THE BASIN

Elemental Druid Review

(cont'd)

VI. Strategy

Mercenaries

Now that mercenaries are a significant feature of the game, it makes sense to explore their use with an Elementalist. Your mercenary can be your faithful, constant companion, or he/she can be an afterthought. You can use them as a tank, as cannon fodder, or even simply as an expensive storage unit. It's up to you. Many people will opt to completely ignore the mercenaries, except in certain situations. You can argue that they get in the way, or slow you down, or detract from playing a "pure" elementalist. If you want to go it solo, that's fine - but the rest of this section applies to those who actually want to use them as an integral part of their strategy. Let's go over each of the four types of mercs.

Act 1 Rogues

The rogue mercenaries are pretty frail. Because of this, if you choose to use a rogue merc, you must do your best to protect her. This means you also cannot ditch her when the tide of battle begins to swing against you, because she is slow to retreat and often will get overwhelmed and killed. Similarly, you can't afford to get completely surrounded, because your poor rogue will evaporate if she gets mobbed. For these reasons, the rogue mercenary is extremely difficult to use well, and keep alive, for an Elementalist. She is much better suited to a hybrid summoner/elementalist who has other tanks. In fact, she is a major contributor to the damage output of many summoner/elementalists who choose to use her, and she can also watch your back while your pups hold down the front line. Given a good bow, she can deliver quite a punch at range. Still, the tactics of most elemental-only Druids preclude the use of a frail ranged merc.

Act 2 Town Guardsmen

These guys are handy to have around in general because of their auras.You can either get a Defiance/Holy Freeze merc, or a Blessed Aim/Might merc, or a Prayer/Thorns merc. In general, the Defiance merc is the way to go in the low levels, because that's when defense rating matters. With one of these guys in tow, with even halfway decent armor you can become virtually unhittable in Act 2 of Normal difficulty. They're sturdy, they hit quite hard (if you give them a good spear or polearm), and they provide all the offensive ability you'll need in Normal difficulty. In fact, you probably don't need to do anything other than follow them around, letting them kill everything in Act 2. They start to become pretty frail by the end of Normal difficulty, however. Their tendency to rush into a mob leads to getting killed pretty quickly in situations where you can't destroy the mobs fast enough. In addition, the Flayers in act 3 make lunchmeat out of these guys if you let them, because the little rats will lure your merc farther away from you until he's surrounded on all sides. This mercenary works reasonably well for the Elementalist, although in the long run Defiance, Blessed Aim, Might, and Prayer are all useless to you. This means you have to get the merc that switches to Holy Freeze eventually - a Holy Freeze tank would be quite useful, and would improve his survivability quite a bit. If you want your Act 2 merc to use his secondary aura, you must get him in Normal difficulty and level him up to level 57. Mercenaries from Nightmare and Hell difficulties don't seem to ever use their secondary auras, even if you get them to very high level.

Act 3 Iron Wolf

The choice of an Iron Wolf is an interesting one. All of these guys deal elemental rather than physical damage, so it would seem that they overlap too much with your existing skills and don't complement you very well. In some sense this is true. However, they also have many benefits. For instance, you have no source of Lightning damage, and all your really big damage spells are Fire spells. Fire immune monsters are a bit of a problem, but if you have a Lightning merc he can dish out the zap hurt for you. A Cold merc is great for freezing targets, which you can open up Volcanos under without fear that they will leave the area of effect. The freezing effect does leave you without corpses for your vine, however. A Fire mercenary is likely useless to you, unless you've chosen to ignore the fire half of the tree and specialize in Hurricane and Tornado (and Arctic). In that case, a Fire merc would be pretty nice. These mercs do, however, suffer from most of the problems of the Rogue, although they are a bit more durable, mostly because of the shield. So you'll have to pay close attention to them in order to keep them alive.

Act 5 Barbarian

The Barbarians can make excellent tanks, provided you maintain them well. +Life and +resistance gear are absolutely essential, and a big damage weapon never hurts. They will occasionally kill things for you too, especially if you give them a decent weapon. In order for them to be an effective tank, though, they have to have staying power, and that means maintaining them by making sure they level up with you. Bringing a level 45 barbarian into Hell difficulty, even with good equipment, is kind of like giving a 4-year-old an Uzi and sending him into the trenches of WWII. It's just not responsible. If you get your barb in Normal and continue using him religiously throughout the game, he will level up roughly at the same pace you do for awhile. If you notice him falling behind (which he will), you'll have to slow your pace of progression and backtrack a few areas, clearing them repeatedly to level up your merc. If you get a barb merc in Nightmare difficulty, they will show up at level 42-46, which is woefully inadequate for Nightmare Act 5. You'll have to take them all the way back to the Act 2 Sewers in order for them to get any decent experience and level up. Then move to the Canyon at 49, and then to Act 3 at 54 and Act 4 at 57. Supposedly the 1.09 patch will fix the way that mercs gain experience, because right now maintaining a merc's level is quite tiresome. A properly maintained Barb merc can provide you with all the tanking power you need, as long as you're willing to accept occasional deaths, and pay the accompanying ressurection cost (which tops out at 50k for mercs around level 60).

Combat Tactics

Elementalists have very little "built-in" strategy to the class. What I mean by this is that they have no skills available to change the way the battle unfolds. In general, the Druid class as a whole is based on direct frontal assault. Druids have no AI-modifying skills. They cannot freeze any targets. They do not have any mobility skills, like Teleport or Leap. Only Shock Wave offers a semblance of control, and that is only useful to werebears. This means that they must rely on dealing out massive damage, and careful positioning to avoid taking damage themselves. The Elementalist is no exception to this - positioning in particular plays a huge role in your strategy.

Playing an Elementalist is very similar to playing a CD2 Fire-only Sorceress, or "Hot Babe" as they are affectionately known. In order to be effective, you must keep your enemies within the area of effect for your spells. This requires careful maneuvering. Each of your spells has definite uses and abuses, and learning which is which will make or break you. I'll go over a few combat situations and outline a few strategies for dealing with them.

Mobs

Fortunately the Elementalist is very good at mob eradication, unlike some of the melee classes. The characteristics of your enemies will dictate which spells to use. For numerous low-health, non-physically-resistant enemies who like to crowd in groups (Fallen, Skeletons, Fetish, Dark Rogues, etc.) a high-level Tornado will decimate them quite nicely, especially if you have a few fast-cast items. In addition, a high-level Tornado will stun all these foes in all but the largest Hell games. Against mobs with more staying power, Armageddon really deals out the hurt if you don't mind staying close - if you don't want to get up close and personal Fissure works quite nicely too, although it is significantly less effective. Hurricane is effective against fire-immune critters. Volcano is generally not an effective mob killer.

Mob strategy 1: The Carrot and the Stick

Lure a mob of monsters into a nice tight pack by offering them a carrot (tank). You can use your vine like this, since he's cheap to recast and will last a few seconds even in Hell difficulty. You can even use your Oak Sage, but that's kinda pushing the boundaries of friendship, since the little guy is so nice to you. If you've got a barb or town guardsman merc, they'll be your carrot whether you like it or not. And of course many of your party members fill this role nicely. You've gotta be there to back it up with the stick, though, which can be either Tornado, Boulder, Fissure, Armageddon, or Hurricane. Tornado works best on tightly-packed crowds, whereas Hurricane provides extra safety for your tank. You can even combine the two. But if you really want to lay the smack down on the mobs, get friendly with your tank's backside and rain some Armageddon death on them, pelting them with Tornados as you see fit.

Mob strategy 2: Chill out, baby

Sweep Arctic Blast across a mob to reduce their movement and attack rate, providing safety to you and your team. Then unload with Tornado - you can get significantly closer if the mob is slowed down, particularly if they were slow to begin with. In addition, wraith-class creatures also like to swarm, and this is the one case where Tornado doesn't work since they're either highly physically resistant or immune to it altogether. In this case, a swipe of Arctic Blast to chill them out is helpful, and a higher-level AB is nice because the chill duration is quite long. Then it's time to either rain fire from the sky or to tag them with Hurricane. Note that if you party with a Necromancer who uses lots of corpses, this will be an unpopular idea because many of the corpses will shatter when dying. Conversely, this can be a good thing if you want to eliminate corpses which the opposition might wish to ressurrect. Note that this tactic works with Hurricane in Normal and Nightmare difficulty but not in Hell, since its chill duration is slashed to 0.5 seconds, and it only re-applies every 0.8 seconds. Still, intermittent chill is better than none at all.

Mob Strategy 3: The Gingerbread Man

Play pied piper - get some enemies to chase you, and cast Armageddon. As you run from them, the fire missiles will fall behind you and right on their heads. With a little practice you can maintain a distance and speed to achieve maximum exposure of your pursuers to your heavenly wrath. This works poorly if you have any minions or party members, however, since you'll be leaving them alone and relatively undefended. It also helps to have a lot of running room. You can do this with Hurricane, too, but it's range/delay characteristics mean you must stay much closer to the mob in order for it to work. Just don't let them catch you.

Missile Attackers

In general, missile attackers are stationary targets. The best example of these are the spike fiends and archers in Act 1, the blowdart fetish in Act 3, the Abyss Knights in act 4, and the Imps in act 5. They tend not to bunch up, so your basic mob eradication tactics don't work very well and are not mana-efficient. Missile attackers are in general Volcano bait, except for Hell imps (and other fire immunes). Volcano will usually stunlock them until they are dead in single-player games, assuming the slvl is high enough to kill them with one casting. You can hit a stationary missile user with Volcano and move on to the next target if you're confident that the volc will kill the first one. Arctic Blast works well for dispatching weak missile attackers in Normal and Nightmare difficulty, but Hell level mosters will giggle and chuckle if you try to take them out with AB, even at slvl 20 — the damage is just too weak. It's possible, but plan on spending at least 4 seconds per monster to kill them with a high-level AB. So your only recourse in-between Volcanos is to get in the face of the missile attackers and unload Tornados at them, or get close and keep Hurricane or Armageddon up. You can try to get at them long- or medium-distance, but the only way to reliably hit anything with Tornado is to probe around with a few Tornados until you find a wander line which hits your target - this probably takes longer than getting in the face of the missile users and unloading at point-blank range, and a missile user doesn't really care whether you're near or far.

Trying to dodge missiles with happy feet and firing off Tornados at the same time can be done long-range for extremely dangerous missile users, but most of your Tornados will miss. Abyss knights are a special case: get in their face at all costs, because they're heavily fire resistant (hence Volcano is ineffective), and if you get close enough they won't use their elemental missiles anymore and instead will try to swing their sword at you, which is much less dangerous. Oblivion knights won't do this since they have no melee attacks - they'll just run away and hit you with Decrepify, which is even worse.

Small groups of tough enemies

"Tough" in this sense means a lot of hit points and/or heavy Fire resistance, but not necessarily hard-hitting or fast-moving. Fortunately the really tough monsters don't generally appear in large groups (except in certain situations like the Kurast temples, where you can get Wailing Beasts who are heavily resistant to Fire and have a ton of hitpoints - they're all bad), so they are more managable in smaller groups. This includes things like Moon Lords, Champions of all kinds, Urdars, Doom Knights, etc. These are, in general, difficult to take out. If you have a Lower Resist wand, these are primary candidates to use it on. If they're not immune to Fire, then pin them down with a tank (merc or emergency vine, or yourself, or party member) and take them out one by one with Volcano, spamming Tornado or Arctic as appropriate. If your bent runs more toward Hurricane, you can use that too, or Armageddon, although Volcano is generally more effective against smaller groups of stronger monsters.

Hard-hitting and/or fast-moving enemies

Fetish, Sabre Cats, Council Members, Moon Lords, Venom Lords, Fanatic Enslaved, Black Rogues, etc - anything that you don't want to be caught by, run away from them. Of course, activate Armageddon first and, as you chortle mightily, your pursuers will have to dodge fireballs. As a bonus, very few of these type of creatures are heavily resistant to Fire. You can lead them on a merry chase if you have plenty of room to work with, and eventually they will keel over. This works quite well for Baal's "minions of destruction" - they're not too fast and you can lead them in a long loop around the Throne of Destruction maze section.

Maggots and Spawners in Wide Open Spaces

Step 1. Put on some +mana/kill gear. Step 2. Cast Armageddon to get that going. Step 3: spam Tornados and advance leisurely, singing a merry tune. Maggots + spawners + 8 mana per kill = unlimited mana, even in Hell difficulty. Just mow down the little spawn and maggot young with your high slvl Tornado (you did remember to pump it up, didn't you?) and the fire raining from the sky will take care of the rest. Raise up an occasional Volcano under the master spawners/maggots just for variety.

Leapers

I include Leapers separately because they're such a pain in the ass. Act 3 and 4 leapers are heavily resistant to Fire, especially in Hell, and they have a lot of hit points, attack quickly, and don't form mobs nicely so they're hard to pin down. They are, however, vulnerable to Cold. Hurricane takes them out quite nicely, and as a bonus Hurricane doesn't knock them back like virtually every other attack does. If one or more get too close to you, sweep them with Arctic Blast and it will blow them halfway across the screen. Without Hurricane, Tornado also does a decent job on these critters, especially because of the knockback effect it can hit them more than 2 or 3 times per tornado, although that's rare. The Act 2 leapers are the opposite: they're immune to Cold, and so unfortunately Hurricane doesn't work. Arctic Blast still knocks them back (although it doesn't chill them or do damage) so they're still not very dangerous. Patience, Tornado, and Armageddon are the way to go for the Act 2 leapers. The same formula actually works for act 3 and 4 leapers, but takes longer since they're so heavily resistant (but not immune) to Fire.

Imps and Crush Beasts

Imps and Crush Beasts are childs' play in Normal and Nightmare difficulties: Imps are easily taken out one-by-one with Volcanos, or Arctic Blasted to death if your AB level is high enough and their life is low enough. Crush Beasts are likewise Volcano bait. But in Hell difficulty they're both immune to Fire. I haven't gotten this far yet, however I've experimented in Nightmare difficulty trying to kill Imps without Volcano and it's quite tedious. Generally since they don't do very much damage I try to run up at them and give them a face full of Tornados. Crush Beasts are more difficult because of that nasty Inferno that the ride-along Imps like to do, and so an emergency tank is probably warranted, coupled with Tornado spam and Hurricane backup.

LEBs (Lightning Enchanted bosses)

There are three situations when fighting LEB's. The first situation is when you're alone. In that case you have two main options to kill him - both your level 30 spells, Hurricane and Armageddon. Before level 30, you won't run into any tremendously dangerous LEB's, so you can use whatever you like (except Arctic Blast, which will set off a storm of lightning unlike anything you've ever seen). Hurricane has the advantage that it won't set off LEB sparks. It obviously won't work against Cold immunes. If you go this route, it is slow but very safe and effective - provided you don't let your merc or summoned creatures or party members to hit the LEB and let off sparks. If you have summoned attackers, unsummon them, and if you can afford it, let the merc kill himself on the LEB so you can safely dispatch it - chances are he's going to die in any fight with an LEB anyway. In addition, this is the only safe way to deal with MSLEB. Run around, avoiding the lightning-enchanted bugger, and keep tagging him with Hurricane. Your other option is Armageddon, which will likely kill him faster but exposes you to much more danger. Plus it works on cold immunes.

The second situation is when you're in a party, and none of your party members is even reasonably equipped to deal directly with LEB's. Provided one or more of them can summon a tank or two (valk, golem, grizzly, whatever), and you don't mind losing your merc, you can direct all of your party members to hit the LEB with a tank and back way the heck off, and you can hit the bastard with a Lower Resist curse (if you've got a wand with charges of it, that is), and unload volcanos under his feet. Your friends will need to refresh their tanks as necessary. You can keep your merc alive if you can position yourself far enough away from the LEB and still keep him on the screen: your merc tends to stick pretty close to you. Only use this tactic if your party members are particularly ill-equipped to deal with LEB's. For example, a javazon, a zeal paladin, and many varieties of sorceress and necromancer are particularly weak against LEB's, and in such a case you need to be prepared to step up and handle it. You can also employ the Hurricane technique.

Then there's the other 99% of the time you're in a party. If your party members are reasonably well equipped to tackle an LEB, by all means let them, and get out of their way. Never, ever raise a Volcano under an LEB who is fighting a melee party member, unless you're quite sure that your friend is practically indestructible to lightning. And never, ever, under any circumstances, in any situation, should you use Arctic Blast on an LEB. It does pathetic damage and lets off a huge storm of sparks. Once you get far enough into Hell difficulty, this is no longer always true, but it's always better to be safe than sorry. Similarly, if you see an MSLEB, either run away immediately and let your party members handle it, or direct everyone else to back way away (taking their minions with them), ditch your minions, and use Hurricane to dispatch the MSLEB safely.

The Zakarum Council

This is, most likely, the toughest fight in the game for you. It's debatable whether the Hell Ancients are harder, but the Council is definitely the hardest fight you'll see until you hit the Ancients. I should note straight at the outset that having a wand with charges of Lower Resist on it will improve your chances of success by about a factor of 10. Trying this without LR charges is possible I suppose... but I certainly don't have enough patience to try that.

They're hard. Plain and simple, the Hell difficulty Council are extremely difficult to defeat, and for that reason many people on Realms choose to skip them. You could do that too... but you don't have to. They're beatable - I've done it, and if I can, so can you. There are a bunch of problems, though:

The ones above ground are all Fire Immune, except for Geleb who usually spawns as Lightning Immune. Their minions.are Fire Immune too.
Some of them can spawn as Fire and Cold Immune, which is really evil.
They heal themselves and each other.
They hit hard, move fast, and have a lot of Life.
They raise up Hydras, which you can no longer ignore because they pack a bit of a whallup.

Most of these problems can be ignored by a melee player, but as an Elementalist they'll give you fits. Of them all, the most potentially unbeatable is Toorc, who spawns as Stone Skin Cold Enchanted, and is naturally Fire immune. This means that he's immune to your main damage-dealer (fire), is 95% immune to your Tornados, and is highly resistant to Cold. If he spawns Magic Resistant (or maybe Spectral Hit will do this too) as well, then you're out of luck because he'll be Cold Immune, Fire Immune, and 95% Physical resistant. For some reason he never spawns Physical Immune, even with the natural 50% physical immunity in Hell and the Stone Skin mod. If you run into a Toorc who's immune to both Cold and Fire, there's no way you'll be able to beat him alone. It simply won't happen, so either portal-park him and accept that you couldn't get him, invite a friend with some hefty Lightning damage to give you a hand, or start up a new game and re-roll his mods, starting from the Travincal waypoint. For this reason if you can get a look at Toorc's mods first, that's a good thing since it lets you know whether you should just bail and try again, or if you can try to tackle him. I once ran up against a Magic Resistant, Lightning Enchanted, Cursed Toorc, which was all bad. Immune to fire and cold, 95% physical resistant, which means you have to hit him a ton of times, and he gives off cursed, cold-enchanted sparks to boot. I was partied with an assassin at the time, and he just ate us for lunch. Of course we finally threw up our hands and parked him.

Separation, separation, separation. If you try to tackle two or more Council members by yourself, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail, because they'll start healing each other. Two or three minions can be taken on at once, but that's still pushing it. Happily, you can usually lure them out one-by-one from their little palace. If they do manage a jailbreak on you, then there is no shortage of good trap points in Travincal to string them out one-by-one. Take out the minions first, if you can, then move on to the big boys. There's always a well which spawns somewhere in Travincal, and you'll want to fight the 3 big boys right next to the well, so you can heal and remove curses. The wells refill quite quickly, and most likely it will take you at least 5-10 minutes per bad-guy, so the wells will give you a lot of benefit. Once you get them alone by the well, it's really just a test of your resolve and patience, and keeping them from healing themselves.

Preventing their self-healing ability is fairly simple, once you get the hang of it. They will never heal themselves if they are preoccupied with attacking something. You could use your merc for this, but usually he won't last long enough, so it's time to whip out that emergency tank. Oak Sage and your Vine can provide all the distraction you need: just keep re-casting them. The big problem is that you have to be quick about re-casting your tank, since if they get bored they might try to attack you instead. Also, if they get really low on Life and have just killed a tank, they might try to run from you. If they run, follow them! As long as they don't run to one of their cronies, follow them and keep on them. Spam tasty vine treats in front of them to get them to stop. Because if left to themselves, they'll heal up in an instant. Similarly, Teleporting Council members (like Wyand underground) are a serious problem because if they teleport too far away, they'll lose interest and heal themselves. So you have to keep on them like a lusty jackrabbit. Also, unless they're cold immune, keep them chilled at all times with Arctic Blast (Hurricane chill time doesn't last long enough) which will slow down their attack rate, so fewer chances to teleport.

If any of them spawn Lightning Enchanted, well, then I hope you have a lot of Lightning Resistance and Life. You'll have to re-cast your tanks much more often. Note that unless you have a really obscene level of Arctic Blast, it usually won't set off sparks on LEB's at this level, since each frame doesn't do enough damage. LEB's have a damage threshold, under which they won't let off sparks. Try it, and if it lets off a storm, don't use it and rely on Hurricane/Tornado instead.

Since they're Fire Immune, I found that a high level of Arctic Blast and a low-level Hurricane was enough to take them out, with use of a Lower Resist charged wand. The reverse I'm sure would work even better: Hurricane for the damage and Arctic for the chill would probably be the easiest way to take out anyone that doesn't spawn Cold Immune. Volcano works well against Geleb, unless he spawns as Fire Immune.

Underground, the chief problem is Bremm, as usual. Even though he's no longer LEB by default, his combination of Conviction and Hydras is dynamite. In addition, he comes with a posse of companions, and the separation principle fails. What you have to do is gather the entire posse down in the southern corner of the room, TP out, and come back via the waypoint and main entrance. Then slowly, ever so slowly, tiptoe in until you can wake just one minion at a time. Lure them back to the stairs and dispatch them one-by-one. This is fairly easy with the council minions, but harder with the Blood Lords since they don't chase as well and will run away when hurt badly. That is, if they appear at all: they don't always show up anymore, although sometimes they spawn as a Blood Lord Bosspack, which is really evil. If you accidentally wake too many (or if you wake Bremm at all before you're ready), then repeat the portal-parking maneuver and start over with your tiptoeing. He's Lightning Immune rather than Fire Immune, and usually will remain non-fire-immune even if he spawns FEB. If he spawns LEB, ditch him since his aura makes that extremely dangerous. If he spawns MSLEB (god forbid) then you'll probably be dead before you realize it. If you somehow manage to avoid the first wave of instadeath, get out of there immediately and start a new game. It's just not worth it.

Wyand is nasty because of the mana burn ability, so bring plenty of blues for when he sneaks past your tanks to pat you on the butt. Also his teleporting is a problem, but see the section above on self-healing and teleportation, above. Thankfully teleporters no longer heal huge portions of their life when they port. Of the three, Maffer is usually the easiest. Mephisto is pretty easy if you lure him to the stream of blood and hit him with Volcanos from the other side. Most of these guys won't show up as Fire Immune, so use your Volcano (if you've got one) to full effect, including Lower Resist wand.

If you can beat them all, solo, then your Elementalist is a Bona Fide Success, since these guys represent the most distinct beatable challenge in the game for an Elementalist. If you fight all 6 of them and win, you can yell "Yeah! I'm a bad-ass!" Now you are ready for the most grueling test of your ability: Hell Act 4.

Hell Act 4

Hell Act 4 is much harder than Act 5 for an Elementalist, except for Baal himself (and we'll discuss him in a minute). Several varieties of creatures are Fire Immune, and most everything that isn't Fire immune is 75% resistant, or at least it seems that way. Once you get to the City of the Damned, you can (usually) breathe a sigh of relief, since the monsters there tend not to have nearly as much fire resistance. The big exception to the ubiquitous fire resistance clause is the Spawner classes, who are quite vulnerable to Fire and pack well for Tornado. These will, however, give the biggest problems to a Hurricane druid, since they are immune to cold, move fast, hit very hard, and can quickly reach huge numbers. Tornado is generally the answer to Spawners.

The River of Flame is less difficult, typically, than the Steppes and Plains. Problems there tend to come from Abyss Knights, but then again Abyss Knights are nasty for everyone. Grotesques and Maggots are bait for Tornado and Armageddon. But once you get to the Chaos Sanctuary, all bets are off. Everything in there is either 75% resistant to Fire or immune, and some are cold resistant as well. All of the Seal bosses are tough, but De Seis and his gang are particularly difficult. Diablo is a pussycat by comparison. In general a Hurricane/Tornado combination will have much greater success than the fire spells in the Chaos Sanctuary. Have fun.

Diablo, Mephisto, Duriel

These guys are, for the most part, pansies. If you've got a Lower Resist wand, use it, but it's not strictly necessary. All three are Volcano bait. Stand your ground with Duriel, but run-n-gun with the other two. It's only a matter of time before they fall. Spam emergency Vine tanks at Duriel if he really gets going with the knockback thing. As always, tackling Duriel is much easier in a party, and make sure your merc is around to take the initial hit. He might even survive and contribute to Duriel's downfall.

The Ancients

The Ancients are quite difficult, but can be beaten. The axe-thrower is Volcano bait, unless he turns up Fire Immune, in which case he can be a serious problem. The other two guys can fall victim to the "chase me while I rain fire" technique, again as long as they're not Fire Immune. The big trick is to not let them catch you when you refresh Armageddon. If they turn up Fire immune, then you have to play catch-me-if-you-can with Hurricane, but you must stay much closer and the danger of getting caught while trying to refresh it is larger. Running and gunning with Tornado is not a good idea, since they are heavily physically resistant. Just remember: in general if you stop moving for more than the time to cast a single spell, you're toast. Bring along a bunch of reds and strew them about on the ground to refill during the fight, because if you run out, you're hosed. Generally these guys don't have one-hit-kill capability unless you've made a low-Life build. Refresh your Oak sage if you can, but he can screw up their chase patterns. You also might be able to preoccupy them by spamming emergency tanks and hitting them with Volcanos while they're stationary.

Baal

In contrast to the other three "real" act bosses (Andariel hardly qualifies), Baal is insanely difficult for an Elementalist to kill. His cold wedgie is dynamite, and his orange breath of destruction does a ton of damage. I haven't figured out a way of killing him reliably, but I would guess that a Teleport charged ring would come in awful handy. In my opinion, he is simply a deathtrap, and doing Baal runs to try and milk him for loot is completely out of the question with this build, solo at least. The only way I've been able to defeat him is by wearing him down, and dying about 5 times myself. His minions are quite difficult as well, but become significantly easier if you can lure them out in small groups into the maze section of the Throne of Destruction.

Partying: Playing Nicely with Others

Different types of elementalists achieve varying levels of effectiveness in parties of all sizes. Your damage output rate is low compared to many characters, and other party members will often detract from the careful positioning game you play to maximize your effectiveness. Therefore, an elementalist must adjust his tactics to fit those of the party. It is no good trying to force the rest of the party to adopt your playstyle - that's not very team-oriented and most people will simply not comply. So we'll discuss a few typical party situations and what you can do to maximize your effectiveness to the team.

Small Parties with Melee Types

Partying with one or two melee-paladins, non-WW barbarians, shapeshifters, spear/javelin using Amazons, or martial arts assassins is generally the best situation you can hope for. These players will generally provide you with all the tanking ability you need, and your job is to support them, keep them from getting slaughtered, and gleefully wipe out the mobs which gather around them. You will likely get a lot of kills, but recognize that it's largely due to the presence of your front line, who are accepting most of the risks. Therefore, give them their props! Help them repair their gear, let them have the good melee drops (rather than giving it to your barb merc), praise them, pat them on the head, scratch them behind the ears, etc. You will want to play with these follks again, so strive to make them feel wanted. Recognize that Armageddon and Tornado are capable of stunlocking a wide variety of creatures, but Hurricane will not stun anything. This is related to the fact that it won't set off LEB sparks either and is probably a bug.

Many spells are good for supporting your tanks. Hurricane and Arctic Blast are widely loved for their chilling effects. Tornado can be used to devastating effect on the tight mobs that a Defiance pally tends to allow to gather around himself, but the same spell is not as useful with a Spearazon or Martial Arts assassin since these types typically don't like to get mobbed as badly. Volcano is an excellent support skill for these types, as you methodically take down each member of the mob. Armageddon can also be good, but you'll have to get very friendly with your tank and your risk exposure increases dramatically. Fissure works well, especially on very large mobs, but its damage output is lower than most of the others so you had better back it up with some powerhouse Tornado spam or your tank will begin to wonder if your offensive capability is really worth the baggage of carrying you around.

Small Parties with Other "Ranged" Types

In general, this is no good for you, because ranged type players (like you) are heavily dependent on manipulating the enemy's AI via careful positioning. Most likely if you party with these types (sorceress, other elementalist, lightning-fury-zon, minionless necro, WW barb, hammer/fist pally, traps assassin) then you're going to foul up each others' positioning tactics. The big exception is a bowazon, who normally uses her decoy or valkyrie as an incredibly effective positioning tool and tank. Plus they complement you well, as they typically deal out mainly physical (and sometimes poison) damage, and have freezing capabilities. The bowazon must be smart, however, for this to work: fortunately most of the barbazons have moved on to be barbasorcies. You can work well with a bowie, but usually it's a good idea to hold back for a little bit so that you can adapt to her tactics. If she likes to herd, then tag along and don't get in her way: help herd if you can but generally that's easier said than done. When she's got a good herd going, unload on 'em. In general let the bowie dictate the pace and strategy, and you can add elemental punch where her arrows lack luster.

For most of the other types of ranged attackers, usually the best tactic is just to split up and clear separate parts of the same area. If you stay in the same area, you'll share experience and both levelup faster, and you can team up for the really nasty bosses. Be sure not to gather a big mob and then go running back to your partner with mob in tow, though. Such "training" will make you unpopular pretty quickly - your partner is likely to wonder why you keep coming crying back to mama. Instead, if you get in over your head, park the problem monsters in an out-of-the-way space, TP to town, inform your partner(s) of what's going on, and get them to TP you into their space. Then you can go tackle the problem monsters on your terms as a pair later, after you've helped your partner secure his or her area.

Large Parties of Mixed Types

If you run with a large party which falls into either of the 2 small party categories above, then it's a simple extension. But if you roll with a large party of varying types, it can be hard to find your role. Your damage output can't keep up with an assassin, bowazon, sorceress, or most barbs, and you're not a good tank (unless you built yourself that way on purpose). What's a guy to do? In general, you must become a support character, who assists others. Some need no assistance. For instance, it's generally not worthwhile to assist a sorceress, since her spells dwarf yours in so many ways. Instead, it's often a good idea to pick one of the tank characters and follow him around, pretty much ignoring everyone else. Support them as you would a tank in 2-man games, although the most effective spell in large games is Volcano, since every monster has a ton of hitpoints, and the diffuse damage from your other spells will pretty much get lost in the noise. Pick a tank, back him up, and methodically raise volcanos under his opponents, cursing with LR if you can and there's no necro around.

Teaming with Barbarians

Fortunately, the old lance-WW-barbs are pretty much a thing of the past. The new kings of the Barb hill seem to be Frenzy and Berzerk, and WW has been relegated to a secondary (but still useful) skill. This is a good thing because it means that more and more barbs are becoming tanks, which is really what they were meant for anyway, with huge life and DR. Support him as you would any tank. Hopefully your barb uses his warcries effectively: the most important one for you is Battle Command, but many barbs don't take this skill. If he's got it, then you're in luck - a +1 skill bonus is always a good thing. Note too that your Oak and his BO will stack, so you'll both have a ton of Life.

Teaming with Paladins

There are many, many varieties of Paladin out there. Most fall into the melee-paladin class, which means they are a tank by default, since a pally only has 2 useful ranged attacks. Hammer/fist pallies are more difficult to play with, since they play almost exactly like you do (Fist works very similar to Volc, and hammer is very similar to a Hurricane/Tornado combo), and thus you are likely to trip over each other. Similarly, a new variety of "bowadins" is emerging who use a bow and offensive auras (like fanat, holy shock, and conviction), and will generally not mesh well with your playstyle. Charge paladins are particularly difficult to work with, since they are not really a tank. In a party, a charge pally usually serves as a bodyguard, dispatching emergency threats one-by-one. You'd much rather have a tank, since without one every monster pretty much becomes an emergency. A melee pally makes an excellent tank, however, so treat them well and support them with lots of pretty spells.

Teaming with Sorceresses

In general, don't. You offer nothing to the sorceress that she doesn't already have, so she's likely to use you as a tank, which you probably don't want. All her spells are much more effective than yours, and she has no motivation to protect you. This is the prime candidate for "go away and leave me alone." There are exceptions - a lightning sorceress in particular will be a tremendous asset to you, since you possess no lightning damage and she's likely to be limited in the fire damage she can output if she's focused heavily on Lightning skills.

Teaming up with a Necromancer

Despite some anti-Druid sentiment among Necromancers, an Elementalist and many varieties of Necromancer make a fantastic team. You provide the big fire, physical, and cold damage, they provide the big physical, poison, and magical damage. In addition, many of their skills complement your tactics quite nicely. What you have to avoid doing is turning him into a simple curse-bitch, who tags along cursing everything with Lower Resist. If you do this, he'll probably get bored. On the other hand a few people actually enjoy playing curse bitches, and if you find one of these then that's great because he will turn your skills into absolute monstrosities capable of wiping out whole crowds in record time (this means you, Brian!).

Of course, you'd love it if he tagged everything with Lower Resist, but sometimes that's not always the best for the situation. Recognize that both Amp and Decrep will augment your Tornado damage, and make sure the necro realizes that too. Then he can watch how you use your spells and switch between Amp and Lower Resist as he sees fit. Similarly, you can adjust your tactics to better mesh with his. A Poison Nova/Fire Golem type will almost always use Lower Resist, so recognize that your fire spells will be more effective than Tornado spam, and sit back and enjoy the ride. An Iron Golem user will certainly use Amp instead, and this is fantastic. The golem provides an excellent tank, and in addition he attracts nice tightly grouped packs of (Amped) monsters, which your Tornado will quickly stunlock and decimate. This in turn will make the IG last longer and your necro friend will be happy. A Necro who uses small numbers of Revives is also handy because they provide a great tank wall, which you can stand right behind and employ Hurricane effectively. Large numbers of revives, coupled with your spell graphics, usually mean huge lag, and a large-revive necro is probably better off on his own anyway so he can learn the error of his ways ;-)

Bone walls pose a bit of a problem: your spells will damage them, often destroying them quite quickly. This will piss off your necro friend to no end: not only does he have to worry about his minions attacking the wall, but now his friends are too! If you see a necro setting up bone walls, he's planning something sneaky, so the best thing to do is probably back off and watch the fun - most likely it involves a big explosion at the end. If you like, a well-placed Fissure can usually avoid the walls while damaging the enemy. The huge spread on the Volcano, on the other hand, means that a few of its balls will probably hit the wall unless you open it way up in the distance.

One more thing: if you have a LR wand, stick it in your pocket and pretend you don't have it. If the necro doesn't want to curse something with LR, then you damn well better not. Over-writing curses with your own will piss them off mightily. In addition, get rid of your vine somehow. If you've already got one going, re-summon it in the middle of a big crowd and let them destroy it. Nothing pisses off necromancers more than other people using "their" corpses. If you forget, he might remind you (and not very subtly either, "get rid of that f*@^ing vine!" has been heard on more than one occasion): don't get mad, just do what he says because he's right.

Teaming with Assassins

Teaming with a Traps assassin is very similar to teaming with another Elemental Druid. She does have the advantage of some great crowd control skills, though, which you don't have. So if she likes to Cloak stuff, open up Volcanos under the blinded bad guys. If she likes to Mind Blast things, they will generally tend to form tight mobs as the converted fight the unconverted, and Tornado can be used to great effect. In addition, she has a reliable tank in her shadow. The danger is that you will trip over each other. For this reason if you find your playstyles don't mesh well, split up and try to clear the area out faster as a separate pair. If you work well together, more power to ya.

Martial Arts assassins, however, make good tanks. Recognize that they're somewhat frail, though, and be prepared to bail them out in sticky situations. This is one situation where Twister is useful - if she's badly mobbed you can start spamming Twisters and stunning everything until she thins out the crowd a bit. Martial Arts assassins are extremely effective at taking out bosses, which is your weak suit, so you should mesh well with her. Feed her nice treats and complement her shoes, and hopefully she'll stick around and continue to kick ass for you.

Teaming with Amazons

I've covered teaming with a Bowazon up in the ranged section, and teaming with a spearazon is almost exactly like teaming with a Martial Arts assassin from your perspective, since she's somewhat frail and needs to avoid getting mobbed, but provides excellent single-target elimination prowess. Javazons tend to beat to their own drum nowadays, so they're hard to predict. She will likely have devastating lightning and poison attacks, which complement your fire and cold skills nicely. Additionally, it's still possible in LoD to build an effective tanking javazon, although it's much more difficult to do than it was in D2X. If you run across such a tankazon, you can smile big and let them do their thing, while you happily destroy the mobs which form around her.

The most important thing to remember about teaming with zons is that they like to dictate the pace of play. Javazons in particular get irritated if you start leaving them behind. A good bowie can do wondrous things with controlling the flow of battle using only her decoy and valk, and a bit of slow missiles. Let her do her thing, and adapt to her playstyle, and you'll go places together.

Teaming with other Druids

Teaming with a hybrid Summoner/Elementalist is a piece of cake, since he already knows what to do and 2 heads are better than one. The presence of his minions reduces the heavy need you have on careful positioning, and essentially you'll become a more powerful version of him, since you didn't have to spend as many skill points in the summoning tree, and will likely have either higher slvls of spells, or more spells at high level to cope with different situations. This is your chance to get a taste of what playing behind a minion wall is like.

Werebears and werewolves make great tanks. Use them well, and if they have a higher level Oak Sage than you do, unsummon yours. The way oak sage auras work, they periodically overlap in their application, and sometimes you can get in a situation where the lesser of the two sages' aura is in effect, effectively robbing your companion of Life which he counts on.

Playing with another pure Elementalist can lead to two situations: In areas where you tear stuff up anyway, you'll become an unstoppable duo. In areas where your offensive power is a little iffy, you'll trip over yourselves and will likely have many problems. For this reason you should probably stay somewhat separate, and only team up on the really big mobs that remain relatively stationary. Another tactic is to roll along together, and then you can trade off who's the carrot and who's the stick. Or you can try to split any significant group you find into two smaller groups, and use divide-and-conquer tactics.

Varieties and Variants

There are several possible varieties of pure elementalist, and a few variants as well. In general, though, the Elementalist is a somewhat underpowered class, so some people might consider the entire elemental-using druid to be a variant. I'll let you decide which of these ideas seem like variants and which seem more mainstream.

The Storm Lord

This guy focuses on Hurricane and Tornado, and likely will back it up with Arctic Blast. He avoids all fire skills. Cold Immunes will provide a challenge, and Duriel is likely to be a big pain in the butt. The big bonus is that you don't have to put a single prereq point in any fire skill. You'll have a lot of extra skill points, so it's not a bad idea to pump up Oak Sage or even Cyclone Armor.

The Vulcanist

This is an Elementalist who specializes in Volcano. He will, of course, need a secondary spell to back it up, but Volcano by itself retains enormous utility throughout the game. The chief tactical problem is getting the enemy to stand still. You could also call this guy "The Kernel" because a lot of people think Volcano is kind of like popcorn.

The Disaster Zone

This variety of Elementalist alternates Hurricane with Armageddon, and thus creates a zone of elemental death in his immediate vicinity. He is lacking in any long-range options, though, and will be a late bloomer since these are both level 30 skills. A minor in Tornado would be wise to deal with magic resistant baddies. With some judicious skill-point-saving, though, both these skills can be maxed by level 50, although getting to level 30 on the strength of your other spells at slvl 1 will be challenging without some twinkie gear.

Be Your Own Tank

This guy puts points in Strength and Dexterity, and puts on big armor and weilds a useful weapon. Usually he will either rain fire from the sky with Armageddon or go for the consistent chill of Hurricane to aid him. Attack Rating will become a serious problem by later difficulties. It is viable to try this as a no-Energy build, although you'll want to avoid Arctic Blast and Tornado since they're such mana hogs. A good shield and a fast, high-damage weapon with a lot of +AR and life leech will be very important. Islestrike, the unique Twin Axe, is not a bad choice since it has decent damage, +2 to druid skills, and a bonus to all stats, and requires only 85 strength, but you'd definitely want to socket it and add something to boost its combat statistics. A Shae rune or perfect Amethyst (for the AR) wouldn't be a bad idea.

He Who Rends The Earth

Funny name, eh? A Volcano/Fissure maniac. Back it up with Arctic, Tornado, or Hurricane, but avoid Armageddon since you've got the fire thing covered. Remember that Fissure's casting delay is reasonably short, so cast it first and back it up with a Volcano two seconds later.

"Standard" Elementalist

He likely has access to all four major attack spells (Tornado, Volcano, Armageddon, and Hurricane) and usually will try to max out 3 of the 4. Keep in mind that Volcano is your only reliable long-range attack. It's also nice to back it up with a medium-level Arctic Blast for the chill duration.

All Fire Elementalist

Well, this will certainly make you think over your tactics, since you have no chilling capability and each of the fire spells is good for completely different uses. The big downside is that Fire Immunes will be a serious problem. You'd have to rely on a mercenary, party members, or wading into battle yourself to handle them.

Summoner/Elementalist

I list this as a single variety because although there is a variety of skill choices here, it pretty much plays the same no matter which way you go. You have a tank, or tank wall, and you cast spells from behind them. Whether you pick a Grizzly or wolves, or go Volcano, Tornado, Armageddon, or Hurricane, these all play quite similarly. It is unlikely that you'll be able to max out 3 elemental skills and still have worthwhile summons, so plan on getting two elemental skills and a well-developed tank.

The Bowler

Molten Boulder specialist, probably with a nice fat Arctic Blast to aid in positioning the chilled enemies. Try to get interesting geometries by laying out your enemies in certain ways. Charges of Dim Vision would be sweet, but be prepared to recharge it often.

The Underachiever

Try to see how far you can get by not putting more than 8 points in any skill, i.e. you'll never see the damage ramp-up which occurs at higher slvls. Once you try this out you'll understand how important it is to max the spells you use most rather than spread the points around. Most likely you can get through Nightmare difficulty with this build on the strength of slvl 8 Hurricane alone.

The Non-Elemental Elementalist

The oxymoron (or maybe just the moron) of the group, this guy only puts points in Cyclone Armor, Twister, and Tornado. Once you've pumped those up, maybe work on ravens or spirit wolves. You could also make this work with shapeshifting I suppose, since none of these spells have casting delays. Unload with a few high-level tornados to soften up the mob, get furry, and finish them off with tooth and claw.

Minionless

No Merc, no Oak Sage, and no Vine. Life will be difficult without any form of tank, so one of your premiere tactics will likely be the "chase me while I rain fire on you" idea. If you combine this idea with the Fire-only Elementalist idea, you're pretty much playing an underpowered version of a CD2 "Hot Babe" or Fire sorcie. Armageddon is used like Blaze, Volcano is used like Firewall, and Boulder is kind of like Meteor. I suppose.

Moving On

That's the Elementalist. Have fun with him, and try not to hurt yourself ;-) I've got one more thing to talk about, though, and that's all the folks I'd like to thank for making this possible.

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