Druid damage is NOT okay.
TL’DR: I am in nightmare tried all of druids main builds with the appropriate aspects / talent skills and my damage is pathetic. Took an hour to clear a normal dungeon with only 2 deaths and spamming my core skill on most builds.
Edit: Look near bottom for the 1 build I found that works in nightmare
Okay So I am a lvl 51 druid. I have notice my damage on the decline as I have leveled, mostly using bosses and loot goblins as gauges for my damage. So when I got to 50 I did the lvl 50 dungeon that lets you go to world difficulty lvl 3. It took about 45 minutes
but I got to the boss.
I did attempt after attempt at the boss switching up my build every so often. For over 90 minutes I never got past his first stage. My damage was so little i couldnt even clear specific mobs he would spawn before he respawned them. Finally called in a lvl 50 necro in my guild and he killed him very fast and the adds were 1 shot by him every time they were spawned. They werent even part of the fight while he was there.
This is utter bully crap. I started comparing gear skills and damage with him and it is utter bully crap. I am now in nightmare difficulty and it takes me a good 30 seconds to even kill a basic enemy, much less the beefier ones or even an elite. Elites usually take me a good 3-10 minutes of sitting in their face and spamming pulverize with full fortify to kill.
This is the last straw for me, screw druid. They obviously never play tested the class once at higher levels. Off to pick something else.
P.S.: I am primarily a Tornado druid, but to me able to live long enough vs Nightmare mobs for how long it takes me to kill them I had to switch to Pulverize so I lower the enemy damage and not die to elites nearly as much
Edit: TL’DR: I have found a build that actually does damage in T3/Nightmare difficulty. (take out space between h and ttps: to make link work)
Link: h ttps://d4builds.gg/builds/615ffd39-3bf9-45ce-ae5d-6a0276d70230/
I have been trying my damnest to make druid work the last 72 hours. I finally had a friend help me out. IT is the only build I have had work so far and damn does it work. With it you should be doing between 2 hits of 8k-14k damage a landslide without much set up. I am currently doing 2-4 hits per cast of 15-20k on enemies with it. Also this build only uses for the most part legendaries available from dungeons so it doesnt rely on rng drops. I added another landslide strikes twice legendary to the build and I have gone from taking 10-15 minutes on bosses and 45 mins on the nonboss in dungeons to 3 shotting bosses and 1 shotting EVERYTHING else. This is the only build I have seen work so far…and I have tried ALOT of builds
5 Likes
I’ve spent this whole time so far in WT2, only level 41 at the moment and my experience varies from doing mostly OK to struggling in certain situations and tends to shift every 3 or 4 levels between the two as I upgrade and swap out equipment.
I’ve stuck by the same build the entire way with pets plus pulverize and playing without any build changing legendaries. The three I have are all geared to survival for extra barrier, fortify and barrier generation which allows me to face tank quite a bit and get things down in a reasonable amount of time.
Have put several passive points into survival and spirit generation and filled out a few damage passives as well. My only marathon fight was the Butcher which I managed to kill at lv39 by kiting through a series of rooms that were setup in a rectangle and using doorways to my advantage. He still managed to chain me through a wall and almost killed me. I wish games would clip enemy attacks on walls the same way the do player attacks, that’s lazy design, but I digress. The fight against home took me a good 7-8 minutes of kiting and chunking his health down.
All that to say I agree that damage is lacking compared to the other classes and unlike the other classes you can’t spam your skills in any order. If you aren’t deliberate about every single action you perform on Druid then you will have a bad time. It’s not just skulls either, your movements, evades and potions must be deliberate or you are going to have a bad time.
Speaking of time I hope you like watching timers. Because this class is mainly burst damage you will be doing a lot of timer watching to line up your skills appropriately. If we didn’t have to go so long between burst windows Druid would feel much better to play. As of now I find it an inconsistent slog, 3 steps forward, 2 steps back, rinse and repeat. There is nothing real progression to be made unless you dedicate yourself to the grind for those build defining unique items. Of course first you have to survive the level grind first.
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Just look at the ultimate lacerate that alone should tell you the problems high cd and no dmg even if you lacerate on vulnerable it still feels weak compared to any other class
6 Likes
So much so that i don’t even use an ultimate since they are garbage and just take up a slot on cooldown for 45+ seconds.
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i’ve been playing a landslide build and it’s been pretty much ez pz so far. face tanking bosses even. not sure why ppl struggle so much with this class.
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With the right gear and set up, Druid is very tanky. It is also very gear dependent. The problem is that as you get to higher tiers, tankiness tends to become secondary to damage (at least in previous Diablo games like 3 where Barb/Crusader were basically liabilities until they finally gave them an innate 30% DR- building for defense was pointless before then). We’ll have to see how it goes in this game.
Druid damage is lesser than other classes with some pretty weak skills (see Werewolf Companions, some of our Ultimates, etc). So, while we can clear stuff in the earlier stages of things, the question will be how it is in later stages of gameplay when damage and speed are basically where it’s at. Right now, a Druid struggles to clear timed events because they are extremely short (usually 60 seconds or less) and we don’t do enough damage outside of our burst phases to clear 5 waves or kill enemies fast enough to keep squishy NPCs alive. Plus, we are extremely slow with few movement abilities.
5 Likes
I fell into a nature build, using Wind Shear, Storm (though temporarily using tornado for the challenge but atm I think Storm is better without some kind of Tornado legendary), Cyclone Armor, Hurricane, Boulder and Cataclysm. Picked up pretty much all the Nature passives and am in the process of maxing them out (am currently about level 45) and it seems to be working out well. And the main Spirit Boons that work great here is the one that makes Ultimate last longer, Nature Crits have a chance of reducing Ultimate CD, and Lightning and Earth spells empower their opposites.
The final skill that gives your Lightning and Earth spells a chance to activate a spell of the opposite alignment from the same category for free is a game changer for that build. Your Wind Shear might proc an Earth Spike, doing extra damage and generating extra spirit, Storm might proc a Landslide, Cyclone Armor can also give you an earth shield, Hurricane might proc a Boulder and Boulder might proc a Hurricane, and Cataclysm can proc a Petrify, which is great when it happens. Also, fun fact, when a proc happens, its 100% treated as a self cast spell, so any spirit boon, passive or legendary that works with that spell will affect it. You just won’t get any of that spells modifiers unless you specifically spend the 3 skill points to unlock them… which, I won’t lie, I’m seriously considering doing with some spells.
I primarily went Lightning spells because I like them and like the Vulnerable procs, but I do sometimes wonder if Earth centric builds would work better for the Fortify and crits, and proccing free Storm and Tornado on Landslide casts can’t be a bad thing. But I like how Boulder synergises with Lightning spells. It actually bunches enemies up, making it easier to hit many enemies with a single basic for mass spirit gen, or Storm for group obliteration.
That being said… single target damage is still trash. I’m still trying to figure out ways to fix that, but this build is still better than several other builds I tried for it. Bosses are still tedious slogs though.
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I am legitimately impressed with how much damage from hits druid can take, but how much they can put out is just as impressively pathetic
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At 31, I hate leaving town because normal mobs are just a chore to kill now.
Playing on veteran.
Gear is up to date but no legendaries.
Its just too much work to kill normal enemies. No real threat of death unless there are like 10 of them at once, but its just a pain to kill them because of how little damage im doing unless creepers cooldown is up.
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Have u tried Pulv build?
It shldnt be a problem to faceroll over 50-60. Tanky, awesome aoe dmg, but very rng sinlge target.
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I’m in T3 content… most of my stuff is all legendary sacred GS 600+ and I’m level 55. All of my legendaries complement my build… they might not be the absolute BIS ones for my build, but they synergize in some way.
I’m running a hybrid Earth/Storm build, and everything is pretty much trivial outside of nightmare dungeons, which are also totally doable solo. I’m not sure if I do more damage than the friends I group with, but I definitely have the most raw survivability with barrier almost constantly being up. Rarely do I go more than a few seconds without it… and I am very happy with my damage also. 15 minutes or less to run a dungeon typically.
IMO if you’re relatively new to T3 there’s a good chance you’re holding onto some gear with some really good legendary perks in lieu of giving them up for higher gear score pieces. I was doing this when I first got to T3, and I think it’s worth playing around with your build a bit in order to keep your gearscore higher or you’ll really notice a drop in both damage and surviveability.
If you’re curious, I run Stormstrike, Landslide, Earthen Bulwark, Cyclone Armor, Hurricane, and Boulder… along with nature’s fury which means every time I do anything I have a 20% chance to cast a free ability.
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I just tried mixing things up a bit on my Werebear by taking Claw instead of Maul. The reasoning being the poison damage from claw gets boosted whenever I slam with Pulverize due to Changeling’s Debt. And because you have a few seconds before Werebear skills wear off, you can easily change back before all your buffs are gone.
The biggest detriment, imo, is Grizzly Rage replacing your bar. Not only do you lose your companion, you’re forced into using Debilitating Roar, Trample, Maul and Pulverize. If you use Dire Werewolf legendary, you’re forced into Claw and Shred (though I noticed I kept Debilitating and Trample without issue). Losing Pulverize makes that legendary a no go and only good if you build full Werewolf.
I may possibly see about swapping Trample for Rabies as well, due to Trample’s terrain issues. See if the poison damage boost is worth it.
Just in these few hours since my last reply I’ve added a couple of legendaries and things took a more significant bump than I have seen yet. The first gives me +1 companion and an extra 24% companion damage. The other also makes my pulverize into an earth skill and deals additional 340 damage over time.
It still lags behind what other classes are able to do, but it’s definitely improving. There are so many moving parts to this class. Definitely not beginner friendly for sure as you really have to work to put things together. Will see how it fares once I finish the campaign and get into the capstone dungeon.
The druid is just lame! Leveling him took me ages, he is slow and doesn’t hit hard. Bear form is way worse than at D2 times. And they also nerfed pulverize from 10 to 12. I ragequitted him on 33 and started new with a rogue. Feels like a complete different game! Don’t know why they made such a mess with balancing this time. D3 start was much better and the gameplay felt a lot smoother. With their crappie MMO level scaling, level ups are no big deal to enjoy anymore. With the druid, you fear them, because now your a little bit weaker again.
I think the druid was their last class and they rushed him. There was no testing! We are the testers! They say “Druid shines on endgame!” maybe because they are developing his endgame at the moment.
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I think Druid is strong when you have the right legendaries but the problem is you have to grind them out which wouldn’t be so bad if they had at least one or 2 builds that worked without any legendaries but sadly of all the classes Druid feels the worst without legendary effects I think once you get some legendary effects and combine with glyphs and stuff on paragon board Druid probably is what they say good but the issue is no one is even surviving the leveling experience so many ppl are quitting before even getting paragon they def need to rework some of the base abilities especially the ultimates that almost not worth using
Edit tbh I’m probably going to switch to necro or sorc if they don’t buff druid I want a working werewolf build that is me doing the dmg not a creeper vine I want lacerate into a vulnerable boss with no mobs around and see his health bar go down noticeably instead of using it to just reset creeper vine and watching the bar not even move
2 Likes
Yeah, maybe you’re right! I also hate this whole “need this and that leg aspect” principle. This should be late game only! Need to min max builds, spending tons of resources just to progress at lvl 30 is a joke. For the whole story you should just mow through mobs like butter! Then the harder content and the min maxing can start. At the moment it is just frustrating. Diablo is my all-time favorite gaming series, but I tend to switch to other arpgs, because of this lame slow gameplay.
Druid is the worst and my rogue does a much better job, but with their lame MMO world and mobs respawning 3secs later, the whole game doesn’t feel rewarding.
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So, testing my hybrid build… it’s ok. About as survivable as a full Werebear- with healing coming from crits thanks to Masochist, but it builds up fortify much slower which hurts the Retaliation aspect.
It was doing a bit more single target damage overall, but frankly, Rabies and Lacerate are fairly weak for cooldowns when things like Poison Creeper exists.
That said, I did just get the poison legendary for Shred, so I may try a Werewolf build.
Played T2 poison wolf till ~30.
Changed to pulverize.
Played pulverize till ~40.
Changed to T1.
Played till 43-44.
Changed to full companion build with wolf roar, earth bulwark and stormstrike, with no core skill.
Finished the campaign with level 49 and on T1, and still took 10+ minutes with the last fight.
i have one viable legendary for that build, as I dropped 0 viable legendaries for any build.
I noticed there is no number text from the instant poison dmg I thought it wasn’t working but if you fight a boss you can see the shadowd poison portion of health just disappears but it’s unsatisfying not seeing big numbers when you instantly do like 5k poison dmg and instead just see a 500 shred lol
You’d know why if you weren’t playing a druid meta build.
1 Like