An in depth look at why Druid is underwhelming and how we can fix it

PC General Discussion
21

Ive been running a high crit poison werewolf build with vine creeper as my big cooldown timed out with shred. The aoe clear is amazing and just rips thru stuff, and on bosses the self healing is decent enough to get poison stacks.

Also, building for armor, life and crit chance on most of my gear helps.
Debating on trying fortify. But the two passive defensive nodes help alot by the defensive skill cluster.

But on bosses and aoe, not really having any issues at all on veteran. If you are going to run melee u have to build for it.

22

Basic/Generator skills is very outdated. This type of dealing damage is just not fun. It’s one of the reasons why i really enjoy just blasting hours after hours in PoE. There is no need for generator abilities, just blast your main attack that you have built, with other cds, movement abilities in between.

Rogue feels OK, because your resource is replenishing continuously, same with Sorc.
Barb and Druid is terrible in this department. If in the endgame we gotta spam generators and use spenders once in a while. No thanks.

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23

People talk alot about spending too much time building spirit which makes no sense.

Abundance increases spirit gen by 10/20/30% and you really need to be putting points into it depending on what your core skill is.

For example if I use Earth Spike - generates 8 spirit and Landslide spirit cost 30 then I should have at least 2 points in abundance so that I’m not casting 4 earth spikes for every 1 landslide and 3 points would give me an extra additional land slide cast that I would not usually have. If spirit is the biggest concern you can also run Wild Wind Shear, which is base 12 spirit +3 for every additional mob hit past the first.

Blood Howl’s +20 spirit on cast with the CD reduced by 1sec after every kill is an insane amount of spirit as well. Trample can also fill this role but its not as good because the lack of cooldown reduction. You can also spec in to Clarity for +spirit when turning into human form. This works well if you run a build that mixes shapeshift and casting.

Druid builds also strongly benefit from anything that adds extra damage while they’re building and spending. Werewolf druid doesn’t mind low spirit as much because their poison is so strong for example.

Petrify is also a strong spirit cooldown if you spec into Supreme Petrify. While not as useful on bosses it is a really strong option for burning a pack and getting back to full spirit instantly.

Keep in mind that druid gets some good spirit passive later on as well. With 7 more skill points than are available on the beta we would have access to:

Storm skills grant 2 spirit when hitting vulnerable enemies.

20% chance to cast a free storm skill, when casting an earth skill and vice-versa.

Lucky hit: 5% chance earth skills restore all of your spirit. (10% for crit strikes or if target is stunned/immobile/knock backed)

and then there are the unavailable animal spirits of which there is
+10 maximum spirit
Lucky hit: nature spells have a 15% chance to reduce the cd of nature spells (works well with petrify for spirit)
Lucky hit: dealing damage has a 15% chance to restore 10 spirit
Extend duration of Ultimate skills by 25% (can help secure petrify kills)

All in all there are a plethora of ways to manage spirit and many of those ways we do not have access to in beta.

That being said druid also seems to benefit greatly from attack speed. One of the animal spirits buffs is attack speed so that will help with how quickly we are building and spending resource as well.

Heres my end of point though: Having a class that has to heavily think about their resource is not a bad thing. We get tons of options to think about both now and later and making those choices is meaningful. That is good design. It feels bad now because all druid builds are somewhat slow right now, and we are missing many of our resource options right now.

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24

Wish I could like a post more than once. A lot of really good points in the discussion here. I’d like to suggest that this problem extends further than druid, though. A lot of classes just have dead skills. Even the ones commonly thought powerful.

You don’t see necromancers raving over blood lance, for example. Sever is just okay. The issue is the balance is just way too skewed towards outlying skills. Why would I waste resources on bone spirit or bone prison or even an ultimate ability when I can press bone spear or corpse explosion for similar or better results?

Same with sorcerers. If you take away their common offenders, like chain lightning and hydra, what do they really have to write home about? Hint: It’s not meteor or blizzard, two of the most iconic spells from previous iterations. Have you seen their radius and damage? It’s really disappointing. You can fit maybe two monsters in the radius of meteor, if they stand still long enough for it to land on them, for a higher mana cost than chain lightning or hydra, which will produce better results for the same number of casts.

tl;dr, fundamental ability tuning is a real issue for multiple classes right now. Everyone is looking for those one or two abilities on their classes that just feel good on a fundamental level, and it’s a way easier search for some classes than others. Entire categories of skills just aren’t ever worth pushing because balance is so out of sorts right now. You don’t get to play how you want to play (at least when you’re leveling up), because certain skills are just outright bad on a baseline level.

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25

There is some truth here. Some skills are flat out better than others. They will have several months to tune abilities though and I have confidence that things will be better for launch. Not perfect, but better.

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26

This post was actually worth the read! Well done, some constructive criticism that means something.

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27

Well said, I completer agree

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28

I can’t agree more about that!

29

I agree with most of these points.

Husband played storm, hated it.

I played Werewolf and LOVED it but had the same general critiques you do.

As with Warrior’s Rend, the DoT abilities in the game need tuned. They’re absolutely useful when doing content above your paygrade to be ‘doing damage’ but also kiting or recovering or waiting on a CD. However, they’re not…what’s the word… They simply don’t fit with the ‘hack n slash looter’ nature of Diablo. It’s the same problem with Conduit or other shrines. Yes, you can do damage and then walk away …but then you have to stop everything you’re doing and walk back to loot.

I think DoTs need to be retuned for sure. Time shortened, ticks faster, change the growth pattern, something.

I felt a LOT of breaks in my animations and dead space when playing Werewolf which was partially because I couldn’t tell when my spirit ran out and D4 doesn’t revert to autoattack so I was just not attacking but partially because there was a jarring gap in animation/activation when I would change skills. My Howl felt like it took two seconds to activate and two seconds after before I could attack again. I was playing holding the A button down as hard as I could like I was 10 again and thought holding it harder would help.

30

i would actually think everyone should at some point. abundance is great. we will all likely have the skill points in the full game. i didn’t because they are a little limited at 25.

attack speed is also very good to have. i could fill my entire spirit globe in probably under 2 seconds.

31

This is a played out discussion.

and streamers said it best you shouldn’t need a few hours with any character for it too feel good.

That being said it’s fine with itemization and in groups. Not all builds are gonna favor solo players, this game isn’t meant for one crowd since they literally couldn’t keep paying enough of the bills to support their version of it.

32

The same thing happened to wow class balancing. Now you need a legendary to even make abilities work as a baseline. Why Tornado isnt homing on targets as a baseline? Why are abilities nerfed and MADE not FUN or even unusable JUST for a devs to make a legendary? Imagine if Hydra had a 1 head and you needed a LEGENDARY to make it 3 heads? Imagine if Chain Lightning could bounce 2 times - YOU NEED A LEGENDARY TO MAKE IT 6. Oh and of course you need to CHANNEL that chain lightning and STAND in place in order for it to chain … IMAGINE. WTF?
And the damage numbers… wow… you need to nerf sorc and necro damage 2x at least to make it FEEL so GUUD as a druid. In fact you can BUFF druid damage 2x and the abilities mechanics are SO BAD except for a landslide - that it would not even matter - the gameplay would still be TRASH.
Now look at all those trolls arguments - basically you need to win in a lottery multiple times in order for you class to work PROPERLY??? WHAT???

And the Passive Talents … they are TRASH. Rogue Barb Sorc Necro - they got all they need basically… forty? - here you go. CD reduction? - there it is! Healing from hitting foes in melee? - Yes sir!
Here is how to save a druid - give a bear form AT LEAST 40% damage reduction - ALL DAMAGE - because its just crazy how easily you die. Your a useless slow attacking no damage tank in a game of DPS race - barb got THORNS right there in TALLENTS THAT WORK and you have NOTHING.
Give a Werewolf basic attack a DASH animation - like a barb LUNGE ability and more attack speed.
Make TORNADO Homing A BASELINE.
Double ALL pets DAMAGE.
Make CROWS and Vine attack every 2 secs - not 5 or 7.

p.s.
And i am not even talking about that cyclone freaking NO DAMAGE abilities … this class tuning failed so hard that it makes me die inside… HOW BLIZZARD??? HOW??? how can you FAIL so HARD??? if you JUST USE COMMON SENCE AND COMPARE CLASSES - ITS SO BAD.