I've been thinking of the best way to achieve these two goals on a melee druid:

- highest doublestrike possible
- Max STR

I enjoy tactics a lot of my 9\9\2 but I really don't like having to invest heavily in wisdom for decent DC's. I'd prefer to just drop the CC and focus on the best melee DPS possible for a druid without it.

So I've come up with 3 possible ideas. They all revolve around 9 druid for Winter Wolf form, running in LD. To get max doublestrike you're locked into to at least 5 levels of rogue or ranger. I prefer ranger over rogue here. Every build has around 62% base doublestrike through items\feats alone. I'll edit the OP to include the next two builds I had in mind later. Looking for positive feedback\criticisms please.

First build:


9/6/5 druid/ranger/wizard
1 druid Shield Mastery, (H) Power Attack
2 druid
3 druid Cleave
4 druid
5 druid
6 druid Great Cleave
7 druid
8 druid
9 druid Natural fighting
10 ranger
11 ranger
12 ranger IC: Bludgeon
13 ranger
14 ranger
15 ranger GTWF
16 Wizard (Quicken)
17 Wizard
18 Wizard Natural Fighting
19 Wizard
20 Wizard (Extend)
21 Epic Overwhelming Critical
22 Epic
23 Epic
24 Epic Natural Fighting
25 Epic
26 Epic Perfect TWF
27 Epic Improved Shield Mastery
28 Epic First Blood

Enhancements would look something like this:

Eldritch Knight - 36
Deepwood Stalker - 26
Nature's Warrior - 14
Human - 4
This option I find most interesting. Wizard gives 6% doublestrike, tensor toggle, two cleaves, and a bunch extra goodies. Free quickened\extended displace/heals. Sadly I can't put any points into tempest really, unless I drop Nature's Warrior (could be an option).

Ranger for Killer and autobluff attack.

Just enough points in Nature's Warrior for doublestrike boost and Fatal Harrier.

Weapon choice would most likely be First Blood for 15% Doublestrike and the new shield from the raid.

71% standing doublestrike, 91% with killer from DWS.

I have yet to do a STR calculation.



The other options I was throwing around was 9\6\5 druid\monk\ranger or druid\ranger\fvs. Same feats, except I would swap the shield masteries for monk stances on the first build. Action points will be tight any way you cut it really.



FVS version gives:

Divine Might, Ameliorating Strike, Inflame, some PRR. It might even be best to go T5 with favored soul. Not sure. It almost makes me wish I would drop ranger for monk and play around with backlash.

Monk version gives:

100% offhand attacks, haste boost, option for T5 Nature's Warrior.



Thoughts?

S&B doublestrike is a really terrible idea to chase.

you can get double strikes from offhand procs, so for every 100main hand procs 2wf gives you 80+ off hand procs.

80+ off hand procs * double strike% is going to be significantly better than S&B.

Shield mastery requires you to have a shield equipped for its 8% double strike, even in wolf form you give up off hand procs with a shield equipped.

8% double strike might look shiny in your character sheet, but it's fools gold.

proof of concept.

For the sake of curiosity, does double strike proc on the 20% off-hand gained from Improved Shield Bash?

Instead of using a shield, could a druid use a quarterstaff, splash two rogue, and use Quickstrike from Thief Acrobat for 25% doublestrike?  Or will Quickstrike not fire in animal form?

Epoch wrote on Apr 14^th, 2014 at 8:59pm:


I completely agree with this!


Munkenmo wrote on Apr 14^th, 2014 at 11:32pm:


I completely neglected to factor that in. First build is pretty much trash then, thanks for reminding me! Thank God I didn't make the build then post about it  I'm curious though. Doesn't the TWF working in wolf form neglect what weapons you have equipped? I thought I read that in a thread here when Carpone and others were discussing what quarterstaff would be best to use on a druid.

Also forgot elf gave you 3% doublestrike. I'd be wasting way too many points chasing that though I feel.

About the 11\6\3 build. I don't understand why you need any level six spells at all. I would probably go 9\6\5 instead, so I could test both shadow double and killer. The main reason why I choose killer over T5 
Ninja Spy is because you also have to factor in the downtime with Shadow Double. I killed mobs so quickly without killer on my 9\9\2 that I was curious what it would look like with it.

Heck, I could even go T5 Ninja Spy and have Killer.... all things to test I guess. Makes me wonder if doublestrike caps at 100% or not.

Munkenmo wrote on Apr 14^th, 2014 at 11:45pm:


I though Doublstrike only worked on the main hand attack when TWF? Is this a druid or monk thing?

Thanks for the input though Munk. I think I'll go 9\6\5 monk\ranger and see how that works out. Picking up any T5 except Ninja Spy means I lose out on the 25% incorp though.

I miss the good old days.

I remember when monks were first introduced, and shroud was endgame at level 16. I remember soloing arry in part 5 of the shroud because every spell was evadable. Ahh, those days were fucking amazing. Ac? Untouchable.