THE BASIN

Elemental Druid Review

(cont'd)

IV. Skills

Surprisingly, the Elemental Druid makes heavy use of his Elemental skill tree. ;-) I'll assume that you've read a basic description (such as the ones on The Arreat Summit), so I won't list full skill stat progressions here. I'll begin with the spells not in the Elemental tree.

Shapeshifting

These skills are the antithesis of the Elementalist. Putting skill points here will only hamper the development of your character in the long run. Resist the temptation to go Werewolf in the early stages of the game. If you must, you can find (or twink) a Druid hat with +1 to werewolf and use it until you get to about level 12. But if you do that, you'll miss out on using some skills which are loads of fun but of little long-term value, like Firestorm and Molten Boulder. (Note: apparently there is a bug in 1.08, where a Druid using Werewolf/Werebear from an item-granted skill point, with no natural skill points invested, causes all (or most) other players to crash out of the game with a "error: player does not have that skill" message if you get near them. Hopefully this will be fixed in 1.09, so don't use this idea until 1.09 comes out if you play on Realms)

Summoning

If you're going to use summoned Ravens, Wolves, and/or Bears, then I wish you luck. I'm not going to recommend it here, for two reasons: we're building a "pure" or at least "semi-pure" Elementalist here, and summoning up woodland creatures doesn't go with the "causing-forest-fires" motif, and also putting skill points in the summoning skills will deprive you of desperately needed points later on in your level 24 and 30 elemental skills. Yes, it's nice to have a tank (bears & wolves are great for that) but that is the province of hybrid Elementalist/Summoners. I will, however, talk about 4 of the Summoning skills which are worthwhile for the Elementalist because of their low investment required:

Oak Sage

For a single skill point invested, you can get a bonus of +30% of your life total. That's hefty - and it affects all your party members (don't forget the mercs) as well. Even better, if you can find a really cool druid hat (or a series of hats to take you through the whole game) with +1 to Oak Sage, you won't even have to spend a point here. But if not, a point here is well spent. The returns beyond a single point aren't really worth it, though. He's cheap to re-cast, and tends to avoid dying reasonably well. A benefit to actually spending a skill point (as opposed to getting one from a hat) is that your "+all skills" or "+druid skills" items later, if any, will increase your Oak skill and give you more Life as a bonus. Heart of the Wolverine and Spirit of Barbs, your other two spirits, are useless to you, unless you're playing a hybrid summoning/elemental druid.

Poison Creeper, Carrion Creeper, Solar Creeper

These are the three Vine spells. At first you'd think the Poison Creeper would be a useful little critter, especially since Poison damage fits the Elementalist's motif. But in fact this little guy has very little practical use at higher levels, particularly since he's a combat summoning and he has very low Life. Carrion Creeper is useful to conserve on red potions, but the real gem of this bunch is Solar Creeper. You have to spend 3 skill points to get it, so the ideal way to get it would, like Oak Sage, be via a Druid hat with +1 to Solar Creeper. If you're lucky enough to find one of those before you've already stuck the point in it, then kudos to you. You are, however, tied to that hat for the rest of your career if you want to keep using the Solar Creeper.

Solar Creeper explodes corpses and gives you mana. It works just like the Paladin aura, Redemption, except it's mana-only. It restores a fixed percentage of your mana pool per corpse (2% at level 1). It has a decent Life total, but unless you dump a whole bunch of points into it, you'll have to re-cast it fairly often. Solar Creeper can be an integral part of your mana management - it essentially replaces a few slots of mana regen gear on your equipment. Also, the vines are just cool: they look spooky and can really confuse your teammates if they're not paying attention.

The down-side is that if you travel with a summoning Necromancer or a Death Sentry assassin, they'll likely scream aloud in frustration as your vine destroys all the corpses he wanted to Revive or use as ammo. Other classes who like to use corpses will be similarly irritated with you. It's so easy to forget about the vine, and it's really hard to turn him off: you can't target him with the Unsummon skill to get rid of him, so you have to run off and leave the area to stop him from eating corpses. The easiest way to get rid of a vine, of whatever type, is to re-summon a Poison Creeper. This type of vine will not consume corpses, and will die very quickly as soon as it enters combat. Since you can only have one vine at a time, he will replace your current corpse-eating vine, and your problem is solved.

Solar Creeper is most effective when you're soloing and can afford to hang out after a battle for 15 seconds or so while your vine eats a few bodies. When playing in a party, he typically won't have the chance to eat much, since parties typically move much faster. This, coupled with the fact that he destroys corpses that your friends might be trying to use, suggests that you probably don't want to cast him when partying, unless an emergency tank is needed.

You can use Solar Creeper as an emergency tank, especially in big games: his life scales up with the number of players in the game (I can't believe they still haven't fixed that!). He's useful to slap into the middle of a mob when they're chasing you. Throw a vine at them and if they get distracted, warm their toesies with a Volcano or two. A slvl 1 Solar Creeper is an effective emergency tank even in Hell difficulty, if only for a few seconds..

Solar Creeper is really only worth 1 skill point. With a couple +skills items you can get the mana return up to 4%, but if you go further than that, the rate of return is horrid. The only reason to pump it would be to increase the vine's life. But he's cheap to re-cast, so why bother?

Elemental Skills

These are the bread-and-butter of your existence: you will succeed or fail dependent largely on how you develop these skills and how you use them intelligently in combat. I will provide some general insight for each skill, and then in the Strategy section I'll talk a little about how they interact, and some tactics to using them together effectively. It is important to remember that an Elementalist must have at least a semblance of balance by developing at least 2 primary skills from different sections of the tree, unless your goal is a focused variant build.

Firestorm: level 1

Firestorm is one of the hardest level 1 spells to use. Most level 1 spells from other classes are simple point-and-shoot or fire-and-forget spells. The only other level 1 skill which really compares to Firestorm is Charged Bolt, and then only in certain characteristics. Firestorm sends three sweeping tongues of fire out along the ground, which wind off in a somewhat random 3-pronged pattern. It looks very similar to Diablo's attack, often called "Fire Twisty Lines" where he sends out a few tendrils of flame to burn your character. Firestorm is much smaller in scale and damage, of course.

The difficulty with Firestorm comes from the fact that, like all Druidic Fire spells, it is a damage-over-time spell. You must get the bad guys to stand in the Firestorm flames (which don't last very long, either) in order for them to take damage. In addition, Firestorm has a casting delay. The only other level 1 skill in the game with a casting delay is the Werewolf skill which, incidentally, is also a Druid spell. Casting delays are a fundamental part of life for a Druid, particularly an Elementalist. Admittedly, Firestorm's casting delay is short, only 1 second (maybe even less), but it does mean you can't spam them willy-nilly to stack a lot of fire damage on top of an enemy. The flames only last about a second or two, so you can't really stack Firestorms at all.

Firestorm is an appropriate level 1 skill: it does very little damage and is of little long-term use, but is useful for the first few levels. Also, it's a cool-lookin' spell. Damage progression is poor, and although it's probably possible to get through Normal difficulty using it as a primary skill and maxing it, I doubt anyone will ever want to. Still, if you choose to play with this spell more than the standard "one-point-and-forget" philosophy ubiquitous to level 1 spells, spread the word about it so we can all learn from your efforts.

Molten Boulder: level 6

This is a really cool-looking spell. The only spell which can really compete with Molten Boulder for sheer fun factor and neat graphics is Volcano. Molten Boulder sends out a giant rolling ball from your Druid character, which knocks back enemies in its path and explodes at the end into a giant conflagration of fire. At first I thought that it did fire damage when it rolled onto an enemy, but it turns out that it only does fire damage in the end explosion. This makes timing the end explosion very critical. The boulder moves very slowly, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it moves slowly enough that it can do knockback on one monster several times in succession. A curse, because it takes seemingly forever to reach a target just a short distance away. The best thing I can compare it to is the Sorceress spell Meteor, since in both instances you cast the spell and a couple seconds later you get damage from it.

Timing is critical when using MB. If the boulder strikes a solid object (a wall, a rock, a door) it will explode immediately. Monsters don't count as solid objects - it will roll right through them. If it doesn't hit a solid object, it will explode after approximately 3 seconds, or about 8 game yards. This makes aiming it difficult in outdoor areas. Also, one thing to remember about the Knockback effect: enemies that have Knockback applied don't necessarily move directly away from the source: instead they move directly backwards in their frame of reference. This means that if you hit a monster who is facing sideways with MB, he will be knocked sideways, according to the boulder, and out of the boulder's path. This is further exacerbated by the desync problems on Battle.net.

Molten Boulder is a fun but hard-to-use spell. It's quite useful at only slvl 1 through acts 1, 2, and 3 of Normal difficulty, but becomes pretty much obsolete once you get Volcano if you choose to go that way. If you can find a Druid hat with +3 to Molten Boulder (not too difficult, just a matter of luck), then put it on, and MB becomes an effective tool for awhile. I've played with a couple Druids who have taken this skill to slvl 8 or beyond, but by Nightmare difficulty they only use it rarely. It is handy for tagging monsters who are right up against a wall and standing still, such as fleeing Vampires or Greater Mummies, because of a bug with Volcano that I'll discuss later. Playing a Molten Boulder specialist would be fun but probably very frustrating.

Some sites have listed that you can control the distance a Boulder rolls by targeting the ground, or a creature. This is incorrect: Molten Boulder always rolls the same distance, unless it hits an obstacle first.

You can go bowling with Boulder. Line up a bunch of Skeletons and get a friendly Necromancer to Dim Vision them so they hold still. Or do it yourself with a wand with charges of Dim on it. Picking up that 7-10 spare is kinda difficult, though.

Arctic Blast: Level 6

This is your first staple skill. As soon as you get it and use it for a few minutes, you'll immediately understand the three main characteristics of Arctic Blast: (1) It works exactly like the Sorceress spell Inferno, except it does less damage and chills the enemies, (2) It has immense utility in a crowd and can also be used to kill single targets effectively (although slowly), and (3) it's a tremendous mana hog.

If you've never played an Inferno sorceress, then you've missed out on a real treat. They're fun, challenging, and generally effective against non-fire-resistant enemies. This is because Inferno, coupled with Fire Mastery, can apply a ton and a half of damage very quickly. Arctic Blast works the same mechanically as Inferno, but the tactics of using Arctic Blast are quite different than Inferno. With Inferno, you must concentrate your fire on one target at a time, or a few targets, in order to rapidly apply damage and kill them. Using this method you can kill several baddies one after the other by shift-clicking and sweeping the tongue of flame about slowly. This works for Arctic too, however the damage output is so much lower that it takes much longer and is best used on single straggler targets. Arctic Blast's chill duration, however, is much more valuable in the long term than its damage.

The chill duration of AB is substantial at higher slvls, and only one 'puff' of the stream needs to hit a target to chill it. This results in a miniscule amount of damage, but does mean that you can chill an entire crowd with a single quick sweep. This increases your maneuverability and gives you more time to avoid your enemies, which is critical since all your other spells are damage-over-time: you'll find yourself maneuvering quite a bit to keep the enemies within the area of effect of your big-damage spells. In order to get good range and chill duration, you'll want to take this to slvl 10, either directly through skill points or via skill adders. The damage at slvl 10 is good enough to see you through Normal difficulty and about half of Nightmare (especially if playing solo), but by the middle of Nightmare you'll find that you're using it almost exclusively to chill targets rather than damage them, especially in big games. At slvl 20 it tops out at about 150 cold damage per second, whereas at slvl 10 it's more like 80 damage per second. So not very much damage, but its decent range, long chill duration, and ease of use make it a very worthwhile spell.

All of your Fire spells, plus Hurricane, have casting delays. This means that Arctic Blast fulfills an important role in your arsenal: it's one of only 3 spells you can use during a casting delay. The other two are Twister and Tornado: I doubt you'll ever want to use Twister, and Tornado is hard to aim. Arctic Blast only benefits slightly from fast-cast items: since it is a continuous stream the only time fast-cast comes into play is when starting (or re-starting) a stream. If you get hit while casting it, you won't be interrupted unless you get stunned, i.e. they do more than 1/12 of your Life in a single blow. This is the norm rather than the exception in later Nightmare and all of Hell. The key to re-starting AB quickly is stacked Hit Recovery and Fast-cast items. 35% faster hit recovery and 35% faster cast will make the interruption when getting hit quite short. You must be standing still while hosing something down with AB, so you'll either want to use it from long-distance (hence pump the slvl to increase the range) or from behind a tank. I think of it like a fire extinguisher: spray it liberally wherever there are hot spots to cool things down and bring the pace back to your level.

I took AB to slvl 15 on my first elementalist and found it retained enormous utility throughout Nightmare difficulty, and I even occasionally used it as a killer against fire-resistant targets. In general, Volcano is much more effective and efficient for killing single targets than AB is. The only reason in the long run to pump AB at all is to increase its range and chill duration. Slvl 15 is a bit much: I'd suggest slvl 8 or 10, including +skills items, so you really only have to put 4 or 5 points in this spell to make it useful throughout the game. You may discover that the chill duration in Hell difficulty at slvl 10 is short, in which case you might try adding a couple points to it. This is one of those rare spells which is useless with 1 point, a huge waste with 20 points, and very nice somewhere in between.

Fissure: level 12

Fissure is analogous to the level 24 Sorceress spell Blizzard. Blizzard rains cold down from the sky: Fissure shoots fire damage up from the ground. Both spells hit a random selection of points within their area of effect, over a period of time. Fissure is in all ways inferior to Blizzard, except for the size of its area of effect and its lower mana cost. It has a larger area of effect than Blizzard, but this means that there are a lot of 'holes' where small monsters can zip through unscathed. It does not have the (small) chill duration of blizzard, doesn't do as much damage, doesn't last as long, and has a similar casting delay. Stacking 2 fissures is possible for short periods of time, but not 3, whereas you can stack 3 blizzards with some success.

As you can probably tell, I haven't played much with Fissure. It seems to be a poor cousin to Blizzard, which has been severely nerfed in the 1.08/Expansion patch because of the inability to stack them for reliable damage. Fissure suffers from the same problem: reliability. In addition, its damage output is poor, especially compared to Armageddon. However, Fissure is also your first glimpse of two of the central tenets of playing an Elementalist: it's extremely mana-efficient (especially if you pump it to high levels) and it has a fairly long casting delay. It is also an effective spell against mobs from level 12 to 24. I tried it at slvl 3 (with the help of a Druid hat) and it was reasonably useful throughout Normal difficulty.

What I do know is that Fissure is almost totally useless against point targets, and is reserved for mob eradication use only. Sometimes if you are fighting a single slow target you can cast a Fissure and get him to move over it and get hit a few times. If you've used Fissure extensively, let me know because I'm still looking for good data on this skill.

Cyclone Armor: level 12

This skill mimics the Necromancer's Bone Armor, except that it protects against elemental damage rather than physical damage. Physical damage passes right through your Cyclone Armor and hurts you directly: elemental damage comes first off your armor. The armor absorption is apparently taken into account after your resistances and MDR gear, which is quite nice. This means that it can last quite awhile even at slvl 1. Cyclone Armor has an important difference from Bone Armor, though: if a Necromancer takes a hit which does more damage than the Bone Armor can absorb, the armor is destroyed and the extra damage disappears. This means that a Necromancer can effectively avoid a 1-hit kill from physical damage simply by keeping low-level Bone Armor on. Not so with a Druid's Cyclone Armor: if an attack does more damage than the armor can absorb, the rest is transferred directly onto you, the Druid. (Note: I have conflicting reports on the nature of Bone Armor - until I get confirmation either way I'll leave this section as-is. I don't play many necros. Still, Cyclone Armor works as described - damage overflowing the armor is applied to you directly. Thus you can still be 1-hit-killed by a MSLEB quite easily.)

Skill points spent in Cyclone Armor increase the damage absorbed. Progression is linear at 40 points at slvl 1 and 12 additional points per slvl. In my opinion, putting more than one point in Cyclone Armor as an Elementalist qualifies as a Very Bad Idea. The spell effectively gives you more life, but only versus elemental attacks. Oak Sage gives you more life, versus all attacks. And at 5% total life per level, if you've got more than 240 base Life (Vitality + items), one point in Oak Sage will give you more than the 12 measly points that Cyclone Armor gives you. And your Oak benefit will increase as you add more +life gear, whereas Cyclone Armor won't. Oak also affects your party members. Clearly, any point you put in Cyclone Armor would be better spent in Oak Sage, unless you're trying to go pure-elementalist. Still, Cyclone Armor is a prerequisite to Tornado and Hurricane, which you'll want to have, and it is a somewhat useful spell.

Cyclone Armor allows you to trade a tiny amount of mana for a little bit of life, and a warning system. The cost of the spell is cheap, and since you need it anyway for Tornado and Hurricane, why not cast it in town, and between battles? It's just a quick hot-key switch away. And 40 bonus life is never a bad thing. Also, it serves as a warning system: if you've just refreshed your Cyclone Armor and suddenly it disappears in one shot from a monster, you know that whatever you're up against is packing some elemental punch. And you can quickly re-cast it, in order to spend 5 or 6 mana instead of the 40-50 Life that the next shot from that monster is bound to do. It's quite useful against LEB's, too: sometimes it's hard to tell if, and how often, you're getting hit. And since when in a party you will usually want to refrain from casting any fire spells on an LEB, you can run around looking for a sweet spot between the sparks and keep casting Cyclone Armor until you find it, and let your party members deal with the LEB.

Plus it looks kinda cool: much better than Bone Armor IMHO. Cheap to cast, minor benefits, and poor progression qualities. I'd say put one point in since you need it as a prereq anyway, and cast it whenever you remember to. With several +skills adders, you could get this up to about slvl 7 fairly easily, which is a handy bonus of about 112 Life vs. Elemental attacks. Useful, but hardly revolutionary.

Twister: level 18

Yup, the Druid got the shaft on level 18 Elemental skills - Twister is the only one in the elemental tree, and it's absolutely pathetic. Twister is, unfortunately, a total waste of space, and more importantly does not function as a stopgap for the increasing difficulty between character levels 12 and 24. The place you'll notice this the most is in the Arcane Sanctuary of Normal difficulty. The Sorceress at level 18 gets Glacial Spike, Teleport, and Fire Wall, and immediately kicks serious butt in the Arcane Sanctuary. You, on the other hand, get Twister, which is so worthless I want to tear my hair out. Fissure doesn't work over open space, which means that if you cast a fissure you might get one or two cracks on one of the walkways in the Arcane, and that's it. And Molten Boulder will explode immediately if you mis-target it, since it will probably roll off and hit a wall. Fortunately, Arctic Blast works wonders in the Arcane, and so all is not lost. But still, every other class has at least one powerhouse attack skill at level 18. The Druid? Well, he gets Dire Wolves and Rabies, but nothing worthwhile from the Elemental tree. So he has to make do with his level 6 and 12 skills all the way through acts 2 and 3, and possibly even parts of act 4 as well, until he hits level 24.

Twister fires out three wandering tornados from your Druid, which spin away from you in the general direction you target and damage and stun everything in their path. They have a wide area of effect, hit pretty reliably (only because there are 3 of them), sometimes hit creatures twice in one pass, and at first glance look like they're going to be a winner. At slvl 1, the damage is 6-10 and the stun length is 0.4 seconds. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Now the bad news: the damage progression absolutely reeks, and the stun length never increases. Mana cost is fixed at 7 per cast, which is somewhat high at low slvls, and more appropriate at mid level. High-level Twister is a reasonably mana efficient spell... but if you pump it to slvl 20 you only get about 60 damage from it. I'll say it again: Pathetic.

Twister is slightly useful when playing with a tank who's being overwhelmed: if you fire off several volleys of twisters (and continue to do so for several seconds) you can help them out. With fast cast items on, you can stun-lock most (but not all) of the monsters and let your friend escape. But the mana drain is pretty severe, and the damage is beyond puny. A better idea in this case would be to hose them down with Arctic or Hurricane, although that won't work on Cold immunes.

If Twister's stun length increased with slvl, it would be a very worthwhile skill. You could fire a volley of twisters into a crowd, and with a 3 second stun length, start opening Fissures or Volcanos under them. As it is, with a paltry 0.4 second stun length that never increases, Twister is a complete write-off. If you manage to make Twister work for you, let me know, because I don't have anything positive to say about this skill, and would really like to know it has some redeeming qualities.

Volcano: level 24

Ah, here we go. Seemingly to make up for the dearth of level 18 skills, the Elementalist gets two snazzy skills at level 24, Volcano and Tornado. Both are extremely useful in very different situations. Let's start with Volcano.

Volcano raises a miniature Mt. Vesuvius from the ground directly where you target it. It sprays forth a gout of fireballs which rise straight up and then arc down to random spots in a wide area around the Volcano. Anything unfortunate enough to be standing directly on top of the eruption is hit several times for full damage each time. The graphics of the spell are beautiful, simply the best in the game, IMHO. It has a casting delay of 4 seconds and lasts for 6 seconds, so with some practice you can get 2 Volcanos onscreen at once, for short periods of time.

My first Elementalist specialized in Volcano, so I will talk at some length about it. First, let's talk about damage. On paper, the damage progression of Volcano looks extremely poor, especially for a level 24 skill. It starts off at 16-24 damage, increases at only 4 damage per slvl until level 8, then it increases by 8 per slvl until level 16, then by 12 damage per slvl from then on. Level 20 Volcano does just over 150 damage minimum. And it's all fire damage, so a lot of critters are going to resist it. Looks pretty grim, eh?

The secret lies in the fact that the listed damage is per ball, and a single Volcano shoots out a lot of balls - 75 balls over 6 seconds (according to ChippyDip's handy dandy skill calculator). If every ball hits (and that's a big If), then the damage output of Volcano is tremendous: on the order of 10,000 damage for an slvl 20 Volcano. Even Fire Wall has a hard time keeping up with that, since its duration has been reduced so drastically in 1.08/LoD. This does not mean that every ball will hit something standing directly on top of the Volcano. In practice, a target directly on top of the Volcano will get hit approximately 6-10 times over 6 seconds, which means that a single slvl 20 Volcano can dish out more than 1200 damage to a stationary target. In this respect is is much like Meteor, except it takes longer to take effect and has a smaller area of heavy damage. At slvl 16, Volcano damage is approximately 120 per ball, and so it is capable of stun-locking monsters with fewer than 1000 hit points, as long as they're not heavily fire resistant. This is one area where Volcano actually outshines a sorcie's Fire Wall: since Fire Wall applies damage per frame, it's not really capable of stunning anything other than the weakest of enemies - and those enemies will die within 1/2 of a second while in the firewall anyway. Volcano will stunlock many foes because its damage is applied in discreet steps rather than continuously. Don't kid yourself, though: your Volcano will never be able to keep up with a high-level Fire Wall for sheer damage and lag-inducing power.

Volcano is technically an area-of-effect spell, but it is best used instead for point-target-elimination. It really only does heavy damage to a single stationary target (or sometimes 2 or 3 small targets), and the extra "splash" damage from the flying fireballs is just bonus. You can open it in the middle of a crowd of skeletons, but a better use would be to raise it up under the toes of the Greater Mummy who's resurrecting them. It works great to open up beneath slow-moving or stationary creatures such as Greater Mummies, Embalmed, Oblivion Knights, Archers, Spike Fiends, Barricades, Frozen Scourges, Corpse Spitters, and Spawners. In general for mobs, there are better alternatives, such as Fissure, Tornado, Hurricane, or Armageddon.

Volcano is a great bosskiller, especially if the boss has been cornered or pinned down by tanks. In fact, it is probably the best boss-killing spell in your arsenal, for non-fire-resistant bosses, anyway. Like almost all your spells, it is not a good idea to use a Volcano against LEB's. Many medium-small hits are not the way to take down an LEB safely. Granted, if you're soloing and can somehow trap or pin down an LEB, you can raise a Volcano up underneath it, as long as you put plenty of distance between yourself and the sparks.

Unlike Armageddon and Tornado, Volcano is easy to target and you can lay them down strategically. Sometimes you'll want to sprout one up under the feet of a slow target, sometimes you'll want to raise it up directly in the path of a mob of quick-moving charging Fetish. Occasionally you'll want to raise one up in the middle of a mob to provide suppression fire and bonus damage while you let loose with Tornados. Also unlike Armageddon and Hurricane, Volcano stays where you put it. You can cast one and run the hell away. This is nice to try and stun-lock a fast moving crowd of weak enemies so you can high-tail it out of there.

Volcano is one of only two spells (the other is Fissure) which can be used to provide long-range damage with any sort of reliability. Arctic Blast and Molten Boulder are medium-range, and Firstorm, Hurricane and Armageddon are short-range. Tornado is short-to medium range and Twister is, well, lame. For this reason it is wise to spend significant investment in either Fissure or Volcano, and of the two, Volcano offers great boss-killing benefits and does more damage than Fissure.

Volcano has a bug. Well, maybe it's a bug, maybe it's a "feature". You can't directly target a creature who is standing right up against a wall, pillar, cliff, or any other obstacle. The reason is that the Volcano graphic is large enough that it would intrude on the obstacle, so apparently it's illegal. The troublesome part is that the spell doesn't go off at all, not even in the nearest available space. This means targeting creatures up against walls is a pain in the butt - you think you've cast a spell and if you're distracted you might not realize that the spell didn't really go off - and yet you refrain from casting another Volcano because you're so used to the casting delay. You can shift-click to target the ground nearby them, but then they're not standing directly on top of it and they won't take full damage. I suppose this might be the result of a fix for a Hydra bug/feature which allowed you to raise up a Hydra partially on the other side of a closed door by directly targeting the door. I don't think you can do that anymore with Hydra - but a side effect is this bug with Volcano.

Volcano is definitely a skill to either max out, or to ignore completely, because of how the damage progression ramps up at later slvls. Slvl 5 Volcano is pretty sad, but slvl 26 Volcano is a thing of beauty. Slvl 10 Volcano is sorta useful through most of Nightmare difficulty, but when you get to Hell you'll either wish you had 9 of those points back to put in Hurricane or Armageddon, or you'll wish that you had pumped Volcano harder and made it actually useful. A maxed Volcano spell retains enormous utility throughout all difficulties.

Tornado: Level 24

Tornado (or 'nado' as it seems to be known on the d2 strategy scene) is the other level 24 skill, and it complements Volcano quite nicely. The graphics are identical to Twister, except the tornado is bigger and there's only one of them. Because the graphics are simple, there is no casting delay, and you can spam them left and right. Mana cost is fixed at 10 per Tornado, which is quite steep for the first few slvls but becomes remarkably efficient at the higher slvls. Tornado (and Twister, haha) is the only spell in your arsenel which really benefits from fast-cast items. Being able to chain-cast Tornados quickly, though, qualifies as A Very Good Thing, so you'll want to get at least a little bit of fast-cast going on. Due to the way Tornado wanders around, it's very difficult to aim. Damage progression is good, starting out at 8 per slvl, increasing to 14 per slvl at level 8, and increasing further at slvl 16. Level 20 Tornado does well over 200 damage. Unfortunately the 50% blanket physical resistances in Hell difficulty prevents it from realizing its full potential, but it is still the quickest way to apply a lot of damage to a tightly packed crowd, even in Hell difficulty. A slvl 26 Tornado does a minimum of about 350 points of damage, which when hit with the 50% global physical resistance in Hell is still a respectable damage of 175. If you party with a necro who uses Amp, or you give your merc an Amp-causing weapon, it makes a huge difference, and Tornado quickly becomes a tool of mass destruction.

Tornados work like the Barbarian skill, Whirlwind. It damages anything in its path, and can hit targets more than once. Usually it will only tag a target one or two times as it passes by (according to ChippyDip's handy skill calculator it applies damage every 0.6 seconds), but larger targets such as Urdars, Crush beasts, Thrashers, and act bosses can sometimes be hit 3 times per pass. The best way to use Tornado is to use it like Whirlwind: target it beyond a nice tightly-packed crowd. Whereas a Whirlwinder will typically skim the edges of a pack to avoid being damaged while inside, you instead want your Tornados to rip right through the middle of the mob. Tornados don't fly in straight lines: if they did, the skill would be positively devastating. Instead they follow a random path vaguely in the direction you specify.

Aiming Tornados effectively requires a lot of practice and patience. Point-blank aiming is, of course quite easy: if there's a mob right there trying to beat you down, firing Tornados at the guy closest to you will probably hit a lot of them. But medium-distance aiming is a bit more problematic. The reasons are twofold: First, as I mentioned before, the Tornado does not follow a straight line. Rather, it bobs and weaves back and forth in the general direction you click. Second, desync on Battle.net can be a problem, because the Tornado travels in a direction specified by a line running between where the server thinks your character is to the point you target. Note that your local display may have your character in a somewhat different position than the position the server has you at. This is an artifact of the network optimization which permits play over slow net connections, and unfortunately manifests itself even on faster connections.

Long-distance aiming of Tornados is hardly worth mentioning, because after it's traveled about a third of a screen width, the path of the Tornado diverges significantly from its original intent. So spamming Tornados long-distance is generally not a good idea, although you can use the "sweep" method to provide blanket coverage of a general area, thus hopefully ensuring a few of them hit. This is very inefficient; however it is sometimes necessary when supporting your teammates in a heated battle in-between Armageddons and Hurricanes.

Tornado does not work well against single targets, unless you get right in their face. The lack of precise targeting makes Tornado almost exclusively a mob-destruction skill. It is quite effective at that, though: it rips through crowds of skeletons, Flayers, Goatmen, Flesh Spawn, and Crushers quite nicely. If only the Tornado traveled in a straight line... If that were the case it would be absolute murder on the Hell Clan in the Arcane Sanctuary. There's a simple equation, too: Tornado + maggots or spawners + 8 mana per kill = unlimited mana. Found this one out the fun way in River of Flame. Tornado is extremely effective against packed mobs of non physically resistant monsters, and little spawn and maggot young fit the bill quite nicely.

A maxed Tornado retains its usefulness in all difficulty levels, even in the largest games. An slvl 25 Tornado absolutely decimates the Burning Dead in Act 2 Hell in a small game. You'll also find that with fast-cast items you can keep a wide variety of critters in stunlock until they die, even in large mobs, unlike Volcano, which starts to lose its stunlock power about the middle of Hell except on the weakest of non-fire-resistant critters, like vultures and fetish.

Some folks think that Tornado is a useless skill, but I contend those who believe that have only looked at it on paper and have never tried it in practice. Like all the Druid spells, you must max it and have several +skills items to see its true effectiveness. A slvl 26 Tornado, for example, does about 350 damage per application. Some enemies get hit twice as it passes them, and some only once, and from experience it seems to be about equal. So the average damage per target is about 525 damage. Against a tightly packed mob, you can easily hit 8 or 10 creatures. So we're talking about 5000 points of damage per cast, for only 10 mana, and you can chain-cast them very quickly with some stacked fast-cast items. With some stacked fast-cast items you can get off more than two per second, which is 10,000 points of damage per second in our hypothetical situation. That's applied to the mob of 8-10, of course, not per creature. The blanket 50% physical resistance in Hell cuts this in half, but if you're traveling with an Amp necro or your mercenary has an Amp-inducing weapon, Tornado suddenly starts dishing out a helluvalotta damage. The only real difficulty is aiming it and knowing when to use it: you need to get quite close to a tightly-packed mob for it to achieve its full potential.

Hurricane: level 30

Think of Hurricane like a "cold shield". It surrounds your character and moves with you. Hurricane lasts for 10 seconds and has a 6 second casting delay, so with practice you can stack two of them (and get twice the damage) most of the time. It applies cold damage a little more often than once per second to any creature within the area of effect, which is large. Due to desync problems, however, sometimes monsters which look like they're inside the storm really aren't on the server-side. The graphics for Hurricane are significantly less interesting than most of the rest of your spells. Hurricane can be used effectively from behind a tank shield, or you can weave your way through a mob yourself for a bit of an adrenaline rush. Tornado complements Hurricane nicely. Hurricane can be used as an effective boss-killer, especially against pesky fire-resistant bosses which ignore your Volcanos. If a boss is resistant (or immune) to both Fire and Cold, you're pretty well hosed: running-and-gunning with Tornado is your only option, and not an attractive one, either.

Hurricane really is a no-brainer to use, and for this reason it is used by many people. Simply turn it on and move near your enemies, and they will be hit by the Hurricane. This is not to imply that people who use Hurricane are stupid: quite the opposite, since Hurricane is an extremely effective spell. It pretty much dominates Nightmare difficulty. 10 points in Hurricane will melt Burning Dead before you "like butta" as well as provide a modicum of safety for you and any party members who wish to stick close. It's kind of like a short-range version of Holy Freeze that also does pretty good damage.

Hurricane will not set off LEB sparks. In that way it it not unlike poison damage, in that it is an effective way to kill MSLEBs with minimum danger. The advantages of this are quite obvious.

The big down-side to Hurricane is that it only does "pretty good" damage. Granted, it does that damage to large groups at a time, and it's cold damage, which is rarely resisted and has the added chill benefit. There are, however, quite a lot of cold immunes in Hell difficulty, throughout every Act. The chill duration is quite short - at only 2 seconds (base) it's shorter than the refresh rate (0.8 seconds) in Hell difficulty because chill times are quartered, which means that at 0.5 seconds it doesn't keep anything continuously chilled in Hell. And the fact that its use precludes using Volcano and Armageddon for 6 seconds is a big turn-off for me. It is, however, quite effective for a hybrid Elemental/Summoning druid to use Hurricane extensively all the way through Hell. In that case you can afford to take a bit of a slower pace, since you have a tank wall in front of you. Standing behind your minions and keeping a steady barrage of Hurricane and Tornado will wear down your enemies effectively as your minions peck away as well. Well, okay, the grizzly does more than "peck" but you get the picture.

I totally ignored Hurricane on my first Elementalist build, and was able to slog through Nightmare difficulty (where this spell is most useful) with only a single point, and +2 from a Terrene amulet. Even with slvl 3 Hurricane you can effectively solo the Act 2 NM sewers in big games, especially if you have a decent Tornado to back it up. Later in Hell, with slvl 6 Hurricane (1+5) I found it retained utility as a backup spell for fire-resistant baddies, but a low-level Hurricane is in general not sufficient as a primary use spell in Hell (not a surprise). I've played with other Druids who used a Hurricane of slvl 24 or so, and it is quite effective, but requires significantly more risk exposure than a Volcano/Tornado combo. Typically folks with big Hurricanes also use wolves or a bear to provide a body shield.

You can stack 2 Hurricanes for 4 seconds at a time, and while they're stacked the damage is doubled, as you'd expect. The graphics are no different, however.

I've heard rumors that the damage of Hurricane will be beefed up a bit in the 1.09 patch, but they're only rumors as far as I know.

Armageddon: level 30

Armageddon is the Druid's most damaging spell. Each casting of Armageddon lasts for 10 seconds and has a 6 second casting delay. During that 10 seconds, it rains 31 fireballs from the sky, which do a lot of damage - over 400 fire damage at slvl 20, and more like 600 at slvl 26. It costs 35 mana to cast, so it is extremely mana efficient, even at the lower levels. It takes about 1.5 seconds for the first fireball to land, and the last one lands about 12 seconds after casting. So it has a low immediacy value: when you need damage now, Armageddon is not the way to go: most of the other spells take effect much quicker. Still, there's nothing quite like raining death and destruction from the sky. Like Hurricane, Armageddon moves with you, but only the active target area: if you run constantly in one direction, none of the fireballs will ever land in front of you. You'll outrun them all as they land where you were when they began their fall out of the sky. This is nice because you can do drive-bys on packs of monsters: cast an Armageddon right before running through them, and then zip through them trying not to get hit. Even if you make it out to the other side of the pack before any fireballs hit the ground, some will still land throughout the crowd.

A very effective tactic with Armageddon is to wake up a pack of monsters, cast Armageddon, and then play pied piper. Run away from them, and the Armageddon missiles will land behind you, continually tagging the monsters while you sing a merry tune. Just don't let them catch up when you stop to refresh it! Any minions or party members you might have will destroy this tactic, though.

Armageddon will not shoot fireballs which would land out of the field of play. They simply won't appear, which makes it very unimpressive in places like the Arcane Sanctuary, since one casting will only net you about 6 fireballs over 10 seconds on the narrow walkways. This means you can't hit anything out of the field of play with it, including River Stalkers, Spectres over empty space, Storm Casters flying over the River of Flame, or Foul Crows flying over cliffs.

Armageddon is a terrific spell to use if you want to be a Warrior-Druid: a few people will no doubt choose to pick up some heavy weapons and armor and charge into battle. Having Armageddon going around you is easy to keep up, and you can stack them 2 deep for most of their duration if you time it right, since the casting delay is 6 seconds and the duration is 10 seconds. Unfortunately, due to the casting delay on Werewolf and Werebear (and the fact that you can't cast elemental spells while a lycanthrope), you can't cast an Armageddon and then quickly shift to were-form to really lay the smack down on your enemies. Too bad. Although shape-shifters are powerful enough in their own right that they don't really need this type of augmentation.

Armageddon is a good "bonus" spell for dealing with the mobs in Hell difficulty. It does a lot of damage to a wide area of effect, protects you somewhat from all sides, and is very mana efficient. It is also very dangerous to use: because it targets areas sporadically on all sides of you, to get maximum effect you must be surrounded (or mostly surrounded) by enemies. Obviously, you don't want to be constantly surrounded: that's a sure way to get a free trip to town in Hell difficulty, for any character. Finding the right balance between getting close and maintaining a safe distance is a constant challenge for the Armageddon user. Most Armageddon users will choose to back it up with a big fat Tornado, because the casting delay on 'geddon is so long.

The main disadvantage of using Armageddon is that the damage is diffuse. It will not reliably kill anything in a single casting in later Hell difficulty. In Normal and Nightmare difficulty, though, it will kill all sorts of stuff, usually in one hit, especially if you pump it to level 10 or so. In late Hell, it is a war of attrition: your fire bombs (and Tornados) versus their Life regeneration. For this reason it's wise to get a tank to hide behind for most of Hell difficulty. If it's a merc, give him a Poison weapon or an Of Vileness (prevent monster heal) weapon, which will help enormously because it negates Life regeneration.

You can stack 2 Armageddons for 4 seconds at a time, and you will get twice the number of missiles. You can also stack Armageddon with Hurricane for 4 seconds, and you will get the benefit of both spells simultaneously.

Hotkeys

Some folks advocate putting Molten Boulder (for the knockback) or Arctic Blast (for the chill) on your left mouse button so that you have instant access to them. I prefer to put Throw on my left mouse button and completely eliminate the possibility of attacking. This restricts movement to the left button and spellcasting to the right button, and eliminates the annoying occurrence where you're trying to move somewhere and accidentally click on a monster instead, forcing you to cast the spell and remain stationary, getting clobbered all the while. But that's just personal preference.

You'll be doing a lot of spell switching, so make sure that your hotkey configuration is one that you are comfortable with. You did know that you can change your skill hotkeys, right? And that you get 16 of them now? Good. If you're don't know how to change your hotkeys, hit Escape, navigate to Options/Keys and Buttons, and fiddle with them there. Here are a few common setups:

Standard: All of your characters will come pre-configured this way, and usually the first thing you want to do is change your hotkeys. Skills are F1 thru F8, and potions are 1,2,3,4, with show items on the Option/Alt key.
Touch-Typist: Many touch-typists (like me) prefer to put skills on ASDF,QWER so that you get instant skill-switching access with your left hand. Some leave their potions on 1234, and some prefer their potions on ZXCV , and then put skills 9-12 on keys 1234. Standstill is usually left on Shift or put on Spacebar. The option/alt key is hard to get to in this configuration, so a lot of folks will move it somewhere else handy. G,T, B, Ctrl, and 5 are decent places to put it.
2-finger: The two-fingered approach usually is for characters with low numbers of skills they have to use. Normally q,w,a,s,z, and x are used to switch between skills, and then potions are left at 1234.
Left-handed: uhh... I have no idea where lefthanded people put their hotkeys. A lefty touchtypist will probably mirror the touch-typis assignments, with apostrophe or left-bracked for map instead of Tab.
Numberpad: Some folks have a detachable numberpad which can be used for the left hand (or in place for lefties), and this is quite convenient since the keys are all lined up rather than being staggered.

I'll give you an example of my hotkeys (I use the touch-typist method) for my highest-level elementalist:

1: Oak Sage
2: Solar Creeper
3: Cyclone Armor
a: Volcano
s: Arctic Blast
d: Fissure (rarely used)
f: Tornado
q: Armageddon
w: Hurricane
e: unused
r: Town Portal
t: toggle run/walk
g: Show Items
zxcv: Potions
b: weapon switch
shift: standstill
tab: map
h: Hireling
f11: show/hide portraits

General Skill Development

I'm not going to dictate the "optimum" skill paths for Elementalists, because frankly I have no idea what they are. I can only give a few examples of builds which work well, and then only in general terms. There are several key concepts to realize when building your Elementalist:

Mana efficiency always increases with slvl, sometimes dramatically.
Immunities later in the game mean that you'll need to develop at least 2 (and probably all 3) available methods of delivering damage: fire, cold, and physical. If you don't do this, you'll be relying on your merc or party members to kill everything that's immune to the one element you've chosen.
You need something to do between casting delays. Your options are: Arctic Blast, Twister, Tornado, running, attacking hand-to-hand, or picking up loot.
None of your spells need to be maxed in Normal or Nightmare difficulty to be quite effective.
Any attack spell you use in Hell ought to be maxed, or nearly maxed (and augmented with +skill items) in order to be effective. The only exception is Arctic Blast.
With a little planning you can have three skills maxed by level 70, which is probably about the time you'll hit the hardest big section in the game, which is Hell Act 4..

Keeping these in mind, we can come up with a general plan to building an effective Elementalist. The first thing you must decide is which skills to use as your primary attack. It's safe to put 3 or 4 points immediately into Arctic Blast as soon as you get it. Mana efficiency for Arctic increases with slvl: even though the mana cost goes up, the damage goes up faster. Slvl 4 Arctic (and a nice juicy mana pool) can literally carry you all the way through Normal difficulty if you want, backing it up with other spells which have 1 point in them. That will require a ton and a half of mana, however, since all your spells will be very mana-inefficient. The points in Arctic won't be wasted later on, because it's a very handy utility spell, but only if you have about 8 or more points (total) in it later.

Putting 3 points in each skill "just to see how it does" is a sure way to build an Elementalist who can't survive in Hell - you'll want 10 of the points back from the spells you don't use to put in the spells you do use - which means the difference between having 3 spells maxed in Hell and 2 spells maxed in Hell. So you either have to know how you want to build him before you start out, or you have to wait until level 30 when you've seen all the skills and you can decide which you like and which you don't. The only problem with the second strategy is that it will require a lot of mana since your slvl 1 skills cost a lot of mana but don't do a lot of damage.

So you need some primary candidates to max. Fortunately that's quite easy: all the level 24 and level 30 skills are good candidates to focus on, and so is Fissure. A more variant-minded build might try maxing Boulder, and the extreme variant might work on Firestorm or Twister. Arctic and Cyclone really don't deserve to be maxed in any case, unless you're going "pure" elementalist. Remember that later on, you'll almost certainly have several +skills items which boost Cyclone and Arctic into their most effective ranges, about 8-10 for Arctic and 4-7 for Cyclone.

Then there's the matter of how to develop them. I'd strongly recommend not to simply max spell #1, then spell #2, then spell #3. The reason is in item #4 above, "none of your spells need to be maxed in Normal or Nightmare difficulty to be effective." So if you develop your three favorite skills roughly equally, they will mature nicely with the increasing difficulty of the monsters as you move along. Then by the time you hit Hell difficulty, probably around level 60 or 65, your three favorite spells will be either maxed or quite close, and you can spend the next several levels finishing them off before the big showdown in Act 4.

Now let's talk about all that cool gear...

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