Levelling druid (50 right now) and it’s about time to start aiming for relic.
https://grimcalc.com/build/cjJ4qnw - build
I’ve narrowed the choice down to 4 relics: Necrosis for additional res reduction (unfortunately no skill points), Eye of the Storm for lightning, Primal Instinct for more distraction (if they actually survive more than one hit without pet boosts), since totems are stationary and Iskandra’s Balance for general elemental boost.
Eye of the Storm at least gives 250% lightning damage and a nice 1 all skills.
Iskandra’s is nowhere near as bad as it was, but still suffers from poor proc uptime and doesn’t synergise well with all your lightning damage.
Never tried Primal Instinct.
Necrosis would be nice, but I always found adding it to be one button too many.
PS with your build you are getting almost zero return from points 2-8 in Frozen Core. Put 2 of those into Maelstorm and 1 each into the IEE line and 2 into Olexra’s Flash Freeze (if you have any trouble with trash, if not then use those on perhaps Mirror or Wendigo totem) and you should see an improvement.
Thanks for input, it’s still much a work in progress. Last character (Saboteur) had full skill bar for actives, so Necrosis is not a problem.
I am currently trying out a cold/lightning caster druid (just reached ultimate) and facing the same question. The issue is, there really isn’t a relic dedicated for this build.
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Primal Instinct pets aren’t gonna do anything. Flash Freeze neutralizes trash by itself. Your personal damage output is going to make every boss ignore them.
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Necrosis has a lot of wasted stats. Probably overall the highest damage option against bosses, though.
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Eye of the Storm is focused on the wrong damage type I feel. I’ll have to sit down and do all the arithmetic, but I think cold is the dominant damage type for this kind of caster.
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Iskandra’s fire damage is wasted. The proc is still great, but up time is low. +Arcanist is more useful than +Shaman.
I think it comes down to Iskandra’s vs Necrosis at the end.
Not sure how you are getting cold as the dominate damage type. I always saw storm totem + Maelstorm (wind devil) doing the bulk of my damage. Skyshard was almost an afterthought.
Mind posting devotion setup?
The major draw of Eye of the Storm is the flat damage, which doesn’t apply to this build, so I vote Necrosis.
Yeah, Eye of the Storm is definitely more a lightning savagery/primal strike relic. Still if you want a passive relic for a totem/sky shard druid it is the best bet.
With 50 in your Arcanist mastery you should definitely consider adding Devastation to your repertoire, in which case the fire damage on Iskandra’s becomes relevant.
Mind posting devotion setup?
https://grimcalc.com/build/Y7rXVKP
Actually, no, that was my initial concept. Right now I am using this:
http://grimcalc.com/build/UFoTLta
I am also considering siphoning some points out of here and there and dumping them into Chariot for the OA since this build has a lot of crit damage. Something like this maybe:
http://grimcalc.com/build/ntrE5BV
(Mainly drop Lantern and Frostburn Nodes for Chariot).
Not sure how you are getting cold as the dominate damage type. I always saw storm totem + Maelstorm (wind devil) doing the bulk of my damage. Skyshard was almost an afterthought.
Like I said, I have to do the arithmetic, but…
- Flash Freeze is my trash killer. Need that cold damage.
- Wind Devil is actually primarily cold damage for me because I assign Leviathan to it. 6 Leviathan whirlpools stacked in 1 spot… is giving me DPS I did not expect out of this build.
- Skyshard is non-trivial damage, but I might be biased because I forced myself to build this guy around Torzan’s set (it’s my first complete legendary set, sooo). I wouldn’t be surprised if assorted legendaries give better results, but w/e.
That said, I also assigned Tempest to Storm Totems, so 3 Storm Totems is also a non-trivial source of lightning damage.
Oooh, an interesting concept. I always avoided that side of the devotion tree. How was your survivability being so slanted to that side of the tree? (I leaned on Tree of Life for survivability, perhaps that was holding me back?)
Not that good, tbh.
Wendingo Totem is not good sustain choice on a fragile character. I find this build plays a lot like my Vitality caster (stack up damage effects in a kill zone, run around it), minus the absurd levels of life steal, but far better crowd control (most of the damage avoidance comes from freezes and mirror).
I’ll have to experiment with dropping some offensive elements at some point. I honestly don’t use Tsunami very much, for example - because of the Symbol of Solael nerf, I don’t really have a fire and forget skill worth casting for it. Frostburn seems very bad, but I am maxing out the frostburn skills out of stubbornness to see how bad they actually are, but I can probably drop them with minimal loss in damage.
This build also doesn’t really have good offensive pants/boots choices, so can always go for Legplates of Valor and Golemborn like nearly everyone else.
I am also leveling a Druid to hopefully make use of Trozan’s set, but I only have 2 pieces right now from other characters. TSS is still the main point of the build as I am trying to make a meteor caster in the flavor of D2/D3. I had intended on going with as many skills, devotions, and gear that dropped something from the sky as possible, but that probably wont work because of different types of damage not associated with TSS. A skill I really wanted to include is Devastation, but the Aether/Fire damage will be tough to boost without losing dmg somewhere else, but still might be possible.
I already have a Warlock, and since there were Shaman skills included in Trozan’s set I figured what the hell. If I dont like how it turns out thats OK since this is mostly for fun and if I can somehow put some damage out thats even better. My last character was a Sorcerer with Demo as the main, and it destroyed shit, so this might be a little lackluster. I had intended on some kind of melee character, but wanted to do this first. Good info in this thread so far so thanks guys!!!
If you can find one of these:
https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/8514-Warpfire
You can make a fire meteor caster pretty easily.
That said, Torzan has a lot of stuff dropping from the sky as well. Personally, I have:
https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/7777-Starfury-Emerald
https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/7843-Empowered-Starfire
https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/8853-Trozan’s-Starkeeper
The Trozan 4 piece Comet, and Amatok’s Blizzard proc.