[HC] Wolfcaster Warden

Overview

Hi everyone, this is my first guide, and as such will be a WIP as well as a stumbling along learning experience.Mad Credit to DHVeez for a nutbusting meme to use as a brand image.The Wolfcaster Warden is my first build to take me into Endless on Hardcore, and its full potential with this variant at this time is yet to be discovered. There’s a few gear choices that have been made for obvious hardcore related reasons, at a substantial sacrifice to potential dmg. However, the build ramps steadily providing the dmg needed to push deep into endless.I look forward to updating this guide with progress on how deep its pushed.

Overview

Wolf Caster, A summoner capable of supporting her companions with casted aoe DPS.

With 26 companions, high mobility, and supplemental aoe damage, the Wolf Caster is ready to take a bite out of any content.

The core of the build is a lesser rune called Wolfcaster, which changes the animation of Ice Shard, an ice based skill in the Winter Herald Skill tree. The new skill bases its damage off your summoned wolves, who coincidentally base their damage off the players damage. So by stacking companion damage and a few other choice stats, insane scaling percentages can be achieved. An exorbitant amount of 320,000% of your frost is applied to the wolf you cast. If this damage sounds insane, well, its not, its roughly 25-33% of the builds total damage. The Summoned wolves, when supported with Wolftooth Necklace Lesser Rune and Bloodscent lesser rune end up as the core damage output the build is capable of, with an infinite scaling ramp damage that stacks all the bleed from each individual wolf hit together. Empower this bleed with the Master’s Set accessories, and suddenly your ramping trillions in only a few ticks. Packleader’s Vest and Call of the Wild provide you with stronger and more wolves. Advancing Army boots scaling your movementspeed directly into companion damage, which remember, is your damage, boost the scaling even higher. Elementium to cap resistances, Balgar’s to soak staggered damage, and Weyrick’s runed with Lifeguard all help to round out the defensive structure of the build.

Credit to DHVeez for an awesome cover image.

Gear

The core of this build relies on synergies from a few parts, all scaling upon one another. Explanations for each item to be added after pushing deeper into the Endless Dungeon. For now will just provide the materials for people to replicate the build, with improvements over gear choices to be added later.

Skills/Items/Mastery

Active Skills

Skills are listed from Left to Right.

Ice Shard – Animation is changed due to Wolfcaster Lesser Rune along with the way its damage scaling works.

Storm Mender – with all the companion use/effect this build has, the Storm Mender’s passive will heal the Warden once per second for 60% of health. The active will provide a shield for 30% of max hp.

Wolf Pack/Alpha – Both skills are provided via the Packleader Lesser rune buff put onto chest.

Treant Guard – Life Roots, the 5th node in the Wind Ranger Mastery, makes the Treant absorb 15% of the damage dealt to Warden. Super useful damage spreading, as there will almost always be a treant up with which to absorb damage.

Spiderlings – Life Link, the 5th node in the Druid Mastery makes your spiderlings heal you for 1% of their damage dealt. With all the companion damage, this 1% will heal you for massive amounts, without having to scale poison.

Winterbringer – Ultimate skill, used for the Evasion, Resists and CDR(mainly for the wolves dmg buff although the synergy with Storm Mender is nice too)

Item Choices

Wings of Sziirk – teleport that does not share a cool down with Codex. Dropped location from a random spawned Rare mob in Act 5, in the Fortress of Hatred(this is not entirely certain, as I have obtained multiple wings now, but never saw the actual mob, he is confirmed Random Spawned, but it is possible that he is in the Molten Sea. Though I am fairly certain its the Fortress of Hatred.)

Codex of Soul/ Scrolls of Soulwarp – Codex is cheaper, Scrolls faster.

Codex of Root Veil – if you have an excess of scrolls use those instead so as to keep refreshing the barrier as needed, the codex shares its cooldown with all other codex meaning that if you use a codex with an 8 second cooldown, your other codex with shorter cooldowns, will have 8 seconds before use.

Codex of Dancing Blades – will summon 4 more minions for a minute or so. This helps with the scaling obtained with Gaia’s passive. Also ONLY needs to be on you hotbar for the summoning, then can be replaced with HP pots or another item of your fancy.

Skill Tree

The points spent on skills right now is fairly tight with little wiggle room, however there is room for personal preference decisions at the slight cost of overall dps. IE opting to go 3 active summon slots instead of 4 to include either the second skill provided by the Wolf Caster rune, or anything else that suits your fancy.

Mastery Selections

Wind Ranger Mastery
Assault -> Fragmentations -> Wounded Limbs -> Restorative Winds -> Life Roots

Druid Mastery
Strengthened Companions -> Spring Pods -> Tangled Growth -> Nature’s Synergy -> Life Link -> Shroom Tender -> Mycelium -> Wide Synergy -> Ultimate Affinity

Storm Caller Mastery
Shattering Hits -> Critical Recharge -> Counter Shock -> Storm Reflex -> Vigor Aura -> Charged Wisps -> Storm Spirit -> Hail Synergy -> Companion Affinity

Winter Herald Mastery
Frost Damage -> Snowstorm -> Chilling Blast -> Immunity -> Wolfmother -> Frost Blast -> Frozen Ground -> Winter Herald Focus -> Frost Affinity

Class Mastery 1
Damage -> Strengthened Companions -> Commander -> Mobility -> Hearty -> Gaia’s Touch -> Critical Hit Damage -> Bleed Damage

Class Mastery 2
Thorns -> Friends With Benefits -> Nimble -> Lasting Effects -> Mana Leech -> Nature’s Bond -> Overpower -> Elemental Power

Class Mastery 3
Health -> Vitality -> Anchored -> Calm Mind -> Challenger -> Bling -> Frost Damage

Final Mastery Master Tamer