Summon Spirit Wolf

Summon a wolf with teleporting ability to fight by your side.

Summon Spirit Wolf is the Druid's level 6 wolf (Summoning tree), requiring Raven; it unlocks Summon Dire Wolf. Each cast adds one wolf to a pack of at most five. The spirit wolf is the fast, cheap wolf: its bite is cold damage, 2–6 at level 1 and 49–53 at level 20, and it carries the pack's defense and attack rating synergies rather than its own damage.

The numbers

• Wolves is min(lvl, Param3) with Param3 = 5. Mana is a flat 15.
• Cold damage is EMin/EMax with the five brackets: 2 (minimum) and 6 (maximum) at level 1, then +1 a level to level 8, +3 to 16, +4 to 22, +5 to 28, +8 past that, the same steps for both ends. Cold length is ELen 25 frames, one second, at every level.
• Defense is Param5 (50) plus Param6 (10) a level: +240% at level 20. The passive the wolf actually carries is item_armor_percent = Param4 (7) × lvl + that line, so the tooltip understates it slightly.
• Attack Rating is Param1 (50) plus Param2 (25) a level: +525% at level 20. The Basin warns that this passive applies as flat attack rating, not the percentage the tooltip prints. The attack itself rolls ToHit 75 plus LevToHit 20 a level.
• Resistances: min(Param8 × lvl, 85) to fire, cold, lightning and poison, 5% a level, capped at 85 from level 17.
• Life: calc1 = Param7 (10) × lvl + Summon Dire Wolf Param2 (15) × Summon Dire Wolf level, as a percentage over the base; the Basin's D2R table prints 143 at level 1 and 390 at level 20 with no Dire Wolf points.

Every line reads lvl, so +skills from items raise the pack, the bite and the passives; the Basin adds that the passive bonuses are fixed at the level the wolf was summoned.

How it works

A spirit wolf is a melee pet that rolls its attack rating against the target's defense (Chance to Hit) and deals cold damage on a hit, so the target is chilled for the one-second cold length; see Cold Damage and Chill and Freeze. The Basin's page: the wolves teleport to you when too far away, can be put into hit recovery and knocked back (item knockback at a 50% chance), can open doors, have 5% chance of critical damage and 100% drain effectiveness. Since D2R patch 2.4 the Basin notes all three pet types can be out together; in the 1.10–1.13 era summoning a different wolf or the bear dismissed the others. The row carries item_pierce_cold_immunity, which lets the caster's Monster Cold Immunity is Sundered apply to the bite.

The damage is cold, not physical: a cold immune takes nothing from the pack unless the immunity is broken.

Synergies and +skills

Received: EDmgSymPerCalc = Summon Grizzly.ln12, the bear's own +% damage line (Param1 25 + Param2 10 a level of Summon Grizzly), as a percentage on the wolves' damage; and the life term above from Summon Dire Wolf Param2 (15) × its level. Both read the other skill's lvl, so +skills count. Given: Spirit Wolf's Param2 (25) × level is the attack rating passive of Dire Wolves and the Grizzly, its Param6 (10) × level their defense passive, and its hard points are +12% damage each to Raven.

Against players

The Basin's page says nothing about Spirit Wolves against players. A player's own hit on another player is cut to 17% (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer), see Player versus Player; the wolves are pets and the page adds no rule for them.

Build notes

• Five points make the pack; after that a level buys 1 to 8 cold damage, +10% defense and +25% attack rating per wolf, so the fifth hard point is the one that matters and +skills carry the rest.
• Each point here is +25% attack rating and +10% defense to every Dire Wolf and to the Grizzly: the reason a Grizzly build still puts points in this skill.
• The one-second chill is the pack's real job on a summoner; the damage is small next to the bear's.