Melee Druid Guide

[val]

Time to farm a Rudolph nose and try it out! Thanks for the answer

I do not think it's the - the important part of the build, you can always use dru neph. (But still its a nice amu)
Fury - max
Warewolf - max
Lynosomething - max
Oak - max
1 point on the pets
Rest on the dmg spirit

The key item is the hammer. Still not tested it yet on all conten, but it works pretty well in pits and inf cows.

My dmg at the moment is something like 22 - 23 k 12 k life and 50 k ar. With the new shield i think you can easy get 15 k life

[Ukon]

If most damage come from flame horizon proc, there really isn't much use of caring about Phys damage then.

I think it would be more effective to build around fire damage from Flame horizon proc, holy fire, and Fire claws.

[wdzepplin]

If most damage come from flame horizon proc, there really isn't much use of caring about Phys damage then.

I think it would be more effective to build around fire damage from Flame horizon proc, holy fire, and Fire claws.

I thought the same as well - I wouldn't even bother with any physical damage and go all out on the fire damage instead. Get lower resist, conviction, etc. and forget about physical that's probably only just a small % of the damage anyways

[Ukon]

Flame horizon has limited phys damage and if you are only adding 1 point into fury / pounce, your overall phys damage is so minimal.


I think you would be better served either picking fire damage or phys damage, not both.

[Lucid]

holy fire almost deals no damage, since you have no synergies to skill (like pala) and no jack of all trades or fire mastery as sorcs/asns do.

you just have it because its on the items. And forget about fire claws. Ive recently tried them with my current setup (-185% fire pierce) and reached 61k damage in screen. But that fireclaw skill seems to barely hit bosses and without physical pierce you cannot really rely on cb%. If you want a fire melee druid, focus on flame horizon procs and go with pounce. Thats the only viable bosskiller if you ask me...

or go full physical and MAYBE try the new necro wand :P lel. 5% chance for a blackhole procc doesnt seem much but i bet it deals good damage and you can focus on leech + cb + high physical damage.

[wdzepplin]

Ya I think fire damage from the procs is really what deals damage from what I've seen from your build Lucid (at least in inf cows)

So then focus on getting -fire res and don't care about holy fire (since I can confirm you the damage is pretty bad vs any inferno content)


Made me think that maybe Flame Horizon paladin build is viable with Zeal

[Lucid]

zeal has the same mechanics as fury. It wont be very good against bosses with dodge/parry/block etc.

A smiter would procc it more consistent and faster if you ask me. Its almost like the poison smiter we once had with plaguebringer as weapon.
But with a smiter you would loose every targeted benefit, such as making holy fire viable and you would have way less life and surviveability.

the only thing to get more firedamage out of the proccs is to skill with 20 armageddon (=+40% firedamage) and the rest of the points into fissure (every point makes 2 more seconds of armageddon).

[wdzepplin]

I mean once you have the items it's rather easy to theorycraft and try out a bunch of builds since leveling isn't very long to do.
I might give it a try

I enjoyed smiter with on-hit effects since you can run things like salvation and just face tank everything and rely on on-hit for all damage instead of other traditionnal sources - HP isn't all that important when you have max DR, max block, decent evade (25-30%) and absorb

[wdzepplin]

I tried smiter with Flame Horizon and I must say it isn't all that great.
It seems to lack lifesteal - maybe I need to tweak it a bit to make it worth better.

Also, gear is not fully done yet, I don't have horadrims in many of the gear yet as I have them all used for two other characters. I might just farm more crucible to get 5-10 fire horadrims more