I’d like to preface this discussion with an aknowledement that, yes… This is a beta… and Yes… It is level 25… and yes we don’t have access to the class specialization. I understand that this is in no way indicative of Endgame balance.
That being said, I think we can still analyze the current state of the Druid and its design in comparison to other classes (Mostly rogue and sorc) and try to help the devs understand why the class is getting so much flack for its playstyle. I hope to start a discussion about what we think can be done to help improve the FEEL of the class’ base kit.
- Inappropriate tuning for the playstyle
- As it stands, the class is extremely slow in almost all of its animations with the exception of a select few werewolf skills. Both Sorc and Rogue feel tight, and when I press an ability, the projectile or my character are hitting enemies almost instantly. The downtime between casts on these 2 classes in nearly non-existent in comparison to the druid. To help illustrate this we’ll look at core spells.
- Lets look at a good “problem ability” to help depict the issue the class faces. It’s not infequent that (without legendary) Tornado does 0 damage to your target because of pathing. It also doesn’t help that the ability has a 40 spirit cost meaning you can only cast it twice before having to then cast another 3-5 basic abilities to then recast another two tornadoes. Adding ontop of this that the ability only does 49% damage at rank 5 when it does hit means that our overall DPS using this ability is relatively low in comparison to our other classes’ core abilities. This also isn’t factoring in projectile speed, taking roughly 1-2 seconds to potentially even reach its target from cast.
- Lets compare that with a commonly picked sorc core ability, chain lightning. When you cast chain lightning, it INSTANTLY flys from your character to your target, and then instantly bounces from one target to another with no potential to miss and the ability to rehit the same target multiple times. The ability, at rank 5, deals 59% damage per bounce up to 6 bounces and costs 35 mana (An auto generating resource). The downtime between casts is filled with other more meaningful spells that don’t have to be basic generating spells.
- What can we do to make tornado feel better to press, in the same way that it feels good to press chain lightning? Well, first, we need guarenteed instant damage. If I have to invest nearly half of my spirit (a resouce I have to manually generate) it doesn’t feel good when it does no damage or takes a large amount of time to deal damage. A simple solution to this is to have tornado spawn where my mouse/enemy currently is. This simple change makes the ability FEEL much better to press. (There may be a legendary for this,I’m not sure, however, legendaries shouldn’t exist to make skills usable. They should be usable and feel good at a baseline and be improved fom there.) However, at a 40 spirit cost, it’s not enough to just have the damage guarenteed and instant. It needs to either be meaty or have a reduced cost. It feels terrible to have to cast 3-5 basic spells at a snails crawl pace to be able to cast only 2 tornadoes. In the time it takes me to cast 8 tornadoes, a sorc can cast roughly 12-14 chain lightnings at a higher dmg return per cast, all while being able to cast other spells that aren’t locked to basic abilities. That brings me to my next point.
- Basic abilities and spirit generation
-As a class that has to generate spirit with basic abilities and then dump all of that spirit in roughly 1 or 2 seconds, it HAS to be quick to regenerate and satisfying.
-As it stands, i’d say that 75% of the time in combat is spent spamming generators, feet planted, doing next to 0 damage. THIS FEELS BAD
-Classes such as rogue and sorc use basic abilities in their downtime between energy/mana dumps and cooldowns for non-resource abilities. They rarely are casting a basic ability more than 2 times in a row (Rogue combo point exception). THIS FEELS GOOD.
- How can we fix this? Well, luckily I think there are a couple solutions here and they are simple numbers games. Either we make basic abilities FEEL GOOD by increasing their cast speed, damage, projectile speed, and target limit. Or we can simply have them generate far more resource. (Preferrably both here).
-As it stands the “Heart of the wild” and “Abundance” passives that help with spirit are 100% mandatory with how much core spells cost and STILL the class is plagued with resource management issues.
-More time spent spamming basic abilities is less time dealing meaningful damage and leads to boring gameplay that feels sluggish and unimpactful. I hope this is an issue they resolve innately in the class and not try to fix with legendaries.
- DoTs and Companions
- Wow are these underwhelming. Even with a legendary that turns wolfs into werewolfs and increases their damage by a whopping 160%, they are hitting for roughly 40-60 damage at level 25 with roughly 550 attack power. As soon as you’re able to access the hydra as a sorc at level 12 you’re already doing more damage than that at a much higher rate without an empowering legendary…AT LEVEL 12.
- It’s not even close to compare the summons between Sorc and Druid, the numbers are simply aggregious. Starting at 8% damage for wolfs compared to the hydra’s 30% per fireball at rank 1. It really seems like there are different dev teams playing a different game designing the numbers for these classes. Not to mention that the hydras just FEEL GOOD with the projectile speed and how responsive they are to summon. Compare that to the ai of the wolfs that chase enemies just to stand still and miss an auto attack on an enemy every 2 seconds… It’s really not even in the same ball park.
-DoTs… The poison builds simply need to be buffed. If my damage in an ARPG is being dealt over an 8 second period of time, I’d like for it to do something meaningful in the 1-2 seconds the mob is supposed to live for. DoTs are always supposed to be high damage over a long period of time. For some reason the poisons are currently tuned to do less damage over 8 seconds than most other class’ instant abilities. This is fundamentally wrong on so many levels, however has an easy fix. BUFF numbers or make total DoT time less. (Or both, what mob lives for over 8 seconds in an ARPG?)
- Abilities don’t feel synergistic
- For a caster druid, a majority of the spells they use are supposed to be ranged and also knock targets away. For example, Cylcone Armor, Boulder, and cataclysm. This is fine, however, it’s expcted that you also take spells such as hurricane that require you to be near your target to deal damage. Overall, it just feels like they didn’t develop the base kit with it playing in a way that feels natural for how you would expect it to play. It feels like they just had ideas for abilities and threw them into the kit without thinking about how it feels to play using those specific abilities together.
Conclusion:
-Thankfully, the class has a lot of simple changes that it needs in terms of just flat numbers to make the damage actually impactful, however, I’m hesitant about how Blizzard will go about this and I’d like to take this opportunity to really clarify the issue.
- If the class plays slow, IT BETTER HIT HARD… If I have to spend 3-5 seconds to build up resource to spend on 1 or 2 abilities, those abilities better FEEL GOOD. OR we can simply make basic abilities FEEL GOOD/impactful to use by picking up the pace/damage/target cap so that we don’t spend majority of combat spamming them feeling horrible.
Please, Blizzard. Take this constructive criticism and make this beloved class FEEL GOOD to play. It doesn’t have to be “overtuned”… It just has to be viable and play in a way that makes players enjoy their time playing it.
Let me know what y’all think can be done to help the class FEEL GOOD. Much love!