Yes, I agree. I had no problems with AoE damage. But to apply substantial damage to single targets I felt like I had to go for very specific skills. And I do think this is a problem since it narrows too much our options.
Yep, maybe. Can we be blamed, though? The whole druid class drew me for the transformations. Passives are restricted to forms. I didn’t find it fluid to change between forms. And we need to choose specific skills to damage single targets.
Can we optimize to make it work? Yeah. Is that how I would like to play? Nope.
I reached level 25 and tested out a few builds. My legend were pretty terrible, so its mostly without items in mind.
Werewolf and bear skills are pretty awful. They don’t feel good to use, are slow, clunky and is melee and we all know how melee is in this game. Only fun ability I enjoyed was pulverize, werewolf skills were a big disappointment overall.
Companions are not bad because they are tanky and draw aggro. I do feel like the wolves need to deal higher passive damage, leveling up the wolves is almost useless, never worth spending a point on and this chould change. Active damage is good, but their bites should deal higher damage when level up.
I tried both wind druid and earth druid upon reaching 25, and I have to say these are highly enjoyable once they get going. Granted I did get a very powerful legend that added an extra instance of damage on the earth core skill, the damage was huge and rolling boulder is really fun to use. Earth druid felt good, even though the basic skill is a bit awkward to use.
Then I tried wind druid and its similar. Really fun build, I maxed the wolves as extra single target damage, but wind druid deals, although not very high, fast continuous damage and it was really fun to play at level 20-25. Did well against both elites and high groups of enemies, without any big legendary. Overall both of these felt great once they got going, and pretty powerful overall.
Didn’t try lightning druid, but in my opinion mainly the werewolf, bear and companion skills needs some work, but I had a great time overall once you got to higher levels. I also don’t think companions should be so reliant on items, 300% damage items is silly when upgrading the skills gives less than 10% damage.
The initially bad Druid early leveling impressions could be taken more lightly after many people have realized that a huge part of the class’ skill effectiveness was put into nodes, aspects and the paragon board. Then again, even when compared to other classes, still a lot more power has been taken from Druid’s skills into other systems than it has been taken away for all other classes.
But if one thing definitely requires immediate attention, is the stupid animation lock when trying to use different abilities, and it isn’t only related to shapeshifting skills, it affects all of the kit.
This isn’t slow and deliberate Monster Hunter or Dark Souls; Diablo has always been about using stuff as soon as it was available, whether instantly like in D2 or based on cooldowns and cooldowns alone like in D3.
It dehances the player’s performance, feels clunky and bad and - most importantly - other classes do not have that issue.
Got this weapon on my lvl 25 werewolf druid as a rare drop off Osgar that I upgraded with with Werewolf companion aspect, and have started upgrading it.
I’m feeling happy with my damage so far.
realized I can’t post an image on this forum, but it’s:
397+10 item power (item level 2/4)
543 DPS
-[483 - 725] dps
0.9 attacks per second (slow wpn)
+29.7% overpower dmge
+20.9% basic skill dmge
+13.2 crit strike dmge
+17.6 vulnerable damage
+wolf compansions are now werewolf that deal 160%$ additional dmge and can spread rabies.
maxed my druid, its pretty aweful. just sayin. it does like zero damage lol. in its current state its absolutely unplayable and horrendous waste of time.
Welp just finished getting my second Druid to 25. This time as a Werewolf shapeshifter (last one didn’t use Shapeshifting at all.) and I gotta say I can’t find where all of the complaining is coming from.
Class feels great. It’s missing its mastery just like Barbarians are, so I gotta logically conclude that’s why both of these classes are getting hated on more than the others.
It follows to reason that people think Necro is the best when they get their class mastery at level 1 while everyone else has to unlock theirs at 15.
For my money though, after leveling 2 druids, 2 Rogues and one of everything else to 25, I liked Barb and Druid just as much as I liked Sorceress and almost as much as I liked Rogue. I’m looking forward to playing both of them when the full game is out in June.
Currently trying to kill Frostthorn right now at level 23 as a rabies/poison wolf and its basically impossible. Regular melee swipes take a third of your life while doing pathetic damage to him. This class is absolute trash compared to sorc.
Same thing happened to me. Could not do Frosthorn at Malnok Stronghold. I tried 7 different builds - many of which were recommended on forum, in videos, and in guides. I ran each of these builds a minimum of 3 times. Closest I got was less than 1/3rd of his life left. All in all, I ran the boss over 20 times. Not fun at all.
Spent the majority of time running around in circles dodging his ice shuriken and the emerging ice cloud explosions. It was unenjoyable. After I died the last time, I turned off D4 and walked away.
Don’t get me wrong, I will come back when it launches. But not going to play Druid again until it this issue is remedied.
Landslide does a lot of damage as well and works at 25. Some boss fights can be a little slow if you don’t go into it with terramotes and the boss doesn’t spawn adds, but you can’t die either so…
I leveled 1-25 with storm strike / landslide build and never deviated really.
seems like closed beta is for friends and family members… which in my opinion does not give blizzard the best feed back. games like mortal kombat actually have competitive players like sonic fox help them test the balance of the game. but games like these are not supposed to be at that level of competitive so blizzard will make the game according to the average player.
if the beginning of your play is bad, and only gets better after X level. delete the first levels below X and start from there. A game that isnt fun and requires hours of investment before its fun shouldnt be made.
so u didnt feel the clunky animations locks, the idea that a healing ability should be werebear rather than the werewolf that already has life steal in his kit, the fact the ww ultimate is seven sided strike of the monk from diablo 3, the fact rabies misses and goes on cool down, the fact melee abilities miss due to terrain…
Didn’t play Werebear, didn’t use WW ultimate because I was built for Rabies and Poison and not crit damage. I didn’t miss Rabies because I’m not bad.
I don’t know what you mean by the animation locks either. I didn’t notice any that hindered my gameplay, or if I did I chalked it up to the rubber banding issues I was getting in general.
Doesn’t feel like D2 at all. Beat Hell on a zoo druid and I did not have any runes above a Lo. So basically my gear was garbage.
Druid was super easy to level in D2 – pets rocked, as well as fissure.
The D4 druid is a mish-mash of different concepts. You can take a werewolf skill, werebear skill, and an elemental skill in one build. It doesn’t make any sense.
Top it off with the worst leveling experience of the 5 classes and you can see why D2 Druid fans are upset.