Geomancer Author: BobTheMadCow Version: 1.08 Page 1 Introduction Elemental druids are rare in today’s world of ITH weapons thanks to their spell timers, low damage spells and determination to avoid in any way becoming cookie-cutter-ised. But here I present to you a way of playing to druids’ non-shifted strengths! A way to beat the game and kill everything you come across, given skill and/or patience, without even once thinking about resorting to lycanthropy. All this without having to get your hands dirty with the messy idea of actually hitting things with a stick yourself. Your enemies will shiver and wilt from freezing winds! They will burn and fall from heaving volcanoes! They will learn to fear your mighty bear! And they won’t even see you until it’s too late… Ok, enough melodramatics. With this build you will be able to kill in 8 player games with enough +skill charms, you won’t kill quickly, but you will be able to kill… slowly. But, with Arctic Blast going, a Holy Freeze merc and your grizzly you can be a valuable addition to any team. No one complains about a highly mobile tank or having everything up to a screen away double chilled and a 100%+ life bonus for all too. Ok, so necros might not like you, but that’s just the way things are, it ain’t ever gonna change, nor should it. Skill Choices There is a more detailed explanation of the skill choices at the end of the guide, under “Spell Comparisons.” Elemental Tree Volcano: 20 Theoretically the Druid’s most damaging Elemental skill and this build’s main source of elemental damage. At level 40, this skill will do up to 5000 damage per second to a single, stationary target. It’s no Firewall, but we can’t all be sorceresses. This skill should be maxed for sure and the sooner, the better. Ideally, this should end up around level 39 – 42 with ideal gear. Arctic Blast: 20 This will mostly be a utility skill, but can be used for killing off fire/physical dual immune enemies. Just don’t expect them to be dropping like flies. Again, this skill should be maxed, but it’s far from a priority. Get it to around level 10, and max it when you’re in your late 60s to early 70s. Cyclone Armour: 1 – 20 This is a handy little skill, saving your hide from elemental attacks (cold, lightning and fire.) One point in this, along with +skills from items, should see you through the game with minimum fuss. It can be recast as needed and is definitely worth a single point investment at level 12. It can serve as a skill points sink after level 75 by which time you should have maxed out your main skills. Twisters: 1 Not an immensely useful skill in any situation, with the 10 frame stun that I think gets cut to 1/4 in hell (meaning, assuming rounding up, it lasts a whole 3 frames!) and frankly laughable (physical!) damage. Nevertheless, it can serve to help out your bear against cold immunes in Hell, interrupting their attacks and allowing him to get more hits in. It’s that or do nothing for 4s until you can cast Volcano again. Don’t put any points in this until you start out into Hell though, as it really is only a situational spell.  Shape Shifting Tree Move along. Nothing to see here. Go on, shoo! Summoning Tree Oak Sage: 10 – 20 A nice, party friendly spirit, this will help you massively with your life and that of your mercenary and bear too. Put enough points in this so that it is maxed out including your +skills gear until the patch, at which stage you can max it if you feel you need to. Your gear will also play a part in how high you take this as any +life items you have will be even more effective with this spirit on you and you may feel you have enough life without putting more points here. Spirit Wolves: 1 Worthy of note just for their passive bonus to your bear, these critters don’t really need pumping as the bear does ok without them. Nevertheless, feel free to put some more points in here if that’s your style. Dire Wolves: 5 – 20 Definitely worth a few extra points. You can get these up to 3 or 5 as you’re levelling, or put extra points into them later on. Each point in this skill will add twice the life bonus to your bear that each point in Oak Sage would give (10% as opposed to 5%). Remember though that the bonus is added, not multiplied.  Grizzly Bear: 20 This will be your meat shield, monster pin and physical attack all rolled into one big, lumbering, furry package. You want this guy to be as strong as possible, especially if you plan on partying in hell as he will be capable of dishing out decent amounts of damage at higher levels (~1400 damage per hit at level 30). You should be aware that the grizzly’s damage increases massively with level past level 20, so all your +skills will help him a lot. When trying to determine your bear’s health, remember that the figure shown on the skill already includes the passive bonus from Dire Wolves. To find out what his maximum life will be with Oak Sage on, you have to add the Oak Sage bonus to the Dire Wolves bonus, then apply that to the bears base life for the difficulty. The Bear has a base life of 142 in normal, 214 in nightmare and 285 in hell. Therefore, it is quite possible to have a bear doing around 1400 damage per hit that has well over 1000 hp too. Carrion Vine: 1 A useful vine if find yourself being hit too often, but not having any mana problems. Only worth one point, but very useful in the right situation. Solar Creeper: 1 Good for helping out with mana regeneration problems; this is the vine you should probably use the most, unless you manage to get the whole mana supply thing totally sussed.  Basically, get both vines and just pull out whichever one will be of more use to you at the time. Useful to note that if you want rid of corpses in a hurry, casting Solar Creeper on a corpse will cause it too eat that corpse, you can then do this on any other corpses you want to clean up. This is handy if your sitting on full life so a Carrion Vine wouldn’t eat any corpses. Stat Allocation STR: 58-79 DEX: base VIT: everything else NRG: enough to keep you rolling in mana You’ll want just enough strength to equip all your gear and no more (strength reqs of items are in brackets after the item.) That should put you between 58 (for a Lidless wall) and 79 (for Naj’s Light Plate.) Dexterity you should leave at base, you won’t want any blocking and the points would be better spent elsewhere. Depending on your gear and play style, energy will probably be the stat you will be pumping the most, as you will need a lot of mana to maintain Arctic Blast.Once you have enough mana to keep casting Arctic Blast non-stop, put the rest of your stat points into vitality. Obviously the bigger the mana boost your items give you, the less you will have to put into energy. If you had level 40 Arctic Blast, you would need roughly 2000 mana and 100% mana regeneration in order to maintain Arctic Blast indefinitely, without having to use any potions. Arctic Blast’s damage is low enough that if you end up having to use it to kill anything, you will go through a lot of mana. Increased mana regeneration and a large mana pool will normally see you sitting with a full mana globe at the start of a fight.  Everything that you don’t put into energy should be invested in vitality, which should be between 50 and 100 or maybe more, depending on how your mana reserves fare and therefore how many free stat points you have. With the life bonus from Oak Sage, it is quite easy to get a good amount of life without heavy investment in vitality.  Gear Decisions What to look for + Skills + Mana / mana regen / mana per kill + Life Faster hit recovery (FHR)/Faster Cast Rate (FCR) Resists As you may have heard before, the Druid’s Elemental skills suck, so you will want +skills as your top priority in your gear. +2 all/Druid skills is better than +3 Elemental skills; the drop of 3 points in your main elemental skills is far outweighed by the gain of 6 points into your summons. This is due to the way the damage for your bear ramps up amazingly with skill bonuses, while your elemental skills go up by a fixed amount per level. Bonuses to mana, mana regeneration and mana per kill are all very important inthis build too. Mana regenerates at a rate of:  maximum mana x (100 + mana regeneration )120 100 mana points per second. You can use this to see your balance of mana drain (via Arctic Blast, mostly) and mana regeneration. Obviously the more mana you have, the faster it will regenerate. Ideally, you want your mana regeneration to be equal to the mana cost of Arctic Blast. Of course, you can always use mana potions, but I personally prefer not to rely on them. All life bonuses are multiplied by Oak Sage, so anything you get will help a lot. It’s a good idea to have as much life as possible while maintaining a good amount of mana. At the very least you want one more hit point than mana point in late act 5 to avoid the blood mana curse (this may be easier to do by removing +mana items, rather than trying to boost your life). In addition, an enemy needs to inflict 1/12th of your maximum hp in one hit in order to send you into the hit recovery animation. This recoil will interrupt your Arctic Blast and slow you down. Ideally, you shouldn’t be hit, but if you do, you don’t want it to be bothering you too much. High life will also help with low resists. Faster hit recovery and cast rate are good for the same reason as above, the faster you can recoil and get back to pumping out cold, windy death, the better. Though it’s not gonna do any major harm to skimp on these two mods, they are available on caster gear anyway, so you may as well have them. Faster cast rate will also minimise the amount of time it takes to switch between casting Arctic Blast to Volcano and back again, thereby maximising your damage output. Resists are a low priority too. It’s nice to keep your resists positive in hell, but even better to avoid being hit in the first place. A lot of the gear here is relatively cheap and/or easy to come by, so I wont be giving too many alternatives on gear in this guide. If you’re playing single player, just get what you can and try to gear towards these mods. Helm Jalal’s Mane (65) is an obvious choice for the +2 Druid skills and 30% resist all. The +5 to mana per kill is good, and FHR is a nice addition. The strength bonus on this pelt will see you clear to being able to equip any of the other gear that I’ve suggested too, can’t really go wrong with this one as it even looks good. Harlequin Crest (50) on the other hand, is somewhat unattractive but a good all round bet with +2 skills, huge mana and life boost and to top it off 10% DR. Like we’re gonna get hit or something :D If you feel like being flash you can use a +2 Druid skills circlet with nice 2nd mods, like decent resists, but unless you do get really good mods, I’d say its not worth it. However, a good +2 Druid skills pelt with +Volcano and Grizzly would be great, preferably magical (with a good +life 2nd mod) so that it can get two sockets when you take it to Larzuk. The +5 to your two main spells just cannot be beat, but you’re not too likely to get that lucky. It’s a shame there’s no way you’ll ever find one with Arctic Blast on it too, maybe Dire Wolves or Twisters? Back on the positive side though, you can shop for this one at Elzix in act 2. For this reason you should not go long without a +2 druid skills pelt. Weapon +2 Druid skills club. You can try to either shop one of these or gamble one, and on occasion one will just drop into your lap. As they don’t normally have too high a strength requirement, you should be able to wield any such club. Bonuses to resistance and life are good 2nd mods to get on a magical/rare club like this. Dark Clan Crusher (25) is the +2 druid skills unique exceptional club. The only mod on this to make it stand out from a magic/rare club is the “+15 to life per demon kill” which is very nice and unusual. For those of you with more money than sense and don’t mind being flamed to high heaven by people who take this game too seriously, you can go and get yourself a Silence Crystal Sword (35). Yes, that says Crystal Sword. No, it’s not a typo. Crystal swords are the normal version of Phase Blades and, like their elite counterparts, can get you 6 sockets in a 1 handed weapon. The big difference is that a Crystal Sword only needs 43 strength (35 after a Hel rune) whereas a Silence Phase Blade needs 108 dexterity, which is far too many points for this build to sacrifice. So, +2 skills and 75% resist all, all for a lowly 35 strength. Good, if you can afford it. Something worth investing in is a wand of Lower Resist. Keep it on your weapon switch and use the charges on a super unique, act boss, or a random unique with bad mods to help you do more damage. It can be a pain trying to weapon switch all the time to try to keep the curse on the boss, but if you can be bothered doing it, it will help out a lot. The worst combination of mods a boss can have (as far as resisting your attacks goes) is Fire Immune, Physical Immune and Cold Enchanted. That combination will see you using only your weakest spell and at just 60% of its normal damage. Most people would just run past such a nuisance, but I tend to like to be able to kill them, and here a LR wand would be the only way of speeding things up. Armour Skin of the Vipermagi (43) up to 35% resist all with your +1 all skills, as well as 30% FCR. Very nice armour. Que-Hegan’s Wisdom (55) has mana per kill, FCR, FHR and an energy bonus to go with the +1 skills while Naj’s Light Plate (79) has good defence, resists and a nice life bonus. 45% damage taken goes to mana is kinda cool too. Oh yeah, and +1 skills. All very good armours. I know The Spirit Shroud has +1 skills too, but it’s just not as good as the other armours as far as second mods go. If you can't get ahold of any of the unique armours, a decent option is to shop for a Jeweller's Gothic Plate of the Whale (70) and throw some Perfect Skulls in there or anything else that will help you out. Gothic Plate is the armour with the lowest strength reqs that can get four sockets. Shield Lidless Wall (58) has a nice mana boost as well as +1 skills, FCR never hurts either. Sigon’s Guard (75) is a cheaper option, with chances being that you’ll find one yourself at some stage whether you’re looking for it or not. 75 strength is a tad high though and there is a distinct lack of other mods on it… Belt Gloom’s Trap (58) is about the only unique belt that will help your mana pool, with a nice 15% boost. Your other option is to make yourself a Caster belt to get mana regen and some FCR. Not worth trading for one though, you don’t need it that badly. If you’re not having any trouble with mana, M'avina's Tenet (20) will help you keep out of danger’s way as the only belt with FRW on it. Trang-Oul's Girth (91) has a wealth of nice mods, but is very heavy on the strength requirement, so not really worth it. Boots Silkweave (65) once again boosting your mana in a slot where mana bonuses aren’t a common occurrence. Following the trend, your only other boots of choice are Caster boots if you still need more mana. If you can get good resists on these, then all the better. As with the belt, don’t bother trying to trade, just make them yourself. If you don’t want/need the extra mana boost, your next best bet is to get a decent life boost out of them. To this end, Waterwalks (18) are your best bet due to the +45-65 life while only needing 18 strength, which you will have anyway. Aldur’s Advance (95) would have been better, but the strength requirement on them is just far too high. Sander’s Riprap (18) are a decent cheap pair of boots, and their +5 strength can help you meet some of your gear’s high requirements, while the 40% FRW will help you with manoeuvrability. Gloves Magefists, were you expecting anything else? +1 Fire skills will boost the power of your Volcano and the 25% mana regen will help with your Arctic Blast.  Jewellery SoJs for the mana boost, or you could go for a Bul Kathos Wedding Band for the life bonus if you want that more. For Amulets, you should try to get a Mara’s Kaleidoscope for the +2 skills and resists, but a cheaper option would be any +2 Druid skills ammy, be it crafted, rare or magical so long as it has good useful mods. A +3 Elemental skills ammy is an option and probably cheaper, but +2 Druid skills would be better. Charms +1 Elemental Skills charms with +life or +mana if you can get it. The more of these you have, the more powerful you will be. It’s up to you to strike a balance between damage and storage space. Resistances, either single resists or resist all are nice to be on charms. Life, on the other hand, is great to get on charms, as everything you get will be at least doubled by Oak Sage. I think having 8 skill charms and then a bunch of small charms should be a good balance leaving enough inventory space to pick up one large item. It’ll come down to personal taste and how many charms you can get your hands on. Socketing Perfect Skulls give 19% mana regen in helms and armour, which can make a huge difference, though you’ll likely only notice it in long fights (Physical/Fire dual immunes, for example) where you are prone to running out of mana. Eth runes can provide 15% mana regen in shields too, but aren't worth putting in armour or helms except maybe in your leveling gear to tide you over without wasting Perfect Skulls. Perfect Diamond in a shield, or Um rune in shield or armour, depending on what you have can be good for getting those resistances up a bit. Try to aim for at least breaking even in hell. 15% resist all jewel in a weapon is another option. If you don’t need mana regen or resists, there are always Perfect Rubies for more life. Play Style Well, I think a leveling guide would probably be the best way to go about this, as you will have to adapt and evolve your techniques as you progress through the game, at least through normal, anyway. Bear in mind I’m thinking about “players 1” level, you may want to quest at a higher level to get more XP, but I prefer higher killing speed in a SP game. Levels 1 – 5 Put a point into poison creeper first, then raven and firestorm. You will be meleeing for the best part of the first act, so get a decent club and let the poison creeper help you out at this low level. Don’t try to kill anything with firestorm, as that is an exercise in futility. Damn that spell for being so utterly useless*!  *Unless you’re 46 levels higher than the monster and using have the skill at level 21, FenrisWulf :P Levels 6 – 11 Get Arctic Blast, Oak Sage and a Spirit Wolf at this stage, and drop a point into Molten Boulder. You should be approaching the end of act one at around this stage (at least, I was, in single player.) Use Arctic Blast in short bursts to chill bigger enemies, and molten boulder to keep things off your back, but for the most part, you will still have to rely on your melee damage. The wolf will just be a distraction really at this stage. You should level your Oak Sage up a bit at this stage, as well as trying to put a few points into Arctic Blast. Andariel can pose a bit of a problem, try to keep your distance and use Arctic Blast on her, your minions wont help you much, but they can distract her. Try finding a pelt with a Molten Boulder bonus and you could take her out with that spell, her –50% fire resistance makes this a more effective approach than it seems. If you’re ok with aiming Molten Boulders, then give it a go. Many potions will be used up here, whatever route you choose. If you feel up to it, you can take a few swings at her with your weapon, or you could just party up. Levels 12 – 23 Fissure, Carrion vine and Cyclone Armour become available at level 12, but each will only get one point, so you can continue to work on Arctic Blast and Oak Sage. Level 18 only sees you gaining Dire Wolves, which you should put a few points into so you get your 3 wolves to help you through these meagre levels. Remember to keep the cyclone armour up as much as possible, it may not seem like its helping much, but it’s good to get into the habit of always having it on. You should get a merc in act 2 asap. Good choices would be Defiance or Prayer, depending on your tastes. This guy will help as a static tank for your elemental attacks, as well as drawing fire from your wolves. You should start trying to move more into the roll of summoner/caster at this stage, using dire wolves to hold monsters in the area of effect of Fissure, while chilling mobs with swings of Arctic blast so they don’t kill your wolves. Duriel is a tough fight, if you let him charge around. Then you will have to fall back on Fissure and luck to kill him. Instead, try to use you Dire Wolves to hold him in place and use Arctic Blast as much as possible, at least keep him chilled. Arctic Blast should take a couple of minutes to kill Duriel in normal. The wolves will die in one hit against him, but if you can keep at least one on him, that will stop him charging around at you, then it’s just a case of hoping you don’t run out of mana potions. You can try the same thing with spirit wolves, but it will be easier if you wait until level 20 to face him. It’s not difficult to be at that level by then. Levels 24 – 29  Now you get your big gun: Volcano. Drop a point into Solar creeper then all the rest of your skill points until level 30 go into getting as powerful a volcano as quickly as possible. By now you should be totally into your elemental druid mode, if for no other reason than that your attack rating will be pitiful by now. Keep your pets on the monsters and cover them with Arctic blast while Volcano is on its timer. You should have Arctic Blast on the left mouse button and Volcano on the right, switching to summon more wolves as and when you need them. Against tougher bosses, you should try to keep wolves, volcano and Arctic blast all going at the same time to get the most damage out of your skills. For Mephisto, use the moat trick with Volcano, it’s slow going, but as long as you unsummon all your pets (get rid of the vine by casting a new one at his feet) then he wont hurt you. Draw him to the edge of the moat using a wolf or two, which should give you time to run around the corner to safety, without him following you or wandering off. Levels 30 onwards Now you have your other main killer: the grizzly bear. You should put a point into this straight away, and split you points between it and volcano until you have them both maxed out. I found it a great help to have a grizzly for taking on Diablo and your bear is pretty much invaluable from there on in. Once you have Volcano and bear maxed, bring Arctic Blast into line while dropping a few points into Oak Sage/Dire wolves for your bear’s longevity. By the time you reach lvl 75 you will be pressed for useful places to put your skill points. Cyclone Armour and Dire Wolves both make good sinks for those extra points, as will Oak Sage once the lvl20 spirit bug has been fixed.  As soon as you reach Act 2 NM, go and buy yourself a Defensive merc. His Holy Freeze aura will help you out no end. It will keep monsters from straying off your Volcanoes, it will stop them beating on himself and your bear, increasing the longevity of both, and usefully, Holy Freeze’s slow effect stacks with Arctic Blast’s chill. This means you can bring enemies almost to a standstill with these two skills. He becomes even more useful in Hell by slowing Cold Immunes down as well. Keep him in good armour and a decent life leach weapon and he will serve you very well. On reaching Hell, drop a point into Twisters for cold immune mobs. I suggest putting it on your left attack and manoeuvring your self to be in a good position to fire from with this skill. Only bother using it if there are no monsters nearby who you could turn your Arctic Blast on though, as you could be getting some damage in with that instead; and your Holy Freeze mercenary should keep most monsters sufficiently slowed on his own.  General Strategies When running around always keep an eye out for monsters on the edge of your screen, this is where you want to keep them. Cast your bear in front of a mob to keep them distanced from you, pop a volcano up under one of the monsters, then chill the group with Arctic Blast. Recast your bear as necessary and try to keep Arctic Blast going as much of the time as possible, every little bit of damage counts, and its good to keep them chilled.  Remember that Volcano is on a 4s timer for recasting, so don’t waste it on a monster who has only a sliver of life left with nothing standing behind it to take its place, or you’ll miss out on 4s worth of damage. Arctic Blast can kill, despite what people will tell you. Try it out on PIs once you reach Hell. It’s best to try to hit as many monsters as possible with your Arctic Blast, so try to line them up, or line yourself up to hit as many as possible. Beware your vine & spirit! Sometimes one or the other will wander too close to a fight and a monster will target them instead of your bear or merc, leading the monster back to you. The worst place this can happen is on the Arreat Summit, when Talic WWs through your bear, then starts after your spirit, which leads him onto attacking you… which is bad. Either recast your spirit/vine in an empty space, or try to use your base level Molten Boulder to push the stray monster back into the fray. Other than that small inconvenience, you should almost never get hit, hiding behind a merc and a bear, only the occasional ranged attack should reach you and as most of those are elemental, your Cyclone Armour should soak them up. Boss Tactics The key to killing any boss is keeping them still. This means keeping your bear out as much of the time as possible. Also as most of the act bosses have elemental ranged attacks, keep in mind that the 10 mana it costs you to recast Cyclone Armour is far easier to recover than the 100 odd points of damage you would otherwise have lost. Keep on your toes through fights with Andy, Duriel, Big D and Baal, keep your bear sitting in front of them (but don’t expect it to live long enough to get many any hits) and keep that volcano pumping out the damage under their feet. A splash of Arctic Blast every now and then can help you in a boss fight. It will prolong the life of your bear, especially if you’ve boosted up his life. The chill also means they wont be quite so dangerous if they start running after you for any reason (like you didn’t recast your bear fast enough, or were in the middle of casting volcano when they did.)  With random uniques, the bear’s KB will tend to push the unique out of Volcano’s centre of damage, so if you can, try to position the bear to push the unique up against a wall or other obstacle (where you can still cast Volcano) so that they are pinned down. Another thing to try is casting Arctic Blast at right angles to the direction your bear is attacking from, I have it on good authority that this seems to stop the knockback. For Mephisto (in NM and Hell) you should try to keep your bear on him on the other side of the moat, but get rid of your other summons as they will often draw his fire over to your side of the moat, which you don’t want. For The Ancients, try to group them together around your bear (with Madawc on the far side of him from you) and take them out one at a time. Start with Madawc, then whoever has the least fire resistance out of the other two. If you can manoeuvre them so that they have your bear pinned in a corner, Korlic and Talic wont use their special attacks against him and he can keep hitting them with his powerful paws. Getting “good” mods on The Ancients in hell is about the best bet for defeating them. By the time you get that far you will have a feel for what you can and cannot handle. Obviously as there are not going to be any corpses up there, try to get rid of your vine before starting the fight, as it will just be another distraction for them and a liability for you. Spell Comparisons Aka: Why not to use Armageddon and Hurricane. Fire Spells Fissure An area of effect spell, this deals out decent damage in random spots within its AoE. A total of about 13 vents open in the duration of one cast of Fissure. The random nature of Fissure’s damage makes it unsuited to this build, which focuses on stationary targets. Level Min Dmg Max Dmg Hit per Sec Max Dmg Per Sec* Duration/Delay Mana Cost 1 15 25 4.1 20.5 3.2 / 2 15 10 81 91 4.1 373.1 3.2 / 2 15 20 217 227 4.1 930.7 3.2 / 2 15 30 377 387 4.1 1586.7 3.2 / 2 15 40 537 547 4.1 2242.7 3.2 / 2 15 Volcano The fire spell that can do the most damage per second is also the best suited for our needs. The rocks that come flying out of the Volcano will hit the monster standing on the volcano’s mouth and do the same damage again to anything it hits on landing, giving a kind of area of effect splash damage. It’s not enough to allow you to place a Volcano between monsters and hope to hit all of them for good damage, but it does help soften up enemies that are surrounding the one you are focusing on. Due to the high damage output and range, there really is no better choice on this side of the tree. The damage listed on the skill panel is really deceptive, showing as less than Fissure or Armageddon; maybe if it said “30,000 damage over 6s” more people would use it. Level Min Dmg Max Dmg Hit per Sec Max Dmg Per Sec* Duration/Delay Mana Cost 1 15 20 12.5 250 6/4 25 10 59 64 12.5 800 6/4 25 20 155 160 12.5 2000 6/4 25 30 275 280 12.5 3500 6/4 25 40 395 400 12.5 5000 6/4 25 Armageddon This spell has two main disadvantages that stop it from being used in this build: Short range and lower damage than Volcano. It also suffers from the random damage placement of Fissure. With its range being a mere 5.3 yards centred on your character, it really is too risky to try to use it. Monsters should never be that close to you. Even if they were, you would have to be surrounded to hope to achieve its maximum damage potential. Leave this one to the melee-mentalists.  The chart here is kind of generous to Armageddon, as it is really highly unlikely to reach its damage potential and any situation where it did; Hurricane would actually do more damage. Level Min Dmg Max Dmg Hit per Sec Max Dmg Per Sec* Duration/Delay Mana Cost 1 25 75 3.1 232.5 10/6 35 10 170 220 3.1 682 10/6 35 20 390 440 3.1 1364 10/6 35 30 640 690 3.1 2139 10/6 35 40 890 940 3.1 2914 10/6 35 *Max damage assumes all vents/rocks/meteors hit a target once for full damage. Cold Spells Arctic Blast Unfortunately this skill, like its fiery counter part, is a real mana hog. Also like Inferno, it doesn’t actually do all that much damage, even when maxed. Arctic Blast starts with a greater range than Inferno, but loses out over level 20 as the sorceress’ spell ramps up whereas none of our spells do the same. We also lack a Mastery to pump our spell’s damage into the 1000+ damage per second range. However, it has one major advantage over the sorceress’ spell: it chills monsters (for roughly half the duration of Frozen Orb or Frost Nova). This can be a lifesaver not only for yourself, but for your bear and merc as well. The only other thing we have over them is that we don’t have to worry about our spell’s stream being split in two, making it that little bit easier to use. As far as this build is concerned, the main things to see about Arctic Blast are its range and chill duration. Both of these things make this a great skill despite its mana cost. It can even be used to kill dual immunes. If you have the patience, that is. Level Min Dmg Max Dmg Cold Duration Range Mana Cost Norm NM Hell 1 8 15 4 2 1 5.3 4/s 10 65 72 9.4 4.7 2.35 8.6 11/s 20 133 140 15.4 7.7 3.85 12 19/s 30 203 210 21.4 10.7 5.35 15.3 27/s 40 273 281 27.4 13.7 6.85 18.6 35/s Hurricane Another one that only belongs on a melee-mentalist, this skill has a notoriously short chill duration in Hell, roughly the same as the pause between pulses (about 0.8 seconds). That combined with its dangerously short range and the fact it only does just over double the damage of Arctic Blast are the reasons I don’t advise you getting this skill. Having said that, it is capable of far greater damage than Armageddon, when used wisely. Level Min Dmg Max Dmg Duration/Delay Mana Cost 1 25 50 10/6 30 10 94 119 10/6 30 20 202 227 10/6 30 30 322 347 10/6 30 Thanks Thanks to everyone on the Diabloii.net Druid Forum who helped me out with this guide (in no particular order): mepersoner, PyroStock, Nword, FenrisWulf, Strid, Lone_Conspirator, Nyayesh, WitterQuick, Yeti and prion. 0 Please log in to post... Please log in. Use your Diii.net Forum account. Username: Remember me? Password: Want to register?     Lost password?