Druid skill rework concept

General Discussion
1

Hey, I was recently posting my changes to barbarian skills for my offline D2R mod and i would like to continue with improving druid. Changes i am making are in concept stage so its not final and I will greatly appreatiate feedback.

SUMMONING SKILLS

Raven

  • Starting at lesser number of hits but every level increasing number of hits by 10
  • Ravens no longer use blindness but instead have Amplify damage curse chance on hit, % and chance is increased on every difficulty

Summon Spirit Wolf

  • cold damage increased
  • new cold damage synegy from arctic blast
  • wolves are ethereal, they ignore obstacles
  • they gain +% cold damage and -% enemycold resist from character equip

Summon Dire Wolf

  • they gain open wounds from character equip
  • you can summon 5 of them instead of 3

Summon Grizzly

  • gains crushing blow from character equip

Oak Sage

  • increased physical damage reduction

Heart of Wolverine

  • increased physical damage reduction
  • slightly increased enhanced damage per level

Spirit of Barbs

  • name of skill changed to Spirit of Nature
  • thorns aura replaced by completely new aura which lowers poison, fire and cold
    % resistance on enemies
  • increased physical damage reduction

Poison Creeper

  • Immune to physical damage
  • Poison damage on higher levels significantly buffed
  • gains benefits from +% poison damage and -% poison enemy resist from character equip

Carrion Vine

  • Immune to physical damage

Solar Creeper

  • Immune to physical damage
  • Mana leech doubled

SHAPE SHIFTING SKILLS

Lycantrophy

  • Switched place with Werewolf
  • +%walk/run buff for transforms

Werewolf

  • Attack speed per level has no dimishing returns

Werebear

  • 1% crushing blow per skill level

Maul

  • No change

Feral Rage

  • 0,5% life leech synergy from Hunger
  • Longer duration of effect

Fire Claw

  • Synergies reworked, they are +30% fire damage from Firestorm, Lycantrophy and both Werebear and Werewolf.

Hunger

  • Added Attack ratting bonus
  • Negative -75% enhanced damage stays but every level of skill adds +10% enhanced damage
  • Mana cost decreasing every skill level by 0.3%
    - Maybe also always hits?

Shock wave

  • Damage slightly increased
  • Displayed skill damage fixed to proper values

Rabies

  • % poison damage synergy increased

Fury
No change

ELEMENTAL SKILLS

Firestorm

  • Can be casted in werebear or werewolf form
  • Bigger and longer flame
  • Mana cost 2,5 instead of 4

Molten Boulder

  • I am not decided on this one. Either i will make it faster, or after casting it will split into multiple boulders based on number of enemies in sight, any ideas?
  • Damage synergies increased

Fissure

  • No change

Volcano

  • Damage synergies increased
  • Casting delay lowered from 3 to 2

Armageddon

  • Synergy from Fissure removed, skill instead increase duration by +2 seconds per skill level
  • If possible i will try to center skill better on druid as it doesnt travel with him fast enough.

Cyclone Armor

  • No change

Artic Blast

  • Skill mechanic completely changed to work as Baal’s Hoarfrost but in smaller scale
  • Added +%Cold damage synergy from Spirit Wolf

Twister

  • Additional twisters added
  • Damage increased

Tornado

  • Random pathing improved to be more stable to go where you want it.
  • Tornado does also additional cold damage

Hurricane

  • Cyclone armor is also damage synergy
  • Removed +2 second duration synergy from Cyclone armor added as bonus per skill level

Opinions? :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

Looks good.

Is it possible to make Rabies useable by both forms, instead of just werewolf?

3

Most summoning changes are fine - except for this. We don’t need another synergy - skill points are sparse enough as it is.
Better change SSW so that it converts the physical damage to cold damage so that other skills can increase their damage.

4

Why dont you work for Blizzard, again?

1 Like
5

I think so yeah. I was thinking about it too actualy, but I feel like it doesnt fit you would have to invest points in werewolf skills before you can go to Rabies.

6

That synergy is not needed, its not like you should level it up. They do enough dmg already. Its just interesting option if you are buing fun build with cold damage skills and you will use only Spirit wolves.

They didnt hire me yet :smiley:

7

Just send them your work with an NDA as your resume and theyd turf the entire D2R devs.

2 Likes
8

Thoughts:
Some nice stuff. :slight_smile:

Suggestions in addition:
Shape Shifting Tree.
Change skills that are usable while shifted. Maybe not every skill you can get with charges and +skill, but as many as possible that makes sense and doesn’t make Beast auto pick for all casters as swap.

Middle path:
WW and Lycan don’t swap places. Middle path is an independent branch instead (only arrows down).
Fireclaw - used old and new attack speed calculation for WB - whichever is faster.
Hunger - also makes you pounce toward your enemy. Not sure if any animations are available, but at least rapid movement to where you click the skill and attack the nearest enemy to that point. Leap Attack / Charge for shifters. Autohit. Only an attack animation if the target point/ creature is in attack distance. Maybe reduce penalty / increase damage by 5% every level.

WW:
Feral Rage - increase duration by 1 second per level. Doesn’t end while in human druid form, you keep your stacks for the duration. Lose them if change to WB.
Fury - cannot be interrupted.

WB:
Maul - a Shockwave is released with each attack. Always the widest area of effect. Increase duration by 1 second per level. Doesn’t end while in human druid form, you keep your stacks for the duration. Lose them if change to WW.
Note: Some may think this change is crazy, but I don’t. If you go pure SW you will have other items and prioritize +skills for example, and possibly use a lot of MF gear, etc. So while your SW damage will not be as high (with the SW) as pure SW build, you will have your melee gear in focus and go for the attack speed, etc, and keep your Maul charged up. Maul is just really lacking, and you can already use a single SW to stun most enemies before smacking them, so the CC aspect shouldn’t be much different. I, for one, would prefer to go and smack enemies about rather than waving my paws at them (which my current build is). This would really add some weight to the attack and make it seem powerful.

Summoning Tree:
Spirits and Vines: perhaps hard points into skills gives synergies to the other sprits/vines. So 1 point Oak Sage = +30% life for the other spirit aura as well (not stacking with other Oak Sages). 1 point Solar = % mana recovered for the other vines when they eat a corpse. Maybe a caveat for the poison creeper as that GFX is damned anoying, lest we all suffer.
Spirit of Barbs - keep the worthless thorns. Lower poison, fire, cold and physical resistance on enemies. Increase poison, fire, cold and physical resistance to allies in the area. Maybe like start at 10% and 1% every other level, perhaps with diminishing returns after lvl x.

Just a few thoughts. I love WB and actually hitting things.

1 Like
9

That’s right . I want to fire all current Blizzard developers and hire you.

10

Oh dont hire me… I dont know crap about programming, I just put out fires. Hire Zax 100%, he does more for free than the paid devs do.

1 Like
11

The developers do the programming, and you command over their heads. Please draw a nice picture of their white paper planning skills with only shiiiit in their heads.

1 Like
12

Spirit of Nature change to provide all resist to allies look better…

13

Spirit of Nature is a really cool idea. Unfortunately I don’t see it happening cuz purists.

1 Like
14

Well i know, blizz will never go something that radical as changing skills completely or go with bigger scale balance. This is mainly for my D2R mod i am creating. My idea for mod is to be better balanced version of d2 with filled gaps like missing unique item versions for many items, more usefull skills, mercenaries… I plan to improve or change a lot of aspects of game.

15

Its not bad idea,i was thinking about it also, but question is what does it solve in druids kit? Does druid struggle with resistances currently? I dont think so and he has cyclone armor too. Would you take that resist spirit over life or dmg spirit? I doubt it. Getting resistances is easy, +life or +%dmg not so much.

Druid has many fire, physical skills, some cold and little bit of poison. But all of these struggle greatly vs high resistant or immune monsters. Unlike several other classes, he doesnt have a tools to deal with those that well.

I solved physical part with ravens having amplify damage and solved fire cold and poison with that new aura which works similary as conviction. So i think its better than + resist aura would be.