Fury build diveristy ideas (balance changes)

Diablo II: Resurrected Druid
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the dreaded balance change ideas yes Im going there.

keep in mind this is an idea… i do not remotely expect it to be implemented, its just something i think would be a good change, or at least a good theoretical discussion to discuss

something that i think could be tested on a pbe environment and then determined if it would fix more things that it hurts

backstory:
i have mained druid since around 2004, i first fell in love with elemental then later on werewolf
werewolf fury has been my main ever since
my online account ended up being “Furry_Fury” as a direct reference to this as the “furry” wolf druid using the “Fury” skill
it remained this way for well over 10 years… before becoming what it is now (swiftkitten) this should show u how much i care about this class and its balance

now here is the issue that needs to be fixed

every other melee class has ways to bypass physical immunties
paladin has holy shock, fire , and cold,
he also has "sanctuary which completely ignored physical immunes of undead (which generally have the most physical immunity)
vengeance also does elemental damage based on % of your weapons meaning its still viable

heading over to barb… we have berserk…
while nothign compared to what paladin has its still a very good way to deal with immunes… reducing defense to zero is a big downside
but to most people who don’t “walk” anyways this wont be very noticeable

now we have druid… our final melee class and well
fury is a very powerful skill and feral rage is great for keeping you alive and tanking…
but…
immunties are a real pain… because we have no way to break them

now this mostly comes from the issue with werewolf form ( and were-bear but im focusing on werewolf here)

is while transformed you can ONLY get attack speed from your weapon…
all non weapon attack speed flat out will not work at all
this means unlike every other melee class werewolf is EXTREMELY reliant on the weapon…
it NEEDS attack speed

now what we are currently doing is using things like “reaper toll” or “lawbringer” on mercs to try to cast decripify, you can alt equip them yourself but again the attack speed is terrible

so here is my suggestion

change spirit of barbs into something that works like “conviction” but have it be - physical resist… starting out at like -5% physical resist and maybe gaining -.5 per level, or start out at 1 and gain -1 per level.

now there benefits of this are obvious… it open up a ton more build variety.

the other option is to just make it so werewolf can use ias from nonweapons, and use things like highlords and 20 ias gloves to reach the breaking and that would work even better. this would also potentially allow an larsucked highlords in half rather than jalals, and allow weapons like cranium basher to be used.

overall the “goal” of this is to make it so werewolf has some real option to deal with physical immunties as he has no native skills in werewolf form that allow him to do so.
and because both rabies and fireclaws get flat damage per level and do not scale with weapons… and which have terrible base damage and sadly neither are hell viable ( although they are quite fun in norm nightmare)

now if u got to the bottom of this… congrats… i want your opinion.
i have came up with idea throwing this around but unlike other things which i “know” has no negative side effects because i have personally tested them in mods… i have “not” tested this.
so with the idea of allowing more build and weapon diversity than just “greif/tombreaver/ebotd” for hell fury builds

maybe we can see things like “Death/doom/ cranium basher/lawbringer/ etc” get some of the weapon and item diversity barbs and paladins have, rather than just flat out having to ignore every weapon that doesn’t have base a 40 ias

at the end of the day i these are the important things i want to meet in order for any balance idea to pass muster

#1… it cant make any currently good builds OP, I’m trying to increase build “diversity” not make any current build stronger.
#2 it has to fix the problem I’m trying to fix
#3 it has to not have a negative unintended side effect that isn’t easily outweighed by the benefit this change brings

2

Have you tried weapon switch? In your case I would probably keep another weapon with a very high magic / elemental damage and use it while still in a werewolf form. Apart non-physical damage on this weapon, you might choose the one with spell to cast chance, thus the attack speed could be a factor.

My personal druid build uses 5 top level skills and is doing well, so I haven’t found anything that I could change in a skill tree.

1 Like
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I personally think immunities was a bad idea and the creatures should just take 80-90% less damage or something from the source, however I would say most fury druids just use IK maul with shaels or shael and ias jewel/hybrid jewel along with the Immortal King Gloves, belt, and boots for the set bonus Cold,Fire, and Lightining damage / crushing blow which will handle anything PVM wise. A Stormlash would work as well or a Bonehew but Bonehews bone spear cast chance would take a while to deal with some immunes but is fun/funny. Also the option of a Holy Freeze merc instead of Might is ok but understand always needing a mercenary like said is lame at times. As far as PVP is concerned I can even see IK maul fireclaws or whatever else working decent until everyone is super geared for PVP of course overall. I see the balance issue in that then physical damage / Fury is more gear reliant unless you get really good items which is another issue as well that physical damage does not scale as well in PVP while not in ELITE gear like how elemental skills do, but again late game at least you can have 100% elemental resistance while People can only get around 50% Physical resistance if not counting block.

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In my opinion the fury druid can become a bit more love from the Developer.
I like the playstyle but as real Melee he has deficits .
Maybe Fury can ignore 10% Defensive or can have 20% chance to bleed or something else, the think is Fury has no Synergie what he can benefit from.