Grizzly Rage & Dire Wolf's Aspect & Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast

Druid
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TL:DR This combination should also allow for more build diversity, specifically for the build that it obviously had in mind upon creation (Werebear+Werewolf builds). Also, Bestial Rampage suffers from similar issues, and the whole Werebeast builds are left in the dust atm. Please do something about this.

I feel like this legendary was made with an incredible oversight. The flavor of the Aspect is to combine Werebear and Werewolf skills together, something this game is currently seriously lacking in terms of endgame viability (or meta). The issue is, however, that once you pop Grizzly Rage you no longer have access to any Werebear abilities, which honestly absolutely sucks. To add to this, the current powerhouse build for Werewolf, even after this last ā€œbuff patchā€ (which was honestly laughable considering the performance of the builds that dominate each class) is a Werewolf build that utilizes this specific Aspect to spam Tornado. So, basically a Legendary Aspect that was designed to be used by and buff Werewolf gameplay has simply been exploited to be used by a caster build instead.

Now, absolutely do NOT get me wrong. Iā€™m not throwing shade at the Tornado build, and I donā€™t want it nerfed. All Iā€™m saying is that clearly build diversity would increase, and specifically Werewbear/Werewolf builds would become viable if this Aspect was redesigned to ALSO allow Werebear abilities to be slotted on your bar when Grizzly Rage is active.

I honestly felt like the last patch was absolutely timid af with itā€™s buffs considering the power level of the current one (maybe two) builds each class has. Some builds can barely hit 100k dps, while these meta builds are breaking into the millions of dps. A little 10% here, or even 50% there in increase is just not even close to hitting the issue on the mark. The issue is things like these two specific Aspects and how they function together with Grizzly Rage, yet only allowing one single ability to reach itā€™s full, devastating potentialā€¦ thatā€™s not even a Were-ability.

I mean, obviously things named Grizzly Rage, Dire Wolfā€™s Aspect and Rampaging Werebeast do not call forth images of a furry caster running around raising his arms in the air and launching tornadoes. Am I wrong???

So, again, Iā€™m not saying to not allow a beautiful build like Wolfnado to exist, I love the diversity and idea of it. It needs to remain. But it is painfully obvious that the person that designed this synergy was imagining Were-wolf-bear rampaging and wrecking thingsā€¦ and thatā€™s just not even allowed to happen.

And as a last point, in regards to Werebear/Werewolf builds, itā€™s not only limited to this specific Aspect + Ultimate synergy. The issue also falls to the Key Passive, Bestial Rampage (notice the words Beast and Rampage againā€¦ themes are obvious, right?). This Key Passive just got a pretty big buff, all things considered. But itā€™s ABSOLUTELY useless if you canā€™t trigger the passive effectively. 1. Needing to be in the form for more than 2.5 seconds is actually and incredibly long time. 2. There is nothing to currently warrant even making a Werewolf/Werebear build, because even the Aspects that are supposed to work for it, actually work against it because the base functionality of Grizzly Rage doesnā€™t permit BOTH were skills on itā€™s barā€¦ yet it does permit caster spells via Unique Helmets.

It just, simplyā€¦ feels bad, man. Please, Blizzard, allow us to set up our bars how we want, or something. Itā€™s honestly pretty silly.

2 Likes
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Grizzly rage is so powerful it needs to limit what abilities you can use during it. Itā€™s one of the interesting parts of the ultimateā€™s design. Its not an ability aimed at dual-shape shift builds and thats okay.

Bestial Rampage is also something people over look a little bit too much because they think ā€œoh this is only for dual shapeshift buildsā€ Its actually very flexible for single shift builds as well. I for example use bestial rampage for my physical shred build. Its wonderful without the bear buff at all.

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Wonderful is an overstatement. But I have done so, back and forth, many times while building variations of my Shred build as well.

My post was less about Grizzly Rage, and more about the obvious intent of these Aspects. There can be very easy numeric calculations that can be added to these (or future) Aspects, like 20% less damage with X Skills, etc. Iā€™m not advocating for that change, Iā€™m just stating a very crude example that shows that your concerns of Grizzly Rageā€™s power being abused could very easily be avoided.

I mean, itā€™s not like we have any build currently that is absolutely, head and shoulders, above the rest of the builds that utilize Grizzly Rage, potentially decimating world bosses in seconā€¦ wait a minuteā€¦ <_<

All jokes aside, I hear you, but the point doesnā€™t matter. Balancing is a huge part of the devā€™s job. All Iā€™m asking for is that if Iā€™m following the trail of smoke, Iā€™d like to see the fire instead of the soot. You know?

Cheers for the response. =)

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Theyā€™re going to have to break this up at some point. Itā€™s currently hog-tying nearly the entire class. It has everything built-in and solves most problems when any build. It provides basically 100% uptime on unstoppable. That alone would be amazing but it doesnā€™t stop there. It give large damage buffs for both bears and wolves. Decent damage reduction for bears and near infinite resources for wolves (especially if you drop it on an amulet).

You canā€™t really buff other builds without inadvertently adding more power to the ones that are already at the top. Thereā€™s also simply nothing to replace it from a damage or utility standpoint. The other ultimates arenā€™t even close.

I really like the werenado build conceptually and thematically. I donā€™t want it to get nerfed. I just donā€™t see how you fix pure werewolf and provide a little more power to bear without having significant impacts to that build. That and they also need to spruce up human earth/storm casters. They need just as much help as wolf.

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I canā€™t agree more with you. I didnā€™t mean to forget about Human form, my original post just wasnā€™t talking directly about them. But they definitely need something going for them too. Itā€™s all about more build options.

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Grizzly rage seems to be a prerequisite skill for any shapeshifter build. As another poster above mentioned you have access to near permanent unstoppable and ramping critical numbers by combining the right passives and aspects together. The trade for this is you get locked into specific skills for that period of time but have access to legendary aspects that give you either earth or storm dependent on your form of choice.

As the OP mentioned however and as a pure shapeshifter myself that is half wolf and bear I canā€™t really run the ultimate in either form and there is no foreseeable combination of aspects and passives that come close to what Grizzly rage and itā€™s requisite aspects being to the table. If you choose to make a build without those things it still performs reasonably well, but at nowhere near the same level.

Bestial rampage passive is weird to me as well. Not sure why the extra .5 seconds. It becomes another buff to manage on my bar. Who has an internal clock that can measure 2.5 seconds? I mean I will likely make a correlation in my head at some point (as a musician 2.5 seconds would equate to 1 bar of music in 5/4 time at 120bpm.) I could just use a metronome click to train myself, but the average person is never going to put something like that together and try to play the game.

But I suppose all this wacky timer management makes it more difficult to create an optimized macro to play the game for you :man_shrugging:t2:

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Iā€™m a musician as well, and I do the same thing. =) I have a great sense of timing, one of my strong points as a musician, honestly (not trying to pat myself on the back, just stating how I can use this in everyday life; cooking, gaming, etcā€¦)

That being said, I donā€™t like managing Bestial Rampage, but not because of the timing. Itā€™s actually terrible because the pace of this game is so fast (especially at end game) that I donā€™t have time to just sit in one form or the other for that long. It messes up my ā€œrotationā€ of sorts, which honestly needs to be used on the fly and FAST. In other words, I need to freely move from Bear to Wolf when I need to do so, and I find that when Iā€™m using Bestial Rampage Iā€™m just standing around (wellā€¦ using abilities I donā€™t really want to) just to maintain that buff. It feels terrible, and extremely limiting.

When it comes to Bestial Rampage juxtaposed to the current state of other high end builds in the game I would much rather have the passive read something along the lines of, ā€œGain 25% Attack Speed when you shift into Werewolf. Gain 30% Increased Damage when you shift into Werebear. These buffs only last 5 seconds.ā€

Something like that, anyways. Because the issue would be how it can get exploited with other builds if the buff lasts too long. I think that was the devs thinking. Would make sense from a design perspective. And so they opted to forcing the player to remain in said form for 2.5 seconds to even activate the buff at all. Early game, it makes sense (sort of) but not for very long. Once youā€™re in the 40+ level range, and have access to many skills, and drastically more so at endgame 70+ and in NM dungeonsā€¦ this design philosophy just makes no sense.

Thanks for your comment and bringing that up. I wanted to talk more about it, but felt my original post was already getting long. I was planning on making a new thread about Bestial Rampage sometime in the near future.

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Iā€™m giving it a try for the first time today as I had been using the Natureā€™s Fury passive on this new build I am trying. Since my bread and butter skills were claw and pulverize and I use the uniques that change those to storm/earth skills I was getting plenty of procs.

The werewolf portion you can build outside of combat. What you have to be careful is that at some point during the 15 seconds you will have to shift and hold that form for the 2.5 seconds. The same will apply with your werebear conditions.

So what I have is a hybrid stormclaw and pulverize hybrid right now. Getting the wolf proc is simple enough with claw. I also have blood howl to help that along and also to restore spirit to help power my bear shifting. For the bear I have pulverize obviously and also debilitating roar. Iā€™m able to spam roar up to 5x single target if I need to however when fighting trash with spirit on kill plus my umbral ring I am almost always completely topped up and can spam it endlessly without relying on lucky hit to fill my spirit.

A single cast of any of those skills and nothing after will stay in its respective form long enough to trigger its passive effect. Iā€™m combat you donā€™t want to spam either form frantically but you do have 15 seconds to reset Aeschylus time independently. Or a max of 12 seconds out of one form before you have to work at resetting your condition again. Trash fights no worry at all, triple elite mobs you may have to shift in and out a couple of times depending how awful the mob sets up.

You are still giving up a ton of damage to be a fluid shapeshifter as opposed to a pure wolf or bear much of that due to dropping Grizzy rage. Ramping crit damage beats out flat damage by a mile. Thatā€™s just how the game works unfortunately. Crit is king, Vuln is Demigod, the two together is fully God mode. There is a reason why every build focuses there.

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If youā€™re looking at high-end builds druid really has two options, they need to put significant effort into earthen bulwark or significant effort into grizzly rage.

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I think for my build purposes I prefer Natures Fury passive over Bestial Rampage. Even though it relies on a 30% proc chance I still feel like it gives me more benefits while shifting Iā€™m between bear and wolf while also not having to micromanage a mini game with juggling ability timers.

Itā€™s a shame that there isnā€™t much you can bring to the table playing this way. Itā€™s certainly better than a pet build though. Lots of fun just no real power fantasy to be found.

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Have you tried them with the unique chest pieces? If you are going bear/wolf, try using the corresponding chest piece to the one you use less frequently. This would at least give you 12.5-15 seconds to start each fight in the opposite form.

I switch between this and lupine ferocity for my shred/crit wolf build (while using Mad Wolfā€™s Glee), just for the 25% attack speed boost. Everyone loves the ā€˜big numbersā€™ but attack speed is every bit as good as vulnerable and crit for DPS, but without the pre-requisites, as long as the spirit drain isnā€™t an issue.

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For sure my issue with the damage is trying to get more things into the build, while good in theory a very fun to play, the damage falls off. And because Iā€™m not using the ultimate I die to frozen enchants and frost walls way too often.

For the Bestial Rampage key passive I could physically see the difference in attack speed when it ramped up, but could not really see the damage numbers move at all certainly not by 30% as indicated in the tooltip. That 30% doesnā€™t feel as impactful as the same 30% boost I was getting from Ursine strength on my previous build.

So far I am 2 for 2 on OKish custom made builds. Both serviceable, both viable, but wonā€™t be able to push high level NM dungeons or get an Uber Lilith kill.

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Yeahā€¦ the only option is to take Earthen Bulwark and Natureā€™s Fury and the Aspect that lowers cooldown times when it procs, as well as the aspect that makes werebear and werewolf skills function with Natureā€™s Fury. That way you have permanent uptime on Bulwark.

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Donā€™t underestimate the multipliers gained by taking all passive nodes like: Defiance, Natural Disaster, Resonance, Quickshift

Because the grizzly rage /+ dire wolf locks you out of certain nodes when you take cliche Earthen Might or Lupine Ferocity, there is often a whole bunch of other damage multipliers and utility at play with Natureā€™s Fury.

We were very conditioned and hold too much stock in the early tier lists, video guides that have come out endorsing those builds. While they are amazing at explaining mechanics and helping the community get started, you can absolutely crush NMs without Grizzly Rage or Tornado, just donā€™t fall into the Companions trap.

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Those passives you mention are part of my build, itā€™s definitely missing something still. It could be gear related because the be taken quite a few of the more generic stat boosts opting for flat crit chance instead of conditional versions of those same thing like crit chance with or crit chance vs. I intentionally took this kind of gear to be more fluid and explore other build options.

Strangely it worked super well when I was running my pet build and part of that was my weapon which had some ridiculous roll like 63% crit damage. I also had an amulet with +3 to envenom passive which took me to a total of 60% crit damage bs poisoned. I could drop pulverize after creeper and with my shepherds passive from running all of the pets plus the stampede aspect it was boosting my core skills by another 96%. I just donā€™t have that kind of power in my shapeshifter build.

I do deliver damage significantly faster in most cases and donā€™t have to rely as much on funnelling, kiting and herding enemies into a kill zone. The clear speed is slightly faster in the early NM40ā€™s on the new build but that seems to be more a testament to mobility than anything moving between the enemy mobs.

When pulverize procs a lightning storm or a couple of tornadoes with natureā€™s fury it has more of a power fantasy than my pets for sure. Being able to take out non elites with 2-3 swipes of claw is nice as well, but thatā€™s at the expense of my pulverize lacking any real punch even with those passives and the meta earth passives behind it.

Some of that may be paragon as well and Iā€™m in the process of replanning my boards now to take more advantage of my WW skills since there isnā€™t any specific boards/glyphs to power them up at the moment. Thankfully Iā€™ve got enough gold to repeat this exercise a dozen times!

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Try Earthen Bulwark with Natureā€™s Fury. I got 75 Million Damage Crits. No Grizzly Rage.

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Frost wall and Frozen enchanted elites are a major issue for sure. My best way of getting around them is to bait the ice wall (seems that it hits you if you go right at the elite but you can move around), use a wolf companion to tank the ice wall first and invest in unrestrained (27% reduction to control impairing effects is huge). Paragon points can help a bit too - but cold enchanted still seem a bit OP.

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For companion build, Aspect of the Stampede will push that 96% up to 144% FWIW.

I find Aspect of Retaliation (up to 80%x on a 2h) can be quite good for core skills as long as you have some form of fortify generation.

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You have to put that on a 2H. I was running pulverize with my pets and the shockwave aspect had a bigger impact there at 200% as opposed to the amulet at 150%.

Iā€™m also still not convinced itā€™s a 9x multiplier, what you see is 9, but what your read is 8 and there is no way to check in your stats what kind of boost you are getting. Murky tooltips and hidden damage multipliers. How are we supposed to plan anything properly?

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Makes sense if youā€™re going Pulverize. Iā€™m Shred w/o the poison (which has been nerfed).

Pretty sure itā€™s 9x. 8x only make sense if youā€™re going by the vine creeper description (which doesnā€™t change) but there are clearly 2 vine creepers. But hard to tell because itā€™s secret - which I believe is because is multiplies from itā€™s own bucket. The aspect ā€˜xā€™ multipliers seem to have their own rules in many cases.