hi devs i am a beast master reptilian

[davidsloan83]

i use serpent strike with plague dragons tongue
but i am all so a pet master i cant use naals tooth for serpent strike be a pack leader of raptors
this is what i was hoping for a hem that that looks like a serpent with the skill same skill as
naals tooth raptors max number up to pet limit
we are all cold blood in my pack so we made fiends with a mother scorpion
thank you for reading this

[wulfster42]

Dragon's tongue is a normal combo with serpent strike. Sadly you can't use that and Naal's tooth together since the tongue is two handed. You can dual wield with naal's tooth though, but serpent strike, I believe always requires a spear (may be equipment that changes that, no clue). I have not made a serpent strike centered build myself.

Raptors are ok summons, but nothing special really. In general, at least in my experience, a wolf is better than a raptor one for one, and you can both get 1 extra summon slot by raising the wolf skill AND automatically fill all those slots with wolves as well. Multiple wolves make it very likely for the howl buff to be on, which boosts your wolves and you significantly if you buff it.

If you want raptors for theme, you might want to go with 1 BIG raptor instead of a bunch of small raptors. Minor problem there though is that you probably want a scorpion as well (especially if your using a spear + serpent strike and a poison build). If you go with just 1 raptor though, there are 2 passive nodes to boost your summon if you only have one, so you could have a REALLY strong raptor that way if you want. Sadly no matter how big and strong you make it, they won't let you ride the raptor *sigh*

Scorpion is good for a poison build combo and probably the best single summon if you are going with serpent strike. That is another setup where you can get the 1 point big boosts if you only have a 1 summon, but only one of them is takeable if you don't go beastmaster and going beastmaster while using only one summon doesn't usually make too much sense (although perhaps a scorpion setup with a TON of AoE poison damage might work well that way still.

I would suggest either going with serpent strike and tongue or beastmaster but probably not both. You could maybe make a cool combo with them, but if you are going to maximize raptors, I would not go with serpent strike. Be some kinda Dino beastmaster, perhaps still with the scorpion on the side. Grab the 2 bonus max summons from beastmaster (1 natural, and one with a passive bonus later on), grab the wolf helm that adds 1 more to your max # of summons and on top of getting summon raptor, get Summon wolf and the +1 max summon in that tree. That will give you 6 total raptors!!! You will have a dino hoard and be like the raptor dude in Jurassic park!!

You could also go with SOME raptors and SOME wolves since you would be boosting the wolves anyway, or maybe just 1 raptor and the rest wolves (or 1 raptor, 1 scorpion and 4 wolves). The wolves howl buffs EVERYONE, and the 1 raptor wouldn't have the negative buff from naal's tooth to it's damage, so in combo with the howl buff 1 raptor in your party would be doing 2x-3x the damage of a mini-raptor (so the equivalent in damage of 3 of them) while being far more survivable.

4 wolves with the howl upgrades should keep all your summons buffed (Along with you!). And that would let you use a spear if you wanted for seprent strike (or just use swipe cause it's so strong).

Anyway I love dinos as well, but just wasn't impressed enough by the raptor to actually make abuild around it (at least yet). I found the crows are actually the strongest druid summons with the right combo of skills, especially end game.

Have fun with your dinos!!

[davidsloan83]

thank you wulfster42 for the post you know the game so well yes its just for the character theme
i was hoping for A reptilian helmet we have a wolves and a bear helmet but we have no legendary themed helmet for raptors
and now i will have to try a full crows build now thanks a gain now i need a name bird man
or BIG BIRD Mmmm ? Ty

[wulfster42]

A crow build is really complicated but fun and powerful. Beastmaster is def the best though shaman can work well too.

Crows are spell casters which means they gain from +spell damage. There is a primalist attack that boosts spell damage by a freakton (literally 196 points for each crow). In addition you have tons of more multipliers for the crow damage and a way to boost the increased spell damage a ton as well. That makes, as far as I know, each individual crow do MUCH more damage than any other summon, and you automatically can fill out all your slots with crows (no equipment or skill nodes needed).

That means 6 crows. On top of everything else you get a damage multiplier the more crows you have AND they have a very strong and useful minion attack as well (that ALSO gets boosted per crow you have). That makes beastmaster with the 2 extra summon slots very very nice.

You def want summon wolves as well (1 more companion slot), the other points don't matter honestly, although in theory you COULD take 5 crows and 1 wolf and buff howl significantly.

The main things to combine with the crows are both your own version of attack and the buff for the crows, which are both melee attacks.

Gather the storm causes you to shoot out lightning bolts constantly and the crows will keep them up, so you don't need to attack with it much. Crows auto get you to 15 stacks, and 1 stack naturally is used a second or so, which means as long as a crow hits any enemy every 15 secons or so, you don't run out of stacks. It's alot of damage, pure spell damage as well, and you generally want to focus on the lightning strike damage not the melee damage in the nodes.

The other skill that just breaks the build and makes you a God of Crows is Tempest Strike. That is the skill that adds 196 spell damage to each crow (which is then multiplied by increased spell damage/lightning damage and 2.5x your own lightning damage) and then multiplied again by all the more damage multipliers. It also boosts your OWN spell damage (all those lightning strikes from gathering the storm and also maelstrom) by half of that 98 damage (which is still alot even end game). You DO need to use it constantly to actually get up to the max, which only happens vs bosses or maybe a nemisis. Random groups/fights generally average around only 1/2 or a bit less than that because you just are not in combat enough.

Round it out with maelstrom, which you can easily keep at 6 or more stacks, and therefore have permanent haste and rage going, along with all the very nice primalist Damage Reduction abilities and you are both extremely hard to kill and have very high damage. You literally can just let your crows and lightning bolts kill random monsters along the way, and to do so, you only need to attack with gathering storm once, then just run through everything, maybe asting maelstrom every 4-6 seconds or so (you auto get up to 4 casts of maelstrom (1 per second), and it lasts long enough that you only need to cast them every 6 seconds or so to always have 6 or more).

Very strong build, best companion build by far that I have played, alot of fun and a great first build to get through end game and collect good equipment with.

Crows are honestly overpowered with that setup, but because you have gather the storm as well (even without using tempest) you are ALSO doing a ton of damage. Tempest just ramps that all up to 11 when fighting anything that lasts more than 10 seconds before dying (which isn't much).

[davidsloan83]

ty this got my attention God of Crows is wulfster42 = Tempest Strike

[wulfster42]

lol, yes tempest strike is pretty broken, it also works with totems (including storm totem). That is why you can make a shaman version that works well also. The crows are not as strong but you can pump up the storm totem to cover the whole screen and pump it's damage to be insane with tempest strike as well.

Main problem I see with it is A: You are not as strong when just running around killing things due to less crows and B: It's another power that ends up mainly only being used for boss fights which are not that common.

Still can be very strong though, and technically better at extra AoE/super large packs of enemies.

I'm lazy though and just having 6 crows and auto lightning casts from yourself destroy everything as you run around and don't even have to use any abilities.......it's nice. You can still use maelstrom and tempest strike and be active when you want, but if you are watching a tv show or something and basically don't want to pay attention, the beastmaster crow build is one of the best at that.

Tempest strike ONLY works with spell casting minions though, so doesn't boost wolves or raptors etc sadly.

Crows cast lightning spells and you can make them hit multiple enemies as well, so 6 crows can take out a large group of enemies even without using their minion skill. 4 still rocks pretty hard though but it's a def drop in both max damage per crow, and number of crows attacking (50% more crows and I believeit's an additional 50% multiple (might be 40% I forget) damage multiplier. That really adds up.

Wolves won't boost crows damage so it's not worth having 1 wolf and 5 crows btw (they do boost bear/raptor etc damage, any melee damage basically).

Crows also literally never die, or mine never did. Maybe because they are further away from enemies, or they kill everything too fast or god knows but they just don't freaking die lol. Wolves, bears, scorpions, raptors all the various undead summons etc, they will all die espceially post game. Some more often/faster than others and it depends on your equipment and what passives you have taken among other things. Crows? I think they made a pact with death or something and he just ignores them if they are supposed to die.