Been playing around with the changes to Serpent Strike, first as a beastmaster (it was awful) and then on a druid (after totems lagged out my game too often). It kinda slaps:
General rotation is this:
- Jump into bug form
- Hit most things once and they die
- Drop totems on big monsters (hives + on hit from idols) to get frostbite/poison. Do not double cast totems or it will drop you out of bug form! They cost a lot of rage.
- Dive frequently to upkeep Frenzy + Haste
- Summon back into human form to maintain shapeshifter buff (Serpent strike still kills small things well in human, shout + leap + spriggan ability while waiting)
- Back to the top
The build scales very well with crit, which I noticed when I would start just one-shotting everything but big bosses on the first tick while having a critical strike shrine up.
What I’m looking for now is a way to scale a bit better into empowered echoes, mostly in the form of convenience/tankiness. I can notice the adaptive boss scaling really hard once they’re at about 60%, so I don’t know how much more damage would actually be useful.
Here are some notes on things I’ve tried:
- Debating between frostbite vs poison. Spriggan+swarmblade can kinda get to 30 poison stacks on their own, and I really, really want things frozen. Would greatly appreciate any insight into a way to get the highest freeze chance while reliably getting 30 poison on big things.
- Scorpion was very sad. The critter gets lots of poison on things, but the baby scorpions get lost, the poison pools spawn in random places, etc. I liked him on beastmaster.
- None of the other companions really stack up because they just fall over dead with low STR.
- I tried a LOT of things before settling on Maelstrom, including autocast ice thorns, warcry, leapslam with vines, etc. The frenzy + haste feels too good to pass up though.
- I’ve considered a Ring of the Third Eye, but have some well-rolled rings atm with crit + poison/dot increase + other good stuff. I don’t know how good the ward would actually be, might be something to swap on for clearing and then put on a different ring on bosses.
- Peak of the Mountain doesn’t feel necessary, but it does give a nice spike in damage. Long term I think I’ll try to farm a high LP one, not sure if its better than a helm with + Swarmblade form (more tankiness) or other good stuff on its own.
- Related to above, but recovery feels great in packs but gets sketchy in single target.
Hope someone else has some fun with this and can find some improvements to what I have!