, with each level thereafter adding another 10% to damage. Each skill level of Summon Spirit Wolf adds 20 to a dire wolf's attack rating and 10 to its defense.

At skill level three and higher, a druid may summon up to three dire wolves. The special ability of a dire wolf is to consume a corpse, after which its base damage is doubled by "rage" for twenty seconds. It only works for "leechable" monsters, so the corpses of skeletons and other "non-leechables" cannot be eaten for "rage." Humorously, if there is no enemy nearby and no leechable corpse available, a dire wolf will keep attempting, without success, to trigger the rage effect on a non-leechable corpse.

Summon Dire Wolf is quite popular among our Pat/Guardian druids, and many that maxed DW also maxed Grizzly for the damage synergy. Examples: Wolf by Jaffa Tamarin, Zhuir_Zalal by maliz, and Deerslayer by OldSoldier. Each and every druid in the "Summoning" sections of the compilation also maxed DW - at the time of this writing, there are ten such patriarchs and three such guardians there.

Galtwish's Chicago was a "town dump" werebear who equipped lots of Immortal King set items and summoned three maxed dire wolves to accompany him. Other werebears with maxed dire wolves were Naturallog's Jeor and maxicek 's Erekose and Beowulf. Equilib by Kefir-Tribe and PhineasB 's Reaver were both werewolves leading a pack of maxed dire wolves. Tropell by D2DC supported his wind elemental skills with maxed dire wolves, and fire/summoner druids with maxed DWs included: jiansonz's Burt, Pyrotechnician's Predator, Artemis by buraz, and Tanis by scwormy.

Dec 2022 Update: Pb_pal's SteveFrench the Fury Druid is one of my favorite recent patriarchs, notable for employing maxed Dire Wolves, as well as for sharing a crazy but grand weapon among six other heroes in a neat sept project.

Summon Grizzly


The Summon Grizzly "mastery" synergy adds a damage bonus to all of a druids summoned furry mammals. A druid may summon just one grizzly, which does 30-60 base damage (+25% damage bonus makes it 37-75) at skill level one. At skill level 20, it inflicts 300-330 base damage (+215% damage bonus makes it 945-1039). A grizzly's base life varies between 550 and 750, which is boosted 25% per level of Summon Dire Wolf. It also enjoys 10% defense bonus and 25 AR bonus for each level of Summon Spirit Wolf. About half of a grizzly's attacks are a special swipe attack called "BearSmite," which has a knock-back effect.

Some of the fun maxed Grizzly summoners: fire elemental casters Iruma by cormallon and Septimus by PhineasB; wind elementalists StagnationKills by TheNix and Seffel by Grisu; fire claws shapeshifters Danson by Colorless Green and Mizor by Stony; rabies werewolves Foulflame by PhineasB and Garruk by SunsetVista; and a hunter summoner named Hunter by PhineasB.

[update: formatting, new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, D2R patch notes]​