The Secret to Spiritual Salvation – Druid Skill Guide [ Oak Sage / Wolverine / Barbs ]
Watch at: 00:00 / 00:00:20while the paladin is the king of the auras he's not the only source of this type of effect with the druid able to sneak in a handful of his own though with a rather unfortunate drawback it's on a squishy summon that can't fight back so the question becomes are they actually worth it in spite of that though first let's get the basic housekeeping out of the way in 2.4 they've smoothed out the resistive spirits giving them 25 resistance to everything yes physical magic and elemental while retaining their natural poison immunity and the other important thing to remember is spirits like vines are exclusive meaning you can only have one active at a time so you will only want to invest heavily into the one that you plan to use for your build and skip the rest now to throw things a bit on their head much like these skills do we'll start with the highest level of the pack spirit of the barbs the level 30 spirit which is essentially a thorns competitor though with the changes in 2.4 it starts to be differentiated from things like iron maiden which is pure percent and thorns which is hybrid percent and flat damage this time being straight flat physical damage no percents no need to actually be hit just need to be attacked in melee range oddly enough this improves the spirit for use against normal enemies but makes it significantly worse against bosses since it can no longer reflect scaling damage to your minions like it used to that said with how rarely it was used for that i don't blame them for changing it though with the changes to the druid's main summons i find myself kind of wishing they had a percent component like what thorns kept overall you will almost never see people using this level 30 skill which does not bode well for our other spirits if you're going in blind but thankfully it is a bit backwards as the skills get oddly better as we move up the tree rather than down this is because as we move to the level 18 spirit heart of the wolverine we now have our actual damage boosting spirit with plus percent damage and plus percent attack rating and an excellent choice for both summoners and melee druids for like the fury wolf or the mauler bear not to mention super helpful to similarly combat oriented allies now the drawback of relying on a spirit for something like this is that it's going to be in the thick of battle regularly due to its ai basically aggressively lacking any self-preservation skills and while this is true of all the spirits this is a pretty common spirit on tanking builds which means less opportunities for navigating them out of the way of enemies so for convenience's sake i usually like dropping some points in the animal summons to provide at least distractions to keep the spirit around a little bit more though the spirit we tend to have less problems with is the ever popular oak sage which is interestingly the spirit without an aura parallel with the closest analogy being battle orders and it unfortunately follows the same behavior albeit just for life instead of everything this means that the percent it applies is going to be based off of hard points and vitality and flat life boosts this is why you'll notice far less gain from plus life per level sources as well as plus vitality on equipment sources which is also the reason why you'll often notice that min maxing for stuff like pvp or late game builds people will often favor builds that go towards these setups rather than just getting points wherever they can now another reason the oak sage actually does well besides the fact that it's useful for both ranged and tanky builds is that spirits are affected by their own auras so at higher levels you'll actually find that oak sage becomes the tankiest of the spirits despite having the lowest base life of the trio that said they all have their uses especially if you're running in a pack with other druids since having multiples of the same aura at least these types of auras is kind of pointless due to only the highest one functioning though even outside of that the choice between oak sage and heart of the wolverine is a pretty important one depending on your build since oak sage is only additive with the percents from shape-shifting not multiplied so do you have a favorite spirit or do you avoid using auras from supremely squishy sources or would you like to see the spirits get a little more utility so they don't just float around randomly mention it down below and as always keep gaming have fun and peace out this is wrath byeWatch at: 00:20 / 00:40Watch at: 00:40 / 01:00Watch at: 01:00 / 01:20Watch at: 01:20 / 01:40Watch at: 01:40 / 02:00Watch at: 02:00 / 02:20Watch at: 02:20 / 02:40Watch at: 02:40 / 03:00Watch at: 03:00 / 03:20Watch at: 03:20 / 03:40Watch at: 03:40 / 04:00
About The Author
You Might Be Interested In
0
01:55
I used to use Oak Sage all the time. But with time I aged and got more wisdom. I am happy to use the Heart of the wolverine with my (finally) full summoner druid.
I am in nightmare and, got bear and first wolves maxed and am now maxing the second wolves. Next is HoW and then crows. I am also using the might merc. I am semi casual and just have "basic gear" (spirit…) with +skills and resists but I am wondering what über runewords I could get to stack more auras.
i use full summoner druid build in HC and cant stress how important oak sage is for me lol.
The spirits are totally worth it. Just resummon them if they die, nbd. I tend toward Oak Sage on elemental and shifter druids, and Heart of the Wolverine on summoners. HOWEVER, spirit of barbs needs a big boost. Maybe a synergy or two?
Enigma would be BiS of course, but would def recommend a Naj staff to reposition the spirit and merc if needed, also other summons….
Hmmm… full Naj with a fire/summoner druid?? intersting… if only Naj didn't have that high lvl req, it would be great early on.
I don't think the spirit form is a disadvantage rather the opposite, it's always active doesn't take the right button slot, so what if you need to resummon it sometimes? Still much better than Paladin and his auras.
I've never liked how they're auras that can be (easily) killed. I wish the AI was better, I mean some self-preservation would be great. Either that, or just make them really hard to hit. The Nightmare pet in Titan Quest is similar, as it's a pet that mostly floats around handing out buffs to your pets and debuffs to your enemies….But within the TQ system, it's really hard to hit. It has a built in dodge (melee) and avoid projectiles (ranged) percentage that goes up with every point spent in the base skill. It's still a squishy pet, but that really helps to keep it alive at least longer than the cooldown for summoning another one.
Personally I would love for them to be physical immune. They are "Spirits" so it never sat well with me that a cow could cleave the little guy in half with his big axe, and it would really help with their survival.
Giving spirits full on physical immunity or a very, very high evasion % would go a long way to keeping them alive.
Personally I feel Spirit of Barbs needs to be removed from the game. Replace it with Spirit of Storms: +% Elemental Damage. Boom. Now Druids have a perfect triad. Do you want more life, more physical damage, or more elemental damage?
My favorite spirt is bourbon
Oak for the win! I tried wolverine hell single player full summons build with only plus 8 to summon skills, but my pets died way to easy. I prob need more summon skill charms to make wolverine viable.
With the changes to the summoning tree in 2.4 the survivability of the spirits is actually A LOT better due to the extra amount of meat shields in the form of wolves and bear.