pharaoh
Diabloii.Net Member
Yeah, Hurricane is cold damage, and his Tornado is physical. I've never played a wind druid to high levels (not played druids much at all since v1.09 on the realms), so I'm not the guy to give much advice here. I mainly play sorceress, amazon, and necromancer characters.True that!
Thanks for the link. I'll try this one out and see how it goesNever thought about freezing attacks because the druid has this tornado/hurricane whatever is that circle which makes a lot of noise and freezes everybody
The druid fire skills, or the amazon ones? My understanding is the druid ones tend to be kind of lacking. Plus your friend won't have the points to spare to get them to levels that could kill anything in Hell if he's also trying to max out the wind skills.
For you, though, it's a little different. You can make them work, but honestly, Freezing Arrow is far better than Exploding Arrow. Immolation Arrow looks nice, but it has a cooldown timer, so you can't shoot it very fast regardless of how fast your attack is. Plus, monsters tend to wander out of the flame patches. It could work if you can freeze or chill the targets to make them stay in the flames longer, but if you can do that (ie, they're not cold immune), you may as well just kill them with Freezing Arrow.
Let's assume you have +5 to your bow skills (not hard to get, since you can get +3 on amazon bows as a base mod). Then let's say you max out Exploding Arrow and Fire Arrow (synergy), for 42 skill points spent. You're doing 622-724 fire damage per hit. If you max Freezing Arrow and Cold Arrow (forget about Ice Arrow; it's completely pointless), you will do 1414-1448 cold damage and freeze things for 2.1 seconds, for 41 skill points. Basically, you spend fewer points, and get over double the damage plus a powerful utility effect in the freezing.
Both of these elemental arrows will carry elemental damage of their respective type. This means if you get some fire damage from gear or Enchant, it will carry to the explosions, while Freezing Arrow's splash damage will carry extra cold damage (including the chill length) from gear. This last point is crucial; if you get gear-based cold damage with lots of duration (it sums up), this will add to the freeze length. Even with freeze duration cut to a quarter in Hell, you can freeze whole packs of monsters for 5+ seconds with good gear and a decent chance to pierce. Cold damage charms can make this even longer if you stuff your backpack with 'em.
Minor nit: he's cold/physical. The game uses the term 'magic damage' in different ways. First, it refers to actual magic damage, such as the necromancer's Bone Spear spell. Second, it refers to all non-physical, non-poison damage, and in this sense includes magic damage (in the first sense), along with cold, lightning, and fire. When you have gear that says 'magic damage reduced by x', it means magic damage in this second sense. If you have 'adds x magic damage', 'magic resist x%' or 'magic absorb', it means it in the first sense.
There are some items that deal magic damage, like Ginther's Rift or the runeword Famine. It's a pretty rare mod. Likewise, the set of skills that deal magic damage are limited. The amazon has Magic Arrow. The assassin has Psychic Hammer, but it doesn't really count; at slvl 40, it only deals 83-104 damage). The barbarian has Berserk, and also Frenzy and Concentrate if synergized by Berserk. The paladin has Holy Bolt (undead only), Blessed Hammer, and Fist of the Heavens (undead only, at least the bolts that come off of it). The necromancer has the most, in Teeth, Bone Spear, and Bone Spirit. The [STRIKE]assassin,[/STRIKE] druid, and sorceress have no magic damage skills at all.
I wouldn't worry about the overlap between your damage types. You really only need 3 damage types to kill stuff in Hell, as monsters will have at most two immunities (most of them will be bosses, too). If you're going with Lightning Fury/Freezing Arrow, and your partner is Hurricane/Tornado, that has you covered. Even if you stick with Strafe instead of Freezing Arrow, you'll have this overlap; it'll just be on physical damage rather than cold. Harmony will help out a bit on Strafe though, with the elemental rainbow damage.
That said, it is possible to make a pure elemental arrow amazon. Points get stretched a bit thin, but there is a way to make it work with fewer points if you don't mind a bit of cheese. What I did was used a Ravenclaw from v1.09, upgraded to a cedar bow. It fires level 30 Exploding Arrow with its normal attack. This means for 20 skill points to synergize it, I get 880-1023 damage. I can then dump 41 points into the cold tree for 1054-1088 damage there. Having +skills will boost Freezing Arrow's damage, but not the Exploding Arrow; I tend to use FA most of the time, and the Ravenclaw's EA as a backup vs immunes, or if I run out of mana. Other points go into Penetrate and other utility skills.
Keep in mind that the bow skills that add an AR boost are buggy. This boost is displayed on the skill and on the LCS, but isn't actually added. Your chance to hit is the same as if using a normal attack. The splash damage will always hit the first target, but unless the arrow hits as well, the arrow cannot pierce. It will usually look like it pierces, but I believe that's just a display bug. Point is, you still need good AR to set up piercing damage chains with FA/EA. I'm not sure if Lightning Fury has a similar problem, but I don't believe so.
Strafe's performance will tend to drop further as you advance through Hell. You can compensate by gaining some levels (since the relative attacker vs defender levels are a huge part of the to-hit formula), boosting your AR (this is why I max Penetrate when using Strafe), lowering target's defense (Eth runes) or getting a bow with the ignore target's defense mod. The latter is hard to do; only two bows (Eaglehorn and Widowmaker) come to mind, and Jah runes aren't cheap. Keep in mind if you can get your to-hit up to 90%, you'll be hitting 12.5% more frequently, meaning 12.5% more damage over time. Getting to 95% (the cap) makes this 18.75%.
On a totally different note, keep in mind the fun factor. Sometimes, when playing MP with friends, I don't go with the fastest killing skill. If you're using Lightning Fury a lot, and the druid doesn't kill fast, then you're going to be slaughtering whole screens of monsters while he sits there bored. He's going to wonder why he's playing, and he's only going to get a chance to play when you're fighting lightning immunes or playing at least a screen or two away from each other. This depends a lot on play style and what the two of you enjoy. If you enjoy playing at a faster pace than your friend, it could work, but otherwise, you might find he's not enjoying it as much as you.
