Companion Build Druid is totally useless

Druid
1

Hi Guys,

I was dreaming about a Wolf Build, Poison Creeper and Raven Companion build. I played it roughly until Level 40.

Main Skill: Shred + Claw + lots of Poison.
Companion Skills: All of them maxed.
I focused on crit chance with the boon, that resets companion skills by 20%. That was pretty okay, but felt not reliable.

Summary:
Litterally no fun at all. The poison from poison creeper was the only reliable damage source, shred was fine for poisoning together with claw, but overall the damage of all companions was a JOKE.

I switched to Werebear with Pulverize & Malm, much better (until nerf today).

Whats your opinion on a companion & minion build? Did I do it wrong?

6 Likes
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While skill and determination can make it work, its absolutely NO FUN to play this build.

Even on Veteran, the wolves die so quickly their active skill is not 100% reliable.

Enemy AI has them move out of Ravens active aoe, so unless you pair it with creepers active, you are also losing lots of DPS. (you lose dps simply by having to wait for creepers longer cooldown).

4 Likes
3

Since vulnerable is such an important damage multiplier the ferocious ravens can be a solid source of that provided you can target the skill properly. You also get increased critical strike chance which is another important damage multiplier.

Enhanced wolves will do 20% more damage against poisoned and are therefore boosted by the vine creeper.

From there you need passives like evenom to boost crit damage, and quick shift which will do more damage when Shapeshifting (if you use pulverize with pets otherwise you want natural disaster with landslide.)

So how it all works together is you are building a burst combo to deal maximum damage. First you need to kite your mob or mobs in a clump. Now assuming you’ve met certain proc conditions for your core skill (healthy for pulverize, terramotes for landslide) you build your combo and finish with that core skill.

My combo goes creeper, ravens, wolves, pulverize. Without legendary gear to power the build it has no problems getting through most mobs. Elites take a little more time to cleanup but with a barrier affix on a piece of armor and many sources of fortify there is little worry of death.

The hard part is that Druid doesn’t have the toolkit to keep up sustained pressure and relies heavily on burst damage to get the job done. Properly geared and with paragon points I think that will change.

1 Like
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I posted some thoughts on how they could make Companion builds a more fully realized class choice earlier:

It would be great if they could make the companion druid into a bit more of a fully realized class.

Maybe they could add a basic skill that summons a single companion that has no cooldown on its active, like a spider that spits poison or something, and give it a passive where its reduces the cooldown on other minions on every hit against enemies that are already poisoned for example.

It would be nice if they could add a dedicated aspect for the creeper ad the ravens. Maybe something like:

Aspect of the Carrion Swarm - When enemies die in the swarm of ravens all friendly targets near it are healed for 2% of their health. Makes the radius of the swarm 15, 20, 25% bigger.

Aspect of the Poison Bloom - The poison creepers active effect is centered on a flower that grows out of the ground at your cursor’s location and taunts enemies for a short time before the effect triggers.

A paragon board for companions would be nice, maybe with a legendary like:

Unspoken commands - being crowd controlled no longer stops Companion skills from being activated.

And of course we need a companion Ultimate, which should be a bear that acts as a tank. It wouldn’t have a taunting roar as an active skill with a relatively short cooldown. If it died it would take a significant amount of time to respawn though, like 90-120 seconds, and that timer could be reduced with things that affect ultimate cooldown.

Another really big thing that sticks out to me about my Companion druid is how little sense it makes that Poison Creeper does so much more damage than Ravens.

Poison Creeper has a huge area, it CCs enemies, it inflicts poison which is highly synergistic for druids, and the damage is absolutely jaw dropping.

Ravens have a tiny area, the enemies don’t get CCed. If they leave the area the damage doesn’t keep ticking, and the damage is half of what poison creeper will do over 6 seconds. THe only upside is a 5 second shorter cooldown.

Doesn’t make any sense. The smaller AoE with no added CCs or automatic synergies that requires enemies to stay in it should do far and away more damage than the bigger one that also roots and poisons them.

2 Likes
5

So, ive been playing companion druid since the early access beta.
While it definitly doesn’t do as much as some, and isnt really a “meta” build.
I have been having quite a blast with it. I use:
Claw, rabies, all 3 companions, and howl.
RNG hates me, so my only legendary powers are howl for crit + affect companions, basic skill speed, basic skill damage reduction, and damage reduction in werewolf.

But even with only those 4 basic powers I have fun, my only real issue with companions is how easily the Wolves die. I don’t see why druid wolves have to die so easily when there’s no built in way to sustain them or any gear of their stats like there is for necromancer.
I wish they’d stop being lazy and nerf/buffing necro and druid companions evenly when druid wolves need to be alive to use their active, so they should be a little beefier naturally or at least have some way to be able to try keeping them alive outside of howls mild heal on them

3 Likes
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Yea, the fact that none of the key aspects for a companion build are available in a dungeon is a real kick in the nuts. You can get the worst version of shepherd, but no stampede.

1 Like
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It def works stack lucky hit for reliable creeper resets but I personally don’t find it as fun as if an actual wolf build worked with the main dmg being shred and lacerate I have tried alot to make lacerate work with ultimate dmg and cd reduction and willpower which is more reduction but it still just isn’t as good creeper resets which sucks for me because i feel basing a build around pets is kinda boring I’m wishing I had went necro if I am doing pet build but I heard they have bad pets too so idk lmao

8

For some reason d4 doesnt like minions.
I honestly dont know why they even bothered to add them, they seem too afraid to even let them be anything.
Yes most ARPGs minion builds are strong and easy. sometimes very OP. but it is what it is. Either let them be minion builds or dont even add minions as an option if you dont want them to do anything anyways.

I personally like minions alot. its pretty much all I like in ARPGs, but I dont like necro and having to spam the summon button every boss fight because they all get 2-3 shot. and yes im sure they live longer when you have full build… but they should be fairly sturdy naturally and full build makes them gods. Not paper naturally and full build makes them okay.

2 Likes
9

Honestly Druid companion build where you had wolves bears ravens vines and had like forest army would be kinda cool but especially with the boons I’m really surprised the boons didn’t match up with our actual companions

1 Like
10

I’ve been having great success with the following companion build - I just cleared the capstone dungeon to unlock WT3 solo at level 48 and did not die once but definitely had some scary moments.

Basic Skill (Builder) = Storm Strike (Rank 1) → Fierce Storm
Core Skill (Spender) = Tornado (Rank 5) → Raging Tornado
Defensive Skill = Earthen Bulwark (Rank 1) → Innate Earthen Bulwark
Companion Skills = Wolves (Rank 5) → Brutal Wolf Pack
= Poison Creeper (Rank 5) → Ferocious Poison Creeper
= Ravens (Rank 5) → Ferocious Ravens
Key Passive = Perfect Storm

Other Passives: Heart of the Wild (Rank 1)
Abundance (Rank 3)
Wild Impulses (Rank 3)
Predatory Instinct (Rank 3)
Ancestral Fortitude (Rank 3)
Call of the Wild (Rank 3) This is a must have IMHO
Defiance (Rank 3)

Disclaimer These are the passives I have at the moment but other choices will be made as I get more skill points.

Spirit Boons: Snake Spirit = Obsidian Slam (your overpowered bulwark hits decently)
Wolf Spirit = Pack Leader and Energize (Bonded)
Eagle Spirit = Swooping Attacks
Deer Spirit = Wariness

Key Legendary Aspects for this Build:

  • Tornado will seek up to X targets.
  • Earthen bulwark duration increase
  • Earthen bulwark bonus amount
  • Core skill damage per active companion
  • Basic skills increase your next core skill
  • Hitting 5 or more enemies with core skill refunds resources (Mother’s Embrace Unique)

All of that to say that I am not a professional guide-maker, and I’m sure some of my personal choices are wrong here, but overall, this build feels good for me and is a nice balance of damage, CC, and survivability.

As I stated above, I used this build to clear the capstone dungeon to get into WT3 solo without a single death at level 48. This build has LOTS of vulnerability baked in so you have very little to no downtime on vulnerability and my companion skills reset quite a bit as critical strike and lucky hit chance was increased a bit - feels good when you can run your 3 button rotation back to back for free.

Basic game-play is as follows: Bulwark on engage / on CD after that, bunch the mobs up and cast your creeper, then layer ravens on it, hit the biggest mob with wolves, storm strike for spirit and then spend on 2 tornadoes. Then cast 2-3 storm strikes to build spirit and rinse and repeat.

Overall, I am pretty happy with this build. Is it perfect or meta? Probably not even close but it was fun and worked for me. If you don’t have the tornado legendary aspect, or just don’t like that particular skill, you could probably use a couple others that work for you.

I started with the pulverize build but struggled because I lack the key aspects for it and found this to be right for me.

Again, not claiming this is perfect but hopefully this helps people think that companions aren’t useless because I have found them to not only work, but they’re fun and bring a lot to the table. Just my opinion!

-Cheers

5 Likes
11

Curious… how much does Tornado do the heavy lifting for you?

I mean, creeper active ability is absolutely great, but its on a 20 sec cooldown.

Wolves and Ravens certainly dont pull their weight, so it seems like most of what gives this viability is Tornado with high uptime from spamming Storm Strike

12

Zewks,

It does quite a bit of the heavy lifting and nicely fills the downtime of the companion skills. I will admit, poison creeper does indeed seem to be the best companion skill followed by ravens, but I find that wolves hit pretty hard on a vulnerable single target which is often needed.

Another thing to consider is the tornadoes are sort of “fire and forget” with that aspect. So they’re continuously hitting, with crit/lucky chances which ultimately gives you more chances to reset your companion CDs. I think I had my companion abilities reset somewhere around 5 times during the capstone boss fight.

The key is to balance storm strikes with tornadoes so you constantly hit tornadoes with the aspect buff to core skills.

Hope that answers your question and helps.

-Cheers

13

Companions definitely need some love. Additionally, the perk Brutal Ravens does not contribute to the active skill. It increases the already pointless passive damage, and that’s it. The only reason to use this perk is in conjunction with the Aspect that increases damage based on number of companions.

1 Like
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as i get more tuned in gear this starts to destroy stuff, my wolves (WHEN THEY WORK) will 1 shot lots when i call them to a target. HOWEVER, I have posted a bug with our druid wolves where they will jump and then just float above the ground doing nothing! this is a huge hit to the build since they are tanking, they arent dpsing and they arent spreading rabies. I’m to far into it now to respec. This is a SERIOUS class issue and needs fixed. Please like my post about it so they will fix it :frowning: Thank you.

3 Likes
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Companions are nice as leveling.
Took me like 10+ minutes just to kill the boss in capstone to unlock T3.

Had to switch to bear after, as on T3 the wolves were nonstop dead and the damage was nonexistent.

16

I use this build and maybe I missed it but I also have a point into Neurotoxin to benefit from perfect storm and slowed % damage from weapons/rings.

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What legendaries where you running? While other classes can get away with some pretty generic legendaries. Druid is strong armed into using them or falling off hard.

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The problem with companions is that they have a crippled base and they’re designed around a few uniques/legendaries and 1 paragon glyph. For you to get an idea, without those you’re missing +100% damage and 1 extra wolf for the wolves skill (unique), 20% all companion damage and +1 extra companion for all companion skills (legendary) and +20% all companion damage and +80% all companion passive damage (paragon glyph).
So it will only be viable later on, when you actually get all the stuff you need.

19

Yea, the problem with Companion builds above all else is that without the Wilds Glyph, Aspect of the Stampede and Aspect of the Alpha you’re working with drastically pre-nerfed skills.

I understand why they did it that way, because the skills would all be no brainers if there wasn’t a significant cost to powering them up, but simply the fact that Aspect of the Stampede and Aspect of the Alpha aren’t in the Codex makes companion builds suffer a huge amount.

20

there’s actually a unique pants that is superior to aspect of the alpha. of course this means it’s harder to find, but it exists.

I think the best build for companions is one that uses the +% to core skills with stampede, and having 9 companions for some absurd bonus to your tornado/landslide.