THE BASIN |
Were-guidever 1.1 - Jonathon SpectreWay of the Wolf or Path of the Bear | A Choice of Companions | What Spirit Moves You? Stats | Skills | General Play Tips | Stone Skin and Physical Immunes Equipment | Hirelings | Lister Mini-Guide | Baal Mini-Guide Greetings all, and welcome to version 1.1 of Jonathon Spectre’s Were-guide. I wrote this guide because in the past few weeks I have witnessed some abominable play and a shocking lack of knowledge on the part of public b.net’s lycanthropes and would like to reverse that unfortunate trend. This guide is not intended to be a step-by-step “tell you how to play the game” manual, instead I will discuss the various shapeshifting skills, how they interact, and my opinion on which are most important/useful for various shifting builds. I will also cover the summoning skills and how they can complement a lycanthrope’s power. At the end of each skill summary will be the stats for that skill at slvl twenty, with life totals for Normal/Nightmare/Hell where appropriate. Note that everything in this guide is based on my experience and opinion and that, as always, your mileage may vary. All numerical info in this guide is from the Arreat Summit. All Nightmare/Hell summon life info is from Chippydip’s skill page. Let’s hear it for these two great resources! Way of the Wolf or Path of the Bear?This is the first choice you have to make. A pure shifter (no skills in any other trees) can afford to pump both werewolf and werebear (why you would is another question), but in my experience it’s far more effective to build heavy shift/light summoning hybrids. In later difficulties, the most important thing a front-line fighter can do is minimize the number of monsters swinging at him at any one time. The druid’s disposable minions, requiring only mana to summon, help accomplish this goal painlessly. It’s also entertaining to watch a grizzly bear fight a frozen scourge. The shape-shifting skill information and most general tips will still be applicable even to those who wish to concentrate solely on their lycanthropic gifts. So should you be a wolf, or bear? Well, that depends on you and what you want out of the game. The werewolf is the “claw tornado” of Diablo 2. Fast, strong, and relatively tough, the werewolf can tear through crowds and hold his own against almost anything. If you are planning on soloing, I would pick a werewolf for two reasons: He moves a lot faster than a werebear and is less dependent on increased attack speed (IAS) items to achieve an acceptable attack speed. None of this is to denigrate the werebear,
mind you. He is big, unearthly tough, and hits like a truck on
crank. His tremendous life and defense bonuses make the werebear one of
the game’s elite “tanks”, front-line fighters designed to give and
take punishment, and he has one skill in particular that can turn even the
deadliest non-boss/champ monster into an experience point pillar. This
were-form does have one drawback, though, and one you should know of
before preparing your life as a bear: SLOW. Without an IAS weapon
or some serious IAS gear, you’re going to be swinging glacially slow,
and if you get chilled, well, just restart the game. No, really. The
werebear untwinked and untweaked swings so slowly chilled as to actually
be hilarious. It’s like watching one of those “behind-the-scenes”
films on the making of a claymation movie. You know, where they move the
little arm a quarter-inch and shoot two frames, then move it another
quarter-inch and shoot two frames? Yeah, like that. Dismally slow. When
you first put a point in this skill, you may be so slow that you will find
it hard to use (I know I certainly did). When mobbed, it’s hard to get a
shot off because you swing so slow, and it’s heartbreaking to miss three
or four times in a row. Your first priority as a werebear is always to get
a fast or very fast weapon with some sort of IAS on it. This is not that
difficult to do, make sure you check both vendors every time you’re in
town and soon enough you’ll find one. IAS weapons/gear negate the big
bear’s inherent sluggishness and, well, he turns things into meat jelly
when he hits them. A Choice of CompanionsNow that you have chosen to be a wolf or bear, if you are going to summon minions, you must choose which to walk with. There is a debate amongst druids about which sort of animal summon is “best”. This druid thinks such contests foolish things, as both dire wolves and the later grizzly bear are both powerful tactical assets and useful in totally different ways. Facing a swarm of enemies? Three dire wolves will tie up a large mass of monsters long enough for you to cut down on their numbers. Up against a single strong boss? A grizzly bear can take the beating none of your wolves can. Here are some points to think about when deciding what pets to develop: In higher difficulty games (and especially with multiple players) the bear is significantly tougher than each individual wolf. The relative weakness of the wolves can lead to what I call the “collapsed front”, and your demise. Since wolves are so much weaker, they tend to be snuffed out in one or two hits by the tougher enemies. It is easy to miss one of your wolves going down and not be “right there” with another, and if this happens, your other two wolves are going to die very quickly. This is the “collapsing front”, and it can happen fast when against a tough aura-enchanted pack or an LEB. It seems like you’re safe with your wall of wolves, and then suddenly their portrait vanishes and a tidal wave of monsters swamps you. This relative fragility vis a vis the grizzly can be offset by making conscious decisions to boost the life of your pack, such as using oak sage or pumping extra points into dire wolf for the passive bonus. A wolf-pack strong enough to survive for long in A5/Hell is going to require a number of skill points to build. Plan accordingly. There is also an argument over which pets
do the most damage. Grizzly bears do 660-726 at slvl twenty; dire wolves
do 82-88. BUT… you can have three of them, so make it 246-284. AND…
dire wolves get a “rage bonus” from eating a corpse wherein their
damage is (supposedly) doubled, giving us 492-566. This is still lower
than the grizzly, but if you were to make the conscious decision to create
a deadly wolf-pack and boosted heart of wolverine, this could be pushed
further still. Three damaging pets would be better than one in numerous
situations, such as facing flayers or the spread-out, fast demon imps in
frigid highlands. Isn’t it great to have a game where you have to choose
between which deadly animal you’ll summon? A resident of public b.net would say that the bear is clearly superior because almost all you see in Nightmare and Hell games are grizzly summons. This is functionally equivalent to “use orb, everybody does”. The grizzle (sic) requires much less care and attention than a wolf-pack does (and a smaller number of skill points to be effective), and therefore the vast majority pick the bear. What Spirit Moves You?For shapeshifters, there are really only two choices when it comes to spirits, oak sage (adds percentage life) and heart of wolverine (HoW, adds percentage-based damage and attack). Spirit of barbs works only when you get hit, and you don’t want to get hit. So which? This is a debate that has rent the druid community. Half say heart of wolverine doesn’t do enough damage, the other half say you don’t do enough damage without heart of wolverine. I’ve used each and found both to be quite satisfactory. Here are some random thoughts on both: Oak sage is incredibly stupid. I truly believe the oak sage pathing AI is actually just the guided arrow routine renamed. It will almost constantly seek out the most damaging monster and attempt to give it life, at which point the monster will kill it and you will be forced to summon another. This is from personal experience, mind you. I would say on average my HoW gets killed one-fourth to one-eighth as many times as my oak sage. Of course, this may be because the HoW has more life, but I still say oak sage is very stupid. Oak sage’s benefit extends to everyone, not just fighters. If you are in a party with two sorceresses, your HoW is doing nothing for them. An oak sage would be helping out their life as much as yours. A consideration if you party a lot, perhaps. Oak sage will greatly enhance the benefits of any +life items you or your party have equipped. Heart of wolverine is prettier J If you kill things at a blistering pace it sometimes doesn’t matter how much life you have. This will end the first time you fight something tough, though… High-level oak sage can make a massively tough grizzly bear, a nigh-invincible tank (your hireling will benefit as well), and quite survivable dire wolves. High-level HoW can make a grizzly a murderous engine of destruction or a vicious pack of wolves. If you are partying with a druid who uses the same spirit as you, check who has the higher level, and whoever loses switch. This should be common sense but, as I said, this guide is to help correct some of the problems I see on public b.net, and this is a big one. Which of these spirits you choose is entirely up to you. My personal suggestion would be to use oak sage for a soloing werewolf, HoW for a soloing werebear (to-hit on werebears can suffer sometimes), and whichever you want for party characters. It is also quite feasible to put one or several points in each and use them situationally as well. As with so much about the druid, there is no “the” path, only “a” path. A side note: Rapidly summoning spirits in various places about the screen is a good way to make sparkly “fireworks”. This hidden skill can be used to celebrate important victories. Stats:STR, VIT, and, to a lesser extent, DEX, are the important characteristics of a shifter. I will reveal for the first time here the ultra-secret method I use to determine the stat point progression of each and every one of my characters! I go to the Arreat Summit: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp I look under “Items” and find what kind of top-end armor/weapons I’m going to shoot for. For instance, I know I want Reese McKenna to be able to wear any armor that drops and use any good weapon he finds. Therefore I look up sacred armor, see 232 STR required, and set that as my goal. I then look and find that the highest DEX requirement necessary for any weapon is 140. Now I have another goal. Then I push my stats to that level. Easy, eh? You can do it too! This obviously shouldn’t be construed as “First push your STR to 232, then push your DEX to 140”. There are plenty of people who plan out their characters down to what weapon they are going to use at level 99, and set stat point caps based on the equipment kit they’ve already got in mind before the character has even started. This is an equally valid way to go about things. I just don’t like to do it. There are many who choose to use +STR or +DEX items to boost these attributes and put extra points in VIT. I don’t like to be dependent on items to be able to use other items, so I choose to forgo quite a few points in VIT to be naturally super-strong and super-limber. There is some argument amongst werewolves
of whether or not to put any points in DEX or simply to use a
mace-class weapon and pump VIT instead. A werewolf usually has
sufficiently high AR that DEX is not critical, but there are a few reasons
to pump it: Does not limit your item selection: It’s terrible to find something nice at high level and need 45+ DEX to use it, knowing how God-awful long it’s going to take to get that naturally. A were-creature should not be a fumble-fingered klutz J 75 STR and 47 DEX will let you use any normal weapon except a blade, war scythe, throwing spear, great maul (99 STR),, flamberge(49 DEX), and balanced axe (57 DEX), and any normal armor up through gothic plate. 100 STR will let you use great mauls and ancient armor. Once you have reached one of these caps it is a good idea to slow down your progression in STR/DEX and pump VIT some. I did 2 STR/2 DEX/1 VIT after hitting 100 STR and 47 DEX and have been well-served since. Again, this is because I chose to make a character who can use shield blocking and wants to be able to use any weapon regardless of requirements. More points in VIT could probably be assigned for a less-fanatic werewolf workout freak than Reese McKenna. And of course any points after meeting your overall STR/DEX goals should go to VIT. Life. Can’t live without it. Skills:Obviously, the long-term strength of any character is going to depend on how wisely skill points are assigned. Someone with twenty points in ravens and twenty points in spirit wolves will be able to rock Normal, but will slump dead in higher difficulties due to lack of power. This is not to say that it is stupid to build a bird-caller, but you should be aware that all skills are not created equal, and some will take you farther than others. There are two skills on the shape-shifting tree of particular note in that they require you to invest in both the werewolf and werebear sides of the tree to gain access to. These two skills are fire claws and hunger. To reach them, a wolf must invest in werebear and maul (note those two skill points are gone, forever, totally useless) and a bear must invest in feral rage (as werewolf is a prerequisite for lycanthropy, every bear is already forced to put a point in werewolf, and it’s worth pointing out here as well that those points in werewolf and feral rage are gone, forever, totally useless). In my opinion, fire claws and hunger are both less than spectacular, and having to spend irreplaceable skill points in skills I will never use to get to skills that are less than spectacular is a bad idea, and I shun them. Specifics will follow in the descriptions of the individual skills. Level One: Werewolf: If you’re playing a bear, here is where you will begin to wonder at the wolf-bear relationship Blizzard Entertainment has dreamed up. Every shape-shifter on b.net will put at least one point in this skill in order to get access to lycanthropy. Hey, Blizzard! So werebears aren’t lycanthropes? There isn’t even a link between werebear and lycanthropy. So dumb. Regardless, even if you are a werewolf, a few points here early will be more than enough for quite a while. I personally left werewolf at level three for many levels, extra attack rating (AR) and a small (and from what I’ve read, bugged) attack speed increase are not worth too many skill points when you’re young and wild and still don’t have access to much of the tree. Later when you come into the fullness of your power this skill may earn more of your points. At slvl twenty werewolf gives +35% life, +25% stamina, +335% AR, and +68% walk/run/attack speed for 15 mana. Growl. Lycanthropy: Well, you’ve already spent twenty of your hard-earned points, and it’s only level one! What do I mean? If you are any sort of serious shapeshifter, you are going to put a lot of points in lycanthropy, and probably max it. The skill grants five percent more life per level (note that that’s percent) and, more importantly, twenty seconds longer in beast-form. “So what?” you say. “Shifting is cheap, mana-wise!” Yeah? Well, changing from a frenzied, furious werewolf to a soft, pink human in the midst of a creature-mob usually ends with the words “was slain by”. Points in lycanthropy are never wasted; if you can’t figure out what to do with your level-up point and don’t want to save it put it here. The effects aren’t flashy but they are both real and effective. Lycanthropy is the second skill I max on most shifters; staying a beast for a long time is really nice, as is the big +% to life. At slvl twenty lycanthropy adds 420 seconds to your were-form and +115% life. Raven: Pure variant material. Put one point in this to move down the tree, and let your Poe-ist peck the eyes out of Fallen while you’re in A1/Normal. It’s very strange to me that this skill gives no passive bonuses to the rest of the tree. As such, it is useless, if fun to watch. At slvl twenty, raven lets you summon 5 ravens with 31 hits at 21-23 each for 6 mana. Note that ravens are not real “summons” in that they can’t be targeted at all by monsters and so are doubly useless later in the game, doing no damage and taking no hits. Poison Creeper: Oh, my GOD. This is a good idea gone bad, specifically because the graphics for this thing’s “crawling” would make a Cray chug. Poison creeper is almost as weak as the raven, and before you put a point in it you should consider whether to have a vine at all. Unless you are playing a poisonish variant, the only vine a melee shifter should consider is carrion vine at level twelve, and I will discuss the strengths/weaknesses of these summons then. Don’t put a point in poison creeper until you’ve read to there at least J At slvl twenty poison creeper has 72/110/148 life and does 84-86 over 4 seconds for 8 mana. Level Six: Werebear: ROAAAAAAR! YEEAAARGH!
Sorry, I just feel ferocious when talking about the werebear. This
non-lycanthropic lycanthrope is gigantic; he’s almost the size of
an Urdar. His attacks “bear” (cymbal) mentioning also. While the
werewolf’s swings resemble him giving little backhanded slaps to his
enemies, the bear’s attacks look like bear attacks. He leans
back, swings from the waist, and usually whatever he hits dies. This is
because the werebear is the king of one-hit mush. Notice how one of
werebear’s bonuses is increased damage? Slow, but certain, is the credo
of the werebear. I tend to pump werebear more and earlier than werewolf,
as his damage and defense bonuses are more impressive to me than
werewolf’s run speed. At slvl twenty werebear gives +100% life, +183%
damage, and +120% defense for 15 mana. Because you can have up to five spirit wolves, some people champion using these as your only summons, a lupine army to spread the monsters out. I personally have found my spirit-wolves tend to die at an angry glare from Hell difficulty monsters, and prefer the higher-level summons. At slvl twenty spirit wolves have 35/53/71 life, 49-52 damage, and give +240% to AR/DR to all wolf and bear summons for 15 mana. Oak Sage: The first spirit you can summon, the oak sage gives a huge bonus, thirty percent (that’s PERCENT) life at level one. Wow. That’s nice. At slvl twenty oak sage has 201/301/402 life and grants +125% life (yowza!) for 34 mana. Level Twelve: At this level, you get your first lycanthrope attacks, and boy, they’re good ones. Feral Rage: This is the first werewolf attack skill, and it is devastating. Feral rage is a “charge-up” attack; that is, you must hit with it several times in succession to “charge-up” its effects, which are increasing percentages of life steal and walk/run speed. I have no hard evidence on this (testing involves MATH), but it seems that feral rage boosts your attack speed as well though, as I said, this may be illusory. I get excited when I’m feral raged. Regardless, it is a supremely powerful skill that in combination with others can make you nigh-invincible. You will be putting at least one point here to get further down the tree, and one of the great mysteries of public b.net to me is that no one uses this skill. I would say that perhaps two percent of the wolves I have played with on b.net use this skill. What!?!? Why!??! I’ll tell you why: Because they’re idiot conformists. Someone has told them it “suXX0rz” and they have blindly swallowed it, just like America almost blindly swallowed Al Gore. Feral rage is far from “suXX0r”ing; indeed, it’s very powerful. When you hit something with feral rage, a small ball of red light will begin to circle you. This shows the depth of your rage. Each hit from now on gives you an increasing percentage of life steal and run/walk speed. The larger, brighter, and faster the ball, the more infuriated you are, and the more life you steal/faster you run. When you have it charged up, you can switch to another attack (what I actually mean is, you can switch to fury J ) At this point, you will be moving very fast indeed, and stealing back huge life with each swing, regardless of the attack you use. How huge? With a few points in feral rage and a life-steal item or two, you can easily hit the fifty percent leech mark, and when you’re doing a thousand damage per hit…. It becomes hard to kill something like this, that heals five hundred (and this is low, really) life every time it hits!!! What’s even greater about feral rage is… it doesn’t require many points to be effective. This is not a skill you really need to max, a couple of points and a couple of skill adders and suddenly you’re leeching 25% more life than you were. Snarl! My own beloved werewolf Reese McKenna plays the game much like this: Feral feral feral feral feral… fury for 19 seconds… feral fury for 19 seconds feral. The bonus feral rage proffers only lasts twenty seconds, but every time you land a feral hit, the timer gets reset. Once you’ve worked your feral rage up to max, a single hit refreshes the timer and gives you another full twenty seconds of high-percentage life steal. What this means is that the last enemy in a mob is usually “feral bait”. Once you’ve torn through his friends, you switch back to feral rage and land a hit on him to reset the timer, then fury him to bits and head out looking for another pack. Usually, the FIRST and LAST hits I land on a monster mob are feral rage, with everything in between being pure fury. Let this short article be a lesson to you: USE FERAL RAGE. Just think of it as a passive. That requires a rending claw hit. At slvl twenty feral rage gives +145% damage, +210% AR, 4-52% life steal and 19-55% faster run/walk speed for 3 mana with a duration of 20 seconds. Maul: This is the werebear attack skill, the ONLY melee werebear attack skill, but it’s a good one too. Maul is maxed by many fighter werebears, as it boosts damage by a respectable amount. It too is a “charge-up” skill, with a lovely green ball in contrast to the werewolf’s cheery red. A party of mauling, raging lycanthropes is just like Christmas, snarling, growling, stealing life! At least that’s Christmas at my house. Maul works in almost exactly the same way as feral rage, i.e. get “mauled up”, find a pack, first hit maul, everything else normal, last hit maul. Unless you have enough mana steal, in which case just maul maul maul. I personally can’t remember the last time I used anything but maul on my left click. Unlike feral rage, maul does not add extra life steal to your attacks (any life steal you have will still work, of course, and work well, as you will be pounding things into scrap), but maul does have the added benefit of stunning enemies, making them smooth and pliant for more thrashing. Werebears will want at least one and probably several points in maul. I personally plan to max it, but am in no hurry to do so. Let this short article be a lesson to you: USE MAUL. Or else you won’t be able to get to SHOCKWAVE. At slvl twenty maul adds +25-325% damage, +210% AR, and stuns for 1.7-4.7 seconds for 3 mana with a duration of 20 seconds. Carrion vine: Ah, the life of a vine. Crawl beneath the ground, occasionally get killed, burst up and eat corpses. That’s the day-to-day existence of the carrion vine, the only vine for fighters. Carrion vine eats fallen monsters, healing you a percentage of your life. Now, this sounds wonderful, right? Corpse disposal, healing, all in one package? It is good, but there are some problems with it, and with vines in general. First, vines tend to have the hit points of wet Kleenex soaked in fragility sauce. In higher difficulties they survive very little enemy contact, and in a party situation their corpse disposal utility can become a nightmare. Consider: You are in a party with a necro, and you have a carrion vine up. You come across a holy fire boss pack. Since you are constantly taking damage from holy fire, your vine will eat any corpse that hits the ground, the instant they hit the ground. This can lead to a seriously pissed-off necro, and furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be a way to unsummon a vine, at least, I can’t get target one when I have unsummon selected. Actually, there is a way, but it involves summoning a new vine in the midst of a pack of fanaticism-enchanted monsters J or summoning a prerequisite poison creeper. So what do vines do for you, then? Well, as stated before, they give you life and get rid of corpses, healing a percentage of your hit points with each corpse devoured. With full feral rage going and a carrion vine eating, it’s difficult for any non-fanaticism-enchanted creatures to hurt a werewolf. Personally, I would “waste” the two points needed to get a level one carrion vine and use it situationally. Great against raisers, great against Nihlathak, great when soloing. At the very least it provides one more target for monsters to pile on besides your hairy self. More points in carrion vine provide more hit points and an increasing percentage of life steal. At slvl twenty carrion vine has 225/340/456 life. Its healing percentage caps out at 10% at slvl 15. Level Eighteen: Fire Claws: This is the first of the “incestuous” skills, the two skills that require wolves to develop bear and vice versa. This skill and its werewolf-only cousin, rabies, were apparently put in the game to help druids against physical immunes. >puts on sing-song voice from MST3K< Total failure total failure! Failed to bring back the Sampo! Now we die of starvation! Sorry. What I mean to say is, it didn’t work. Monsters in Hell difficulty have such huge hit points and regen so fast that trying to use this skill to kill one is like digging… a lake… with a spoon. Yeah, that’s about right. I don’t think fire claws simply doesn’t deal enough damage to be worth the skill points necessary to to get it and then pump it. But without fire claws, how can a druid deal with stone skin/physical immunes? Stay steadfast, and check “On Stone Skin and Physical Immunes” a ways farther down. At slvl twenty fire claws does 233-238 fire damage with +335% AR. Rabies: Marginally better than fire claws just because it’s amusing. I’m of mixed mind about rabies. First of all, it’s poison, which I love. Second of all, it’s infectious poison, which I love even more. Third, it’s infectious poison spread by the bite of a werewolf. Does Blizzard have a little neuron gnome perched betwixt my synapses taking down my most secret thoughts? How cool is that? A rabid werewolf! Rabies works like this: You bite an enemy. That enemy turns green and gets a reddish-orange, transparent aura around him. This orange glow shows he’s RABID!!! For the next four seconds, if that enemy comes in substantial (one-half second or so) contact with another enemy, he coughs, and the second enemy gets sick too. In this way the poison can spread like crazy. Cool, eh? This looks incredible in a place like the Flayer Dungeon; you bite one, he runs off, and suddenly you’re surrounded by little glowing green figures, radiating sickness and spitting darts at you. It can be effective almost anywhere enemies bunch up and come in contact, and while its damage even at high levels is relatively low, it is high enough to put an end to whole hordes of tiny, low hit-point, oh, say, spawned monsters. But wait! Blizzard saw this skill’s usefulness and penciled in all the monsters this would be good against as poison immune. Rabies was made almost useless by that decision. At level twenty rabies does 306-331 over four seconds. Not good. Would be fantastic against maggot young and baby flesh-eaters, but I digress. As I said before, I’m of mixed mind about this skill. I want so badly for it to be good, but its damage is low, and the disease has problems spreading. A round of rabies is four seconds, total. So if you bite a fetish and make it rabid, and it takes that fetish two seconds to spread the disease to another, the second fetish is going to take only half of rabies’ (already low) damage. This makes no sense, and is not how disease works. When rabies spreads it should start up on a whole new timer for that creature, allowing reinfection of large groups to occur naturally. This would look incredible as well (cellular automata). Despite its low damage I still use rabies often enough to have it hotkeyed just to help out against hateful, hateful stone skin bosses and more hateful physical immune. With a few changes and a damage boost, this skill could be great. I hope Blizzard will take the time to fix it someday. At slvl twenty rabies does 306-331 over four seconds with +183% AR for 10 mana. Dire Wolves: Growl. Snarl. These are the sounds of the dire wolf (also of Reese McKenna). The high-level wolf summon, dire wolves are bigger, meaner spirit wolves who eat corpses to drive themselves into a blood-fueled frenzy. You can summon up to three dire wolves, and each point gives a percentage passive bonus to life for all wolf and bear summons. I always put at least three points in dire wolves. This gives you three wolves, and the sheer usefulness you’ll get out of them from level eighteen to thirty is worth the skill points. You may find you like them, and decide to devote the points to becoming a wolf summoner. And even if you don’t, three points will give a nice 70% bonus to the life of your forthcoming bear. At slvl twenty dire wolves have 193/292/387 life, 69-74 damage (doubled when frenzied?), and give 240% life to all wolf and bear summons for 20 mana. Heart of Wolverine: I already discussed HoW above in the section on oak sage. Reread that if you really need to know more. At slvl twenty HOW has 326/489/652 life and gives +153% damage, +158% AR. Level Twenty-four: Hunger: The second “incestuous” skill, hunger is another I’ve never placed a point in. The basic premise of hunger is that you sacrifice a large percentage of your damage for a huge percentage of mana/life steal on what’s left. Now, this works, certainly; were-creatures of sufficient level do tremendous damage. Slvl one hunger is –90% damage, +187% mana/life steal of whatever damage is left. Taking again a base damage of 1000 (again, this is quite low compared to what a higher-level lycanthrope can do consistently), a single bite would easily refill almost any fighter-type’s mana orb and a good chunk of their life. So why do I not use this skill? Several reasons: You have to develop both sides of the tree just to get it. Assuming you don’t want to use fire claws (and I don’t), a werebear has to spend two prereq points to get to hunger (would be three except werewolf is already a prereq point, grrrr, have I mentioned this?), a wolf has to spend three. Wolves already have access to quite ample life steal in feral rage, which can be used with an incredibly powerful skill (read: fury) where hunger must be used instead of fury. In this way the werewolf gains the big life steal but doesn’t sacrifice the damage done. Were-creatures period don’t use a lot of mana. Feral rage, fury, maul, and shockwave all use relatively miniscule amounts of mana (shockwave uses seven, and it is the most expensive) that can be easily made up with even small amounts of mana steal or a few (hell, really even one) triumphant item with conservative play. How much mana leech do you need when your fury costs 4 mana and does 1000 a hit This is not to suggest that hunger is bad; the skill’s concept is great. But three, even two skill points are far too many to spend for something that’s not really needed, especially when all of those prereq skills are completely useless. Really the only time I run out of mana with my were-creatures is when against a mana-burn boss, and for those times, well, that’s why I have that belt full of fat purples! With less prereqs I would be a great advocate of this skill, but as is, I choose to pass. At slvl twenty hunger gives –90% damage, +360% mana/life steal, and +240% AR for 3 mana. Shockwave: And the Lord spake, and behold! He said, “Shockwave.” This is a great skill. This might be the greatest skill in the game. Shockwave creates a cone-shaped field of middling range in front of your werebear. He sweeps his hands out in a dismissive gesture, and all caught in the cone are stunned. For 1.6 seconds. Unmodified by difficulty level. At level ONE. This is the ultimate in protection. Having a decent level of this skill is like having holy freeze, decrepify, and a boatload of elite safety items rolled into one 7 casting cost skill. Listen. Perhaps you don’t understand the incredible, world-changing power of stun. Let me give an example. Ever fought Lister? Know how difficult he is, the way it’s so hard to deal with his pack of huge, deadly brutes? For a werebear, this fight is cake; it’s literally no harder than fighting fallen shaman. This is because the only thing you will be fighting is Lister. Lister’s minions will be standing stunned for the entire fight, little things twirling about their heads as you casually destroy them. I’m not going to say any more about this skill than this: The duration of the stun is a little bit bugged, but my beloved werebear Garth McKenna has it at level eighteen now, and I can’t honestly remember the last time more than two or three stuns were necessary to polish off even the largest pack. This may, of course, be due to the extreme, predatory lethality of Garth’s werewolf companion Garoni, but I’m sure his multiple seconds of area stun have something to do with it as well. At slvl twenty shockwave lists a stun duration of 13 seconds, but, as I said, it’s bugged somehow. Did I mention it costs 7 mana? Or that it gives multiple seconds of area stun? Or that it’s a very weak area of effect attack, doing 99-109 damage along with its stun at slvl twenty? Do you love it yet? Solar Creeper: If you’re into wasting points and then agonizing about it later, get a solar creeper. It functions as a mana-stealing carrion vine that is less efficient. I held a spirited debate with a fellow one night in a game where he almost begged me to think that solar creeper is good for a shifter, it reminded me greatly of people who loudly champion something like the Turbografx-16 or the Atari 7800 because they had the bad judgment to buy one. His idea was, if you wanted to wait to shift/summon until you were outside town, then solar creeper would help refill your mana ball off the first few monsters you killed. I pointed out that you can always just shift/summon inside town and then visit the healer, or drink a potion, or have some mana steal, or just wait, all actions that didn’t require a skill point, but he kept swearing by it. Then he told me Sega was coming back and he’s still got his Sega CD. At slvl twenty solar creeper has 393/595/792 life for 33 mana. Its replenishing caps out at 6% at slvl twelve. How’s that for diminishing returns? Level Thirty: Fury: The be-all and end-all. Red, wrathful bliss for the werewolf. With this skill the wolf-kin submerges his humanity totally and throws himself wholly into the attack, rending about himself with an unknown ferocity. What this means is, Zeal with big, bronze balls. Fury is a multi-hit attack with large, constant percentage-based bonuses to AR and damage. It makes a werewolf into something approximating a tempest of pure carnage, and if you are a melee wolf this is the skill you max first. Some tidbits about fury: Fury seems to give a random number of hits at times. Perhaps it is internet lag or a flaw with the graphics engine, but I do not always see fury delivering all five hits, even when surrounded I often only throw two or three. Regardless, if it only delivered one hit, this skill would still be superior for the huge damage and AR bonus. Fury’s effectiveness increases drastically with the addition of IAS weapons and gear, as well as selecting fast (good) or very fast (better) base speed weapons. Range considerations should come into play when choosing a weapon. I notice when using a polearm that Reese McKenna tends to fury at things around him because of the increased range, while with a maul he tends to just pile on the enemy in front of him. With a sufficiently damaging weapon with range, a furied werewolf can hold his own even surrounded, keeping everything near him stunned. Range can be a blessing in some situations, a curse in others. Play around and find out what works for you. The interplay of feral rage and fury is what creates the indestructible “tempest” werewolf. Fury’s huge damage and feral’s huge life steal can make you into the destroyer; even an MSLEB will be as nothing to such a frenzied creature. Do not forget yourself and fail to stop and renew your rage against such a dangerous thing, though, or else you’ll be picking yourself up off the floor when you lose 20+% life steal in the middle of a fight. Again, DO NOT NEGLECT FERAL RAGE. Even if you only have it at slvl one (and don’t you have a skill adder or two?), it adds a large percentage of life steal at a cost of basically ~2 seconds of hitting monsters. There is a reason this is a level thirty skill. With fury at a sufficient level even the strongest of the Prime Evils’ monstrosities will be blood-filled smoke before you. At slvl twenty fury gives 5 hits at +183% AR, +423% damage, and +100% attack speed for 4 mana. Spirit of Barbs: Well, as I said before, this spirit is only effective when you or your pets get hit. I think getting hit is failure, and I don’t want to base a character on failure. If some of you losers do, that’s fine. J Couple this strategy based on failure with the global physical resist penalty in Hell difficulty, which will further cut the spirit’s returned barbs damage, and it just can’t measure up to the benefits of oak sage or HoW. Spirit of barbs may be a perfectly logical choice for an elemental/summon druid or a pure summoner, but to the were-creature, this spirit is best left alone. The exception would be a druid who expected to always party, as it would cut down on “spirit conflict”. However, unless you’re always in a party with two other druids who separately use oak sage and HoW, you (and your mates) are still missing out on sage/HoW’s far superior benefits that do not rely on failure. At slvl twenty spirit of barbs has 508/768/1022 life and returns 240% damage to attackers for 44 mana. Summon Grizzly: Roar. Grar. These are the sounds of the grizzly (also of Garth McKenna). This is the big tank, the monstrous cave-bear, a fighting companion without parallel. Even if you decide to be a wolf-only summoner, the grizzly is well worth at least one point to get access to his passive bonus, +25% damage to wolves and bears at slvl one. Most of the time, whether as Garth McKenna or his brother Reese, I find myself traveling with a grizzly. He has the advantage of being quite a bit tougher than individual dire wolves, and he stuns whatever he hits as well. At high levels, the bear can also do quite a bit of physical damage. There’s not that much more to say about this guy. He’s big, he’s bad, he can suck up punches pretty well, and he costs nothing but mana to create. A burly grizzly at slvl twenty has 142/213/285 life, does 660-726 damage, and gives a passive +120% damage to wolves and bears for 40 mana. Grar. Just Some General Tips on Items and Play:Refreshing your were-state is just like refreshing shiver armor or thunderstorm. ALWAYS do it just before you leave town, and ALWAYS do it before a big battle. If you start to think “Hey, I wonder how much longer I’ll stay a were-thing, it’s been a long time,” break off combat THEN and go shift and shift back. It’s too easy to get pounded to bits as a mere human, and dying is bad. The prime requisite for a were-creature’s weapon is speed, even at the cost of some damage. IAS is the most important attribute, and your primary weapon should almost always be socketed with a Shae rune if possible; you cannot be too fast. For this reason werewolf is often the skill picked to max after fury and lycanthropy, but rumors of bugs with its speed increase have led me to leave it relatively low. Other IAS gear will help as well, but is not as important as the speed on your weapon. Sigon’s Gage and Sabot are good choices for were-creatures for many levels, as together they give 30% IAS, 20% faster run, and 40% cold resist (less chill). One-handed or two-handed? Can you guess what I’m going to say? Well, it’s “Whatever you like,” for those of you who guessed. The advantages and disadvantages of both are obvious; the one-hander sacrifices damage for protection. I personally keep a big, deadly two-hander on one tab and an elemental damage one-hander with a nice shield on the other. More about this setup in “On Stone Skin and Physical Immunes” below. For either were-creature but especially for the werebear, items with “Half Freeze Duration” or, better yet, “Cannot Be Frozen” are extremely valuable. A chilled werebear is a pitiful thing. Of particular note here are the items Death’s Sash (which can be combined with Death’s Hand for 30% IAS) and the unique ring Raven Frost. Death’s Hand and Sash are relatively easy trades, and Raven Frost provides some nice benefits in addition to its freeze-immunity. In later levels, even super healing potions will hardly make a dent in your massive life-orb. Develop the habit of picking up those little purples, they are far superior to any red and don’t forget you can transmute three of them into a fat purple. Once you reach Hell difficulty you should keep your belt full of little and fat purples entirely; the only things that will be able to hurt you by then are going to hurt bad. As a werewolf, no situation is beyond you if you are feral raged. I have won some battles I really thought were just impossible by staying raged and keeping a cool head. Remember, while you’re raged, every fury hit is full life. Of course, if you’re playing hardcore, you may wish to be more prudent J, but softcore is a war movie. Growl. Remember that you can summon anywhere. If you see a teammate getting swarmed under, don’t hesitate to pop a bear up next to him. This mobility and the lack of any reagent is what makes the druid’s minions so powerful. Bears and wolves can be used like turrets in Starcraft, blocking off lanes of access and temporarily blocking enemy movement. Don’t just throw them up in town and forget about them. It’s not evil to banish one bear and raise another J On Stone Skin and Physical Immunes:These are the worst foes a shifter can face. Our strength lies in delivering massive amounts of physical damage, ripping with teeth and claw. Teeth and claw aren’t so hot against stone. And there are weirder things even than this, monsters whose very flesh parts before claws and then heals seemingly instantly. Against such our ferocity is meaningless; only the elements can hurt such creatures. To deal with stone skin/PI (henceforth just PI) monsters, the lycanthrope has only a few choices. The first is to develop fire claws or rabies. I’ve already made my arguments against those, but to recap: They cost skill points in useless prerequisites and their top-end damage is not high enough to be worth the investment. If you choose to invest in fire claws or rabies and utilize the tips in this section you will chew through PI monsters even faster. You just have to decide if being able to do that is worth the points to you. What I do instead is to use charms and to keep one of my weapon-swaps reserved for a high elemental damage weapon. Charms can come with quite nice elemental damage on them; I have one that’s 1-38 lighting and 1-12 fire for a whopping two slots. I usually give up four full columns in my inventory for charms, and whenever I find a charm better than one I have I just toss the old one. It’s really not all that difficult to get some decent elemental damage in this way. Poison charms bear special mention, as poison’s odd stacking allows for some truly huge poison damage with only a handful of charms. As well, you can now purchase or make weapons with quite large amounts of elemental damage. Reese McKenna’s current elemental weapon is a buzzing crystal sword of (something useless) that does 2-240 lightning damage. It cost a few thousand gold. Before that he used a four-socketed military pick with four Ort runes for 1-200 lightning damage. A magical weapon can also be socketed with the socket quest, giving you one or (if you’re lucky) two sockets to further increase the weapon’s damage. Do not ignore the power of multiple socketed perfect emeralds either; poison damage is not as fast as sparks and flame, but just as deadly. It should be pointed out that you can find one of these “zap weapons” as well as buy one. If you particularly like using crystal swords, or like the speed of a military pick, snatch up the blue ones that fall and ID it. It costs almost nothing, you can drop it if it’s no good, and it JUST MIGHT BE that arcing crystal sword of storms… Because the killing is obviously going to lag a bit when facing a PI monster, my elemental damage weapon is a one-hander, and I supplement it with a good shield. The rationale behind this is:
I look for +life, resistances, and magic damage reduced by on my shields. When you come upon a PI, clear out any non-PI beasts first and then swap to your one-hander/shield and commence the “challenging” ten-minute beating. On Equipment in General:Were-creatures have a tremendous amount of leeway when it comes to developing their kit. Mana requirements for their most-used spells are very low, making them less reliant on mana steal. Both have access to natural mana and life stealing through the hunger skill, and the werewolf has access to far superior life stealing in the form of feral rage. The werebear has no need for gigantic amounts of life steal because so often his enemies will be stunned, and the damage he deals is so great that only a small amount of life steal should be more than enough to keep him topped off. The leech nerfing of Nightmare and the re-leech-nerfing of Hell difficulty may render your current amount of leech untenable and force you to obtain more. Do not discount the power of +mana per kill items as well. Because he is not so shackled to leech in order to be effective, the druid can, if he wishes, concentrate his equipment effort on factors other than life and mana steal. Crafted safety items are very good, and some of the “best” items in the game are now sold only in stores, for example, Godly armor of the Small, Terrestrial Mammal. In the end, your choice of equipment will be dictated by your playstyle and your various resistances. Do not neglect these; even with your wild gifts fire burns and ice freezes. A modifier I would be most desirous of on any item is “Reduce Poison Duration x%”, as poison is now a real threat, and can sometimes last a ridiculously long time. Many of the “casts level x spell on being struck” items are worthless (how good is level 3 nova in Hell difficulty?), but those that launch frost nova should warrant some attention, as it can be a lifesaver. However, such effects are random, so don’t plan on it. As a werewolf, you will be attacking very quickly, so items that “cast level x on hit” can be interesting, but again, those effects are random. 20-30% faster run items are going to be important with a werebear if you don’t want to die of old age getting places. A werewolf who uses feral rage can almost ignore run speed on boots and depend on his rage to make him fast, but this will come at the cost of crawling around in non-combat situations. A special note: Any ring or item with charges of teleport is very powerful. Teleport’s main usefulness is not even its mobility anymore, it is the fact that you bring your whole army with you when you teleport. A were-creature with a tough merc and a tough critter teleporting on top of a monster usually ends that monster’s day. It can also allow you to save yourself (and how did you get surrounded, anyway?) and your hireling from death when you’re swarmed and save yourself some gold and experience. On Hirelings:Hirelings are very powerful lieutenants in your war on monsters, and you should probably employ one, unless you’re one of those “lone wolves”. The question “What is the best hireling?” is quite nearly the same as “What is the best animal summon?” All of them are good, but I personally would choose one of these: Barbarian: Just great tanks, and can dish it out too. Front-line fighters who are very tough. Town guard: There are three flavors of these, and I would pick according to your build and your priorities. Building a tank werebear? Defiance might be your thing. Decided to use oak sage with your werewolf? Try a might-aura merc to make up for the absence of HoW. As front-line fighters they also take some of the heat off of you, the most important thing a merc can do. Ice-specialist Iron Wolf: These guys can freeze targets. That is a powerful, powerful ability, but they have some disadvantages. They are relatively fragile, and as they aren’t fighters they don’t tie up any monsters, leaving more to pound on you. And aren’t you the star? The rest of the hirelings are, in my opinion, useless. Rogue mercs might be able to do a lot of damage, but barbarians/town guardsmen can do a lot of damage and tie up monsters. The ice Iron Wolf is useful not because of his cold damage but because his spell freezes. Fire and lightning don’t freeze. So they don’t get used. Equipping your merc will go a long way towards keeping him alive. Big +life items and big damage reduced by and magic damage reduced by items will make your hireling much more durable. Eventually you should probably aim for some nice elite crafted safety stuff socketed with perfect rubies for your human pet, or go really crazily all-out and find him some nice damage reduced by percentage gear like Vampiregaze and Shaftstop. A Mini-Guide for Fighting Lister:This is my favorite battle in all of Diablo 2, and I have done it many, many times with both Reese and Garth McKenna. I consistently see people getting killed by this guy, and perhaps I can help put a stop to some of it with my observations. The first thing to remember about fighting Lister is, get out of the way of where he will spawn. Even if you are running D2 on a YMP-3, it is going to lag when Lister appears. On my system it lags approximately 3 seconds, every time. Screen freezes, everything stops dead for a second or two, then another second or two of sped-up play, then back to normal. So the first thing to do is, run away. As soon as that Venom Lord pack is dead, get the hell away from Baal! Run all the way to the back of the room, to the “neck” of Baal’s chamber. If you get too far away, Baal will not summon Lister. You will know he hasn’t if you don’t lag. If this happens, edge forward until Baal laughs. He’s laughing because now you’re close enough for him to summon Lister, and Baal likes Lister. It would be prudent to stop whenever Baal starts to laugh. Lister doesn’t have a gigantic awareness radius, and if you are in/very near the “neck” just inside Baal’s chamber, neither he nor his pack will come at you. After you lag and time becomes normal again, it is time to face this most powerful of demons. Almost no one can charge into the middle of Lister’s pack and remain unscathed. His minions hit super-hard, they ignore defense, they stun, they knockback… it’s ugly. So the key to defeating Lister and his hellspawn is to not get surrounded. Once you do, you are inevitably lost. So how to go about this? For a werebear with a decent level of shockwave, this fight is nothing. Stun Lister’s minions. Kill them. Kill Lister. If the monsters begin to fragment, recast your bear in a place to make them bunch back up. Then shockwave. Then kill. This works equally well partied or solo. If you are in a party on public b.net, by the time Lister has materialized, half your party (the half that ignored you when you said “Back up!!! Lister coming! Back up!!!”) will be dead at Lister’s feet. It’s very hard to coordinate a battle among strangers, so just remember not to get surrounded, to attack the edges of Lister’s pack while you keep your summons in the middle, and make sure you keep all your minions up. The more targets for these dinosaurs, the better. The extra people in the game will make your minions much, much tougher (let’s hear it for hit point scaling) and even if everyone else manages to get waxed you can do it. Just pay attention, stay raged/mauled up, keep your minions up, and don’t do anything dumb. If you are alone and not a shockwave werebear, you’ve got a harder fight, but one still quite winnable. The key for you will be to keep Lister’s minions fixated on your own. Start by throwing a bear or wolves as far up the screen as you can to attract the demons’ attention. They will run forward and start bashing on your pets. Any hireling you have will now also rush to what is likely their doom, charging straight up the aisle to get in the middle of all those monsters. Don’t be like your hireling. Swing out to the outside of the pack. Pick one of the monsters on the edge, and start beating on him. Use this guy as feral/maul bait, and then switch to fury or, eh, continue mauling. Keep a close eye on your summons, and as soon as one seems about to die recast it, as close to its current position as you can. You may be unlucky; your front may crumble very quickly due to some random criticals by these powerful creatures. If this happens, run away. Run a few steps and regroup, put a line of creatures up for Lister and crew to break themselves on, and resume your pecking at the edges. Before long one monster will go down, and then you can shift your attention to the next, and the next, and the next, until it is Lister’s steaming carcass left on the floor, doubtless next to magic breastplate and magic falchion. A Mini-guide for Fighting Baal:Baal is a pretty straight-up fight. There’s him, and there’s you. He does this thing to do damage, you do that. Title fight! Round twenty! Baal’s festering appendages are good for you. They give you feral/maul bait right in his chamber. I usually skulk around until he raises a few, feral/maul up, and then charge. Summon a bear behind Baal, this way if he lets loose with his killer orange missile it will only get one of you, and if you back off to drink a potion or run away Baal will turn from you to deal with the bear. The demon’s fire nova will wax your spirit quickly, and you will have to resummon all of your minions frequently. Do so. Anti-freeze items can be quite important, as one of Baal’s worst attacks is the “chill wedge” that shoves you back and chills you. Werebears, especially, are hurt by this, as chill so greatly slows their run and attack speeds. There’s not a lot of tact in a melee fight with Baal, so rage/maul up and go get him. Keep your summons active, don’t be afraid to drink a potion if you get hurt, don’t be afraid to back off, portal and go to town to resummon dead critters and visit the healer. Remember, dying is bad. If Baal clones, it may be worth your while to go hang out in town a minute or two, as the clone will usually be gone when you come back down. Take your time, and he will fall, leaving behind a blue unraveller head and 6532 gold. And though I recognize the futility of this, if you are playing in a party and you kill Baal or another boss, try to restrain your greed. Try to allow all the treasure to hit the ground, to allow everyone who contributed the chance to at least see what he dropped before you TK it up, and perhaps even >gasp< to share. And on that ridiculously utopian note I shall end my guide. The author invites disagreement, commentary, or stupendous hosannas of praise J.
Changes from version 1.0:
Thanks for reading! Jonathon Spectre
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