GOOD NIGHT SWEET PRINCE. THIS BUILD IS DEFUNCT AS OF 3.0+
GO PLAY A SHOCKWAVE BEAR DRUID INSTEAD
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- INTRO
- REASONS TO PLAY
- REASONS NOT TO PLAY
- MAIN STATS
- ENDGAME SKILL BUILD
- EXAMPLE GEAR
- MERCENARY EXAMPLE
- GAMEPLAY LOOP
- SCREENSHOTS AND EXTRA STUFF
- CONCLUSION
1. INTRO
Maul Bears are cool, but they are always Fury’s ugly cousin if you don’t play a mod that (usually) changes Shockwave to be integral part of the build and not just a 1-point wonder that you use to stun-cheese the content. Luckily on Reimagined you can be more than that. A lot more than that.
2. REASONS TO PLAY A TECTONIC SLAM BEAR
- Its a druid. May sound dumb, but some people (like me) just like the class. This build offers everything you like in druids, as in furry friends, suicidal spirit friends, and the inability to do a bunch of cool stuff other classes can because you are in a shapeshift form. The blow of that was softened a lot here in Reimagined though.
- DAMAGE. Wont go into mechanical details, otherwise it would defeat the TL;DR part of this whole thing (more than it already is), but a Tectonic Slam Druid can reach higher levels of damage than even its most direct comparison point (a straight Tectonic Slam Barbarian) can. This is due to:
- The way Bear Form and Maul ED works almost like a “pseudo-synergy” that functions with soft-points as opposed to being real hard-point synergies.
- The way shapeshift forms attack breakpoints cap with 2 handers is lower than barbarian and how you get a HUGE chunk of that stat by your selection of skills alone (Maul gives +3%IAS per charge. It doesnt currently says on tooltip, but it does like in Vanilla D2R).
- The way Maul and Bear form ED Interact with the Splash Charm, making the “double dip” the charm creates for melees using skills with innate AOE extrapolate to HUGE chunks of damage on a druid using a Maul-powered Tec Slam – a lot higher than what happens on Tec Slam or Carnage Barbarians for example. For them, its a small bonus - basically an extra regular auto-attack pinging. For you, its almost an entire Maul worth of extra damage.
- Cool counter-intuitive gearing for a physical damage based melee. Again, due to how Bear Form and Maul ED works; you focus on +skills a lot more than your usual physical char does, and that leads you to a kind of snowballing effect because of how much druids benefit from +skills as a whole.
3. REASONS TO NOT PLAY A TECTONIC SLAM BEAR
- Slow start. You can, of course, level with the go-to easier to leveling builds and just swap later, but if you are like me and like to play a char from start to finish ‘as it would be’, the gameplay is a bit slow even with splash charm at the start. At lvl 51 you get your first Tec Slam source and that speeds everything up considerably (Unique Sword No Quarter Given - may look a bit underwelming at first, but its not. There is technically an earlier source, but good luck trying to get Cow King’s set here unless you are feeding it to the druid from another char that got VERY lucky as you can't orb into this set in particular), and Maul does start to become easier to manage by mid-game when you can spare it some extra duration.
- THIS THING IS DYING IN 2.2. There is too much (I think) unintended synergy going on on this thing and there are several aspects of it that are getting reduced or axed next patch. Good news is Shockwave is getting a super-cool remake that will fill this character slot directly, but then new theorycrafting will be needed for it.
4. MAIN STATS
Regular decades-old D2 stat logic. The bare minimum you need to equip gear on STR, whatever you feel you need on DEX for both gear and attack rating and everything else on VIT. At the endgame, I don’t have a single point on STR and DEX, due to charms and other stat boost on gear.
5. ENDGAME SKILL BUILD
During game progression, you can swap stuff around as you feel useful, but the quick summary is to have Bear Form and Maul Maxed asap, with 1 point put into all the other passive and summon skills you want as soon as you can. Then, your third skill to max can either be Spirit of Barbs (number one recomendation) or some points into Lycan if you are too squishy, or get Bears to 10 points soon if you like the meatshields. 1 point into Shockwave though negates your need to have points into Lycan and multiple points into summons, due to how you can use that to reduce incoming damage a lot. For late progression, I don’t bother with it at all – because honestly you become practicaly impervious to damage at some point.
For lvl 100 with all extra skill points, this is the build I current use:
- 25 Bear Form
- 25 Maul
- 25 Spirt of Barbs
- 1 Oak Sage
- 1 Heart of Wolverine
- 10 Grizzly Bear (for 2 bears)
- 24 Lycantrophy
Lycan is the last one you max, after the other three 25-point skills and after 10 points into bear summons.
6. GEAR SETUP
There are a lot of options of gear in the mod, and it’s hard to gauge what a “true BIS” list would be. Generally, if you gun towards your regular physical melee setup, you gonna be a competent char anyways, but through some theorycrafting and experimentation I arrived at the gearset I’ll present below. There is absolute room for customization if you want, but I recommend going for what I’ll list first and then start twinking it if you feel you need. I’ll give some explanations for them as well, to help out.
The optimized corruption on every slot except the weapon (and gloves and boots obviously) are +1 all skills, but I won’t consider them. If you get them, awesome. I only got 1 of them in a ring and you absolute don’t need to farm for them (so I’ll cite other stuff you should look for if it has some nuance, otherwise you can use whatever the best one you get is).
6.1. HEAD SLOT - GIANTSKULL
Starting with the irreplaceable endgame piece, you are locked into Giantskull due to it being your source of Tectonic Slam. Gun for a piece with good attack rating (it varies from 180-220), as attack rating is a bit of the weak point of this build. Corruption you can get Cannot be Frozen if you are not using Zero Effect boots or if you don’t get it in your boots via corruption or from some jewelry crafted piece. Upgrades are 3 all skills, nothing else. Socket Punch it to 4 slots and use 4 Heaven Facets (you can use Tiger’s Eye or Jade Facets if you are severily lacking those stats on your gear, but be aware of the ED bug on those slots. I really do not recommend).
6.2. JEWELRY SLOTS – LORDS OF HELL 2-PIECE + JACKAL’S LAUGHTER
Amulet and ring slots on Reimagined have a HUGE field of variance regarding power level. Crafted amulets and Rings with multiple rolls of all skills, class skills and tab skills along with other nasty mods are the de-facto end-gears, but I will list a combination of amulet and rings that are perfectly fine to end your gearing process with them, so its something more palpable to gun for (specially if this is your first char).
For the amulet + 1 ring slot, use the Baal’s Cryptic Amulet + Diablo’s Soulstone Ring combo. At first look this is more of a caster oriented combo of items (and it is), but it for this melee in particular it fits in super nicely with the big amount of +skills you get from them, as well as 10PDR%. Amulet upgrades are locked to Druid Skills. On ring, upgrade them after you get a better feel from what you gear lacks, but I ended up doing PDR% on mine (usually the best slot to upgrade PDR% is the chestpiece, but since you gotta use 2 handed weapons I decided to go for Resists + Max Res on that slot and had to make up for PDR% somewhere else).
For the other ring, a Jackal’s Laughter is a super good ring with +skills, life, a lot of deadly strike and dual leech (that doesn’t Interact with Tec Slam currently on 2.1.2, but also doesnt hurt to have when you are stacking up your Maul charges).
If going for craft and rares, below is one of the rings I use along with the Lords of Hell 2-piece. But like I said, Jackal's works pretty well in its place.
6.3. CHESTPIECE – LACHDANAN’S HEART
This piece has huge armor potential (really good with Bear Armor multiplier), 1 all skills, a lot of ED%, PDR%, some life and all the attack speed you need to finish capping off your attack speed with end-game gear. The best corruption here is getting an Indestructible mod AFTER you make it ethereal, but that is a combination of stuff that will have you usually spending A LOT of resources to get (its totally worth though). Upgrades I recommend are all resist and + max res, since this is the only slot you can reliably get these as you can't use a shield with this build. Get 4 sockets and once again, put Heaven Facets on it. While you hunt for these jewels, put ED% jewels on it, but MAKE SURE they are jewels with no flat +min +max damage, to not ED bug the huge number of ED% this armor innately has.
6.4. BELT SLOT – OGRE’S EMBRACE
Huge STR and VIT, a lot of PDR%, autorepair mod so you can make it eth for more armor, big poison res and Iron Skin oSkill. Really perfect and I’d consider using anything in its place ONLY if you get iron skin oSkill on your gloves AND you forego the recommended weapon (below) for something without Melee Mastery (so you would get Girdle of Kitthix in its place). Upgrade with +Life and Mana, basically mandatory on this slot. You get so much life out of it due to all the %life multipliers on this build.
6.5. GLOVE SLOT – Dracul’s Grasp
Life Tap is super important during progression, as Tec Slam does not (currently) leech, and this slot is the best source for it (there are boots with it that can be used, but they are not as good overall). Also, it has a bit of STR to help out, and a good chunk of innate Open Wounds so you don’t have to lose upgrade/corruption slots with it. Either DS or CB are good upgrades, so you can get what you prefer here. Again, super good crafted would be the theoretical BIS here (specially since they can roll +Shapeshift Skills if you are really lucky), but you really don’t need it and the convinience on this slot is super nice. I would swap it if you going for a different curse setup, but with Barbs max and a lot of +skills and merc inner sight and CTA support, I don’t feel you need even more -enemy phys res, so I went with Life Tap for the sustain.
6.6. BOOTS SLOT – ZERO EFFECT
For the nth time, a godly crafted would be theoretical BIS here, but there are very good unique options. Offensively, Stallion Hooves would be the best option, but I went with Zero Effect due to Cannot be Frozen (that I didnt have anywhere else on my gear) and the huge defensive boost. Upgrades I went with were +10 STR +10 VIT, for the life boost and to make my entire gear equippable without putting points into STR after all charms and other gear bonuses.
6.7. WEAPON – MORNING DEW SUPERIOR GREAT POLEAXE
This is the most important slot in the build. There are a LOT of good Options, but in a holistic approach, I found that going for a Morning Dew runeword is the perfect choice for this build.
You can reach a lot higher damage numbers with good rolled uniques and specially with crafted items, all upgraded and socketed with good jewels than you can with a Morning Dew, but at the end of the day, they all fell flat to the runeword due to a bunch of reasons. The most important one being that the single hit physical damage rollover point for D2 is, according to the modders, around 87K damage, and you can already reach close to that with even Morning Dew. Then after that, the other bonuses Morning Dew grant you synergize really well with the rest of the build. +3 Druid skills is a good boost on a spec that already converts every skill points to about 45%ED anyways. 20 melee mastery boosts your attack rating a lot (something that you want a lot) and gives you, at the end, 34% critical strike. The chance to cast lvl 20 Static Field though is one of the most broken things currently in the game to affect melee clear speed. When you are chain-killing packs of mobs, you basically start engaging every mob pack at 50% life at some point (even with the Static nerf) and that just turns you into an absolute mowing machine.
The “art” of crafting a good runeword makes so that there are a bunch of combinations you can do regarding selecting the base, corruptions and upgrades for your weapon; but here is how I crafted mine:
I went with a superior Great Poleaxe base because you need a 6os Polearm as a base, and out of the 2 only options, this one requires less base DEX and has higher base damage. It is slower than a Giant Thresher, but with high level Maul and 40%IAS from the chestpiece, you cap your attacks at 6frames anyways. Then I corrupted it to 25CB and 25DS. I did that because those stats could use a bump since I dropped Stallion Hooves from my feet slot (and because thats what I got after 4 tries of spending Uber Orbs on getting superior bases xD). Then I spend all my 10 upgrades in ED, to cap the base ED to 511% (superior base). Flat elemental damage is a good upgrade 99% of the cases for melee weapons, but for this one I just didn’t bother cuz its a sliver of damage by this point. It is a good mod to have though if you happen to get a 120ED% corruption on your base, since you will only need 8 damage upgrades to get to 511% with one of those.
Raw damage wise, it is not the most exciting thing you will see on this mod. Its benefits are indirect though, and once you start putting it to good use, its very apparent the runeword is better than uniques and crafts.
6.8. ALTERNATE SLOT
On my alternate slot, I use a Crafted whatever 2 skill shield with 4 Heaven Facet. If you have enough STR for some reason, you can use a 4 Heaven Faceted Lachdanan's Guard for +7 all skills on this slot.
For the weapon, you have 2 choices: Call to Arms or Warrior Untamed with 3 Heaven Facets. Warrior untammed is a lot more defensive (quite literally, it boosts your defense to even more absurd levels), while CTA gives you the option to swap and manually use a very high level Battle Shout to reduce Enemy physical resistance. I chose this one due to that, as my endgame choice of Mercenary was A1 rogue. If you go for na A5 Slam merc, I’d use Warrior Untamed).
If you can snag +1 all skill corrupts on both, awesome. Dont need to bother with upgrades.
You can use some other thing on your alternate slot, but I really recommend a source of B.O. on it, in particular to help your spirits stay alive at the early hell prog, since they LOVE TO SUICIDE.
6.9. CHARMS
Besides the regular normal charms (Anni, Torch, Queen's Call, other uniques), the best crafted ones to use here are the +1 All Skill charms (flat damage ones are good, but this build is focusing +Skills). Have a Physical Sunder charm on you as well. Also good to gun for some resists on the charms, specially if you don’t get a good amount of resist corruptions, because it can be something the char lacks with the gear profile presented.
7. MERCENARY
During level, my rec for phys chars is almost always na A5 slam merc due to their chonkyness and usefulness. I put together a very fun one with an ETH Last Wish on an Thunder Maul and it was AWESOME to level, but I'll leave the leveling partner for you to figure out how to assemble.
At the endgame, the perfect one in my opinion is a A1 merc due to her -phys and armor debuff (helps to hit) that does not overlap with CTA battle Shout. I’ll do a quick listing of gear for her, but wont go into details nor corruption/upgrades for this gear. I also focus on Heaven Facets on her because what I car about here is that she stays alive and that her -phys res debuff be as strong as it can, and those Jewels do both of this. On chest, some bonkers crafts with diferent auras can definetely change the shape of itemization, but keeping it to defined gearing, here is a recommendation.
A1 Cold Merc:
Helm: Royal Diadem with 4 Heaven Facet. This also helps your summons to stay alive.
Weapon: Faith or Mist. Faith gives AR. Mist gives non interruptable attacks. They feel most equivalent on ED%.
Quiver: CTC Corpse Explosion one if you don't wanna to interfere with Life Tap, or the Amp one if you not using Tap or don't care about a small overlap on curses sometimes. I found it really isn't a problem.
Chest: Tyrael’s Might with 4 Heaven Facet
Gloves: I used a crafted one just because I got Lucky with an Iron Skin corrupt. But anything works here; Dracs, Black lotus (if not using Mist), LoH. Mephisto’s for a bigger range on Holy Freeze...
Belt: Kashya’s Ward
Boots: Zero Effect
Rings: 2x Chiads Set Ring for holy freeze
Amulet: anything with generic or amazon skills works, as I said, going for max debuff and not damage.
8. GAMEPLAY LOOP
Regular gameplay loop consists of:
- Buff up with Battle Command.
- Summon Spirits and Bears.
- Rebuff BC and Buff Battle Orders to buff you and all your fwends.
- Go into Bear form. You will want to do all the last steps in the Alternate Setup since they have more +SK than the main setup, specially if you are using Warrior Untamed with Heaven Facets on the alternate.
- Swap to main setup.
- Go out into the wild and mash stuff with Maul till you fully buffs it. At the endgame it takes some time, cuz you will have 33+ charges.
- Start Tec Slamming stuff out of existence. Don't let Maul drop.
Due to how long it takes to build Maul charges up, the char is not at its full power on quick run-in farming sessions, but when running entire act TZs so you don't have to rebuild Maul charges. But the thing is, its not that bad to actually do it if you HAVE to. You will be ripping stuff even without fully building Maul up by the end of the game. Ubers on P8 fall like bricks in seconds even without Maul build up (which means you attack very slow).
9. SCREENSHOTS AND EXTRA STUFF
On the left character screen box its unbuffed by Maul (but with merc and summon auras kicking in), on the right, with Maul fully buffed.
One thing to notice about numbers not shown here is the auto attack damage:
The auto attack damage is ‘almost’ what your Splash Charm … splashes… when you combine it with physical AOE skill like Tectonic Slam, Carnage or Impale. Due to how Bear and Maul ED% increase all your physical damage dealt as a state, and they are the big bunch of the ED% you have in this build, this carries over to what is dealt by splash damage too. On regular physical AOE builds, the bulk of the ED% of the damage you deal is cooked into the skill itself, your auto attack damage is super low when compared to a Maul Druid splash damage. Things are even more unfair when you compare this effect to builds that use “fair” melee skills like Fury or Zeal or Jab/Fend that only splash the actual skill damage and do not get “extra” benefits from splash charm.
The secondary stat table looks like this:
10. CONCLUSION
Have fun with this absolute dog… bear of a build while you can. In 2.2 there will be a very cool but way more balanced (probably xD) version of the char to play, but this one was a hoot to put together and still my favorite char I done in Reimagined so far.