Druid needs some love Blizz. Like the kind of love you would give a puppy or kitten. The kind of love you give when your child hurts themselves and needs reassurance.
My cons are beginning to outweigh my pros for this class. To be clear: I love Druid! I was more than excited when it returned hoping to see my Chunk boy/girl harnessing the power of the elements and shape shifting into glorious shredding madness.
Every season so far I have played Druid first, and aside from the occasional glitched build (Landslide being the most recent) or the 1 time storm claw was decent Druids have never contended with the greater builds found in other classes. Leveling is more challenging than other classes, class quest is pure nonsense, endgame it has consistently been among if not the weakest choices available to players. Druid has been given the D3 paladin treatment and we all know that’s not a good thing.
Overall damage needs a boost or better mechanics to allow it to contend. More unique aspects associated with class choices. Each should idealize an aspect of playing these classes. Casting just feels awful. Even Thunder has taken a step back from previous seasons even though all I used it for was leveling.
Despite harsh criticism I do enjoy D4 just asking for better balancing considering this class has been low to worst tier for like 3 continuous seasons out of the 6 so far…
I completely agree. I already talked about this in another topic. druid needs urgent buffs and better items. The most fun and strong builds are always nerfed due to bugged interactions. There is no player interest in the class other than its lovers (as in my case). It seems to me that there is no development for a specific class, the skins are ridiculously ugly (except the one from the last season which was paid). Anyway, I can only wait for poe 2 to see what the Druid there will be like.
Yes, the class is very solid and very tanky too. Any druid build is very tanky. The issue I see however is a lack or imbalance of damage compared to other classes. Druid is always the class that hits hardest in terms of damage on the ptr and this is clearly corrected later. There are many bugs in the game and in the classes as a whole, but today again the druid is not even competitive compared to the other classes.
Right now, the only two classes showing superiority in content is necro and of course SB. Barb, rogue, sorc and druid are all within a few levels of each other in top pit clears, and bossing is a joke regardless. I’d say that by definition, thats competitive.
Now, I do agree with you that druid needs love. The class lacks direction and the top builds like hurricane is about as much fun as wiping with sandpaper TP. Oh, and half their abilities don’t function properly.
The only class you picked here I will “agree” with tentatively is Barbarian. Which has 1 S tier build and the rest are low performing. If it weren’t for Barbs running the show for the last 2 arguably 3 seasons and for the first 2 seasons I might be more swayed by this argument.
However, druid struggles in all forms with perhaps 1 build above B tier and even then it’s beyond gear dependent, struggles with anything more than base endgame and soon falls behind. And this has been consistent. Since the definition of “competitive” suggests as good or better, when has Druid been as good or better than other classes? Filing a class into “only played when you love the stylistic choice” hardly measures up.
“Right now, the only two classes showing superiority in content is necro and of course SB”
Clearly i excluded necro and SB from that comparison. More importantly, it doesn’t matter because there is 0 competition in the game. The majority of the people are crying to cry. So back to the original statement:
Can druid, with multiple builds, clear all aspects of the game? Yes
can they be competitive with most classes? yes
does druid need love? Hell Yeah
but lets not act like they’re in such a bad place they’re unplayable. Druid as a starter is actually quite easy to level, and scales faster than most classes. the problem is they fall off scaling because they lack synergies that actually work for full endgame, where other classes scale exponentially.
100% agree. not saying it doesn’t. They obviously lacked direction when it came to how to create druids. This season having to constantly shapeshift to maximize feels like crap when i want to smash lmfao.
The Druid needs some base design changes. The biggest being “why do I need a unique item to maintain another form, and why doesn’t it actually work when using summons?”
Your base form should be built into the spirit board with four possible choices: human only, werewolf, werebear, or shifter.
Not sure why it’s all or nothing with these arguments. I never said “Unplayable”. Because something “can” be done does not make it “optimal”. I would rather see consistent scaling/mechanics that demonstrate growth than spamming lightning, creeper companion builds as a form of success to leveling.
Every class has a job where you complete a few quests than unlock your abilities except druid. Gather a ton of resource to access latent abilities that fall of to quickly leaves every build selecting the same things to succeed.
I would hardly describe druid as competitive. Each season we have access to perhaps one viable build which is soon destroyed due to “bugs”. At this point there should be a few per class that equals skillful endgame play we can all enjoy and give us options so we aren’t slaves to the meta. I want that for ALL classes.
I would be fine with more restriction equal to greater power in form shift. Like must be wolf/bear for x time in order to access ultimate which decimates the screen or activates x ability empowering the build further. Or some reasonable facsimile there of.
Imagine a pulverize that overpowers and hits in a wide AOE launching all enemies into the air and giving a 50% stun? Or Every enemy freezing in fear as your wolf ninja dashes slashing for x% damage? Cataclysm and Petrify feel good but their caster skills. Even Super Bear and Wolf forms feel underwhelming and are hardly utilized.
I’m not solely trying to complain I want these suggestions to improve what I love about the game.
Everytime I see a build where I have to use Hunters Zenit I just hate it.
I know you mostly shift by default anyways but still this is a bad mechanic.
It doesn’t help that they butchered most skills to be only usable when using specific Aspects.
Stormchaser’s Aspect for example should not be an Aspect. It should already be default that tornados chase enemies. Heck, the whole reason Nado Druid was bad until you built an enigma in Diablo 2 LoD was because Tornados couldn’t seak enemies lol until you were able to port on them and just abuse it.
Even Pulverize (Shockwave Aspect) should basically be built in the skill.
There’s a lot of aspects the Druid should have built in. Pretty much every ability has one that makes the ability function correctly.
Incorporating many of these into the base Druid would go a long way toward improving the class. It would open things up for different aspects or uniques.
Druid has gotten progressively worse minus zookeeper with bugs and build inhibiting interactions going on for months unfixed. Game is going on 1.5 years no more excuses