Hello. It is nice to see some patch changes regarding the druid class, however, I would like to suggest other changes that might be better suited to the werewolf kit for the druid. Since druids no longer have fury or hunger from Diablo 2, I would like to see some reference to them. I think the werewolf path of the Druid struggles with taking down groups of enemies in tier 4 torment unless using extremely rare aspects and niche equipment.
Fierce claw should become an arc attack that adds vulnerability for 2 secs with 2% life steal. Werewolves are known to regenerate and I think this balances the werewolf basic attack and holds true to the past werewolf skills of the Druid.
Enhanced claw should proc with a 50% chance to hit twice in an arc, with poison+bleed added (7.5% damage each). Bleed makes sense on a werewolf. 15% to attack twice is just not enough. The recent patch was a step in the right direction, but it needs more. In D2, the Fury skill used to hit for 5 times per use. This gives a nod to that past skill. Spirit is a huge issue and it’s more fun to be able to spam certain abilities without having to run out of spirit all the time. This helps to mitigate that.
Rabies cooldown needs some serious reduction. 4 second cooldown seems right, so it can be used more often. Its not even that good, even with the damage buff recently added.
Here’s a big one–create an on hit chance to convert enemies into lesser werewolves or wolves to join your pack. 5% chance to happen upon monster death.
It makes sense from a theme perspective. Paladins back in D2 used to have a similar ability called conversion. Disallow it happening with poison damage for balance. Additionally add it as a stat for equipment and as an aspect for recruiting werewolf allies. It makes sense as wolves always run in packs.
Lacerate is just a bad skill, even with the damage buff. It needs to be reworked where it hits more than 10 times within the aoe. Additionally, cut the cooldown to 30 seconds. For comparison, Cataclysm hits everything on the screen within a certain radius over X amount of time. It’s way better than lacerate right now. If these changes were implemented, I might consider it over cataclysm. I don’t want to use cataclysm as a werewolf. Make lacerate better!
Wolves are still bad. To make them better, allow 4 instead of 2. Make them work like the necro minions. Lucky hit should become (20% each) with 4 wolves for balance.
Fix or replace the passive skill damage boost to companions. Currently it does not apply to them. The buff should be 10% movement speed, attack speed and 10% damage. (Druid and companions). I think it is reasonable as the companions are very bad right now. (Even after the recent patch)
The companion damage needs to scale with the user. A reasonable damage would be 20%-25% of the user (per wolf). Right now the wolves’ damage is extremely low and does not balance well in tier 4.
Beastial Rampage, worst passive. Here’s a fix: Have incentives to stay shapeshifted as a werewolf. Have this passive get stronger the longer you stay in werewolf form. For example, if in werewolf form for 5 seconds, buff damage, movement speed and attack speed by 10%. For every 5 seconds, add cumulative bonuses to those stats up to 15 seconds. If reverting back to human form, the bonus resets.
Thanks for your time and let me know your thoughts on these suggestions. Have a good one.
3 simple changes related to Lacerate would make it competitive:
Reduce the cooldown to 15-20 seconds
Make it usable while incapacitated
Change the Blurred Beast aspect trigger off of Lacerate dashes in addition to Shred
If you went with a heavy poison shred build, lacerate would become a nuke from orbit ability on a decent cooldown. It would also become an “oh crap” button to break CC when you get into trouble.
I absolutely love your ideas and they support the thematic of werewolf folklore very much.
Werewolf should have 2 viable play styles that can function at the same time: flicker build and pure poison, each adhering to eachother’s opposite spectrum of damage application and welcoming both
The way werewolf feels should be exactly like playing a flicker build. Kill or be killed, die trying, but this can’t be done without replacing half of the kit with spells of the other branches, when it should really be independent to werewolf
The poison aspect of werewolf suffers greatly. It’s meant to be a subset of werewolf, but is realistically too weak to use in a drive-by playstyle that the build was meant to feature.
Rabies shouldn’t be doing the same base damage as the 3rd hit of Shred over the time span of 6 seconds. That’s objectively nothing—especially without the support of vulnerability— with the typical HP pools of mobs
It’s been said to hell and back, but werewolf’s kit doesn’t function well together in comparison to werebear or lightning Druid. The other branches of Druid can effortlessly synergies within their own kit (werebear double dipping in willpower benefit, storm with innate vulnerability). Werewolf is the only druid that HAS to work for damage and still can’t keep up with the other two
It seems like there’s two competitive builds right now for druid:
Bulwark Wolf / Crone staff (Infinite Bulwark barrier spam and explode)
Cyclone/Lightning Wolf
Every other build just sucks. But right now I see TWO builds that >>! involve !<< wolf and 0 for bear, and most importantly: absolutely 0 for human form.
Both the builds you’ve mentioned are not werewolf builds, they’re both storm builds. Dire werewolf is used to counteract against mana regeneration which all of Druid struggle with, which is not because it’s a werewolf (stolen werebear) spell, but because people need sprit preservation
Didn’t play other classes yet but Druid build paths are really limited. The game isn’t matured yet. Game funnels you in to 2 paths.
1- Earth/Bear
This works great from when you first find shockwave aspect to WT4. And then it faces a single target damage problem. Instead of utilizing Overpower mechanic, Druid is forced to this Earth/Bear/Earthen Might/Grizzly buff path.
2- Wolf/Storm
In WT4 this shapes up to be the best and final form of Druid class with the unique drops.
Honorable mention: Earth mage + trampleslide aoe. This is more complete and better version of Pulverize build in my opinion. Landslide does massive damage single target or aoe. Trampleslide destroys screens.
There are unexplored build routes. Unexplored not by players but developers. I’m sure they will finish these builds in upcoming seasons but apparently it’s not ready at release.
These routes are in the game but they are surface level and can’t scale up in endgame. There is also Earthen Bulwark build which i think is not an intended build from developer perspective.
Imho, this one plays better without the werewolf gear. The base guide is good, but I’ve found far better damage output as a human using a regular 2hander with beefy affixes. I think we are still in the beginning stages of learning the best build variants.
Husband has played, or trying to, a pure werewolf druid. He agrees with most ideas here. Rabies should act like rabies, if infected mobs should go mad or berserk and attack other mobs with exception of bosses or elites, maybe they have some immunity. Why dont werewolves have a pounce option? Mobility sucks, barbs have leap, sorcs teleport, so why dont werewolves pounce in some way? Werebears have both tankiness and attack, so werewolves at the minimum should have tons more attack than bear in lieu of tankiness at least. Furthermore, melee werewolves could have bleed effects procing on attacks. Lastly, ffs, add more unique and aspect options for melee werewolves. Not everyone wants to be a caster and in our opinion a spellcasting werewolf is ridiculous.
They have Dash on Shred which works both amazing and terrible at same time. Honestly Rabies would be really good if it had 2 or 3 charges, better for spreading or stacking on single target.
Raging Shred also needs to be reviewed, with out dashes it just feels very awkward.
I would like to see the ability to combine damage types. Like lighting dmg on crit should actually add that dmg type to the skill. Opening up more interesting ways to build your char. Like the skill description says you deal lighting dmg but the dmg can’t proc lucky hits or proc other lighting dmg aspects that actually say they proc off of lighting dmg. What was intuitive to me on initial assumptions actually wasn’t the case which is disappointing. Not really able to play how I want to play which is part of the marketing of this game. MEME/Meta gaming is boring AF. And if all you are seeing in the endgame is Meta then they need to rethink/add aspects/balance to make the endgame much more diverse. There’s plenty of ways to make builds more diverse and interesting such as what I suggested. This game is about building your character and killing mobs with satisfaction. That’s why it’s fun. The builds. Meta ruins it and is a sign of stagnation.
right now there’s too much benefit for being in a bear or wolf form.
wolfs get DR from boots & have a 15% aspect DR (honestly this makes no sense, bears should get more DR and wolfs should get more attackspeed/movespeed)
Does anyone know if wolf builds get more DR than bear builds ?
humans only have 1 10% DR glyph.
In terms of survival, it make much more sense to pick a form.
I think it’d be really lame if everyone ran that build. Diversity in D4 made me quit playing.
It’s like the developer focused on wolf / storm exclusively. Earth builds have it the worst.
There should be competitive builds for each type:
-Pure earth
-Pure wolf
-Pure wind
-Pure lightning
-Earth wolf
-Earth bear
and so on…
That’s where my expectations are. It seems majority of players seem to be okay with 2 competitive builds per class. Everyone relying on the same items, affixes, cooldown breaking points, and paragon glyphs is really lame.
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