Melee Druid Guide

[Lucid]

Thanks for this guide pulse37!

Ive followed it mostly and it really plays well. Ive changed that armor into azmodans (curse immune, alot -% fire, 990 baselife bonus etc) and the belt into the new relic of the ancients. I may also try to get my claws on some titans grip

i guess you can also equip your merc with this shaa sword + new arkaines wrath chest, adding up the physical pierce aura to like 40+? But i havent tryed to play with a merc yet. The druid is good enough on his own.

as there were videos requested and i want to help some new fire druid @About20Pandas :

oh and i mostly use pounce on bosses / large monster groups and fury for single monsters or some bosses like othuyeg who seem to not dodge as much as other bosses...

https://youtu.be/n9_0O5DXbjc

The first one is how to get to santa without getting hit from his snowballs. You need to run as fast as possible on the northern side of the way until you see him casting something (you can see it pretty clear where i decide to go southwards of the way and dodge those orbs almost completely).
Make sure to attack him first with rabies (-40% slow from rabies, plus those 2x sur runes i have in my FH = ultra slow boss, that cannot really attack you anymore).
Still he gets a second snowball attack on me and i barely survive it with (5500 life while shapeshifted, 8300 life while ss+oak) 95 coldress, 260 stacked resist, no absorb.

https://youtu.be/JsJWMO8F634

This is the first way to kill knarst: Try to kill stuffs close and in line of sight to him with fury. If flame horizon proccs, it gonna attack knarst too and kill him. Since fh proccs are no melee hits, he wont teleport away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjpLteBAXvM

This is the second way to kill knarst: Klick with pounce on him and then hold pounce while centering your mouse cursor fast! This way you gonna teleport with him, hitting him again and teleport again with him. That looks somewhat strange but killst him too over time.
A combination of teleporting around with him and the first way (killing monsters nearby) is probably the best way to get fast to dreamlands. I dont even slow this monster since it cant hurt me much.
OH and dont summon any bears/wolves/ravens. They melee hit him and he will teleport away. Its just you and the oaks :P

https://youtu.be/JKygnNhmY0g

and something funny at least. Probably one of the fastest ways to kill timerift diablo. I was pretty procclucky there and the more of this minions that are there, the more proccs my quillstorm and the more quillstormproccs there are, the more flame horizon proccs following

now the more boring part: My gear

Helm: Full moon - 2x fire facets
Weapon: Flame horizon - SurBerSur
Shield: Corrupted Stormshield - 3x fire facets
Armor: Azmodans shell - 2x phys horads, 2x fire horads
Belt: Relic of the ancients, 7 might, -20% physical pierce, 117dmg, 147 ed% :P
Gloves: rnd Hysteria (still want to test some titans grip there)
Boots: Deaths advance - enchated with -5% fire pierce
Rings: 2x cons
Amulet: 1x Diablos rebirth

Inventory with anni, neo anni, torch, druid prime with -10% phys res and alkors (you wont get hit into delirium, you just sometimes end up in cancelled wolf form. Just recast it then)
Rest of the inventory is filled with life/ar charms.
Most of the inventory is just random stats, except for the eyeballs. Ive chosen one with highest max resists since you will need them to get to 95% res.

in my case i end up having:
8328 Life while shapeshifted and oak alive, no bo
151 frw
65 fcr
40 fhr
110 ias
20-23k pounce damage (self-enchanted)
20-25k feral damage (self-enchanted)
33811 rabies + fury attack rating
31999 pounce attack rating
332 mana (like pulse said, there are some manaproblems :P)
92 max fireresist
95 max rest resists
252 stacked resists (cold 260, light 272)
-185% fire pierce
-60% physical pierce
44% slow from rabies, plus 40% from weapon (you can see the boss' attack speed in the first vid - Santa is ultra slow)

i still want some more fire pierce (for mappo, mostly) and probably some more physical resist, to get leech active/better on some bosses.
My gear isnt enchanted yet. Only the boots are. Also i can replace some of those fire facet jewels with fire/phys horads and get even better fire pierce.
Also i havent tested any merc yet. This act 3 lightning with arkaines wrath, shaa sword and malevolent seems to provide some nice stats. But mercs die way to often/fast and i just dont like looking for those guys...

gl and feel free to pm me if you have problems or need advice

~Lucid

[About20Pandas]

Holy shit @Lucid.

Thank you so much for that explanation - that was way more than i expected!
I really, really appreciate what you've done. Thanks!