Has anyone else noticed the other skills that are useless on Druids that no one uses?
And my other question is why is everything Physical damage on this character even most of the spells?
Earth Spike does barely any damage even though it is a faster cast time it’s only use is to build spirit.
Landslide doesn’t do anything useful at all, it tickles the enemy like it’s doing nothing, basically useless particularly because pulv does so much more for the cost it should be the ranged version of pulv but it takes 4 casts to finally stun? Seriously?
Tornados do alot of damage but don’t really have a use since they wonder around aimlessly we need spells that are targeted why can’t Tornados be more like the boss’s tornados that I keep seeing?
Boulder feels like I’m throwing a pebble sure it knocks them back but enemies have to be in a straight line, it’s as useless as wind shear.
The animation for Rabis is way too long and the amount of poison it spreads is weak compared to the creeper.
Grizzly Rage forces you to use all bear skills even the base skills change this is a problem because we don’t all run around using the bear basic skill Maul because it’s so incredibly slow it’s not really chosen most of the time.
I think you’re probably not using the abilities properly.
It’s true that earth spike and wind shear are largely useless, almost every druid build uses stormstrike for its basic skill because having a 50%+ chance every time you swing your weapon to apply vulnerable to groups of enemies is just too good by comparison. The other basics need a buff to that level of usefulness, but since the devs are anti-fun they’ll probably end up nerfing stormstrike instead.
Landslide isn’t used for the CC/stun. Pick up primal landslide, use vine creeper to immobilize enemies, and the aspect that causes your basic skills to give up to 30% more damage to your core skills. You wind up with a landslide that always crits, hits groups of enemies, and does a ton of damage. It goes up even more once you get the poison/range synergies from later skills.
I agree that tornado is difficult to use, you basically have to use it like a shotgun and be at point blank range to the target you’re trying to hit, but I hear it gets a lot better once you get the legendary that makes it seek out enemies. Personally I wish tornado would just stay in one spot, that’d make it far more useful.
Boulder is used in some leveling builds, and mostly useful for the 10 second cooldown and decent damage, but you have to be good at lining enemies up.
Rabies becomes better against packs that take longer to kill. It’s not there for the damage so much as the poison effect, which can spread quickly to large groups of enemies. Druid has a lot of passives that buff damage and critical chance against poisoned enemies, reduces their movement speed, reduces the damage they do… you have to get some synergy going.
Grizzly rage is used in stormwolf builds, but you need a couple legendaries to make it work properly (first and foremost, the ones that make it a werewolf instead of werebear, and make your storm skills count as werewolf skills).
Earth spike is used in pulverize builds, especially if you use the legendary that makes pulverize an Earth spell, which is great, because there’s a paragon board specifically for boosting Earth spells, including Landslide.
There’s also a Landslide build. A Tornado build. And a Poison Werewolf build.
I’m basically saying a lot of people use skills from your list…I agree with Grizzly Rage though. I don’t see that in a lot of the builds I’ve read about online.
Correction: the one skill I thought no one uses the person above pointed out they do.
Well because I mentioned how useless the companions were in another thread I guess I should have combined them.
I actually think this goes deeper than the druid class itself I’ve spend some time playing on both the Barbarian and the Necromancer and I’ve noticed that once again Blizzard doesn’t realize the importance of summons. The reason they are there is to take the agro off the player in order to allow the player to spend time dpsing rather than kiting the enemies. It’s like there’s a huge disconnect between the people who developed World of Warcraft and those who develop the other titles.
I’m definitely using them properly one of the biggest criticisms I have is there are three functioning builds and all of them require you to have at least one transformation ability. The Druid class seems like it was just thrown together last minute in order to launch the game.
Yes but there isn’t a pure caster/summons build which is why I and many others like me (DarthMicrotransaction) say the Druid is a horrible class right now and is mostly just a 1 trick pony. It really has no depth and part of the problem is the overall design of the summons which is also affecting the Ancestral summons of the Barbarians and the Summons of the Necromancers. It needs a huge update ASAP!
Great but have you seen how slow they spread especially Rabies?
Other than Vine’s individual attack that has a long cooldown and the up to 3 enemies swiped by the only skill that the wearwolf has to swipe with, there’s really not much to work with on a glass that is right up front in melee range of the enemies which means they either have to add a faster spread of poison or make it possible for our poison abilities to create puddles, or they will have to allow for DoTs to crit and burst.
And that’s another astonishing thing, why is it so much of what they’ve spent decades learning in World of Warcraft about combat such as DoTs HoTs not translate to Diablo IV when it’s the same company? Am I missing something here? Why are these departments not communicating about combat design?
Things missing from Diablo IV found in World of Warcraft:
all summons aggro to keep mobs off character
DoTs crit and can increase with damage bonuses during combat
Every Werewolf attack skill does poison either base or by upgrade
Creeper is large AoE Poison
So Order
Natural Rabies
Ferocious Poison Creeper
Fierce Claw
Raging Shred
Now add Pulverize with; Aspect of Channeling Debt do 150% of remaining poison damage
So all those poison stacks you just stacked up get multiplied by 1.5x
And since Pulverize is AoE and Creeper and Rabies is AoE you can do both large Single Target and AoE damage.
Uniques:
Hunter Zenith - Your Pulverize becomes free if a enemy killed by werewolf form
Mad Wolf Glee - Increase Poison Damage further
Show me builds that have a good use for Wind Shear, Claw, Tornado (without the chase enemies aspect), Landslide, wolves raven and rabies, Grizzly rage (which changes my skills to all bear skills whether I’ve chosen them or not especially that slow as hell Maul)
Grizzly Rage is literally the strongest ability Druids have. Its THE reason they’re top tier for high nightmare pushes…
Tornado is good with stormchasers just like Pulverize is good with shockwave… And both are pretty lackluster without and Landslide is literally half of Trampleslide
Except… its a 5 trick pony… it just doesn’t do the one-trick you want lol…
Which is why you use Vasily’s/Tempest to get around that
Grizzly Rage is used in Stormclaw and Hurricane Shred builds. Both need the aspect to make it werewolf to use. Stormclaw wants the CRIT damage buff (another aspect) and Hurricane Shred wants the Spirit Cost Reduction. Stormclaw is probably the #2 build for Druids in high NM Dungeons while Shred is 4th but is an absolutely crazy fast build for doing anything world related or sub-70 NM Dungeons.
Landslide has a build for the midgame that is literally built around it. Don’t know a ton on this build, hopefully others do.
As for Rabies… Stormclaw is messing with it a bit because the unique chase helm isn’t great for the build and Stormclaw is just now getting focus and going through iteration process.
grizzly rage dire wolf uses rabies in that form just to get damage reduction spreading fast in large packs. Albeit you don’t need to put points in it, it just gives it to you. Before you have 5 abilities that carry over to dire wolf anyways. Its also used by poison wolf.
I was trying to go with the unquestionably top builds. I actually run Poison Werewolf right now and I keep going back and forth on Trample and Rabies - another Poison ability vs. mobility
What makes it poison werewolf? Tornado wolf already applies pretty much constant poison already, so you stack damage reduction vs poisoned and grab envenom.
How does that work since it’s an earth skill? I wanted to make boulder work… it just doesnt