The fundamental problem with Druids in Blizzard games đŸș

General Discussion
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  1. The druid fantasy is being a shapeshifter
  2. Blizzard makes you choose one shape and stick to it
  3. ???
  4. The druid is no longer a shapeshifter

This is a shapeshifter (Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves)

If you have to choose one thing, then it will inevitably just be a worse version of a barb, a sorc or a necro.

The Druid should be a jack of all damage types, master of none:

  • Worse than all other classes at both physical and elemental.
  • Better than all other hybrid builds.
  • The Best at dealing with immunities.
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Such builds do not work in D2 since synergies and especially since Sunders.

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I sort of see your point in that, but the real reason they’re not good is because their spells work poorly with maybe the exception of PvP.

Like yeah you can go PvM with fire druid, cold druid, wolf, zoo. But all of those builds just suck and aren’t efficient. It isn’t just that being versatile in D2 is garbage, it is that even if they just follow one path, their character still sucks at PvM.

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Yes, but I see that as an opportunity for the druid to be special.

  • For example what if every other class has synergies but the Druid does not? Or if the Druid synergies are shallow.

  • What if druid only has 1 kind of skiller grand charms: +1 to Druid skills

  • Several unique weapons already have +Druid skills: Dark Clan Crusher, Athena’s Wrath, Islestrike. Earth Shifter has +7 to elemental skills


You should be able to make a Fissure/Fury/Poison Creeper build that has 75% power in each damage type.

It should blow something like Meteorb sorc out of the water, which has like 40% power in each element and only two damage types instead of the druid’s three or four - including physical.

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Thinking about expanding Shapeshifting, it gave me an interesting idea for a movement skill. Let’s call it “Raven Flight”, where you transform into a Raven (and are similarly untargetable) for a second or two and fly to the targeted location, bypassing all non-solid barriers. At the destination, you transform back into your previous form and don’t lose any SS skill charges or anything. It’d obviously be usable while Shapeshifted.

It would kill two birds with one stone (pun intended!). It would give Druids a native movement skill that kinda functions somewhere between Teleport and Leap Attack, while also allowing the Druid to use a decent movement skill while in Wolf or Bear form.

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Hell druid could even have another form for pure move speed, something akin to paladin vigor bonus

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Almost like you stole Travel Form from world of warcraft.

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Fundamental problem is allowing Sekscalibure on the interwebz.

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Ironically I remember Shapeshifters in old DnD games not being too good either.

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