The Adventures of Sail, the Hunter

[Jocular]

The Adventures of Sail, the Hunter

So I've never gone the distance before with an untwinked SPHC character before, and I thought it's finally time.

Druids have always been just...really fricken cool to me. So I decided it had to be a druid. And I've always wanted to make a high level Summoner Druid too! So it had to focus around the Summoning tree. I looked around at a lot of the guides (Town Dump WereBear and the like), and at first I was going to go the safe route with a Shock Summoner. But while leveling up with a bow in the early stages, I couldn't help but notice how pimp Druids look when they use a crowssbow.

That was that. Screw Shock Summoner, I'm making him a hunter. But Hunter themed too for style points! That means:

1. No metal anywhere (except on the crossbow and bolts I guess. And rings. And amulets. Eh. Don't worry about it.) And I'll try to use leather wherever possible of course. Quilted armor? Really? No self-respecting Hunter would run around in that sorry excuse for clothing. Also, the only helms I can use are Druid Pelts (which isn't really a hindrance anyways.)

2. Being a Hunter, I'm self-sufficient and live on the land! Therefore I can only use gear that I find. No gambling, or shopping from vendors at all. I'll have to stockpile a couple quivers of bolts from time to time. And I'm unsure about potions...I'm definitely going to be forced to buy them in Nightmare and Hell, but do you think I could swing it in norm, simply picking them up? It would be realllllly annoying picking up potions for boss battles. We'll see.

3. It absolutely has to SP too. If someone went hunting, would they expect those same animals to magically resurrect themselves the next day? Heck no. So I'll going SP.

4. /p8. Hmmm. I'll do it at /p8 for as long as I can, but I'm thinking I might need to lower it in hell possibly.

5. Crossbows all day. No other weapon for my Hunter. I'll definitely be looking for ctc amp, though it's "On Striking" instead of "on attack". So I'll actually need to make sure I have high enough AR to even have a chance of my crossbow making a difference.

We'll see how far he goes. I've taken a few characters to Guardian in b.net, but that's b.net.

P.S. If anyone wants to follow this, I can post up pictures and summaries as I go along. But first point me to a good imagesharing website! Imageshack only lets you have 10 pictures at most in your gallery, which is definitely nowhere near enough.

If no one wants to follow this, no worries. It'll only make it easier for me, without having to deal with uploading screenshots and such.

P.P.S. The one thing I do ask of you is maybe some pointers on playing a Hunter?

P.P.P.S. I really hope I don't embarrass myself with an accidental early deeds, after hyping this up :ashamed:

 

[Kitteh1]

Re: The Adventures of Sail, the Hunter

I played a hunter with a bow and it was pretty fun, got lucky and found a Witchwild String (awesome bow).
In Hell you'll definitely need to lower the player settings, I was P3 until late act2 when I decided to go to P1 for a bit more speed.
Obviously, have a different weapon set on switch for summoning your bear.

 

[Jocular]

Re: The Adventures of Sail, the Hunter

Thanks for the advice. However, that brings up a dilemma I saw on a lot of Summoner threads; whether to use Dire Wolves or a Bear. I saw someone said to use the Wolves for regular creeps, and the Bear for unique monsters and so on. What do you think?

 

[Kitteh1]

Re: The Adventures of Sail, the Hunter

I used the bear normally, and the wolves if I was up against a big pack. Your merc and bear should be able to tank better than wolves in general.

 

[Swamigoon]

Re: The Adventures of Sail, the Hunter

I use photobucket to post screenshots; you might like it too.

Hunter druids are my favorites as well. I have played many variations of pure summoner druids. IMHO, the only given "must have" to the build is maxed dire wolves, maxed grizzly, and as much +skills gear as you can find. Learn to use both dires and grizzly; they're both effective. Grizzly does more damage than the three dires combined, even when the dires are enraged. But three dires can engage foes on multiple fronts and thus aid in battlefield control. Learn to "combat cast" your pets at foes, rather than just wait for them to run up and engage whatever you just awakened.

Most hunters also prefer to have HoW maxed, because they find the AR and damage boost so amazingly effective.

If you'd like to see more of my experience and recommendations, I wrote a guide called "tank hunter" a few years ago, which I posted over at the AB druid forum. In that variant, I maxed SoB and Solar Creeper. Also, I'm currently playing an HC hunter in the "Fashionistas" tournament here at the incgamers SPF, where I have elected to max Oak Sage and the Poison weed.

I recommend roughly parallel investments in dexterity and vitality. Of particular note: develop some patience. You'll have few OHK's. You'll be plinking away at monsters that hopefully are engaged in battle with your pets, and not with you. If your mind is made up on using ctc amp damage as your PI solution in hell, you'll want to leave your ravens unsummoned when you encounter PIs, because they'll overwrite the curse. As an alternative, you'll want to find ways to inflict elemental damage, and you're going to want a lot more of such damage than you get by stuffing pgems into socketed weapons, because some of those pesky unique monsters in hell heal their life bar as fast as such weapons reduce it. Poison/PMH/OW can help you with that problem as well.

If you're not committed to a pure summoner build, there are some "shaman" (hybrid summoner/elemental) builds that can be effective as well. In my experience shamans require just as much patience as pure summoner hunters.