Celtic Heroes

About a month ago, I was very intrigued when someone mentioned about howling wind. Very unorthodox but it sounds workable so I gave it a shot.
The result:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jELOy54K ... e=youtu.be

As you noticed, the video is about a min long and I have not been hit by a 145 wyv. Not even once. (It varies, you will still get hit but dodge rate is about 75% – 85%)

Sure it takes about 2.5 mins for me to kill a wyv lord but the fact that I need not heal myself 90% of the time, with no fears of interruptions is an amazing feeling for a druid.
I have tested this with various Ow mobs and it works as well with pleasing result. Note obviously Howling wind only affects the target attack rate. It does not affect skills. Only your evasion abilities affect it. Hence, skills such as border toss, swift tackle, fire ball, delude will still be able to affect you etc.

In terms of bosses, it helps to certain degree but not a lot compared to me soloing a normal mob. My conclusion is bosses in general have a much higher attack rate than mobs. The tank (usually warriors) place emphasis on vit or str, damage or armour. Hence they have zero to low defence which minimizes the max potential on HW. (It still helps with dodging overall I have noticed)

For example, if I were to pvp a lv 150 warrior who has an attack rate of 1500. HW reduces it to a total of 200. Chances are the warrior can still hit me regularly with auto attack if my defence is at zero or lower than 200.
Hence this build requires both HW and Def to be at a high rate to receive the highest potential for auto rate dodging.

Some may comment what’s the point of howling wind if you still get hit occasionally and still get hit for skill attacks. Well, yr missing the bigger picture – Interruptions.
With the proper set up, I can proudly say HW helps a ton with reducing interruptions, till the point it’s not even funny. & No, I wont consider this OP as you require a huge cost of skill points and gear to play this build correctly.

As for skills, yes you will get hit and damage but that’s where the H2H build comes into play. The fast attacks will help with interrupting their skills. H2H build potential has now effectively gone up.

I am very amazed with this build and it offers amazing opportunities with new play styles with other classes. (For instance, lv 30 howling Wind and a lv 30 entangle support combo, intriguing yea?)

I mentioned before and I will say again. I love druids, such a versatile class with 20 odd skills to choose. But I also love our druid community. We are very adventurous by trying different builds. We adapt ourself with each update, tackling each issue as it rises. It is only when we really cant solve it then we get admin involved.

Quoting a wise man, or was it a weasel, 30/30 in thinking of yourself.

Cheers

About a month ago, I was very intrigued when someone mentioned about howling wind. Very unorthodox but it sounds workable so I gave it a shot.
The result:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jELOy54K ... e=youtu.be

As you noticed, the video is about a min long and I have not been hit by a 145 wyv. Not even once. (It varies, you will still get hit but dodge rate is about 75% – 85%)

Sure it takes about 2.5 mins for me to kill a wyv lord but the fact that I need not heal myself 90% of the time, with no fears of interruptions is an amazing feeling for a druid.
I have tested this with various Ow mobs and it works as well with pleasing result. Note obviously Howling wind only affects the target attack rate. It does not affect skills. Only your evasion abilities affect it. Hence, skills such as border toss, swift tackle, fire ball, delude will still be able to affect you etc.

In terms of bosses, it helps to certain degree but not a lot compared to me soloing a normal mob. My conclusion is bosses in general have a much higher attack rate than mobs. The tank (usually warriors) place emphasis on vit or str, damage or armour. Hence they have zero to low defence which minimizes the max potential on HW. (It still helps with dodging overall I have noticed)

For example, if I were to pvp a lv 150 warrior who has an attack rate of 1500. HW reduces it to a total of 200. Chances are the warrior can still hit me regularly with auto attack if my defence is at zero or lower than 200.
Hence this build requires both HW and Def to be at a high rate to receive the highest potential for auto rate dodging.

Some may comment what’s the point of howling wind if you still get hit occasionally and still get hit for skill attacks. Well, yr missing the bigger picture – Interruptions.
With the proper set up, I can proudly say HW helps a ton with reducing interruptions, till the point it’s not even funny. & No, I wont consider this OP as you require a huge cost of skill points and gear to play this build correctly.

As for skills, yes you will get hit and damage but that’s where the H2H build comes into play. The fast attacks will help with interrupting their skills. H2H build potential has now effectively gone up.

I am very amazed with this build and it offers amazing opportunities with new play styles with other classes. (For instance, lv 30 howling Wind and a lv 30 entangle support combo, intriguing yea?)

I mentioned before and I will say again. I love druids, such a versatile class with 20 odd skills to choose. But I also love our druid community. We are very adventurous by trying different builds. We adapt ourself with each update, tackling each issue as it rises. It is only when we really cant solve it then we get admin involved.

Quoting a wise man, or was it a weasel, 30/30 in thinking of yourself.

Cheers

Wow morph, this is really deep. I remember when you said last night (this morning for your time) that you liked the build and may be sticking with it. Found a new build congratulations to the end of the experiment, maybe and congratulations to a new build!

Woah that's an amazing find. And here I was thinking the move had no use.

Because I'm only on level 80 do you think the skill will still help enough to be useful to me? Or should I wait?

Entity

This is great I have tried it befor, what skills and stats have you got? Do you use a lot of dex?

Quoting a wise man, or was it a weasel, 30/30 in thinking of yourself.

Cheers

Best build is a 30/30 thinking for yerself

That's the quote

Whats your dex, defence and defence items as that may be a good indication to others thinking about this build as how to go about it

About a month ago, I was very intrigued when someone mentioned about howling wind. Very unorthodox but it sounds workable so I gave it a shot.

Was that me? If so, I'm glad I could help People often think I exaggerate the efficacy of HW, but I don't.

I like this idea alot, but bottom line: is spending a bunch of points in HW *really* going to make a tank easier to heal, or is this a leveling build?

As a support druid, my goal in life is to keep tanks hp bars full, does HW facilitate that?

I've been thinking about trying out howling wind for a while and this clinches it!

I can’t give away my stats and item build as this build is pretty good against melee classes at pvp as well. Basically, if you need not fear the auto attacks from melee classes, good chances are you won’t get interrupted and your heals can be used to counter their skill attacks.

There are however several ways in building up your defence:
1) Stats: 1 Dexterity will be 2 defence. So if you invest into 50 dex, you will get 100 defence
2) Golden Trident: It provides 100 defence and 45 dex which is a total of 190 defence
3) Earth stone gear: See if you can secure any of this gear. Radiant being the best – Boots 250 defence, Radiant 500 defence, ring 250 defence

Personal Observation
1) It requires a ton of skill points for it to be really useful. Hence, paralysing your available skill points that could have been put into dmg, heal or buff.
2) Even when maxed, your defence must be pretty good as well to receive full potential from HW. I am assuming this but generally mobs should be similar to us, as in a lv 120 mob should have 1200 attack same as a lv 120 class. So if your howling wind reduces it to 300, your defence should be greater than 300 to receive better dodges. Hence, again the more skill points in HW and more defence, the better and you will evade like a ninja.
3) With the correct set up, interruptions being a druid’s biggest nightmare will be very manageable
4) This skill is only good when you have a high defence hence it only works well on rangers with a high dex build or rogues who have a moderate dex build or fast reflex skill which increases their defence. For other classes, you have to do it via the defence accumulation options above.
5) In terms of support druids, warriors being tanks usually only pump into 2 types of stats – Strength or Vitality. Frozen armour provides a bit of defence but full frozen gear probably about 150 defence. Hence even if you have an amazing high level in HW, the tank wont be able dodge as effectively as a rogue due to low defence.

However, it still helps the warrior’s dodge percentage rate. I don’t have the science for it but for example, if the boss has 1000 attack rating and the warrior has 100 defence. This means the warrior can evade 1 out of 10 attack, 10% dodge rate. If you reduce it to 500 attack rate, the warrior with 100 defence will start to evade 50% of all auto attacks. This will sustainability increase the tank’s survivable rate due to lesser damage received throughout the fight. It also lessens the healing pressure on druids. Remember this, Bark and wards help to reduce physical damage, abundance increases HP but damage received is still the same. Only HW helps in dodging auto attack damage which over a period of time can be an impressive number.

I really like this build as I am a dps druid who solo wyvs when I cant find groups. Hence it overall suits me better due to the amazing dodge rate. I have also observed the increased dodge rate % on tanks during Boss fights. (Note I do have a very high level in HW) But overall this may not be suited for general build as it requires a huge ton of skill points. Again, this is about your play style and preference. So good luck all

PS: Entity, as a lv 80 druid, you need to consider the following:
Am I a support druid or solo druid: You are a support druid I remembered?
Will I be solo levelling or group levelling: Support druids are dependent on group levelling
Does HW applies to my support druid build: Notes as above
Will it help me for solo farming: Lv 80 to 100 ow mobs are eye monsters. They use piercing auto attack and various skills but basically just one attack skill being piercing gaze. Hence HW will help you a lot here with the correct set up. If your farming in SV, most of the meteoric gem requirements come from faeries, wisps, boar and unicons. Putting aside lore dancers, impale and wisp bosses, HW helps a ton.