Druid sentinel build advice

[trazwald]

I'm making a character for my first 4e game (I've always played 3.5 previously), and have decided to go with a druid. For the sake of easy character creation, I'm making a druid sentinel (as the character progression was laid out in one of the books available to us: I think they were PHB 1&2, and heroes of faerun/heroes of the underdark, or some such.)

The character is going to be a leader, so I would like to be able to heal/buff my allies effectively. So far I was thinking of going half-elf druid sentinel of summer, but I'm wondering if spring might be a better choice, given the bonus to heal checks and the +1 to hit with the given weapons.

Stats are as follows:
10
10
18
10
18
12

feat: combat medic

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, regarding any aspect of the build. The only thing I'm set on is druid and the party role, and I'm not sure if any other books would be allowed.

Thanks in advance, Playground!

[Fallbot]

A lot of advice can be found here (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/26244737/Call_of_the_Wild:__A_Druid_Handbook?pg=1).

Combat Medic is fairly weak, since you'll rarely be making heal checks in combat, if ever once you get to higher levels - it's probably better to focus on using and improving your Healing Word and any other healing powers you may take. I don't have the book that the Sentinel is in, but it sounds like it's relatively difficult to improve its healing ability with feats, so I'm not sure what to suggest. I'm sure someone more familiar with the class will be along soon with better advice.

[Yakk]

You have two per encounter "heal an ally as a minor action". For the most part, this will be sufficient to stabilize PCs who drop below 0 HP (as a heal while below 0 HP resets you to 0 HP, then heals you).

A heal check is useful when things have gone poorly.

The downside of the druid is that you have two characters to control (you and your companion), and one set of actions. So that can be more complex than it has to be. On the other hand, your powers are mostly pre-chosen for you, so that simplifies things.

The real strength of the Sentinel Druid lies in their ability to reform their companion as a minor action at the cost of 1 healing surge. Each time an enemy attacks your companion instead of an ally, you get to efficiently turn your healing surges into damage prevention for your allies. :) (And the companion starts with 1/2 your HP for free, which is a lot of free "healing" for your allies if you can convince enemies to attack it -- and the companion heals up to its full HP for free at the end of an encounter...)

Remember that by the rules, you can pick Druid daily and at-will powers as a Sentinal, not just the default Sentinal daily powers. You won't be able to use Druid powers with the Beast keyword, but that doesn't eliminate every power they have. (Note that this does not apply to your encounter attack power)

That is one of the reasons why I find human sentinel druids tempting. You can take a druid at-will and a sentinel at-will both, giving you a ranged attack and a melee attack.

For a ranged-at-will, I would be tempted by Magic Stones (attack wis vs reflex on up to 3 targets for 1d4+wis damage, push them up to 1 square each). For a melee attack, I'd start with tending strike (con bonus temporary HP), and move on to Dynamic Assault after a few levels (because the con bonus temporary HP doesn't grow fast enough to matter after a few levels).

The druid I last made has a menagarie of allies -- multiclass shaman for a spirit companion and used dailies to summon additional allies. I grabbed melee training in case I wanted to hit things, and all of my at-wills where ranged implement ones. I even had the fire hawk at-will for a 5th pseudo-presence on the battlefield. But I was going for maximum complexity.

(The idea is that I could plop down a wall of flesh between us and half of the enemy force, and by the time they overran that wall of flesh we'd have defeated the closer half).

[busterswd]

Check out the linked Druid's handbook. Here's some tips on sentinels:

-Strong, strongly consider hybrid Sentinel. Combined attack's OK, but it's really limited as an encounter power, and hybridizing fixes that a bit.
-Multiclass shaman as mentioned can be nice for more impassable terrain for enemies, and eventually a 3rd heal per encounter.
-I prefer spring; the bear has to be adjacent to allies for its aura, which makes flanking harder in melee. The wolf has to be adjacent to enemies, which naturally lends itself to flanking.
-Look at the Fey Beast Tamer background for more minion madness. 3 squares of impassable terrain (companion, shaman feat, background) makes for decent control, and it gives you even more options.
-Remember, you can only attack once per turn regardless of minion numbers; this includes OAs.
-Don't ignore your other features as a sentinel. There are way better healing type leaders out there, but you have a good bit of damage and control. You're not super sticky but your minion wall can help out with that.

[MeeposFire]

The nicer thing about the wolf is that you don't need to flank to get CA.