The way the aspects, uniques, and skill tree try to promote synergy between skills doesnt seem to be all that effective. A lot of them require you to kill/cast opposing skills to get the buff or otherwise given effect but it doestn really work out. The main damage dealers are obviuosly meant to be the core skills but resource generation is terrible without help from hard to find specfic aspects(assuming you even get a good roll). You can barely cast a single core skill more than thrice without spending 5 minutes basic attacking to do it again, mush less run 2 of them to get that synergy. The rest of the skills dont have spirit costs but have cooldown that are way too long to take advantage of these effects. Non-core skills dont really bring much to the table either unless buffed by an item(which only a few even get support for).
The base skills dont feel good to use and nothing outside of Pulverize really feels like a build because casting twice and auto attacking isnt a build. I know other skills do get some buffs like trample and earthen bulwark but thats why they are the skills that get picked. Most every item ive picked up that tries to force synergy(uniques included) just feels like a loss because the skills by themselves dont feel like they work together in the first place and the items/skills arent fixing that, they are trying to rely on a synergy that doesnt already exist.
Of the items that change the type of skills the only ones that seem to matter are the helemt that makes Storm skills into werewolf skills and pulverize into an earth skill. In those cases the changed skills gain access to buff they otherwise wouldnt. What the heck does making earth skills into werebear skills do for me, im already playing the best skill for that crossover, pulverize.
I almost forgot about the ring that gives storm skill access to Eathern might, that does feel good, but still doesnt work better than pulverize gaining that ability. Just wondering if anyone else feels this way.
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Please use paragraphs. This wall of text made my eyes catch on fire.
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Does that make it better?
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Thank you. Makes it much easier to read. I agree that the builders feel gross to use
I’ve had to build for my resource generation (pun intended) in order to make my build work. I put 3 points in the abundance passive and also 3 points in clarity when transforming into human form. I use storm strike as my builder which transforms me back to human. I also took some cost reduction affixes on gear and have some paragon nodes to get the cost down further plus generate 3 spirit per kill.
I will have to double check the math, but between my reduction and spirit per kill I think when I kill 8 enemies with a single case of pulverize the skill is essentially free at this point. With full spirit I can drop it 5x in a row and it take around 5-6 basic attacks to completely refill the meter again.
Starting out however it’s tough to manage for sure. The abundance passive I mentioned is pretty much a must have early game or else you will be attacking endlessly for 1 or 2 casts of your main skill.
Resource generation is terrible, we agree, but its more of a tangent in this post. My main point here is that there are a lot of skills that promote using various types of skills in conjunction with each other despite the basic synergy not existing. I would love to get a bonus for switching between wolf and bear skills but it just doesnt feel doable
I completely agree here. Build diversity for druids feels awful. I started the game alternating Stormstrike (usually 2) and Pulverize and just tried my best to maintain as many synergies as I could. Sometimes I feel like I’m spending forever on bosses where my friends using Net-builds trash the bosses in no time with glass-cannon builds. When I look up what’s working for other druids, they’re without a doubt ALWAYS using Grizzly Rage which means staying in a single form as often as possible for the insane buffs it and it’s aspects give. Really ruins the build diversity to have so little suport for other ways to play…(especially ways that are pushed by half the passives).
Theres a lot i like about the druid but out of all the abilities i would probably complain about builders the most. They just do not feel fun or impactful to use. No feeling of weight or power to them. They just FEEL like tickles while building minimum spirit.
Resource generation is rough early on but gets infinitely better with spirit boons, items, and paragon points.
I think I have three different lucky hit procs that generate spirit. And there is always the option of running two resource gen rings.
Promoting synergy between things is antithetical to PoE (which D4 is a version of). They sorta mixed PoE with some elements of WOW which is great except the forced (promoted) synergy is more the cookie cutter which is exactly the opposite of what PoE did best. They just need to get to 1-2 years in when they’ll add other mechanics like gems that alter how abilities work and then the potential synergies and room for creativity will grow exponentially. Which is also very hard to balance, which is why PoE and D4 (and others like D3) should have always had a dynamic ability scaling that changes in real time to reflect success and failure / popularly and rarity, of each ability and passive etc. An AI could easily be implemented to have perpetual balance.
LOL….D4 is very much not a version of PoE. Unless, by that you mean to say, PoE is an ARPG and so is D4 — in which case PoE is a version of Diablo + Diablo 2…which basically created the genre.
PoE mechanics are very very dissimilar to D4 - though there are a few things that have gotten sniped, as happens in ALL game development. If anything Diablo 4 is closer to Diablo 2 than anything…and that came way way before PoE.
The entire nightmare system is taken evidently from PoE. Thought the leveling progression feels more like D2 mixed with WoW. There’s certainly a little from column A, B and C.