Fire druid still very underwhelming in hell. Even with Grief as his weapon the hammerdin is better. A character using multiple high runes should be stomping everything not standing around waiting for his merc to get the kill in act 1. Some suggestions. Double the damage for fissure and volcano and make half of it physical. Allow characters to access Armageddon directly from Volcano at level 30 without going through the wind side of the tree. Increase the damage from Armageddon. Have fire skills synergize cyclone armour the same as wind skills do. Cut all the casting delays in half, or maybe even 75% No other class is crippled by long casting delays. Even all of that would leave a fire druid less powerful than the common cookie cutter builds.
This isn’t the balance changes coming in 2.4…I hope you realized that.
When Mr.Llama introduced this update he said players should make specific recommendations. I’m getting mine in early. To be blunt, I have been playing since before LOD and I have been through lots of promises about under achieving classes and skills over the years. Yes, this is a different group, but I am not getting my hopes up about this round of “improvements.” That said I will add another. Level 99 is ridiculously hard to attain. It wasn’t always that way, it used to be possible to go from 1 to 99 in a single day if you had some help from your friends. Ladder could be tracked on experience points and 99 could be a reasonably attainable goal instead of something only botters can get.
No thanks. Why would we want level 99 to be easily obtainable? That’s silly. There is no sense of accomplishment if it isn’t easy to get to.
Level 99 should be insanely hard to reach imo.
You realise that you’re not playing whit the updated skills?
not sure where to ask this… what exactly is different or new about this PTR as of right now? The blizzard launcher says the patch is ready for testing on PTR. OK so what are we testing? are any skills or items changed? ty
edit: as feedback to blizz, I think your clickbox on the blizz launcher advertising “patch ready for testing” is misleading. everything i’ve read or watched re: 2.4 is changes - ok so where is it?
Like it was stated every time regarding, the first PTR, it has 2 parts. 1. server database changes test, which is running now, after that comes the 2. part 2.4 balace changes test. That will be announced separately. Now you have to brake the servers, that’s all. Make games constantly, log on and off in a fast pace.
I’m playing with the new one now and I was right. Fire druid is trash. As for level 99. There is a difference between hard and only playing D2R for a month to attain level 99. When this game came out, 99 was easily attainable in a week. In terms of hitting and getting hit there is a huge difference between level 99 and level 89. 99 should be possible without botting or a team of friends who are basically working a second job so you can get to 99.
You need to play a character for more than 30 minutes, set up proper hotkeys, watch guides, read forums, optimize your equipment, practice that character several hours per day, learn the zones it is strongest in, learn the zones it is weakest in…
Fire druid was never trash… Even before Patch 2.4 was announced, Fire Druid was S-Tier at clearing high density areas like Cows, Tal Rasha’s Tombs and Flayer Jungle… The fire druid was heavily gear dependent - before Patch 2.4, I wouldn’t recommend playing a fire druid at all until you have Enigma and Infinity…
The changes made so far in Patch 2.4 make fire druid immensely better to play, and way less gear dependent (Enigma will still be almost mandatory however unfortunately)… MacroBioBoi did a nice video showing that the Fire Druid doesn’t need Infinity any more, and the Act 3 lightning Merc is now BiS, and I agree with him…
The fire druid is a class that you need to spend a lot of time practicing and perfecting… It has a lot of skills that need to be used and practiced. You need to teleport, cast fire skills, re-summon you vines / pets / oak sage, pre-buff with BC/BO. It’s not an easy class to play… But it is very powerful once you learn how to play it properly…
Here are my thoughts after testing 2.4 Druid buffs:
Changes to fire skills were definitely a step in the right direction, but skill mechanics of Armageddon and Molten Boulder have a big, negative impact on their DPS. These 2 skills simply do not hit often enough and they are very unpredictable. Also Molten Boulder’s burn damage per sec is very low.
I would also say that Armageddon’s small radius makes it unfit for a pure caster build. Another pain is that you need to spend 5 points on skills that you’re not going to use with Armageddon (maybe with exception of Cyclone Armor).
Volcano has much better mechanics than the other two, but its damage is just waaay too low for a skill with 3 synergies and 4 sec casting delay (compare it to Blizzard or anything else really).
Fissure and Firestorm are in a good spot and they always had been.
Arctic Blast should have much larger area of effect to be useful (maybe a cone-shaped area). Also its damage seems to be very low.
Summons with exception of Oak Sage and HoW are still mediocre at best. Creepers work too slow and they very often get too close to monsters and die very fast. Ravens, Wolfs and Grizzly damage is super low even with all synergies maxed out. Wolfs and Grizzly are ok only as meat shields. Spirit Wolfs now provide a bit of crowd control thanks to cold damage but they’re still mostly a meat shields. Pure Summoner Druid build still do not exist.
Fire druidcos still very weak. I will not play it. Even nerfed hydra is much stronger
Fire druids are much improved and work great in areas with no immunes. They just don’t have the physical damage to deal with immunes, even with top end gear. It’s painful trying to kill a frenzytaur.
Some of the issues are just mechanics. Molten boulder actually works really well for clearing immunes until it no longer pushes them back. Then it turns into garbage.
I hope they still buff their physical damage. They’re so close to being a great class.