The Druid/Amazon Problem/Solution Is Everything (Why Community is Wrong)

General Discussion
1

The question that Blizzard and the Community need to be repeating over and over again in their minds is the following…

Why doesn’t the Druid achieve the offensive caliber that the Necromancer and Sorceress achieve with out classifying as a Dependant(Sorc) or a Diversitalist/Soloist(Nec)?

https://ibb.co/1MX3kS9

Dependant: Strong in single skill tree devotion
Divesitalist/Soloist: Strong when built across all 3 skill trees.

I will come back to this…

The Druid and Amazon are currently in an identity Crisis with Diablo 2.

Let’s get right to the point with the Amazon first. They are buffing the hell out of physical bows while it’s actually been the community’s fault for not realizing and being too lazy to build the core Amazon the right way, which ends up being a tight build that requires hard emphasis on weapon swap between plague javelin and strafe/multi shot. The build is solid all the way through the entire game but the bottom line is that you’re not going to see Sorceress level strength until you reach mid 90s with your best gear.

The Amazon receives 3 life per vitality point unlike the 2 life that the Necro and Sorc receive. This is one of the fundamental underlying factors that firmly establishes the Amazon as a “Balanced Middle of the Road Hero” who is NOT A GLASS CANNON like the Sorceress or the Necromancer.

Blizzard is firmly destroying the identity of the Amazon with these 2.4 changes. You’re buffing Amazon bows ON TOP of the community’s laziness to play the hero properly and you can’t see that 3 life per level with passives pushes her away from cannon strength?That’s. Absolute. Insanity!

But when you shift the direction the arrow points from Amazon, on through the Sorceress and Necromancer and stop on the Druid, you have a Hero that receives 2 life per vitality point just like the Nec and Sorc which establishes his glass cannon potential but then does not achieve a comparable offensive output.

Is the reason because of skills? Maybe if there was that partial damage synergy between cold and poison skills in the game then it would somewhat help. You would have the hurricane/rabies druid and that’s what their “hurricane in wolf form” should be going for whether they realize it or not. (Slow Poison is a Theme)

Is the reason because of items? I can see this as being very much part of the problem because Plague runeword effects should have basically been on a unique druid pelt. It’s impressive how much Blizzard can mess up so little but it’s super obviously why plague sword didn’t make it in to the game in the first place.

Or is the reason because of skill tree cooperation? THIS … THIS right here has got to be the real reason that the Druid does not achieve the “Power Feel” of the Sorceress or the Necromancer, but you have to be careful in not making him single skill tree devoted like the dependant sorceress, and also careful in not making him complete/powerful across all 3 skill trees like the necromancer.

You have to look at exclusive cooperation between 2 skill trees at a time.

The Elemental / Summon Druid
The Summon / Shape Shifter Druid
The Shapeshifter / Elemental Druid

One could almost ask a question with a bad idea but make a good point.

Where is the Shifter/Element mastery skill? Where is the Summon/Shifter mastery skill? Where is the Elementa/Summon mastery kill?

And if you look at the offensiveness of the Sorceress (Element) and Necro (Army), you can put both of them together to ask a very appalling question…

Why doesn’t fire claws apply to the druid summons?

It’s the elemental/summon direction that the Druid can pursue to compete with the Necro and Sorceress, but it’s just simply not there…

Let’s Talk about the skill fire claws though because maybe fire claws is the skill that’s suppose to bring all these “double skill tree pursuits” together through synergy and cooperation…

Fire Claws should enhance damage of fire elements also
Fire Claws should apply to druid animal summons (Wolves/Bear)

The complexity is in how the synergies should bring this all together in a cycle

  1. Points in to wolf/bear summons would enhance the claw aspect of fire claws increasing its attack rating.

  2. Points in to fire claws would add fire damage to summons

  3. Points in to fire claws would enhance damage of fire spells

  4. Points in to fire spells would enhance damage of fire claws

and last not least

  1. POINTS IN TO SUMMONS WOULD REDUCE ENEMY FIRE RESIST BY X% WHEN HIT BY SUMMONS.

BOOM.

Now you might run in to an issue with builds where the Druid would have to devote a lot of mana toward recasting his summons, but then that actually gives real and true purpose to the damn solar creeper for once…

The Druid may end up being pushed to span all 3 of his tech trees like the Necro but he wouldn’t be a Diversitalist/Soloist like the Necro. The Druid might be devoted to one elemental type like the Sorceress but he would not be a Dependant like the Sorceress because he would not be single skill tree devoted with lack of variety in order to achieve a competitive offensive output.

Imagine when going to decide what element Sorceress you want to be now? You wouldn’t just throw in the towel on light and fire because of Cold’s pierce. You might have a summon druid Friend available to provoke your choice of Fire Sorc to achieve that pierce in team cooperation.

But the real kicker might be a runeword to get the sorceress some wolf summons that she could recast with all her mana to keep -fire resist effect on opponents as she casts her fire skills.

And as stated before… it seems the recasting of the wolves is the only real wall of inconvenience. If only there was a way to put it on some kind of auto cast to keep the wolves out on the dance floor

It’s time for this company to Paradigm Shift out of its current approach and go back to the core conservative values that are true to Diablo 2’s roots.

People want Bows/XBows to be stronger, I get it…

We’ve been talking a lot about a Bow and XBow mastery on the Barbarian lately, but it’s been very critical to not steal from the amazon’s bow mastery identity through her passives.

You might have a Crossbow mastery on the barbarian that applies or enhances open wounds and crushing blow blow… like making crushing blow 1/4 instead of the nerfed 1/8th. And maybe open wounds would last longer or proc its own chance… But I don’t think you would see that straight damage buff and critical strike chance.

As for Bow mastery, the same would apply. You wouldn’t have damage or crit, rather, you would have something elemental that wouldn’t conflict with the amazon much. I proposed enhanced fire/ice/lightning and magic damage with attack rating all at once. The idea actually trickles over in to a missing Hero 8’s skill: Magic Mastery that I had structured out.

As for the Amazon’s offensive output with bow, you might be able to get a runeoword in to the game that applies “Bow Mastery” as aforementioned. Multi elemental diversity strength with ranged. But you just shouldn’t see this physical strength with bow EVER in the current way they are doing it. It’s just flat wrong. It’s the disgusting and gagworthy new hires for the company along with Activision.

It’s all about making Diablo 3 not seem as bad as it was, in order to build hype with Diablo 4. God Save Us All…

2

You lost me at “a classes core should be weapon swapping required”

That right there, you obviously dont understand game design. Why did/does the shapeshifter in WoW have actual players vs d2 shifters? Easy, its core to allow mobility & shapeshifting combos

Few to no players play d2 shapeshifters bc … shift out form, enigma tp, shift back into form - 4-6 seconds later: resume fighting.

It does not feel good, nor does constantly swapping. Mind you that feels much better, than shift spell pain, but still not good. WoW figured out how to make many classes feel seamless in pvp. Something which we should never accept is poor design. Janky? Couldnt finish your book after that

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3

The Amazon’s core build is not only weapon swap required, it is weapon swap effective and weapon swap promoted.

When you perform one of the most powerful maneuvers in the game(especially on hardcore) otherwise known as “creeping” with the Amazon, you have you javelin and shield out, cast your decoy (using said shield) in to the direction you suspect enemies could swarm you from. Watch them go after decoy(shield out) as you throw your plague javelin. Valkarie gets in position to tank. Switch to bow to finish off with plague. Rinse and Repeat.

It’s the staple Amazon procedure demonstrating her core AND STRENGTH as a Diversitalist/Soloist.

You people who have said that there are no roles in Diablo 2 are Insane Nut Jobs. You’ve simply lost your marbles. You are clueless, and need to stop demanding your flavorless sugar coated free pop tarts before Blizzard just takes advantage of you(fake/fale capitalism) in a game that is progressively sexist.

Weapon swap emphasis is an absolute joke for anyone who has properly learned how to play Diablo 2 with said hoykeys.

How far will the laziness go here? Are they really going to take advantage of people who can’t push a damn conveniently set up hot key in order to try and make Diablo 3 not look as bad to increase Diablo 4 sales?

I should flag you for spam right within your very own post because your follow up statement had nothing to do with your original one.

Switching weapons has absolutely NOTHING to do with switching in and out of shape shifter form. Totally different topic as I said nothing about Druid not being able to teleport in wolf or bear form.

4

Be as angry as you want but that doesnt account for theorycrafting and alternative builds. Part of the fun of the game is making a unique non meta build. A melee necro a tank amazon…

My 70 year old father plays a melee only Amazon. Crazy right? He has a blast. He refuses to use summons bc he cant do 20 abilities. I’m half his age and agree completely.

I dont want to do 50 things, maybe 5-6 abilities max using quickcast (stroke of genius to add)

Just because YOU believe in cookie cutter one size fits all or die in fire, doesnt mean everyone else. Use a little empathy and humility. Allow alternatives.

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5

This is basically d3 now. Buff everything!!!

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I stopped reading at the “I’m right and the entire rest of the community is wrong”…

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Capability Range.

Each hero has their own capability range.

The Amazon’s is broad because she is a diversitalist/soloist.

But she leans defensive

The Necromancer’s is broad because he is a diversitalist/soloist.

But he leans offensive

The Assassin’s is broad because because she is a diversitalist/soloist

But she is inbetween the Necromancer and the Assassin in terms of offense and defense.

The Assassin is the technical “down the middle of the road” hero of the game with 20,20,20 , 25 stat start.

But the Amazon is the most stable and conservative “down the middle of the road” hero of the game because of that defending stability.

Literal vs Figurative.

Of course you have Alternatives…
WITH YOUR CHOICE FOR HOW YOU PROPORTION, KEY WORD, PROPORTION YOUR SKILL DISTRIBUTION

Would an Amazon put all 5 of her 20 skill points in to bow skills like a Druid might put all 5 of his 20 skill points in to Summons?

Absolutely Not.

Is an Amazon going to go pure lightning javelin and not 1 point any of her passive or decoy and call it “legitimate creativity” because they were still squeezing damage synergies with lightning javelin skills? Absolutely not.

Oh but your Zon wears Enigma and you feel like that it should justify your choice not to point any of your passives? And you think you are being special/legitimately creative?

Congratulations, you just made Sorceress that wears an Amazon Mask.

You’ll never understand this.

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That’s what all of this guy’s posts boil down to.
He’s just a more civil version of Stanner/Randy.

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We are at this forum’s equivalent of check username first before bothering to read any further.

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And I stopped Acknowledging BigBad GTO’s comments after he claimed to stop reading after “I’m right and the entire rest of the community is wrong” and then proceeded to enter the thread and scroll down to reply with a one liner bump to the original thread.

Show me more about how you justify your stubbornness through hypocrisy out of sheer laziness to read from someone who put in the work.

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11

Bro just stop, nothing you say makes any sense and these long winded troll posts are idiotic.

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I’ll make an effort to provide a legitimate response to a legitimate question and/or comment.

When you start with “I’m right, tens of thousands of people are wrong” you don’t deserve a legitimate response. You’re just trolling. And if you’re not, I feel bad if you really honestly think this way.

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Oh so by your bias perspective of what someone deserves is how you qualify your definition of legitimacy?

I’ll jump right on board with that…

Hypocrite Twice didn’t deserve my second chance… why did I take his trolling bait?

Game over man, you proved it to your very own self that you’re not for the greater good of the community or legitimate steps forward.

Now you should leave like you want to and were suppose to.

14

Do you mean druid cannot deal big damage? because he can, fissure and tornado+hurricane are very big damage skills.

I agree that physical bow buffs were completely unnecessary. Despite zon having 3 hp per vita, some people still chose to do max vita physical and elemental bowzons, and complain that “there’s no reason to put points into other stats” at the same time. Dex for physical, energy for elemental zons - do so much for them. Multi shot zon doesn’t have any Skill-ED%. Every point in dex for them buffs their damage by a lot, relatively (unlike every other physical build that already has hundreds of ED% from skills).

The only problem that 1.14\2.3 physical bowzon is that it’s very hard to get a good bow in the mid game. You have to rely on one of the few uniques. Harmony just ain’t good enough. In 1.10 monster HP grew by an order of magnitude but bow damage remained exactly the same.

He has Oak Sage and Cyclone armor to compensate for it. Also where did you get the glass cannon potential of the necromancer? Life gains aren’t everything. He isn’t exactly a very big cannon either. Bone spear is a very modest offensive spell, corpse explosion is strong but is quite limited in application until the end game, poision spells deal OK damage and go into “cannot” territory only after you acquire the DWeb and some skillers which is very deep into the end game.

Overall I like reading your thoughts, many interesting ideas, but bases confuse me. I like the idea of characters having unique identities, being different from each other, etc. The idea of fire claw is interesting, but people already kill ubers with their pets alone - such buff is uncalled for.

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I think that there is a functional truth to what you’re saying here but you got to think this through comparatively and gracefully.

The Druid was clearly designed so that he had the option to and could excel at 1 skill tree devotion like the Sorceress. This nearly caused me to classify the Druid as “dependant” like the Sorceress (who is the only one) but I could and would never push for that with out some kind of mastery skills on him.

This does not change the fact that his design philosophy is still in the same spirit of the Sorceress with his potential for 1 skill tree devotion.

So let’s say I just apply all my points down the left side of his elements(fire skills) because all of these skills provide “Interconnected Synergy” to one another.

So here I am with this Druid. Now go through the entire list of the things that this Druid does not have in and of himself and how he finds him self between the Necromancer and Sorceress.

  1. In and of himself : No oak sage, No wolf, No cyclone armor (a proper defensive form for a squishy hero too with a flat block amount at that)

  2. Sorceress: No Teleport, No Masteries, Lacks cannon range

  3. Necromancer: No Corpse Explode, No Army, No Debuffs, Lacks cannon range

Why does he lack the range? obviously because of how Hurricane and Armageddon function as close ranged exclusive spells.

You see? He finds himself in the Sourest of Sour Positions while built in a way that should be viable unless you believe the Sorceress should stand out completely from the game in both build and class (Dependant) therefor fully proving that the Sorceress is in fact “Dependant” like I’ve been proving to the denialists.

Now if you could gracefully transition in design from the Sorceress to the Necromancer through the Druid by implementing synergies and effects properly with him so that if he built a certain way that he could achieve a comparable glass cannon output to the Sorceress and Necromancer that would be viable, then you would have legitimately solved this problem hands down.

He simply has no debuffs, no army, no mastery and no proper defensive form(since gets 2 life per vitality) and this is in conflict to his own melee ranged identity found through Armageddon and Hurricane.

THIS. IS. OBVIOUSLY. A. PROBLEM.
IF. NOT. THE. PROBLEM.

But it’s very silly that it has to be a problem when HE DOES have access to an army and HE DOES do a lot of damage.

You would have thought that people would have put those two points together by now to see how his missing glass cannon approach could be achieved and viable.

But no… here we are dinking around with things that shouldn’t be dinked with. like the Soreceress’ Cold Mastery Pierce. And the Amazon’s Physical Bow Damage Output.

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can you explain finally wtf is “dependant”? sorceress doesn’t depend on anything, she is the most “solo” hero ever, in the way that she’s the best at obtaining gear that can make her the strongest.

No, i don’t. See what? you only got more confusing here.

Necromancer lacks range or druid? and so what that they do? they have other advantages

17

  • twister stuns

  • molten boulder knocks back

  • summons act as meat shield with low skill point investment

pick any.

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You also didn’t define Soloist. But by popular opinion the way that a Sorceress does “Solo” resides in the shadiest of shade, i.e. Skipping the game through teleport. Since when has teleport failed to be solo? It’s even so solo that it pushes out the rest of the game. And the Sorceress being dictated in to tearing herself in half (forfeiting her integrity) by MULTIPLE MASTERY investment. You might see what that provides but you don’t see what that is taking away. On Hardcore and by true Soloist play (with out mercenary) you fully reveal the Sorceress’ depandency. But you built multi element and you think that makes you a Soloist and not a Dependant?

Even on the supporting side you have to pay attention to the “turning point” of when support flips to dependant.

Enchant is supportive but look at how many skills have to be devoted to that supporting for it to be legitimate? Look at how much mana it costs, Look at how it is cast on One individual ally at a time. It casts on one at a time because it was meant for that 1 mercenary that you can have with you at a time. You end up putting so much in to this one cast and skill for your merc that it shifts from a manner of supporting to a manner of depending. If your proper build practically goes all in on supporting then you are now in fact depending.

But you have to ask yourself… Since when does supporting not also include its own self? So when it shifts to depending do you say that it should not include its own self? Are you saying that it’s not possible to be “Self Dependant”. But that’s actually exactly what enchant does.

But now we ask… Is this self dependency viable?

No… Just because the Sorceress has the enhanced attack rating from enchant does not mean she is going to make legitimate use of it with Proc Effects, Open Wounds, and Crushing Blow. Knockback with no strafe or multi arrow?

Otherwise, why are you relying on a fire element exclusively when you already have fire spells.

And that’s like saying that the Barbarian should have “Bow Mastery”, that’s practically a mirror comparison. It’s not right for the sorceress to be trying to apply open wounds or crushing blow, just as it’s not right for the Barbarian to have PHYSICAL bow mastery when every element of that would already be captured by the physical bowazon.

19

I think you need to go outside.

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Not when you would be the other guy staying inside to sit on, in a fashion of failed leadership, this qualified diablo 2 identity so that it can’t breathe or evolve with all of your “bought in” and “give up” rear end kissing that just continues to pile up junk on top of itself.