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Nov 13, 2010 -- 8:44PM, undergroundplayer wrote:

sentinal druids ignore the wild shape rules correct?

Correct, they get the Animal Companion instead of Wild Shape.

Nov 13, 2010 -- 9:30PM, Squad wrote:

alien270 - Glad to see you're updating the guide!

I'm going to once again argue in favor of a higher rating for the Guardian build.  I think you underestimate the value of their class feature, which is similar to another paragon level feat that let's you consolidate your toughness with an existing stat - Zuoken's Centering (the one that lets Githzerai Monks use Wis instead of Con for HP/Surges).  I think it's a much better deal than the other equivalent paragon-level feat of Fleet-footed for the Predator.

And while it's true that Guardians don't have great feat support, their high Con does open up nice options like Second Skin and Rapid Regeneration.  It's no small thing for a melee oriented controller to have such nice defensive options.  A Con focus also opens up the Blightbeast PP and some nice ED options like World Tree Guardian.  I think on the whole that the guardian build has the potential to better support a Grasping Claws lockdown strategy than Predators. 

After making those Guardian builds of the Polearm and Striker builds a while back, I find it hard to contemplate going back to Predator builds.  I don't think Predators are worse than you make them out to be though - just that Guardians are being underrated.

You know, I was just fooling around with a (low level) Guardian build today and thinking about whether I hadn't underrated the class feature.  Another point that you didn't mention is that Guardians will have plenty of surges to spend on summons.

I guess it really started to hit me when I expanded the class feature ratings to include other build considerations, and gave Swarms a purple for AC scaling.  Sure, the pseudo-DR of the Swarm Druid is a great class feature, but you really can't beat a reliably-scaling AC with a Con build.  I think I'm convinced enough to upgrade Primal Guardian to blue.

@ Nausicaa:  I do agree that D385 put Wizards on more even ground in terms of Summoning.  As far as I can remember though, pretty much all of these new summons have drawbacks to attacking with their intrinsic nature, in addition to the intrinsic nature possibly being ally unfriendly.  Sure, the Druid has its fair share of summons with ally un-friendly instinctive actions, but it also has some great, low maintenance options.

Let's compare some summons at 1st level. 

The Druid's Giant Toad is pretty much the perfect summon:  it has reach 3 and instinctively attacks enemies only, pulling them to boot.  Once you summon it, you can let it do its thing and it will do it well. 

The Wizard's Dretch, by comparison, does a little more damage but intrinsically attacks or charges the nearest creature and on top of that you actually take damage whenever you take a move or standard action until the end of your next turn!  If you fire and forget this guy, it'll start to cost you a LOT of HP, which you're not exactly swimming in, and it might attack your friends on top of that.  The extra retaliatory damage you can deal through the symbiosis doesn't make up for the downsides of this summon.

The Dust Devil actually has a very nice burst + slide attack, but it intrinsically just attacks adjacent creatures so it's easy to escape from.  The Dretch can at least charge (but keep in mind that enemies can move such that you or an ally is the nearest creature, thus turning the Dretch on you!), but the Toad is hands down the best at roping enemies into its maw; very rarely will ALL enemies vacate all squares within 3 of the Toad, especially if some are locked into melee with your allies.  Oh, plus if the Dust Devil acts intrinsically you fall prone.  Yeah, bad deal for a ranged character, as the enemies will catch on and try to lock you down in melee.  At least they give you a +4 bonus to defenses against OAs, but the summon is bad news for putting you in a position to need that in the first place!

Ok, so clearly the Toad comes out the winner here, and I'd argue that the Pack Wolf also fares pretty well.  Also notable is that the Druid's Boar, it's worst level 1 summon, suffers the same problems as the Dretch but at least it doesn't cost the Druid HP when it uses its instinctive action!  Now admittedly this comparison is limited in scope because it just includes level 1, but after glancing at the rest of these Wizard summons I'm seeing a lot of intrinsic effects where the Wizard takes damage or suffers from some status effect when the Summon uses it.  Maybe it's just personal preference on my part, but I'd rather stick with the safer summons of the Druid.

And if you're wondering why I'm sticking with the D385 Wizard summons, it's because they're more directly comparable to the Druids.  Plus IMO the most effective mechanic for a summon is to get out onto the field and wreak havoc independent of the summoner's action.  This is what will incite monsters to attack the summon instead of a PC, and when all is said and done a major strength of summons in general is their damage soaking ability.

SongNSilence is also correct about how awesome Primal Summoning Expertise is; as far as I know the Wizard doesn't get anything like that.

With this in mind, I give the edge to the Druid pre-HotFK.  Now that the Sentinel Druid is on the scene, the gap widens further.  The Sentinel's animal companion is essentially an at-will summon.  Though it has no instinctive action, it does have a good OA and an aura that will make monsters want to take it out.  If it gets knocked to 0, it's trivially easy to re-summon it (minor action, spend a surge and it's back on the field, albeit with only a surge's worth of HP).  And actually, the lower HP value is a GOOD thing for the re-summoned animal companion because monsters will kill it more often, which means that monster damage will overshoot its HP more often (and be wasted).  With a normal summon you obviously want more HP because once it's gone, it's gone.  The companion doesn't suffer from this drawback.  Oh, and it also recharges to full HP (your bloodied value) with each short rest, so if it's low on HP at the end of a fight you can have it pull back to conserve surges.  Finally, when the Sentinel uses his/her second wind, the companion gains a surge's worth of HP at no cost.  And yes, the Sentinel can take normal Druid summons for Dailies just fine.

Even though the Wizard is probably the 2nd best summoning class in the game, I just feel like the Druid takes it to a completely different level.  Which is fine, because the Wizard has other strengths (bigger areas and several unmatched high-control powers, to name a couple).

Nov 14, 2010 -- 7:26AM, Nausicaa wrote:

That feat is impressive, really. The druid hasn't summoning PP? 

The Druid has 2 summoning PP's, Pack Lord and Primal Summoner.  I don't have my copy of Arcane Power with me so I can't compare them with Rimetongue Caller and whatever the other Wizard PP is, but I do have Primal Power with me so I can outline those. 

Pack Lord


level 11 feature:  +1 to attack rolls and all defenses whenever you have a summoned creature on the field
level 11 AP feature:  When you use an AP, you can give a single minor action command to your summon as a free action, and if you give it no other commands it will still use its Instinctive Action.
level 16 feature:  While summoned creatures are bloodied, they gain regeneration equal to your Wis mod.
Encounter power:  Single target beast form melee attack, and you can command a summon to make a standard action.  If there's no summon present, roll a D20 and on a 10 or higher an ally can charge or make a basic attack.
Utility:  Daily, for the rest of the encounter you can command summons to use standard action attacks as a minor action.
Daily:  Choose another 19th level Druid Summoning power.



Primal Summoner

level 11 feature:  When a summon uses its instinctive action, it regains HP equal to your Wis mod and gains a +2 bonus to instinctive action attack rolls. 
level 11 AP feature:  When you spend an AP, you can give a single standard action command to a summon as a free action
level 16 feature:  When you use a move action to move, one of your summoned creatures can move its speed (notably doesn't count as a "command," so if a summon moves it can still use its instinctive action)
Encounter:  Single target ranged psychic attack and summoned creatures deal extra damage to the target equal to your Wis mod until the end of your next turn.
Utility:  Daily Stance, allows summoned creatures to gain a +2 power bonus to attack and damage rolls, except when such rolls are part of an instinctive effect.
Daily:  A nice summoning power; the summon switches forms each turn (large to medium, and vice versa) and instinctively attacks a bloodied enemy or an adjacent enemy.  Both attacks (each form has a different one) allow the summon to shift 2 squares before making the attack, so it's a friendly summon that shouldn't have trouble finding a targe to instinctively attack.

Nov 14, 2010 -- 7:26AM, Nausicaa wrote:

I don't agree with you about the sentinel druid wolf/bear low hp. My question is this: can you dismiss it? Otherwise you risk to expend an healing surge for nearly nothing.

Regardless you're not going to spend a healing surge for nothing; by default when a PC takes a surge's worth of damage, it takes a surge to heal them back.  The companion is front loaded by having HP equal to your bloodied value, just like a summon.  Unlike a summon, you don't lose a healing surge when the companion dies.  So in effect, letting it die is like dismissing it because there's no risk involved until you re-summon it.  Anyways, the point being your companion's first "life" in an encounter is going to be worth 2 surges, just like a summon.  After that, each time you re-summon it you're working with a surge's worth of HP for the cost of a surge.  However, if you use your second wind to allow the companion to regain HP for free, you can basically give it 2 "lifes" per encounter that are worth double what they cost.  And like I said before, if the companion is low on HP at the end of the encounter when you're just mopping up, pull the thing back because a short rest recharges its HP at no cost, stretching its damage soaking ability even further.

Now, back to my initial argument about how having only a surge's worth of HP can be a good thing.  I suppose it's more of a "glass half full" way of looking at it, because obviously a companion's first "life" in an encounter is ideal.  The argument assumes that most enemy attacks won't outright kill the companion in one hit, but will leave them with little left.  Any attack used to "kill" a summon (or even a PC) that's low on HP is going to have a lot of its damage wasted.  This could potentially happen a lot in a long fight with the companion, and if there's that much damage being thrown around someone was going to have to spend surges anyway(might as well be the guy with a ton of them).  For most PCs, the biggest healing hurdle in combat is gaining access to their surges; they can use a second wind on their own, but after that they'll need a healing power (or an inefficient potion) to use them.  The Sentinel, however, can re-spawn the companion as long as there's healing surges left to spend, so access isn't really a problem at all. 

So I guess I can revise my argument.  The companion is good at soaking damage under 3 circumstances, which can potentially occur in every encounter:  1) its first "life," since it starts with bloodied value HP, 2) a second wind, which gives the companion a surge's worth of HP for free when the Sentinel spends a surge, and 3) by retreating from the front line at the end of combat if HP is low, since rests recharge companion HP automatically, at no cost in surges.  Aside from that, the companion's strength lies in providing easy access to healing surges without "wasting" a Healing Word, etc.