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Powergaming a lvl 12 Druid?
- Thread starter ChickDM
- Start date
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
Druids aren't strikers, but some of the wild shape powers are striker-ish (in terms of melee).
If you're looking for a druid that can kick ass with ranged spells, however, you need to multiclass. The invoker is a Wisdom primary "controller", with the wrathful invoker having some striker-lite abilities. I'm not aware of any specific Wis-based ranged or area strikers that you could multiclass with, though.
If you're looking for a druid that can kick ass with ranged spells, however, you need to multiclass. The invoker is a Wisdom primary "controller", with the wrathful invoker having some striker-lite abilities. I'm not aware of any specific Wis-based ranged or area strikers that you could multiclass with, though.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I was tweaking around with CB and while I haven't done a complete build I think that if you use the Primal Wrath Aspect of Nature you can do a pretty nice job. I added in Primordial Adept Theme, and I was thinking of something like the Elemental Anchorite PP (not the strongest one, but you can end up with a great elemental power blasting 'druid'). That sounds pretty strikerish to me. I didn't go through power selection, but there ARE quite a few druid powers with fire, cold, thunder, and lightning as damage types (and the above picks allow you to add such types to other attacks). Considering you're getting a +1 to-hit on all of them its kinda nice. I doubt this build would wild shape a whole lot, BUT with the right weapons you could apply several of your theme/pp benefits to melee attacks as well.
Race is an interesting question. Elf is always a good choice for EE. If you go this route I would suggest feats like maybe Fiery Blood, which will work with your nice fire powers.
Honestly, its not going to be a killer of a striker, but it will be a pretty blasty controller with a potentially a very good accuracy and some decent damage output. If you want to be really serious along these lines though, go wizard.
No idea - why would anyone want to when you could just as well play a different class that deals insane amounts of damage without having to 'munchkin' it?
The druid in our group deals the lowest damage of everyone but he has the most annoying control/zone effects.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, my advice would be to go to the WotC forums. http://community.wizards.com/forums/77391 All the non-trivial 4e forums are still up and live, you can ask in Charops, or just search there or find a sticky that has the URL for a Druid guide. I'm sure there are various subtle damage enhancing concepts that I don't know about, I never was THAT interested in optimization. There's a VAST amount of info over there on every class in any case, you can certainly tool up a nasty druid, even if its not the ultimate striker.
While I don't recall specifics, I did once gave a 4e 14th Druid that was matching the strikers in our party for damage.
First he was focused on wild shape rather than spells. He had the paragon path that gave an expanded crit range with beast attacks. All his feats were conditional things like "if you charge, get +" if you have ca get + and so on (many of the feats were Druid specific for wild shape, so from phb2 and primal power)
Between all the conditionals he could consistently get several of them which is how he consistently boosted his damage by a lot, just had to plan ahead to (a) figure how to get the conditionals and (b) be able to do fast math on what conditionals apply else you'd bother your fellow players by how long it was taking each turn with the calculations since your modifiers are never the same from round to round if your conditionals changed.
Again, sorry that I don't recall specifics, but that is how I did it.
Going the spell route as a Druid will not get you high damage output, they are built to be controller spells with some damage, rather than as damaging spells.
First he was focused on wild shape rather than spells. He had the paragon path that gave an expanded crit range with beast attacks. All his feats were conditional things like "if you charge, get +" if you have ca get + and so on (many of the feats were Druid specific for wild shape, so from phb2 and primal power)
Between all the conditionals he could consistently get several of them which is how he consistently boosted his damage by a lot, just had to plan ahead to (a) figure how to get the conditionals and (b) be able to do fast math on what conditionals apply else you'd bother your fellow players by how long it was taking each turn with the calculations since your modifiers are never the same from round to round if your conditionals changed.
Again, sorry that I don't recall specifics, but that is how I did it.
Going the spell route as a Druid will not get you high damage output, they are built to be controller spells with some damage, rather than as damaging spells.
Lindeloef
First Post
Warning: if you ask the CharOP guys, be sure to have a thick skin. They are not the nicest guys with their word choices. (When they belittle you that you want to make a druid a striker)
There is a nice guide on the WotC CharOP board to improve your damage regardless of your class. Though most of that really starts at paragon tier when elemental damage gets really good to optimize around.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Meh, if you just go in and say "look, I'm going to be running a druid, this is a given, how can I make it as much of a striker as possible?" you aren't going to get a lot of guff. Sometimes there's that smartass that will say "convert him to ranger" or some silliness but you'll basically just get pointed at sound advice. The jerkiness really comes out when people wander in there and start insisting that their totally lame charop concept is hot stuff or trying to tell everyone that some well-known optimization path "doesn't work" or something equally inane. THEN they're merciless.
Lindeloef
First Post
Depends really who of the CharOPs respond but I would bet money that you would at least get called an idiot/moron/sth similar once.
