The Crowmaster: Little Birds, Big Crits Beastmaster Build Guide

No required unique or set items

Unlock Summon Storm Crows at 15 passive points

You do 99% of the damage - no reliance on minion AI

Choose your playstyle: micro-intense or 2-button + right-click

Well-supported with gear in endgame

Most efficient in melee: a dangerous place to be

Minions are a liability. DPS dies with them

Dislikes Critical Hit Avoidance and Chance to Dodge Monolith modifiers

No cast speed scaling

I started a Beastmaster because I was intrigued by Encourage in Eterra's Blessing and quickly realized that Crowstorm is an incredible candidate for spamming: it has 80 base damage, 400% spell damage scaling, and a built-in damage multiplier of 50% per crow. Then you dig into the specialization tree and find huge crit bonuses, three fixed damage multipliers, and two more scaling multipliers in Thunderous Blast and Murder of Crows.

Let's do some math

Most damage modifiers grow linearly and thus give quickly diminishing returns: if I do 10 damage and add 100% increased damage I double my damage (20). If I add another 100% increased damage, I triple the original damage (30) but only have only done 1.5x compared to the first 100% bonus.

However, when you have multiple scaling multipliers you get non-linear growth: if I do 50% more damage/crow and 30% more damage/crow, I do 1.5 x 1.3 = 1.95 damage with one crow. You would expect a second crow to add another 95% damage, but it actually adds 125% (2 x 1.6 = 3.2 - 1.95).

OK no more math please

Sorry about that. Basically, Crowstorm is a very powerful skill and we want to get as many crows as we can and then cast it as much as possible. Happily, we have several options to get around its long cooldown:

• Eterra's Blessing is the first skill we unlock via skill points. It has no cooldown, so with the Encourage specialization we can reset Crowstorm whenever we want. This does require a lot of mana and the ability to target your crows reliably, making totems and other minions undesirable
• Swipe unlocks at level 5 and with the Primal Resonance node will auto-cast the ability of our closest companion (it does not go on cooldown or need to be off cooldown). This means we do not want to mix companions (i.e. Spriggan). It does require adding a 2s cooldown, and for us to hit enemies in melee range
• Summon Frenzy Totem unlocks later in the game but does have the Furious Cry node that can reset Crowstorm on-demand, without targeting. But the totem has almost as long a cooldown as Crowstorm itself

More damage, please

We have several options for increasing how much damage our Crowstorm is doing:

• Summon Wolf is our very first skill, and a meager 6 specialization points gets us Pack Hunters and an additional crow
• Warcry is a powerhouse. Frost Claw adds 250% damage, which eases the need for SuffixIncreased Minion Spell Damage gear. Bringer of Winter and Battle Cry together add up to 200% crit chance
• Fury Leap has Warrior's Entrance which grants our crows 15 spell damage. Remember this is increased by 400% for Crowstorm, almost doubling the 80 base power.

More, more, more!

I mentioned 200% increased crit chance from Warcry... this is especially relevant because a single Observe and Learn 5/5 proc gives our crows 20% base crit, for a total of 25%. That means they only need 100% more increased crit chance to perma-crit (after the Warcry bonus). This is easily obtained by adding Cry of the Lynx and its related passives (along with 120% crit damage).

Putting it all together

Starting out you can choose a more caster-like playstyle with Eterra's Blessing, or melee with Swipe. Eventually you'll have access to both.

The caster play loop:

1. Warcry to buff
2. Crowstorm
3. Eterra's Blessing to reset cooldown
4. More Crowstorm

The melee play loop:

1. Warcry to buff
2. Movement skill to enemies
3. Swipe at enemies, casting Crowstorm

If we're low on health, Blessing is also a great emergency button - especially once you have Purge.

Specialization Order

1. Start by specializing Summon Wolf and working towards Pack Hunters
2. Specialize Eterra's Blessing next and work towards Encourage. The 100% damage boost also helps the wolves kill faster
3. As soon as you hit 15 skill points, get your Summon Storm Crows and specialize them instead of Eterra's Blessing
4. When you get your 3rd specialization, you can choose: Swipe and Primal Resonance, or back to Eterra's Blessing. This is just a matter of how you want to play. I recommend trying both out. If you pick the Blessing, start focusing on PrefixAttunement and PrefixMana Regeneration. If you go Swipe, it's PrefixStrength and SuffixIncreased Cooldown Recovery Speed
5. At your 4th specialization, you're at the point you can start working towards real impact with Warcry. Get to Bringer of Winter first, then Shallow Breath
6. Finally, grab whichever of Swipe and Eterra's Blessing you didn't take earlier

This should be enough to get you through the story and to empowered monoliths. Check out the advanced variant for target uniques.

Milestones to Keep in Mind

• Level 52 - Opal Ring is very nice, especially if you find them with +2 to all stats.
• Level 66 - You can use Horned Staff, yay! Craft it with SuffixIncreased Minion Spell Damage and you'll be good to go.
• Level 67 - Greatwood Coat is going to be a significant damage boost, go get one! Solarum Greaves also unlock here.
• Level 76 - You just got to 20 in all your specializations. Celebrate with an Ancestral Crown!

Tips

• If you are don't have a big stash of shards to draw from, as you find items with PrefixLevel of Summon Storm Crow or PrefixPrimalist Storm Crow Added Spell Damage just salvage them with Rune of Removal and save for later. These are rare and essential modifiers that you want to put on items that will last for a long time. Avoid the impulse to craft them for a short-term gain.
• The campaign and non-empowered monoliths, even low-corruption empowered monoliths, are not overly demanding. I encourage you to use this time to experiment! Maybe you'll find something you enjoy even more.

Farming Monoliths

My first goal in the end game is to get the blessing I want in each monolith that affects game stats (the loot monoliths are fine, but lower priority - especially since gear priorities can change quickly after a new acquisition). Grand Enmity of the Clans is one exception here since swords share their Unique/Set echo with Daggers (I'm not 100% sure that actually works, but in any case - you want 2x Apogee of Frozen Light so more swords = good). I don't prioritize good rolls; those can take some farming, and uniques will have more impact on your build. You'll also naturally get chances to upgrade your blessings as farm uniques.

You will probably get Dedication of an Erased Primalist and Artor's Legacy naturally as you play. Also, both of these items will probably hurt your survivability significantly (especially Artor's). So don't rush for them. Also, Rayeh can be pretty annoying for melee builds.

The first item I would target farm is Apogee of Frozen Light in empowered Reign of Dragons. Legendary potential (LP) is not essential as you're building your gear, so get two and move on.

Next I would farm Ravens' Rise in empowered Ending the Storm. LP is not common on these, and your glove slot are not as impactful as your helm, so once you find a pair you can move on.

Now you can target farm Artor's Legacy in empowered Black Sun. LP 2 is quite achievable and can be upgraded in tier 1 Temporal Sanctum. Hope for PrefixPrimalist Storm Crow Added Spell Damage and SuffixIncreased Health.

At this point you should be ready to push corruption (if you haven't started already). Remember you need to be above 200 for Omnis to drop. Just pick one of the above-mentioned monoliths (so you can also be looking for LP) and get to it!

Monolith Farming Strategy

To target farm a unique, we look for "Set/Unique _____" echoes of that item's base type, which is determined by the monolith (as indicated above).

Two powerful tools in target farming are:

• Vessels of Chaos - Rerolls the rewards for all echoes in the web that have not been completed yet
• Vessels of Memory - Restores all completed echoes to an uncompleted state (excluding other Vessels of Chaos or Memory)

If you come across these, here is how I attempt to use them maximally:

1. Explore the echo web until a) all remaining echoes have at most one outgoing connection and b) all visible "Set/Unique" echoes are completed
2. If available: destroy a Vessel of Chaos. Our hope here is to roll more "Set/Unique" rewards. If we did destroy a vessel return to step 1, otherwise continue
3. If available: destroy a Vessel of Memory. This will refresh all of our completed echoes, most importantly the "Set/Unique" echoes, including those created by rerolling in step 2. If we destroy a vessel return to step 1. Otherwise, pick an Echo of the World and move on.

Note that the "at most one outgoing connection" clause in 1 is because if we complete an echo and only reveal one new echo, that new echo has the same chance to reroll a "Set/Unique" reward as the one we completed, only now it's one step further away when we trigger our Vessel of Memory.

This strategy works especially well when we find multiple Vessels of Chaos (and Memory) in a single web.

Boss Fights

Boss fights, whether in dungeons or monoliths, can be pretty annoying for this build. You need to be in melee to do damage, and your minions are vulnerable to their killer area spells. Rebinding the "Move minions" hotkey to something more accessible (I use "t") can help.

If you're feeling frustrated though, the best option is really Sky Passage because it gathers your crows with you when you teleport (ideally, out of harm's way).

Swap Fury Leap for Summon Frenzy Totem so that you can reset your Crowstorm without trying to target a crow during a boss fight. If you do, Healing Pulse is optional; either Invigorated Renewal or Warding Totem may be the better option. You can also shift your passives around to invest Critical Bite. If that doesn't help, grab Feline Bond and The Chase. You can always move things back as you get more resilient gear.

Here is a pastebin link to my loot filter. You will want to modify it a bit for your current gear needs.

My general filter strategy is:

• Have one rule per item slot, with emphasis. This allows fine-tuning the specific item type needed (e.g. Greatwood Coat) or all types if I'm just looking for legendary material
• Put in my top 4-5 affixes for that slot and require 1 or 2 (depending on the quality of my current item in that slot)
• As my gear improves I will refine the rules so that the affix needs to be tier 6+ (i.e. exalted), and will prune out lower-priority affixes (e.g. I only want to look at boots with T6+ SuffixIncreased Cooldown Recovery Speed)

I also have at least one rule for idols with the general affixes I'm looking for. I could create a rule for each idol type but that is annoyingly granular to maintain, and they are uncommon enough that I don't mind looking at idols when they drop.

I have one rule for crafting shards, which comes after the gear rules and just recolors affixes that I'm low on shards for.

Finally, I hide all Magic and Rare items not shown by the preceding filters.

I have 6 max companions! Why not trade one for a Spriggan?

I thought this and experimented with it a bit. To take full advantage of this companion you'll have to specialize it, which probably means dropping Summon Wolf, and thus trading two crows.

Summon Spriggan is very tempting, as Aura of Retribution 4/4 would free up two passive points from Observe and Learn and allow us to change our idols. Aura of Kinship 3/3 is another source of flat spell damage that we crave so much. We also have Branches of Winter and Frostleaf to maintain frostbite and get more freezes.

This might balance one crow loss but probably not two. More importantly, there is a chance Primal Resonance will target your Spriggan instead of a crow, which kills your DPS.

That said, the bonuses are very nice especially before gearing up. So I do encourage you to try it, and maybe you'll find some interactions I missed.

Why not use a Druid instead?

See the Druid build variant above.

My crows keep dying!

You're probably fighting a boss with a nasty area skill. See "Boss Fights" tips in the Endgame section above for methods to improve their survivability (or to get them back faster).