Let’s fix druids

Shapeshifting

Wereforms

  • Power up skills apply all their bonuses to all attacks when they are active
  • Power up skills if not refreshed for 20 seconds lose 1 charge per 2 seconds rather than all charges at once
  • Power up skills take 5 hits to fully charge regardless of level
  • All non damage dealing skills from other classes now castable in wereforms, wereform FCR nerfed to Amazon FCR level
  • Can directly transform between wereforms
  • Lycanthropy remove Werewolf as prerequisite and add FRW as passive
  • Hunger switches position with Fire Claws on skill tree, prerequisites are Maul and Feral Rage now
  • Hunger now does a leaping attack of 8 yards max to target or location, if your target is in melee range you perform attack without leaping, you can leap over obstacles and line of sight required
  • Hunger is uninterruptible, always hit, damage penalty removed, fix bug that causes you to miss

Werewolf

  • Rabies cap duration at 8 seconds but keep the same damage
  • Feral Rage FRW buffed to Frenzy levels
  • Fury is uninterruptible

Werebear

  • Reverse attack speed calculation nerf, make 4 frame attack possible again
  • Werebear no longer has uninterruptible
  • Fire Claws is a Werebear only skill, prerequisite is Shock Wave now
  • Fire Claws is uninterruptible, now cleaves hitting 1 target adjacent to primary target, synergies changed to Armageddon only and damage is increased to compensate.
  • Shock Wave increase base skill damage, NHD reduced to 3 frames, replace Maul synergy with Hurricane synergy, add Cyclone Armor synergy for ED, projectiles can be blocked, spell damage affected by Spirit of Barbs aura

Elemental

Fire

  • Firestorm CD removed
  • Molten Boulder CD removed
  • Fissure NHD reduced to 4 frames
  • Volcano NHD reduced to 4 frames balls and 6 frames eruption
  • Armageddon has increased base duration to 20 seconds and radius to 6 yards, add Fire Claw synergy for ED

Wind

  • Arctic Blast projectile speed is faster and behaves more like a beam
  • Twister remove Arctic Blast synergy, increase stun length, NHD reduced to 20 frames, gains damage aura like Tornado
  • Tornado NHD reduced to 20 frames
  • Hurricane castable in wereforms, increase base duration to 20 seconds, add Shock Wave synergy for ED
  • Cyclone Armor add Shock Wave synergy for enhancing damage absorption

Summoning

Spirits

  • Spirits take half damage from all sources
  • Spirit of Barbs aura enchants enemies instead, in addition to attacker takes damage enemies take increased damage from spells, effect stronger at higher skill level and capped at 25%, summons using physical attacks does not trigger effect

Animals

  • Ravens does cold damage and chills
  • Spirit Wolf does physical damage and has open wounds
  • Dire Wolf has deadly strike
  • Grizzly has crushing blow and now cleaves hitting 1 target adjacent to primary target

Plants

  • All vines can be active at same time
5 Likes

Spirits really needs some buffs to life or get damaged reeuced or invulnerability, there are spirits, do spirits have physical bodies?
Like Hoto the charge is useless …

I think damage reduced is the way to go for spirits, you want them to be more survivable but still differentiate themselves from paladin auras.

Not really sure the druid is in too bad a spot anymore. That being said spirits definitely are weak and should have more life or damage reduction. One skill that i would like to see some changes is rabies cause this skill is simply not viable for endgame at all. What sets rabies back is the duration of around 20 sec at max lvl . Even with best in slot gear u wont reach much more than 50-60k poison damage and with a 20 sec duration u are looking at 2.5-3k dps tops which is pretty much useless in hell difficulty if u compare to almost any other build. Dont think anyone in their right mind would consider spending multiple highrunes on a build that cant be used for anything except maybe a very slow cow lvl farmer

I think elemental skills are in a pretty good spot and summons are in an ok position, but definitely not the same level as paladins, sorcs and javazons. They aren’t bad but could be pushed a little more to make them really good.

Shapeshifters I think are still kind of bad and melee in general need more help. I think poison skills need a rework, they need to have their durations capped at fix numbers. When the duration rises with the damage you’re not really getting more dps, you’re just having to reapply it less.

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I actually played a hybrid WW fury/summon druid this league and i must say its one of the best builds ive had in D2 ever. Clears all areas with ease and can do at least 50 chaos sanc run without even using a single pot and around 3 min full clear every time with only left click :D. And im using reaper’s toll as my main hand weapon so i really have no problems with any immunity mobs. Hybrid druid is in my opinion the way to go with shapeshifting now since the summons provide soo much safety and cc that u practically never die. Besides they do just enough damage to clear out the trash that are out of reach while u kill the champion packs and they provide a good boost to single target dps. Reaper’s toll is the kingpin for WW druid now in my opinion :slight_smile: That being said i will agree on the poison skill rework Rabies really suck and its a shame. I tried Path of Diablo a few years back and i think they lowered the duration to 6 sec there and the build was a blast to play :slight_smile: Still needed to use Fury for bosses though but the clear was pretty decent and it was a really nice cow farmer

I think Werebear is more so lacking after the attack rate nerf, it can’t hit 4 frames anymore with Fire Claw and lacks any form of meaningful aoe. It’s just a flat out inferior version of the Werewolf now they can hit a faster attack frame rate than Werebear with Fire Claw. It’s just doesn’t do anything that’s unique that’s better than the Werewolf anymore.

The major issue with wereforms is the mobility. They just don’t have access to the same movement options as other classes. The transformation mechanics also make things like prebuffing clunky.

The summons are nice but at the end of the day Fury Druid is just a slower Zealot that can’t Charge, Teleport or Smite. Zealots are probably the strongest melee and most people still don’t use them over Hammerdins or Sorcs. If you’ve seen a Fisting of the Heavens Paladin nuke chaos, you know what the difference is.

I can agree on werebear it seems a bit weak now but i think WW is in a much better spot than ever before. I wouldnt trade my WW Fury/Summon for any Zealot ill tell u that. Sure u might cut a few sec here and there but it really doesnt make up for the lazy good for countless hours of farming playstyle of the ww druid i played this season. And i have tried amost every zealot build that i know of including tesladins and smiters. They are all pretty good but the druid wins in my opinion for the relaxed playstyle and its pretty fast with the reaper’s toll. Yeah the fist of heavens pala is good for chaos sanc but have trouble in many other areas, the reaper’s toll ww doesnt it clears all areas and i wouldnt exaxctly call it slower than a zealot i really think they come pretty close but it would be nice if u could teleport in ww form

Yeah I wouldn’t change too much about Werewolf specifically. I’d just give it more FRW and make Fury uninterruptible. Rabies definitely needs a fix.

Yeah the run walk would be nice and i wouldnt mind the uninterruptible although for the build i played it wouldnt matter much since my summons pretty much block all other mobs than the ones im hitting so i really didnt get interrupted much :slight_smile: but what i did in the beginning was having feral rage on right click and then use it every 15-20 sec to get a run walk buff. Later ladder i got some summon skill charms with 7% frw and enigma and got too lazy to keep up the feral rage since i already got 28% life leech from gear and movement speed was decent enough :slight_smile: Rabies suck and it pretty much got ignored when they did the skill balance patch in season 1. I would really like a rework to that skill like they did with the poison javazon

In terms of kill speed between Fury and Zeal it isn’t really that different, Smite really put zealots over the edge for killing Ubers. Shapeshifter just don’t have the ability to skip content, you pretty much have to kill everything in your way. Paladins have both teleport and charge, they can just ignore what they don’t want to fight. Making feral rage easier to upkeep and bumping the frw bonus would help Werewolf get around much faster. Opening up wereforms to teleport and possibly other spells could help close the mobility gap, but could create more issues if not balanced properly.

1 Like

In a way u are right cause u cant tele in shapeshifting form. However the way i played with all the summons i could teleport anywhere i wanted in normal form and the wolves would soak up most of the damage when i accidentally landed in the middle of a pack so it really was no problem that way. Did solo P8 baal runs with a group i mf’ed with no problem. No one of them wanted Baal area and it was fine by me :slight_smile: i did it easily and teleported all the way to throne room np. Even did it when terrorized and P8.

Pretty creative playing around the problem. But I don’t particularly like transforming back and forth even to cast battle orders. It feels like really clunky gameplay. I’ve played other melee as well, zealers, frenzy and kickers - shapeshifter mechanics just feel clunky in comparison.

Yeah u are right really wish they would make the druid able to teleport and cast battle orders in shapeshifting form. This would be an easy fix and lots of people agree on this. One of my absolute favorit chars before the druid got changed was frenzy barb :slight_smile: sometimes i went all in on ar/frw charms to the point where i almost couldnt control my char when frenzy got fully charged :smiley: Tried the kicksin a few times but that felt pretty clunky to me and i always liked the trapsin better . Once properly geared the trapsin is one of the best and most relaxed cow farmers in the game and probably the best Nihlatak farmer when u get enigma

My fave was actually kicksin, I’ve never really bothered with the charge ups they are a mess currently. They have an incredible amount of CC and probably one of the safest characters I’ve played. Once you get Death Sentry going with a couple of bodies they can clear mobs really quick even though they have the least on paper DPS of the melees. You play like a semi trapsin anyways, you just get your first bodies with kicks and you’re able to do Ubers with it. Hopefully they can fix the charge ups so they are less clunky for a different playstyle to be possible.

Yeah i kind of hated the whole charge up thing but trapsin was one of my all time favorit and its great for solo playthrough especially now where synergies have changed a bit which lets u put more points into fire blast. I think melee chars biggest problem is lack of good weapon choices and the aoe + the ammount of attack rating u need to be able to hit stuff is insane. To compete with casters u really need to be able to hit multiple targets which is why fury and zeal is in the best spot atm. I really think they should rework many of the unique melee weapons and the whole chance to hit equation.

2 Likes

I think definitely AOE what’s holding melee back, they aren’t lacking damage numbers for sure they just can’t deliver it in the same rate as casters can. Not saying they should do as much AOE as a caster, you have to differentiate the play styles in someway but adding a cleave mechanic to some single target melee skills would go a long way to making them a lot more enjoyable to use. I don’t find AR to be too unmanageable until you face stuff like Ubers, this is where Smiters dominate. It’s kind of unfair that only Paladins have access to an always hit skill, Amazons too now but it’s severely nerfed compared to Smite.

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Yup AoE is the main problem. Even with a best in slot geared melee char who can almost one hit every mob besides a few boss packs u will never beat a caster because u litterally have to hit every single mob at least once. Casters on the other hand with best in slot gear deletes the entire screen in a few seconds and they dont have a chance to hit they always hit. Point is buffing damage will never make melee able to compete with casters unless u implement some kind of aoe it just cant be done. This fact and the unreasonable high amounts of attackrating u need to have a decent chance to hit and the fact that chance to hit has a 95% cap is all contributing to the problem.

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