I’ve put 11 days of playtime into my Pulverize druid and about 2 days ago I started farming the gear for Tornado because I’m left with feelings of complete disappointment in the Pulverize ability.
It’s single target is one of THE WORST sustainable abilities. Even with Umbral, Passive points, Paragon Points, Spirit Cost Reduction on everything it can be rolled on, lucky hit procs with Earthen Might passive yields you absolutely no sustainability against single targets.
Update 7/1/23: Tornado is insane. Pulverize is no where near it. Swapped over fully yesterday and I can kill tier55 bosses in about 10 seconds. Don’t use Pulverize unless you’re leveling and find Vasily’s before Tempest Roar
Boss fights. I don’t even wanna get started on how bad this ability is at killing the Butcher at 48+. You can’t even get close to generating a full orb of spirit before he legit just runs you down like a dog and wacks you to death. The fortify shield he generates is overtuned and half the time I can’t even remove it because there’s 0 sustain on resource.
This is one of the most resource thirsty builds in this game, that all hinges on lucky hit chance proc’ing Earthen Might. Testing with 127 total Spirit Orb, on average, it takes 15-25 hits with Earth Spike to proc Earthen Might (which has a lucky hit chance of 35%) or it’s about 13 hits to fully restore it with the generator. Thank god Blizzard gave Earth Spike 1 more spirit generated, went from 13 hits to 13 hits to fill the orb up. They don’t play their own game, clearly.
I’ll be swapping to Tornado since it’s the only build that can seemingly upkeep spirit enough to be a class that can put out sustained DPS. It’s whatever, but Pulverize is a cool ability that was nerfed into F tier after the nerf patch that ruined Barbarian shouts because they didn’t know two aspects were infinitely scaling damage, not shouts (which is yet to be reversed and fixed for the Barbarian class yet). The Pulverize ability didn’t do anything to deserve those nerfs as it wasn’t killing Uber Lilith or making the game unbalanced, they just decided that Pulverize “could catch these hands” too.
Very unfortunate. I think Pulverize is one of the coolest abilities in D4 and it’s sad to see that Blizzard built aspects and a build around it, just to nerf it to make it inoperable for pushing any tiers higher than 60. Hopefully it gets fixed, but I don’t see Blizzard making any substantial changes until Season 2-3, so it’s hard as a Druid player to get excited for the next ~ year or so ~ of outlook on this game. Pulverize may you rest in peace and be the Champions Demise god runner you’ve been. You’ve served me well, but it’s time to lay you to rest and let you fade away into B tier builds.
Additonal Edit Comment: "Build’s not bad, just can’t do bosses or push NM Tiers.
There’s a difference between “yeah, it works” and “sustainable endgame build”
This build is not sustainable in it’s current form unfortunately. I have found every unique for the Druid at least 10+ times each. I have all the options, I’m just stating why Pulverize is not the option and what needs to be done to buff it and what the inconsistencies are at higher tiers/endgame push.
I hit for 10m crits on this build using what I’m using - damage isn’t the issue. I’d rather have less damage from it so it was more sustainable as a cast. I’m not asking for a buff on damage, but a buff for resource management so the build can be used single target and for fortifying/disobedience procs so it can maintain the same toughness as any char using disobedience with stacks above 75/100 all the time.
Just be warned, it’s great but has an illusion to it, but when it comes to beating Uber Lilith, The Butcher in tier 48+ and NM Tier 60+, this isn’t the build that’ll do it."
I should also clarify what I mean by “endgame.” I don’t mean the casual ideas of leveling 1-100 and Helltides. I mean the only activities left after you level to 100 and flush your paragon board out. Pushing Nightmare Dungeon Tiers higher and Uber Lilith.
So I actually switched to tornado from pulverize and went back. I just prefer pulverize and even though it’s single target damage is meh and boss fights are slower I think it’s AoE clears so fast for me it easily makes up for it.
I think with very high level Pulverize on single target, you need to play around your Stagger Window. Trample/Roar on cd to stack stagger, and make sure you have full energy + grizzly at the start of stagger.
It might be annoying, but you could also consider carrying Frostburns in your bags just to equip when you get to the boss. One minor thing is to value Lucky Hit on your rings. This will give you more spirit resets, but also stack the stagger faster with frosties. When the stagger is like 90% full swap to “real” gloves.
some people is still playing pulverize and some moved from 2 handed to 1 handed and offhand to get retalliation, and some stats like spirit cost reduction, i switched to wolfnado but pulverize is way more impactful satisfaying imo agree that the single target damage is meh…also the same happens with lightning storm, i would rather lightning storm wolf over tornado, but lightning storm suffers the same as pulverize
The only reason for this is it can do Tier 55. It’s outrageously terrible single target ability drops that for me down at least 2 tiers for me. I don’t want a build where I have to ask my friends to come into my dungeon to kill a boss in 10 seconds for them, but I’ll die 2-3 times before I can. It’s fun, nothing wrong with using it for leveling and finding Tornado gear, but that’s rough. It’s like Pulverize is Internet Explorer… #1 Browser for downloading Google Chrome.
Pulverize is still one of the best Druid builds in the game. Nadowolf is one of the best builds in the entire game, and if anything in this game will get nerfed it’s probably that.
Yes pulverize has a single target weakness, but it’s incredibly tanky and clears packs easily which is honestly more challenging than bosses. Also, try working landslide into your build if you really want single target damage. Most pulverize builds already build into earth damage so you would just need one bar slot, 7 skill points, and one aspect invested.
I’ve already tried stacking Lucky Hit Chance. It doesn’t change it enough, better off going raw CC% and hoping to get that 5 second of 100% CC from Earthen Might to proc outside of that window.
Stagger would work, but you have to cast the abilities to stagger and there’s no resource to stagger them fast enough. 1h and off-hand is a thought, but at that point, I’ll just do what pushes higher NMs, Tornado.
The whole class isn’t cooked and matured yet. Feels like it’s in idea stage. Play druid in later seasons when it actually work.
You can respec your pulverize bear to landslide bear. I think it would work good. I did human earth mage in early endgame. It was op however not as fun and fast as pulverize. Landslide is laggy. Next stage of this build i think making it bear earth mage. No crit chance needed with this build. You will use terramote. Landslide do massive damage especially single target, trampleslide kills hordes.
I’m on pulverize right now farming for the tempest helmet. Droprate is either bugged or as low as harlequin.
if you wear the bear form unique hat, you can also spike instead of swipe - which builds stagger pretty fast too (random stuns).
I guess the point I was making is that: you can change gear not only before the boss, but mid-fight. So swapping out boots to Penitents and/or gloves to Frostburns to speed up the stagger significantly (then swap back to Crashstones or whatever right before the stagger bar fills).
I started a druid specifically to play a tempest roar build. Level 85 now and have yet to see it drop so still playing pulverize but am not happy about. /grumble
Yeah and the no-nonsense nerf to Pulverize’s lucky hit chance killed it’s single target. It’s also not tanky past 60. It will get one shot off-screen and since disobedience sustains it’s best bonus when abilities can be used more consistently, you’re better off using Insatiable fury for the 15-20% armor consistent in Werebear form than you are using Disobedience at 30-40% stack all the time cuz that’s just ~15% armor uptime and you have to maintain it constantly with abilities you can’t cast constantly.
Donu n have the chest unique that keeps u in bear and vals unique helm. U also need few aspects to make the build work specially the shocknto make pulv work n strate line
It clears maps pretty easy and yea bosses take a lil.more work
I have every unique and recommended rare stat priority in slot. The build’s actual garbage.
I’ve done groups, my friends all who hit 100 a week ago have quit cuz there’s nothing at the end of the rainbow besides a cauldron of manure. So now I have no choice but to solo play.
Working on that different build, as stated in the OG post.
I guess I’m not sure what you want then. Pulverize is a build that works “out of the box” with mostly codex powers - all the way up through into the mid-late game. It clears entire screens in a single button press at mid-level nm with no unqiues and a single off-codex power.
If, in addition to that, it deleted bosses in seconds in solo play (meaning it now does everything) - why have any other druid builds?
Maybe I got lucky. At level 50, I got an aspect for 4 spirit regen. After that, I never once experienced problems with the spirit. Damage against bosses is terrible yes, but otherwise it’s just a bomb. I have a necro level 100, I have something to compare. Yes, I have never seen such numbers as the necro. But even in this situation, my level 89 teddy bear seems to be much more chilled than the necro. I am no longer afraid of any explosion, any control, and in principle I am no longer afraid of anything. But, after an hour of gameplay on the druid, my head starts to explode from this sound. Honestly.
