The Druid Skill Trees and Synergies are too prohibitive to allow you to build your characters the way you want them. It is necessary to rework them a little bit to ensure more built-variety among Druids; especially dual specs between Shape Shifting and Summoning Skills must be made easier, because pure Summoners are not exactly the most fun build, since the Druid has nothing to cast besides his Summons. Furthermore, it should be easier to pump Skill points into Synergies to boost Elemental Skills procced by certain weapons. An example for this would be Stormlash, which procs Tornados and requires 60 Hard Points to be put into Tornado Synergies. If you use those 60 Hard Points on Tornado Synergies, you cannot max out your Werewolf and Lycantrophy Skills anymore, which is a pity.
With Patch 2.4 - or so - came a very good change that took away the prequisites for Armageddon. Before that Patch you would have to pump Skill Points into each of the Wind Skills of the Elemental Skill Tree in order to be able to use Armageddon. Luckily, Blizzard understood this flaw and fixed it; namely, the prequisites of Armageddon would disallow you to max out your Fire Skills and have a Grizzly at the same time. Such hinderances must be undone to make sure, that you can max out the Skills that you need for your Build without compromizing on something vital.
The first Skill Tree I want to talk about is the Elemental Skill Tree, since it has a few Synergies that need to be removed. I’m talking of the duration Synergies of Armageddon and Hurricane. Armageddon and Hurricane are not even usable before you max out either Fissure or Cyclone Armor to boost their duration to the maximum. My proposal is, therefore, to simply have Armageddon and Hurricane always have the maximum duration of 50 seconds, regardless of how many Skill Points you pump into Fissure or Cyclone Armor. This way you could use these Skills right away with one Hard Skill Point; also you would have 20 Hard Points that you could invest into something else, if you wouldn’t need either Fissure or Cyclone Armor for your build. One example is the Fire Claws Druid. He could save the Hard Points of Fissure to max out Werewolf/Lycantrophy, which is very important for the Fire Claws build. Fire Claws requires attack speed and also health to be a bit less of a glass cannon character, but it takes Armageddon as a Secondary Skill to increase clear speed and fun.
The second Skill Tree I need to talk about is the Shape Shifting Skill Tree, as it requires a few easy tweaks to make it a bit more user friendly. First of all, Lycantrophy shouldn’t even exist. I see no reason why anybody would have to put so many Hard Points into such a Skill, just to increase duration and hit points of Wereform. Instead, Lycantrophy should be deleted and its effects should be incorporated into Werewolf and Werebear directly. This way the Druid gains 20 more Hard points to use on another Skill Tree for dual specs. The other flaw of the Shape Shifting Skill Tree is, that Fire Claws has prequisites that take too many Hard Skill Points away which could be used on another Skill Tree otherwise. Fire Claws should, thus, have no prequisites and should therefore be free to use for either Werewolf or Werebear. Also, cap Rabies duration at 6 seconds and enhance Shock Wave damage to reach an acceptable level in Hell.
The third and last Skill Tree that i want to touch is the Summoning Skill Tree. I imagine it to be better to have no prequisites for Summon Spirit Wolf and Summon Dire Wolf. Why does the Druid have to invest a Hard point in either Oak Sage or Raven to gain access to Wolfes and Grizzly; though, this would be a minor change to be sure. What the Summoning Skill Tree really needs is a Summon Dire Wolf Synergy for all three Pet Spirits and the three Creepers to boost their hit points to an acceptable level. That said Synergy would boost Pet Spirits and Creepers by 15% Life per level and it would work not only with Hard Points, but with Plus Skills too (just like it always did). Additionally, all Summons on the Summoning Skill Tree should get a flat amount of All Resistances that would increase per Difficulty: Normal - 5% All Res; Nightmare - 15% All Res; Hell - 35% All Res. This would ensure that your Pet Spirits and Creepers would not die upon being touched once by any random monster in Hell. Furthermore, Spirit of Barbs should get an additional ability that would grant ‘- To Enemy Physical Resistance’ for any character, minion, or merc that would be in the radius of its range of effect. This would help Shape Shifters and Wind Druids alike, while the latter would climb up the Tier List to become S-Tier. I believe that, since every class has an S-Tier build, the Druid should have one too.
These are the changes I propose for the Druid Skill Trees and their Synergies. Feel free to comment. Cheers!
Update:
Some important QoL for the Druid that I didn’t mention in my post above should include Teleport and Warcries for Shape Shifters.
Also, please allow us to gamble Druid Pelts, since it is already possible to gamble Assassin Claws.
Another thing would be to make Feral Rage and Maul refreshable with any Werewolf/Werebear attack (except Bite attacks like Rabies or Hunger) after the skill has been fully charged. It is very frustrating having to switch between Feral Rage attack and Fury attack, just to maintain the Feral Rage charge. So, Normal/Fury/Fire Claws should refresh Feral Rage and Normal/Fire Claws should refresh Maul.
It would also be nice to be able to use Poison Creeper, Carrion Vine, and Solar Creeper all at the same time. However, I’m personally against allowing the Pet Spirits to be used all at once, for they grant too decent buffs, if used in combination.
The last QoL idea I want to bring up here is something I have repeatedly read about in posts on another forum. What if Druids would not use up Weapon/Armor Durability while in Werewolf or Werebear form? This would actually open up some interesting new ways to play Shape Shifters as you could, for example, equip an ethereal Plague Sword as a Rabies Fury Druid. It could be op for pvp, though in pvm it would be fine in my opinion.