Playing the druid currently and wow there’s a lot to unpack here.
For starters, maintaining your form is very difficult, seems like if I hold shift and using werewolf swipe or bear swipe resets your form duration so you can start and stay in form which is great and all but holy cow it’s CLUNKY. With bear/werewolf having such huge benefits if you go that route while you STAY in form (a few passives only triggering if you are in form for 15+ seconds), there has to be a better way.
Honestly forms should last until you cast a non-shapeshift ability, that will switch you out of it and give you the lingering bonus if you have one.
Next is the durability. At least for werewolf it’s really lacking. Sure you have some minor “lifesteal” on shred, and howl to restore some health. (20% isn’t much when you get smacked a second later and it’s gone)
Bearform demoralizing roar (or whatever it is called lowers enemy damage by 50%), can we get a passive that’s a taunt for bear? Would be great for group play to have some kind of AOE taunt when I WANT everything to smack my face. Have been mashing through random open world events and everything chases after a necro or a sorc while I am chasing them trying to hit them so I can maintain my form. (At least werewolf has a dash attached to shred along with move speed)
Druid feels so much squishier than my sorc… and my sorc is doing 4-5x the damage FROM RANGE! She literally facetanks elites while they burn to death in her firewall.
And where are the spirits? We have birds, wolves and vines coming back but no group buff ball? If druids are supposed to be high group support, would be nice to have a summon to go with. (Would be nice to have a summon grizzly too)
6 Likes
Druid does feel a bit soft. I did find the Earthen Ward to be a nice boon in recovering and keeping health high.
Seems like you’ll want to put in more than one point in the beginning levels to chunk up the forms. Wearbear was pretty slow and not doing it for me, but in Werewolf with the added poison, lifesteal and Earth Ward, standing up much better to punishment.
Caster Druids are feel pretty weak right now, but I do want to try a few more builds to find something useful here.
Maybe you guys built your druids wrong my brother on his werebear is an absolute unit.
i love the druid i went werewolf form with all passives in maxed, i charge around the map slashing everything to bits. So fun, its almost like a sorc in power but only x10 times better! I went lighting stormstrike (max) and werewolf (max) and poison aoe
the 1 fight i had troubles with on my sorc, i shredded without even losing a single dot of life, kinda funny just crazy
I tried this and didn’t fair too well for me. Though I admit that I didn’t more than one point in each skill early only and was probably spreading too wide.
But now that I have quite a few points, it would be worth trying this one again.
i use some yellow 2hander club i found on my sorc last weekend, its crazy in power (probably why im OP) but i just swing the 2hander and the whole arc in front gets zappledabbled into particles and what every didnt die with that i xform into a werewolf and shred for clean up
Yea disappointed not to see more summoning abilities. I would say, though, that how squishy a character is just comes down to tuning as far as we know right now at lv 25. The game’s RNG, too, so perhaps the gear you have in testing your sorc and druid aren’t even? Lots of factors in that.
you can summon wolves or ravens however i didnt take that route, i went poison vines and its rather cool looking
Yea, but they seem to be supportive damage, not main sources of damage like D2’s druid somewhat was and later came to be. And no grizzly is definitely sad.
Wearbear definitely starts out slow, but I can see a monster through those skills. Tons of Fortitude and EZ Overpower on an AoE Core? I can believe “Absolute Unit”.
Yea he’s level 20 now and is just shredding with me.
There are uniques that change your “true form” so caster isn’t the base form you fall back to.
The main way Druids got tanky in closed beta was stacking several DR buffs you had to maintain. They could be very tanky that way, but it required a lot of items and effects together. Sorcs just have easier options early on.
Barbs can also be very tanking combining high fury regen mechanics with a unique amulet that makes you take damage from resources before health (and adding some DR buffs as well).
I just wrecked Butcher with SS Druid with little to no issue. Spec Earthen, dot em up and kite while pets kill him. EZ PZ. Druid is strong as heck, play better friend. I am currently level 19 on my druid and have not slowed down, except for my disconnect and 1 hour in queue.
The spirits are one of your class quests. Im not sure how they work, but they are in scosglen and as such are not available in the beta.
i have been finding werewolf druid an absolute beast. killed the den mother without much trouble. would like a permanent werewolf but since there is a unique that does that i believe then it’s so far great
Was going to make a similar post, and found this one.
This is a comparison to the D2 and WoW druids. The shapeshifting feels like a cosmetic feature and not a true class gameplay. The fact that you can learn any kind of skill (human/wolf/bear) at any time and have any kind of skill on your bar completely removes the shapeshifting fantasy/gameplay mindset. May as well call the very first tier skills “Melee attack 1, which also changes character graphics to wolf” and “Melee attack 2, which also changes character graphics to bear”, and similar for all other wolf/bear skills.
Being shapeshifted doesn’t seem to provide any unique bonuses, making me ask “why would I want to stay in the wolf/bear form?” I did see some passive bonuses that are provided only to a specific shareshift form, like a legendary helm with “damage reduced by X% while in wolf”, but it’s more along the lines of “oh, i get that bonus, okay cool” instead of “wolf always get some unique bonus - awesome, i like it, i’ll keep playing in wolf form”.
Recommending to review how druid works in D2 and WoW and bring it closer to that druid. I understand you (Blizzard) are probably trying something new, and it’s great you’re doing that, however the current D4 druid feels like a complete downgrade compared to D2 and WoW in terms of shareshifting fantasy and gameplay.
3 Likes
agreed. Got a headache from seeing the character shifting every 5 seconds. Like do i wanna be a werwolf or not?