Fire Claws

When in werewolf or werebear form, maul your enemies with a fiery claw attack.

Fire Claws is the Druid's level 18 Shape Shifting attack, requiring Feral Rage and Maul; it unlocks Hunger. It works in either form, wolf or bear. It is a plain melee attack that adds a block of fire damage to the weapon hit and a large attack rating bonus, and nothing else: no charges, no spread, no leech of its own. The numbers that decide it are the fire, 464–499 at level 20, and the attack rating, +335% at level 20.

The numbers

• Fire damage is the EMin/EMax columns with their five brackets. EMin starts at 32 and gains +16 a level to level 8, +24 to 16, +32 to 22, +40 to 28 and +48 past that (EMinLev1–5); EMax starts at 48 and gains +17, +25, +33, +41 and +49 over the same brackets. The steps show in the table: 96–116 at level 5, 192–217 at 10, 312–342 at 15, 464–499 at 20, 648–688 at 25, 864–909 at 30. The Basin's level table agrees with these to the point.
• Attack rating is ToHit 50 plus LevToHit 15 a level: +335% at level 20, +485% at level 30. The Basin writes the same line as 15 × slvl + 35.
• Mana is a flat 4 (mana 4, lvlmana 0).

Every tooltip line reads lvl, so +skills from items raise the fire and the attack rating. The synergy line reads hard points only.

How it works

Fire Claws is a melee attack: it rolls your attack rating against the target's defense (Chance to Hit) and, on a hit, deals the weapon's full physical damage (the Basin lists weapon damage 100%) plus the skill's fire, which is Fire Damage with EType fire, cut by the target's Fire Resist and raised by Fire Skill Damage, see Dealing Elemental Damage. The fire is attached to the hit, so it does not land when the attack misses, and it goes to one target. The Basin's only note on speed is that weapon speed and weapon increased attack speed are the main factors in the attack rate, see Attack Speed.

The fire is one lump on one hit, not an area: a miss adds nothing and nothing spreads. Against a fire-immune monster the hit is the weapon's physical damage alone.

Synergies and +skills

Two synergies, both at +22% fire damage per level (Param8 = 22, the table's "Damage synergy"): Firestorm and Molten Boulder. The calc is EDmgSymPerCalc = (skill('Firestorm'.blvl) + skill('Molten Boulder'.blvl)) × par8, hard points only; +skills in those two from items add nothing here. The Basin's page lists four synergies for the older game, with Fissure and Volcano as well, and records that the current game keeps only Firestorm and Molten Boulder; the table has no line for the other two. Fire Claws gives no synergy to any skill.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player. The Basin's page says nothing more about Fire Claws against players.

Build notes

• Forty hard points in the two synergies are worth +880% on the fire, nearly ten times the base: the synergies, not the skill's own levels, are where the fire comes from.
• Levels from +skills still matter, since the brackets widen with level: 464–499 at 20, 864–909 at 30.
• Attack rating is +15% a level, the highest of the shapeshifting attacks, with no cap.
• Mana is a flat 4, so the attack costs the same at level 1 and level 30.