Druid Horror Stories

Druid
1

Let us share some horror stories of this class. I will start with mine:

For the 11th hour in a row, I open a new Nightmare Dungeon. My Glyphs are all maxed out, my right hand is hurting from spam clicking tornado for 11 hours straight, my eyes are tired. I am nearly 87 and for the last 30 hours of gameplay I have been telling myself the same thing over and over to motivate myself to open yet another Nightmare Dungeon:

The next one will drop tempest roar.

The last 6 hours have been particularly bad. Butchers cleaver, then penitents greaves… another penitents greaves, another butchers cleaver, and finally, an overkill. Not much for 2 full levels. But I have been having a good feeling about level 86. Somehow i believe that the next unique that drops will be Tempest roar, and it will happen on this level.

I am 95% to 87. I open another Nightmare dungeon. Whispering Pines. The next one will drop tempest roar, i repeat to myself.

8 Minutes pass. I am near the dungeons end, and at 98% XP and I see a Unique helmet drop of a normal white fallen.

My heart races. My pupils widen. I can’t believe it. I clear the pack, loot the helmet, and take a deep breath. It takes me 5 more seconds to open the inventory, look inside and read

Vasily’s Prayer.

I stand still for a solid 5 minutes. There are only 14 mobs and the boss remaining, but I can not bring myself to continue right now, as my mind is focused on a single thought:

Nothing I have done so far mattered.

There is no bad luck protection in this game. No trading. No progress towards items. I have every other druid unique. Some up to 5 times. Most neutrals too. And yet, the next 30 hours of gameplay are just as unlikely to drop the build defining item that I need. The build defining item that enables another build defining Aspect, that enables us to use the only ultimate that matters, which gives unstopable and movement speed, which is necessary for endgame content. I am just as likely to grind 3-10 levels higher for the next 30 hours as I have been 30 hours ago. Am I even in the endgame? Or am i still grinding the midgame to enter the endgame? My thoughts circle back to the beginning… again and again. I finish the dungeon. I am missing 12k xp to the level up.

I return to the town to sell my items. I take a deep breath… and I open another Nightmare dungeon. The next one will drop tempest roar.

5 Likes
2

Log in play as usual… Fenris error. Have no druid nightmares… was a fairly easy ride to 100. Uniques were a little too plentiful.

3

Oddly the bulk of my uniques have dropped during helltides. The race to kill enough monsters to open 4 mystery chests is much more appealing to me than NM dungeons and I can’t wait to get out of the NM grind fast enough.

The uniques are dropping off elite mobs that either randomly spawn when the lava rains down or spawn during one of the overworld events you encounter along the way.

Mind you I can go 3-4 events without a significant drop, but that doesn’t mean I am not bagging significant gold or mats and picking up a good chunk of experience along the way. If ever there was a one stop shop for farming with a bit of fun helltides are it.

Some spots on the map are dead though, but there are some solid routes through some of the zones where the mob density feels much more like a Diablo game and this is a good thing. Above all though when grinding feels like a chore it may be best to stop going at it so hard and take a moment to enjoy other parts of the game.

4

wait until you find out that the storm wolf build gets boring after an hour of gameplay

1 Like
5

Butcher, nuff said. lol

1 Like
6

I’m stuck at the tyrant king and can’t progress. Thanks blizz.

7

As a pure fantasy playing druid, my horror story is diablo 3

2 Likes
8

Level 49 and haven’t found a single build enabling aspect yet. No Aftershock, Trampled Earth, Shockwave, or Dire Wolf. I’m hard casting base Landslide or running around for 12 seconds waiting for overpower pulverize to come up. Brutal.

9

see theres your problem. You should keybind your most spammed ability to the W key.

2 Likes
10

I’m having absolutely ZERO luck with loot. I have 18 unique items, and only one is usable for my build. It’s outrageous at this point. I have 4 Zenith Hunter rings (2 of them dropped within 2 hours), 4 Mad Wolf’s Glee, 2 Insatiable Fury, 2 Vasily’s Prayer, all useless to me at this point. That’s not even to mention that I’ve gotten the unique Frostburn gloves twice, which support frost damage, and I’ve also gotten a unique barbarian only axe. I’m spec’d for lightning storm, and I honestly love it and am putting up a lot of DPS with pretty high survivability, but it really seems, based on the loot availability, that Blizzard is not throwing any support gear for this build into the game. Over 90% of all gear I’ve gotten is aimed toward shape shifting and earth spells. It’s starting to get pretty damn discouraging at this point. Anyone having better luck?

11

Theres just not very many druid uniques right now.

Gibbous only really works for shred-wolf. Perhaps you can gain some benefit by using it as nature’s fury wolf? thats about as creative as I can think to use it.

Greatstaff of the crone is useful for any build that doesn’t use a generator (stormclaw and earthen bulwark are the main 2). Its main draw is making claw a human form skill I guess. Theres probably something creative you could do with this that hasn’t been doine yet since most people pair it with tempest roar just to keep it a WW ability for the damage reduction legendary.

Storm’s companion would be so interesting if wolves weren’t in such a bad place right now. I think we’ll see this unique open up with new builds once wolves are adjusted.

Mad Wolf’s Glee and Insatiable Fury are in the unfortunate spot of being chest armor pieces. You lose so much damage reduction and max HP, by using these pieces for such minimal gains it can be hard to justify using them in the late game. Most skills they benefit just don’t scale well with +skills. They’re no +poison creeper ranks if you know what I mean. They can be fun to use while leveling though.

Tempest Roar is the strongest druid unique in the game, because it gives any build that uses storm abilities a constant damage reduction modifier (via the druid legendary + storm strike) and increased spirit gains. You lose a lot of defensives stats on the helmet itself but it easily makes up for that. Unfortunately this means that any storm build has to use this if they have it. Its too valuable. Any wolf build should use it as well to benefit from Strom strike over claw.

Vasily’s Prayer - The helmet is not as strong as tempest roar, but is still solid. The fortify gained from earth skill casts is really pitiful sadly, but gaining werebear effects as an east caster is very beneficial. The constant damage reduction especially. Sadly, Tempest Roar is so much better (because of stormstrike) that even builds like bulwark will use that over the earth helmet. Its useful for the werebear builds as well because of varying legendary affixes. The main difference between TR and VP is that TR will only turn base storm skills into WW skills, while VP will turn any earth skill into a bear skill. This means that even skills that aren’t natively earth skills can become bear skills through creative means. How much practical use does that have? eh. to be seen.

Hunter’s Zenith - This ring is in a weird place. Not many builds run it. Its probably the most useful on a build that kills with bear skills and generates with wolf skills just to apply free healing on bear builds. But you can get creative with it utilizing it on builds that turn storm skills into wolf skills and earth skills into bear skills. For example a werewolf build could get free bulwarks, or boulder casts. A bear build could heal by using stormstrike, hurricane or cyclone armor.

The only limiting factor in those options is they don’t work with grizzly rage. Which is a big negative with how the game is balanced right now.

12

some other threads implied that loot table is influenced by your build, so if you respec and change the skills in the skilltree it might increase the chance.

13

My horror story is short.

Being level 95 and have not seen a single Tempest Roar.

2 Likes
14

I’ve seen three of the shapeshifter rings drop two werewolf chests the werebear helm and the thorns chest as well as the waxing gibbous and two the frost boots.

Was trying to be werebear but the chest for it still not dropped and it seems the game is hellbent on making me go werewolf though now it would need to drop that helmet lol…

I hate druid seems super dependent on uniques. Is there an end game werewolf build that can do great with the 1h and chest?

15

I’m about to be 79.
I have 4 werebear chests, 2 werewolf chests, 3 Vasily headpieces, Hunter’s Zenith. I have 3 Butcher’s Cleaver (and now a Butcher horse trophy), Frost Boots, and Frost Gloves, and Temerity. And several Barbarian Uniques, including Hellhammer which isn’t labeled as a Barbarian weapon for some reason.
0 Tempest Roar.
I was lucky enough to get Greatstaff of the Crone. Now it is 150 item power behind my other gear, and I can’t even consider replacing it with another weapon unless it’s the same one since I would have to bankrupt myself to respec my skills and paragon. Thankfully, i at least enjoy the current playstyle with it…

16

Four unique helms in for me, this is the only one I’ve gotten. It’s so beyond frustrating. I just want to try something other than Pulverize.

There’s no real way to target upgrades. No trading. At least in d3 I could rare upgrade with the cube or gamble with Kadala, and reroll items into higher versions using the cube. None of that is present here and it sucks.

17

That is how my crone dropped. Low item power, and minimum rolls on most of the stats.

18

Storm strike has nothing to do with why tempest roar is so strong.

Many fleshed out stormwolf builds dont use or even slot storm strike. Why would i? I can cast a whole lotta tornados at range instead.

I have zero reason to ever use stormstrike. If youre playing the stormstrike build, its crone staff you want.

19

You got me. Its just another bytch complaining

20

Definitely need crone staff for even minimally functional stormstrike build, but if you use Dire Wolf form you can only access storm abilities in that form if you also have Tempest Roar.
That’s my current issue lol. I can pop Hurricane right before Dire Wolf for the faster crit build-up, but i can’t recast Hurricane until Dire Wolf wears off. I also lose my Cyclone in Dire Wolf. And those storm abilities don’t get to double dip into the werewolf passives without the helm, so no added poison procs. Not needed for direct damage, but to trigger poison related passives (+damage to poisoned enemies/ -damage from poisoned enemies/ Heightened Malice - deal 45% increased damage with 3 or more poisoned enemies nearby).
So they aren’t directly needed for each other, but certainly improve Stormstrike builds.