Zelaron Gaming Forum - Pvp Druid Guide

Hello some of you know me as apoq, or Furo.
I have been playing druids my whole d2 career, and my most successful druid is FurociousFather he is a Hybrid druid he duels using a wide range of skills and tactics, shockwave hunger fireclaws oak HoW wolf and bear forms.
This is my first attempt at a pvp guide so be nice : )

Goals

maximum damage reduce (atleast 70%)
maximum block % chance (75%)
2800+Hp's
30ll%+

Weapons

These are the weapons you are going to want to use.
4 FPA Elites (7 FPA standard):

Cruel Cryptic Sword of Quickness with 3 sockets.
3: 40% ED/15% IAS jewels. 420% ED, 85% IAS.
31 - 405 damage. 218 Average. Range: 2

Cruel Mythical Sword of Quickness with 3 sockets
2: Shael runes 1: 40% ED/15% IAS jewel. 340% ED, 95% IAS
180 - 224 damage. 202 Average. Range: 2

Cruel Conquest Sword of Quickness with 3 sockets
2: Shael runes 1: 40% ED/15% IAS jewel. 340% ED, 95% IAS
167 - 237 damage. 202 Average. Range: 1

Superior Berserker Axe (15% ED) and 6 sockets.
5: 40% ED/15% IAS jewels, 1: Shael rune, 215% ED, 95% IAS
78 - 226 damage. 152 Average. Range: 3

Cruel Phaseblade of Quickness with 2 sockets
2: 40% ED/15% IAS jewels. 380% ED, 70% IAS.
153 - 172 damage. 162 ½ Average. Range: 2

Cruel Fanged Knife of Quickness with 2 sockets
1: Shael rune. 1: 40%ED/15% IAS jewel. 340% ED, 75% IAS
70 - 255 damage. 162 ½ average. Range: 1
(Note: All knives damage is modified by dexterity as well as strength, since you will be pumping dexterity for max block, theyll end up doing more damage than a weapon with similar base damage.) (besides this weapons are str based 1.00 this is .75 str+.75 dex)

Cruel Ataghan of Quickness with 2 sockets.
1: Shael rune. 1: 40% ED/15% IAS jewel. 340% ED, 75% IAS
118 - 206 damage. 162 Average. Range: 1

Superior War Spike (15% ED) and 6 sockets.
6: 40% ED/15% IAS jewels. 255% ED, 90% IAS.
110 - 173 damage. 141 ½ average . Range: 2

Jeweler's Scourge of Quickness with 4 sockets.
3: 40% ED/15% IAS jewels. 1: 40% ED/+15 Max jewel. 160% ED, +15 max, 85% IAS.
10 - 225 damage. 118 ½ average. Range: 3

Griswolds Caduceus with 3 sockets
3: 40% ED/15% IAS jewels. 295% ED, 85% IAS.
149 172 damage. 160 ½ average. Range: 2
Leveling/PvM
I would use heart, more damage=more leech, more ar=more hitting =more leech

2handed weapons are always better for leveling purely from cow runs
2handed weapon you won't get "locked" from blocking , and you do more damage (leech back quicker)

I suggest
cruel giant thresher of quickness/swiftness shael-shael for 6/4 fury, or 2* edias for 7/4 fury with a bit more damagel
if suffix is swiftness shael-edias is best way to go.

cruel great poleaxe of quickness shael//edias, or if you don't want to use edias jewel on a pvm weapon shael shael

Buriza edmax Lo eth anything you think will increase your damage output.
Shael Ik Maul
Mess Reaver (shael)
StormSpire
no basic "strategy" but always charge up feral pretty good before getting inbetween a pack of cows, feral rage is one of the best PvM skills, the added in r/w is also nice if you need to run away or towards something quickly.

Charms

As far as resist, you usually won't need that for dueling melee, unless your opponent deals high elemental damage. for dueling in more public areas you might want higher lightning resist and or r/w
I suggest using hp/lightning, all res/hp, resist/ r/w, resist/fhr sc's

For melee dueling the optimal charms to use are sharp/fine
charms of vita/sustenance/(elemental damage)/balance

when dueling you will want 42% hit recovery

assuming small charms are bugged to only be 4% fhr ..

there are a few different setups to attain this
with bloodfists use a 10 max/12 fhr gc
with a stability armor (24% fhr) use 5*3 maximum damage/5 fhr sc's

If you use a pure vita druid (4500+hp) i suggest only using 20% faster hit recovery, because you will not be put through the hit recovery animation as often due to higher hp. basically the higher your life is the less useful a high hit recovery frame rate is

The optimal charm setup is :
7x 10max 45 hp 76 attack rating (sharp grand charm of vita)
3x 10max 12%fhr 76 attack rating (sharp grand charm of balance)
2x 3max/20 ar/5(4%) fhr sc's (fine small charm of balance)
8x 3max/20 ar/20 life ( fine small charm of balance

for bear form you want 37%fhr, so take out a 3/20/5fhr and switch in a 4max damage sc, or 3max/20 life sc

If you can't afford the higher end gear, +20 hp small charms, and regular +8-10 max gc's and +2-3 max sc's will also work very well also.

Hybrid pvp druid
you probably want to just go with HoW
(this is going to require a high level to be affective)

This build requires the druid to be atleast 90+

at level cLvl 99 you want :
3 feral rage
lycanthropy/fury
10 HoW (use 2 sojs, jalas, valor, lidwall, dark clan crusher, 1 summoning skills charm for maxed HoW)
7/max werewolf
3/max maul
7/max wearbear
1/max fireclaws
1 hunger
1 shockwave
(surplus skills can go into cyclone armor, ravens, oaksage)
if you use many shapeshifting skill charms like me you can just get wolf/bear forms to level 7 and use +25 skills from gear to get lvl 32 (cap) shapeshift level

Here are my lvl 94 Pvp hybrid druid base stats :
Strength 170ish
Dexterity 226
Vitality 140

The Optimal stats at lvl 99 are
Str 156
Dex 237
Vit 172
None into energy

Helm: 08 gaze ed/max ed/str max or 09 ber
Armor: ed/max/life/stability jewelers armor
Shield: Storm ed/max cham (for bear) max ed/str shael
belt: String of ears
gloves: bloodfists/venoms/crafted gloves if you want leech/ optimally : 6% life leech with +stats/hp /crush blow/ar
boots: goreriders/war travlers/ 08 goreriders
rings: 10%+ life leech +stat/ar/min/max/hp ravenfrost
Ammy: Highlords/08 highlords
weapon : any of the above listed weapons, and shael baranor star/ shael estar

a bit cheaper build :
Helm: Shako(ed/max or shael) or Jalal's with SOE
Armor: shaftstop(ed/max)
Weapon: same as above
Shield: storm(shaeled)
belt: SOE ls
gloves: Blood fists/venoms
boots: Aldurs/gores/ik
ammy Highlords/Cat's
Rings: bul kathos/raven frost

A few breakpoints:

9/5/5/5/5 fury = -60

8/5/5/5/5 fury = -75

7/4/4/4/4 fury = -95

6/4/4/4/4 fury = -115

5/4/4/4/4 fury = - 140

(The first frame is the speed you will feral and normal attack while the rest are the last 4 hit speeds of a fury swing)

bear speeds are

5 frame maul = -115

4 frame maul = -140

anything slower than that is not feasable for pvp

Faster Hit Recovery Breakpoints:

(if you take more than 1/12 your life in damage from a hit, youll be sent into a recovery animation)

20% = 5 frame recovery

42% = 4 frame recovery

86% = 3 frames recovery

Chance to Block formula:

Shield% * (Dex - 15) / (clvl * 2) = 75

Dueling

Dueling druids :

I don't reccomend eth (unless they use valor) because you need to be able to leech as much as possible (not using eth allows higher damage weapon), with wolf form just say 'go' and start raging/furying , if you have the chance shift attack and let them walk up to you it allows you to start out with a few hits.

With bear form you might want to let him come to you instead of running up to him, If you run to him he might get a good 2-3 hits in on you before you can hit him. in bear v bear start raising maul charge until you reach final animation if opponent starts stunning you, switch hotkey to hunger and as soon as you see the swirly over his head switch back to fireclaws, and go back to maul every once in awhile to keep maul charge maxed.

when dueling bear v wolf, you want to keep him pinned so don't let him run and comeback to you, after you get maul to the final charge, switch hotkeys/skill to fireclaws which has nice fire damage, and if your'e not using eth (alot of ar) alot better chance to hit him.

you don't need life leech as badly in bear form for dueling most classes

Using ravenfrost/cham/etc
4 fpa wolves don't need it, they aren't slowed ias wise by cold damage/holyfreeze

bears however need cannot be frozen at any speed.

Dueling paladins :

In bear form becareful, if they charge and smite you can be in for a tough match.
If you are planning on dueling a vindicator (smiter) try staying against a wall so when he smites you, you aren't knocked back. thats the main reason it hurts bears (by not giving you a chance to hit back)

If they charge/walk up to you or you walk up to them, charge maul to final animation and switch to fireclaws, every 10-15 seconds switch hotkeys and hit with maul again, that way every attack of yours will have the damage bonus and stun bonus from maul.

Dueling Paladins with wolf, shift-lock if they charge you (most do)
using an eth'd weapon usually (2 shael 3ed/ias eth or Lo) gives you a significant chance of block locking them and usually killing them before they get to hit back more than a hit or so.

If the paladin does not charge you, use the highest damage weapon possible (7/4 anyways) , opposed to a 6/4 fury weapon, that way you can kill in as few consecutive hits as possible.

Dueling jabazons :

Bear form is pretty tough because jab is uninterruptable and its Usually hard to connect..this is a fight that will be tough no matter if the jabazon is good or bad.
Another thing you might not want to use fireclaws as much because it costs more mana, and sometimes you don't get to hit the jabazon as much, so you want to have 100% chance to be stunning them every time, so you might want to keep using maul whole duel, so you don't run out of mana (sadly i ran out of mana wearing a gaze dueling a jabazon once) (if you place a skill into hunger, here is the time it might help if you run out of mana/get very low on life)

With wolf you want the highest damage weapon, to ensure 2-3 hit kills (because most jabazons have 1400> life)
usually you can't hit consistently due to their passives, but with a higher damage weapon you can get a large proportion of your hp back in one hit, and if you hit 2-3 times in 1-2 furys you can win quickly
*high attack rating is a must in this duel

Dueling asns :
Depends what skills they use (elemental/ts), I reccomend using 42% fhr for wolf form, again this is another challenge for a bear because many if not 99%+ of all melee assasins use elemental skills which are bugged to be uninterruptable with one claw, in which case you want to use an eth'd weapon usually so you leech back every time you swing at them in either form, if they use tiger strike, bear form will work very well.

With wolf you want to charge feral about twice, and switch to fury to get the duel over as quickly as possible.

Dueling conc/zerk barbs :

Make sure you have the highest hp you can achieve so you don't accidently get hit consecutively by bezerk, the reason it does so much damage is because damage reduce % doesn't lower its damage, only the 1/4th pvp reduction does and the minor -mdr damage items you can find which aren't worth using..

most barbs will use conc until they get your life lower, or when theirs is lower, because zerk can't leech (it converts and adds damage% to physical into magical ) some will use bezerk a few times to get your life low then quickly switch back to conc to keep you locked at a lower life, as soon as they start bezerking be prepared to run back a bit and let them chase you so you can get 2-3 hits in and get most of your life back very quickly.

i reccomend using an eth'd weapon because most barbs have 7k+defense making them very difficult to hit
also be aware concentrate is uninterruptable, but its possible to get hits in because its fastest attack speed is 9fps swing which is about 2 and a half swings in a second

most good conc barb duels will take over 4 minutes..be prepared to run a few yards and recast wolf/bear

Bear is also not very effective against concentration barbs because concentration is uninterruptable. You have to make sure you are hitting faster than them, and keeping your hp over 60%+

Spirit Usage :
oak sage for wolf when dueling non-melee classes/paladins
oak sage for bear form when dueling higher damage eth users (barbs, some ethereal cruel paladins and asns)
heart of wolverine for bear when dueling bears/wolves/jabzon/some asn/most paladin
heart of wolverine for wolf for every thing else

Credits
Thanks to all of the people who have given me the will, advice, and reason to keep playing druids through the good and bad

venagence, dave-you've been my personal hardest opponent since i first met you
neob, jon - your'e one of the greatest people i know ! you've given me the inspiration to duel outside of "druid duels", and you've helped my grow as a person : )
j828war2- jim, you taught me you don't have good gear to do well pvp, and your'e one of the most determined people out there
dylan-for keeping me in the shadows about druids and just giving me more reason to keep working to improve
mep, kyle- weapon comparison
rolleo. Clay- just because you are who you want to be-a clone
diabloii - for most teaching me most of what i know about druids
And to everyone else who has proven me wrong, helped me and given me advice

http://www.hut.fi/~tgustafs/hitrecovery.html

feel free to msg me on east *Apoq, *Furocious