Collection of bear/wolf/Beast/transformer characters

[purplelocust]

I've been working over the years on various projects involving characters who transform shape. I'd put off actually making the runeword Beast for quite some time but finally did that a while ago, which has opened up this project to even more classes. Here is how things stand at the moment:


Druid transformer characters

Patriarch Calorique- fireclaws bear

A pure fireclaws bear with good physical damage due to a 1.07 4-socketed Cruel Phase Blade of Quickness

Patriarch Jeltz, the Ghostly Medusa's Gaze Fireclaw Werebear

A fireclaws bear using Treachery and Medusa's Gaze to get Lower Resist to trigger

Patriarch ImmolateKing, an IK Fireclaws bear

A fireclaws bear using the IK set for good damage of not just fire

Patriarch Skoll, 1.12 Ribcracker Fury Wolf

standard Fury wolf using Ribcracker

Stompi, untwinked HC armageddon bear, started in a tourney, still in progress, I think left in A2 hell, somewhat stalled


Barbarian transformer characters

Patriarch Otsoa, 1.12 base vit wolfbarb

basic wolf barb who had a big life pool without any vitality

Patriarch Lloposo, barb man/bear/wolf

big physical damage 3fpa with a big life pool

Necromancer transformer character

Patriarch Zarquon, ghostly meleemancer necro in vampire form

used a Crescent Moon phase blade to slap monsters around, no minions

Paladin transformer (and Beast) characters

Patriarch SantMarti, Beast Avenger

not really a transformer, but used Vengeance as the main attack with the Fanaticism from a Beast Caduceus while running Conviction himself

Patriarch OsoElectro, Bear Tesladin writeup coming soon Edit: uses ITD Crescent Moon phase blade and -ELR and +LSD damage gear

Patriarch GlosoVert, physcial damage set-items only palabear using Griswolds, writeup coming soon Edit: writeup complete


Assassin transformer characters

Matriarch Sitamat, 4fpa bear assassin

used great crafted 1.07 runic talons for hard-hitting 4fpa attack as a bear

Matriarch Pingasut, 3fpa bear assassin

used 3-socketed runic talons of quickness for the 3fpa attack as a bear


Sorc transformer character

Calista IK-using enchantress bearsorc, underway, in A2 Hell at the moment (edit: now complete)


Amazon transformer character

Atalanta Fuzzydodger amazon sorc, using strong 1.07 crafted knife, underway, in A3 Hell at the moment

There is an obvious gap of not yet having a Necro bear character and I've got some ideas on that but plan first to finish write-ups for the done characters and play the Sorc and Amazon through the rest of Hell.

 

[logoutzero]

Nice indeed. Re: Necrobear, I saw a writeup for this once, in the Pat/Mat thread, but I always felt it would be neat to do a Bonebear, using the Beast switch, and a 'Brand' Demon Crossbow with synergized Bone Spear proc. I never actually read the thread about the bear, only looked for one when I got the idea. Once I saw it had been published already, I sort of lost interest. But, now that I have accepted the fact that I will never come up with a unique build in this old game, I may revisit the idea. I would be happy to play him vicariously though a content rich write-up yours, however.

 

[purplelocust]

Interesting idea for the Brand bear necro and a demon crossbow would be a good choice, it seems. I'm Vanilla though and Brand is RWM so it would have to be someone else!

For Necro-beast types there are a couple of possibilities I've thought about:

1) Skelliemancer holding Beast for the aura (kind of boring)

2) summoner or hybrid of some kind using Beast in bear form. This would be with normal attack, so AR problems (Blessed Aim merc? Inner Sight rogue?) or ITD (boss problems?) and not a ton of ED. It probably would be more effective than the Trang-Oul's melee one in combat but without being able to curse it's probably overall kind of weak.

No curses whilst in bear form either means lots of transforming or basically forgetting about curses.

I'm open to other suggestions! The Bone Spear proc on Bone (that is Vanilla) is only level 10. Bonehew has better level CtC Bone Spear but is not such a great weapon. Andy's Visage has CtC Poison Nova (Viperfork has a level 9 poison explosion) so maybe some kind of poison-synergized CtC necro bear. There will be skill points galore. Bone tree skill points are good as a strongly synergized Bone Armor would be nice and one of the few things that would do a Necro bear some good.

 

[naranjadita]

I used IK set + beast transformation on a necro.
The point was to have an army of skeletal magi and cast LR to weaken monsters both against your elemental damage from the IK maul and against magi elemental missiles (unshift-LR-shift-fight sequence). Worked pretty good for me.

 

[crawlingdeadman]

Keep up the excellent work! :thumbup:

 

[logoutzero]

Keep up the excellent work! (Needs more Guardians...) :thumbup:

Fixed that for you.

 

[purplelocust]

@logout: Ha! By far, most of my Guardians are tourney characters and I don't think I have a transformer tourney Guardian, although I do remember a confused Rabies Druid in one of the "pass-it-on" tourneys that I think made Guardian, albeit quite tediously. I do have one of each title from my Title Grail project though!

The elemental IK necro bear seems reasonable but I've already had a druid and sorc wearing IK as a bear, so I'm still brainstorming for good ideas on that one. And to be honest, if I'm going with LR as a curse, it would probably be too tempting to play with an Enchantress in town and have her enchant the necro and minions to make the most use of the LR.

 

[purplelocust]

I've added in the write-ups for the tesladin bear and the Griswold's bear. One idea I'm now thinking about for the necro bear using one of the nice blue 1.07 polearms or a crafted one as necros with those seem to have decent attack speed and can get great WIAS. I'll have to consider options with the speed calculator and see what makes sense there.

 

[purplelocust]

I've updated the original post now that there is a writeup for Calista, the IK-set bear enchantress. Now the only class I don't have a transformer complete for is Amazon and I'm working on that.

 

[purplelocust]

Something of an update- the Amazon has been making good progress but I've mostly been working on an untwinked HC bear using Armageddon. That has been very slow going and now I understand why I don't see many Armageddon bear write-ups around...

 

[HC Gunther]

You are missing Guardian Allanon, a Shockwave-Armageddon Bear

 

[purplelocust]

Aha, indeed, I missed that one! Interesting character and also seems to be slow going as I have found. That one seems heavier on the elemental side than my choices. I haven't used Volcano but have been using Shockwave continuously together with a (once) upgraded Steeldriver and am thinking about doing some rerunning of areas to improve gear as things are quite slow at the moment.

 

[HC Gunther]

And Guardian Kodi