PTR Feedback Summon Druid 2.4

PTR Feedback
1

Good Day to you all,

Over the years, I invested loads of time in the Summon Druid. Therefore, I know it quite well. Thank you Blizzard for thinking about some improvements for the underpowered Skilltrees of the Druid at all, that is to say, Fire Skills and Summons!
I did a full calculation sheet in excel to compare the Druid Skills Raven/Spirit Wolf/Dire Wolf/Grizzly from Patches 2.3 and 2.4. Did that sheet for every skill level between 1 and 44.
Here is my Feedback:

  • It is obvious you didnt change anything at all on “Summon Grizzly”. Thats okay, but a change to AoE damage would actually make the Grizzly more versatile than just being a meat-shield.

  • You doubled the Life total of “Summon Spirit Wolf” and “Summon Dire Wolf”. Thats great, but: They actually used to die only because they could not manage to kill mobs on Hell diff. There life regeneration is quite good, they have got 85 all resistances. It is not life that they need. They need better AI, the player needs to know their actual Defense- and Attack Rating stat, and they need to do more Damage.

  • Improvements to “Raven” (im talking about Skill level 44 right now, just as an example): Raven level 44 (and both wolves/Grizzly as well) does 4214-4583 damage now. A level 44 Grizzly does 5416-5583. This means: A single Raven almost does the same damage as a Grizzly. But you can have up to 5 Ravens. I am sorry, but I am absolutely sure that this is not a good path to follow. I dont have to compare the Damage of the Wolves with that of the Ravens to tell that this is ridiculous…

  • Cold Damage of “Spirit Wolf”: Again, I am sorry, but this is not an improvement at all. You wanted “Summon Spirit Wolf” to be used for crowd control, okay. But the AI of all the Summons is still terrible and just does not work with this at all. They are either standing around, or all of them are attacking the same enemy. Slowing one Mob with cold damage is NOTHING compared to one random, single-cast or proccd low-level AoE-cold damage Spell, like Frost Nova or Frozen Orb, from Rift Runeword. Furthermore, the Druid can not even buff his own summons with Heart of the Wolverine anymore. As I have written above, nobody will choose Spirit Wolf over Grizzly or Dire Wolf.

As long as the player has to choose between the Summon Skills, “Summon Spirit Wolf” is a dead Spell. If you want this skill to be actually used, I see only two ways to let that happen:
1: Let the Druid have his 5+3+1+1+1+5 Summons at once
2: Improve AI of the Spirit Wolves and give them a HUGE Buff to Damage, and/or add AoE effects for them, as well as let the max. amount of Spirit Wolves slowly increase with higher skill levels.

The easiest way to have the Druid Fan community stop complaining would be to just have the Druid let 5 Spirit Wolves plus 3 Dire Wolves plus 1 Grizzly at the same time. Nobody, I repeat NOBODY would EVER use the Spirit Wolf Skill when he could have a Grizzly instead.
Same would be true for Necro: Nobody would ever choose Skeletal Mage over Skeletons if he had to choose between the two of them.

At least let the Summon skills evolve similar to the Necro skills: Slowly increase the maximum number of Summons with increasing levels. Both ideas would make the Druid finally feel like a Summoner at all, because a Summoner needs to have some amount of Summons, I think.

Single-Target Damage is a huge problem here. You are going to change this for the Act 1 Mercenary, why not change it for the Druid, too? Terrible AI, Summons standing around, in combination with single-target Damage is no good.

Another important point: The player still has no idea of the base values of Attack Rating and Defense. I am sorry, but the Tooltips telling you “+1000%AR” and “+500%Defense” just is not useful at all. +1000%AR , based on which value? 20 Attack Rating? 100 Defense?

What about Carrion Vine healing not only the Druid, but the Summons, too?

18 Likes
2

You made all really good points overall - good read.

I just wanted to highlight that last line as I’ve asked for that too.

Also, why can’t druid just have all summons? Or at least 1 extra spirit and vine (2/2)?

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i like the idea of the grizzly having an aoe attack. please do this blizzard!

4

Played also full summon with dire wolfs and agree with all points. did not choose the bear because all the other summons outplay him in damage output what should not be the case.

I´m always cautious with AOE attacks for weapons in Diablo (PD2 AOE felt already a little bit wrong) and i think it should stay that way but:

  • i root for Bear with AOE damage!
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Here’s my PTR feedback:

Druid

  • Summon Spirit Wolves OR Dire Wolves AND Grizzly (one type of wolf + bear)
  • Grizzly now has chance for open wounds
  • Improve Ravens by summoning 5 ravens per cast instead of 1 per cast and increase number of attacks. To balance the change, the damage could be slightly lowered to compensate
  • Improve survivability of Oak Safe, Heart of the Wolverine and Spirit of the Barbs by adding a small resistance to elemental damage (10-15%)
  • Improve Armageddon to hit monsters more frequently and consider removing all wind skill prerequisites
  • Consider allowing Teleport to be used in shapeshifted form
  • Reduce the cooldown on Volcano
1 Like
6

We have this on ptr and there is one more post on general as well. We try to fix this build cause it sucks. Even the buffs from spirits dont multiple to summons.
Plz check this if you agree with us, like

3 Likes
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Good feedback!

SUMMONING SKILLS
Despite some little improvments summons are still too weak compared to the necromancer ones. Possible solutions include allow summon bear and wolf together, increase bear attack speed and wolf damage, improve bonus and survivability of all the spirits (for example add attack speed bonus to heart of wolverine). Ravens are not the way to go in my opinion and there is not source of splash damage (like necro corpse explosion) which makes every summoning build too slow to be effective for druids.

ELEMENTAL SKILLS
Fire skills are better but still a little too weak to be consistent. Possible solutions include improve fissure sinergy or skill damage, improve volcano physical damage and reduce cooldown, remove hurricane requirement for armageddon (to free some important skills point), reduce cooldown of the skills. I also suggest to make tornado go in a straith line path and/or improve even more twister damage.

MERCENARIES
The new changes to mercenary are intresting but act 2 mercenaries are still the way to go for the majority of build, since they have auras and they can provide Conviction thanks to Infinity Runeword. Possible solutions include allow Infinity Runeword to be made in bow and sword, so that all the mercenaries can provide endgame conviction aura (similar to insight in bow), give other compelling auras to ac1, act3 and act5 mercenaries, greatly increase other mercenaries damage, introduce new item to provide auras or lower resist on striking

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2 Likes
8

This means: A single Raven almost does the same damage as a Grizzly.

But auras / HoW don’t affect ravens

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I only think Carrion Vine or Solar Creap will be used with maximum 1 point. One way to improve them could be -

Carion Vine: also heals summons including itself. Or something else
Solar creeper:. Also increase max mana a little. Or something else.
Spirit of Barbs: at level 20 it gives 500 dmg or so so attacker. It was a waste for me on my wolves.
Perhaps a completely different kind of Spirit. Or swap the position with heart of wolverine.

End game:
Right now only oak sage or heart of the wolverine is interesting along with a tank like grizzly or spirit wolves for tanking along with the slowing cold effect.
Leveling: have only tried playing a little from level 1 in ptr and poison creeper is a great and fun help early on before a respek.

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This cannot be emphasized enough. A buff that disappears when it is most needed is… most annoying.

3 Likes