Fire Claws
The last of the main attack skills in shifter druid's possession is fire claws. Fire class is a skill based fire damage attack. It has a %22 fire damage synergy bonus from each of Fire Storm, Molten Boulder, Fissure and Volcano skill point.
The full investment takes 100 skill points but grants extreme fire damage. The attack speed is the same with the standard attack speed of fury so it can be deduced from the Fury Speed Table.
The Fire Claws attack seems to be interruptible. More on Fire Claws findings here.
To achieve 4 frame Fire Claws attack, one can shift into a bear instead of a wolf. For accurate speeds, check TheDragoon's Calculator linked at the end of the guide.
For the Fire Claws path, a 1 point investment will enable the use of Shock Wave, which is the ultimate crowd control skill in the game. Also 1 point can also be put in hunger, but not suggested strongly since you will be stealing either from life or damage. For a Fire Claws bear, the Maul skill can also be used for stun along with Shock Wave and is very useful. Needs some practicing though. This guide focuses mainly on wolves, so the exploration of the bear side will be left to you.
EQUIPMENT
The damage of fire claws is dependant on skills, not weapon damage. So a fast weapon will work nicely with fire claws. A 5 framer such as a phase blade with at least 110 IAS socketed can be used to cause decent damage. The 5 frames is a 4 framer when shifted into a bear instead of a wolf. When bear and using Fire Claws, watch your mana.
Here is a table with various skills and synergies and +% fire skill damage and resulting fire claws damage.
|
Fire Claws Skill |
# of Synergy Skills |
+% Fire Skill Damage |
Fire Claws Damage (not exact) |
|
20 |
0 |
0 |
250 |
|
20 |
20 |
0 |
1370 |
|
20 |
40 |
0 |
2500 |
|
30 |
40 |
0 |
5000 |
|
30 |
40 |
10 |
5400 |
|
30 |
60 |
10 |
7900 |
|
30 |
60 |
20 |
8600 |
|
38 |
60 |
20 |
13000 |
|
30 |
80 |
20 |
11400 |
|
38 |
80 |
20 |
17100 |
+% Fire Skill Damage Can be obtained from Rainbow Facet Unique Jewels with +% Fire Skill Damage (%5) and -% Enemy Fire Resistance (%5). Other equipment is to your taste, but Magnefist Unique Light Gauntlets is advisable due to its + to fire skills.
Stone Runeword on a 4 Socket Armor-ShaelUmPulLum gives Level 16 Molten Boulder Charges. This item can be used to save some skillpoints and increase life, but the Fire Claws damage will be considerably lower (One can only max Fire Storm and can't put any skill points on the synergies for the Level 16 Molten Boulder to work). Still a decent build because of the high life.
The damage is not dependant on the damage of the weapon, so a fast weapon is advised. As far as I observed, Fire Claws is the fastest killer among the three paths in PvM.