Diablo II: Patriarch Lucian

I have patted a single Druid in my D2 career, and that was on Battle.net. Since one of my goals for this year was a pat/mat of each class I have so work to do. So a Druid was decided to be my next character, mostly because I have no idea what type of Barbarian to build. Specifically this character will be a Fury werewolf Druid. I have a nice 298% ED Ribcracker collecting dust in my ATMA stash so time to put it to use. And so Lucian was born. The name comes from the movie Underworld, where the leader of the Lycan (werewolf) clan is a fellow of the same name. Seemed fitting.

Lucian started out whacking away at monsters with his starter equipment and things went rather well. Due to this being a purely physical damage build I am allowing myself some twinkling before reaching Hell. Specifically the weapon may be twinkled, but nothing else. This lets me use items like the Hellplauge and Bonesnap that would otherwise remain idle in my stash. Such twinkling made Lucian's progress move at a decent pace, but nothing absurd.

Resistance troubles plagued Lucian from the start and as expected the first Act was fairly uneventful, but Act II gave him real problems. Specifically the lightning beetles and their charged bolts were the culprit of many a NDE. For this reason Lucian traded in the rogue mercenary for a desert warrior one, so that someone else could tank these monsters.

Along the way Lucian became quite fond of his summonable companions, especially the ravens.
His constant companions in the beginning were a pair of ravens, a dire wolf and an oak sage spirit. The ravens were key in keeping the mobs a bit off balance with the constant attacks and blindings. As a result Lucian wasn't overwhelmed and could hold his own, even with low resistances and no hard points spend in Vitality.

All of this changed however in the beginning of Act IV. Lucian was level 29.5 going in and it only took clearing the first area to raise his level and gain his endgame skills, specifically Grizzly and Fury. The grizzly makes a much better tank than the single dire wolf Lucian had up to this point, so he traded. As for Fury, suddenly monsters were dying so much faster it was fantastic. Also made Bonesnap a bit faster of a weapon. Very soon after Lucian reached level 31 and could equip his endgame weapon, Ribcracker. Oddly enough his damage output dropped when replacing the Bonesnap, but the speed of attacks increased dramatically and that more than made up for the small damage output reduction.

Suddenly Lucian was breezing through the rest of Normal. No NDEs, no interesting drops but also no problem handling the Chaos Sanctuary and both Diablo and Baal at P8. Even Iron Maiden wasn't an issue as Lucian would cast a dire wolf on the Oblivion Knights and that would keep them occupied just long enough for him to deal with the Doom Knights before knocking off the OKs as well. Also helped that a Cathan's Seal dropped early in Act IV and the 6% life leech made it so that Lucian didn't need to use health potions anymore, reducing the amount of times required to return to town while questing.

Nightmare was very much the same, at first. Once Lucian arrived in the desert his mercenary companion had difficulties staying alive. That, coupled with the ghost packs that were encountered everywhere and kept burning off all of Lucian's mana, made the trek through the desert quite long and dangerous. As it was that is where Lucian met his first, followed by a few other, death. His cold resistance is -30% currently and up to this point he had base vitality. The combination meant that each cold enhanced boss encountered killed him off. I finally broke down and placed 125 points into Vitality, so his life is over 1100 and deaths aren't occurring anymore.

Lucian cruised through the rest of Nightmare without too many difficulties. Did drop the player settings to 3 for the Chaos Sanctuary so that Oblivion Knights weren't too difficult to handle. Other than that everything, including the Ancients were done at P8. The mercenary liked to take a dirt nap quite often the closer they got to Baal, against the minions he must have been resurrected at least a dozen times. Once Baal was defeated a few NM Baal runs were performed to level everyone to 76 so that all the endgame equipment could be used. Then it was onward to Hell.

Hell proved to be a bit easier than expected. From the other patriarch threads in the SPF I assumed that entering Hell with a non-upped Ribcracker and no Fortitude I would have a difficult time, since all monsters have 50% physical resistance. That didn't turn out to be the case at all. Lucian breezed through the first three acts without any difficulties. All through Normal and Nightmare he quested with a grizzly but now in hell the dire wolves come into play, and they held up nicely.

Mehpisto was a pushover, getting to him was a bit more difficult. In one of the side rooms Lucian encountered a double boss pack of Blood Lords coupled with a champion pack of the same monsters, along with the unique council member I expected. Needless to say the dire wolves died instantly since they don't do so well against elemental attacks. The grizzly came out and tanked the lords while Lucian and his merc concentrated on one Blood Lord at a time. Eventually they were all dealt with and Mephisto was handled without having to use a single potion. Lucian recast the dire wolves in preparation for Act IV.

That was a mistake. Keeping them alive against the harder hitting monsters of that act proved to be quite the task as they needed constant recasting. So Lucian switched back to grizzly which could pretty much be cast and forgotten about. In the meantime I put all available skill points into Dire Wolf in order to increase their life so I could use them again. As it turned out they were useful, in the Chaos Sanctuary. My way to avoid Iron Maiden was to cast three dire wolves at the OK's feet, then deal with their minions. It worked quite well, except once. I was IMed and meant to cast dire wolf but instead misclicked and furied a doom knight. Obviously I died quite quickly, up to this point my only death in Hell.

As it turned out Infector of Souls ended up much harder than Diablo himself, since IoS spawned immune to physical and with a Conviction aura. Much casting of grizzly was needed to keep the pack at bay for a few seconds while Lucian engaged on minion at a time. Eventually they were all dealt with so Lucian could resurrect his mercenary companion and deal with Infector himself. One thing to note is that my hellforge drop was a Hel rune, the lowest possible one. The past four characters I've finished have had drops of Io-Hel-Hel-Hel, apparently my luck in respect to runes continues.

The last act was ripped through like nothing else. I didn't intend to play it all in one sitting, but that's what happened. None of the normal areas held down Lucian much, except for a few places. The Frozen River contained Fanaticism enhanced Succubus in large numbers that gave Lucian fits, and required quite a few mercenary resurrections. A pack of Might enhanced Blood Lords didn't help matters in the Glacial Trail, but all were manageable. Eventually the Ancients were encountered and defeated after a long protracted battle where they were split up and dealt with one at a time.

The World Stone Keep help the normal assortment of Flayers, Oblivion Knights and Gloams. Each dealt with in the normal way; straight up assault, spammed dire wolves or using a distractionary grizzly respectively. And then there were Baal's minion waves, which didn't last long. With Life Tap active and a decent life leech possible to boot Lucian was able to tank all of them, including Lister's entire pack. After that Baal was almost anti-climatic as he fell without summoning a single clone or teleporting more than twice.

A few notes about this build. A Fury Druid is definitely overpowered for P1 Hell, and that's without Fortitude or and upgraded Ribcracker. I can't image what this character would be like with both of those, but it's definitely enough to keep Baal awake at night. The character himself had no way of dealing with physical immunes, such as Ghosts. Instead he relied on the mercenary with his chance to cast Decrepify for these situations. Now the only problem with this was that Life Tap from the gloves or being blinded by a raven attack overrode Decrepify on a semi-regular basis, which was a bit annoying. I can see using a different pair of gloves, if a better one existed. However Life Tap definitely had it's uses and saved both Lucian and his mercenary's lives in more than one occasion. So overall I'd stick with the setup and just live with the fact that physical immunes will take a little longer than normal to eliminate.

Stats:
Level 82
Strength - 78(111)
Dexterity - 40(91)
Vitality - 362(362)
Energy - 20(50)

Life - 910(929)
Life in Werewolf form: 2556
Mana - 182(325)

Lightning Resistance - 75
Fire Resistance - 75
Cold Resistance - 60
Poison Resistance - 70

Skills:
Summon Grizzly - 1(5)
Heart of the Wolverine - 17(21)
Summon Dire Wolf - 10(14)
Lycanthropy - 20(27)
Werewolf - 20(27)
Fury - 20(27)
Raven - 1(5)

Equipment:
Weapon: Ribcracker (Shael)
Armor: Wire Fleece 'Smoke'
Boots: Gore Rider
Belt: String of Ears
Gloves: Dracul's Grasp
Helm: Jalal's Mane
Ring 1: Raven Frost
Ring 2: FR 6%, PR 29%, 5% ML, 36 AR
Amulet: 17 dex, 43 mana, 12% resist all, +2 Druid levels

Mercenary (Might Desert Warrior)
Helm: Vampire Gaze
Armor: Duriel's Shell
Weapon: The Reaper's Toll

Hellforge
NM - Lum
Hell - Hel