After running every build in the PTR I can think of building I come to a conclusion. Druid needs a complete re work. Druid isnt good until there is some bug associated with a build. Poison druid had a bug, bulwark had a bug now the hurricane boulder is a 2 trillion damage bug. Why cant Druid be good on its own? I figured it out. Druid has too many conditionals. Every build has conditions to be met and maybe it functions how u intended. Werebear overpower is either by kills or time in werebear. Look at the key passives. Every single one is conditional. Perfect storm requires you to hit an enemy thats Vuln, Immobilized or slow. Natures fury has a 30 percent chance to trigger a free skill of the opposite category and to make it good you need aspects like symbiotic. Earten might has a lucky hit to maybe restore spirit. Lupine ferocity is every 6 werewolf skill hit and you trying to watch and time your abilities. Beastial rampage requires you to be in bear or wolf form to grant a multiplier. Ursine strenght requires you to be in werebear form and stay healthy. Even alot of the skills require conditions just to functions. Things like Beastial rampage should function good with passives like quick shift. However, if I want to quick shift fast to ramp my damage its counterproductive because beastial rampage says I have to be in that form for two seconds.
Other classes do have lucky hit key passives too but they are damage multipliers. Not a source of damage. Look at the above examples. They counteract play styles.
Also Druid is the most gear dependent class and is painful to play until you get an entire build up and running. Even the. It still does not compare to other classes.
Druid loses on skill slots cause to push damage you gotta take Shepards aspect.
I dont mean to rant but im passionate about playing what I want to play. I dont want to play a different class I want my desired class to be good and functional without playing the mega millions for damage.
Lastly all of the cosmetics suck. All the other classes look fantastic with both the free and paid cosmetics. The druid has 1 good cosmetic in my opinion which is Nightmare spirit and it cost money.
All of this is my own opinion.
druid i just has too many things at once in the skill tree. bear, wolf, pets, caster, melee. it’s three classes rolled into one, leaving you with little room.
Yes that is true but i love the hack if all trades and the synergies with quick shifting between animals or casting earth and storm each powering the next. It just too situational
There should be aspects or uniques that makes those conditional more manageable. Or at the very least allow them higher uptime but lower their output.
Yeah but then you waste aspect slots on trying to manage conditional damage. Same as people running 3 companions for the shepard aspect to ramp damage.
Here is how I would fix druid. Make every single bear move slightly faster. If not then make every single bear move fortify you. Make grizzly rage actually rage. Increase attack speed and movement speed in grizzly rage. Make every werewolf ability dash. Even rabies. This way u move from pack to pack accordingly. Instead of lacarate hitting in an area it should dash from pack to pack for however long the duration last. This way if an enemy/boss moves it doesnt waste the ultimate. Leave the nature magic skills cause fundamentally they work. Remove lucky hit from earthen might but leave the percentage and change the storm to 2 percent instead of 1. Change beastial rampage and quick shift to every time you change forms and not remain for X amount of time. Lastly re work storms companion and shepards to your companions cast the same nature magic abilities you do on skill press. Sorta like necros with bone and blood abilities. If all these things are done its a completely different class. Maybe still not be the strongest but it will definitey be the most fun for sure.
I have been saying this for a while now. I completely agree. Druid suffers from too much concept not enough focus. In theory a jack of all trades concept sounds awesome but ultimately you create a master of none.
If this game was a support meta style game druid would be key for group play. But standing alone (compared to its counterparts) it lags behind unless “broken”. So, you get a consistently average class.
Even other class supporters say “druid is playable” or “druid is A/B tier” on their way back to their sorcs/barbs/necros/rogues. That alone should be your sign that the design is lackluster.
but why?
Too many conditionals–yeap
Weak spirit boons–yeap
a few weak/unused glyphs–yeap
No real pet focus–yeap
Identity crisis (human/ bear/wolf/werewolf/shapeshifter)–yeap
Tag bloat (storm, nature, earth, shapeshifting, companion, and all the essentials
core/basic/wrath/defense/ultimate)—yeap
Unsupported concept (thorns)–yeap
Gear/Aspect dependency—yeap
I think the class was very designed at game launch given the design philsophy at the time. Most useful unique, truely build transforming.
But the game design also like to do combo pairings for aspect. You can still see that legacy type of thinking for blizzard sorc and icespike builds requiring minimum 2 aspects. Druid had Grizzy Rage and Dire wolf Combo, but you also need TR which then is 3 slots.
This is not how the new system works where each aspect can be more standalone. So Druid at this point really needs a deep mechanics re-think to match the new affix system. Maybe move some unique capabilities onto skill tree or spirit boon.
Druid skills don’t have good scaling since most meta builds revolve around shepherds to buff them to competitive levels. Fix they and Druid becomes great again. Still has some of the best uniques for making builds so it’s got that going for it.
Update the Boons, most of them suck or are never taken. I don’t hate the boon concept, it’s just you run the same ones almost no matter the build. Needs to be more defining similar to enchantments.
So many people complaining about Shepherd’s aspect all of a sudden.
The aspect hasn’t changed since they buffed it in patch 1.1.0a, 18 july 2023.
It was there all the time.
everything else has been nerfed. now it’s the only viable option left.
Thats exactly it!!!
@Cord,
People have spoken out about Shepard’s for several seasons. It went unnoticed. The PTR and new itemization just really lit a fire under the (druid community) because the feeling of “being left behind” in an upcoming season became OVERWEHLMINGLY obvious.
Since so many players were able to really deep dive and test EVERYTHING so quickly even the more casual players finally saw it! One of druid’s biggest problems since launch has been it levels slower than any other class.
So, what happens when you give people the chance to just skip that slogfest of leveling and furthermore grinding altogether to test things? Players went, “wait why is this not that”… made some corrections without the grind, “wait that doesn’t jive either”.
Agreeing with practically everything I read here and yes one thing I miss is the possibility to make an entirely storm-based build without using animal forms. I come from a long background as an elemental druid that was possible in D2. Now I am practically forced to choose an animal form to complement the build otherwhise my damage stays under any other class. You can see this in unique items where there are one or two that are specific to this type of build. I get it that is a new game with other features and all but even so I miss the possibility
OP, please add some paragraph breaks or line breaks in that wall of text. It makes reading your opinions so much easier.
I have been mentioning it to the Devs every single chance I get. Im tagging them in videos. Im posting them links to the forums and honestly I dont think they care. Seems like they ok with the Druid players exclusively running Werenado cause nothing else is as good. Thats very disappointing.
Barbs have WW, Hota, Charge now DD
Rogue has TB, rapid shot, now traps,
Necro has Bone, Blood, now Minions
Sorc has Firewall, ball lightning, blizzard, now firebolt and frozen orb
Druid has a couple builds but none of them are as good as the other classes and all of them require shepards so its basically a 2 button build
druid only has shepard (which is shepard + core of your choice).
Try Stormclaw. I don’t use any companion skills or core skills, and I can do a lvl 100 NMV. This build does not get the love that other builds get probably because it doesn’t have that splashy burst damage, but it is very effective, and using Cataclysm with it is very satisfying pulling in mobs from off screen.