The Spirits Suck

Druid
1

Everyone knows the problems with Druids from the Beta. But one thing that wasn’t available then was the class quest. I just finished it, and its quite the huge slog compared to Sorc, Rogue, and Necro. And the worst part is its actually not done.

Those Spirit Offering Orbs that drop, I assumed you just needed maybe a few dozen to turn in for the quest, but no. You’ll need to collect 1,150 of them at the end of the day. When I reached this point after hours of play time, I had about 250.

But what do they do?! Well, you turn them in in exchange for some crappy static buffs. There are 4 Spirits, each with 4 tiers of Passive Buffs to unlock (Think of it like a Battle Pass!) and each tier costs more Offerings to unlock. 250 to be exact. Except for the Snake, the Snake requires 400, but in a goofy plot twist you aren’t allowed to see what buffs the Snake gives “because the Snake distrusts humans” -.t Blizzard. TL;DR most of them are pretty darn weak and completely unimaginative. Big disappointment.

So here are the game changing buffs you get from the other 3 that will surely make the Druid on par with the other classes in the game. You can only Bond with 1 Spirit, until you fully unlock all the buffs, at which point you can select 2 Spirits.

Eagle: 5% Crit Chance, 10% Max HP, 10% Atk Speed, 30% Crit Dmg

Deer: 40 thorns, 10 Spirit, 10% Reduced Dmg from Elites, Reduce CC by 15%

Wolf: Unsure due to the wording where the buffs are listed as Lucky Hits, that trigger on Crits. So do they proc off of Crits, or Lucky Hits that are Crits? DUNNO! But it gets better, as they are all worded with the line “up to a X% chance” How do you know what that chance really is then? YOU DON’T. AMAZING!
You get— An X% chance to reset Companion CDs, An X% chance to restore 10 spirit, 10% Fortify when you use a Defensive CD, and Extend Ultimate duration by 25%

Snake: DUNNO! HAVE FUN!

Oh wow, I was wrong. Just dumped all my points, and found out you don’t actually unlock all the Boons for 1 Spirit of your choice. Instead you unlock 1 of 4 Boons from that Spirit. And once you unlock everything you can choose a 2nd.

So in the end, you’ll wind up with 2 Boons from each Spirit. Which makes most of the lower tier ones completely pointless filler because why would anyone pick +10 Spirit etc? Come on Blizzard you can do better.

2

Lots of false information here.

First the snake only costs 100, not 400
Second it costs 400 offering orbs to unlock all 4 branchs.
Third you get to choose a passive from each tree to be active. and you are able to bond with one of the 4 spirits to take two passives.

So in total you get 5 passives for free. Not really that bad IMO.

10 Likes
3

I was just about to post this same info.

What OP wrote here is full of bad information and just seem to be rage dumping.

That said, the boons don’t provide the “kick” that other class quests seem to give. Looking at sorc/rogue here, but mostly sorc. I’m quite disappointed with them so far to be fair though.

The quest that you get at 15 you really need to do at 20 because it requires you to unlock a stronghold that is level 21.

Some things I took away from the boon system:

  1. I strongly recommend unlocking wolf first for the % chance to get 10 spirit on dealing damage. From what I can tell this procs from any damage source. It helped me significantly with being spirit starved. Once I got more crit chance I bonded with this one and picked pack leader because poison creeper is really strong (wolf companions are still not in a good place)

  2. Scythe talons is a no brainer. A free 5% crit.

  3. Snake, while it takes 100 to unlock it does the entire line rather than just unlocking the ability to unlock boons. Masochistic is the one I went with.

  4. Deer - 10% less damage taken from elites is nice, but still kind of meh.

Overall - I feel like these boons don’t match up with the effort it takes to unlock them and could use a buff, imho.

1 Like
4

Not really. And certainly not the part about these Spirit Passives sucking. Have you even looked at what the other Classes get? Spirit Bonding is a bad joke.

5

I did the Tur Dulra lengthy quest, and unlocked about 60% of the boons. I tried to go back to Tur Dulra but the waypoint is gone. I ran all the way back to find it was trying to have me do the ENTIRE QUESTLINE again. Anyone else experienced this? Rather annoyed. Cant find any information on this and no one in game seems to know.

6

Yeah, i don’t see what the devs talk about the mechanic making up a lot for the druid. Its pretty meh. I already knew it was going to be meh after reading what it did and the passives it gave. And still feel the same after use.

I like the sorc mechanic way way more, but it is what it is i guess.

1 Like
7

To update: I left the party I was in, logged out, logged in, and now its back to how it should be.

8

Is it the best class mechanic out there?
Hell bo, its unimaginative and boring AF.

Does it offers really nice benefits?
Yes it does.

TBH, i think best mechanic has sorc, followed by necro.

9

LOL’ed so much.

U call it bad even not playing the late game. With pulv-earth build having a snake is SO STROOONG! All ur AOE is nearly non-stop Overpower cause legendaries transfer Pulv top earth and with a nice lucky hit Grizzly ultimate is on 20-30 seconds CD. On top of that having a Crit chance of 5% and a lucky hit restore 10 spirit. pfff. dude play late game druid after talk.

Just another cry thread with 0 understanding how synergy works.

go cry somewhere else

1 Like
10

Packleader is definitely garbage, because it’s way too random to really make a build around. I switched to Terramote Landslide just to get more crits and it still doesn’t proc often enough to make it a significant benefit for my Companion buil.d It’s not the skill I wanted to use either, but oh well, why allow people to make synergistic builds with everything when you can pigeonhole them.

I really hope they change Packleader to something that’s on kill or on damage or something reliable with a smaller effect instead of this dumb “Win the lottery, get 3 cooldowns reset” thing.

11

Pack Leader is definitely underwhelming at best. It’s a % chance of a % chance meaning if your crit chance is low you will see virtually no benefit from taking this boon.

If you had a 50% crit chance that’s roughly 1 out of every 10 attacks that would reset your animal companion skills. Crit chance of around 25% would be 1 out of 40 attacks to rest the skills. 20% crit chance would reset the cooldown every 50 attacks.

Not damage ticks, actual attacks because damage over time effects are static and cannot crit.

12

Take the core passive for 100% crits then stack lucky hit and you can reset companion abilities reliably but it still falls short for nightmare

13

You don’t need to play the late game to know its weak. 5% will always be 5%. Your argument is silly “listen bro that 5% is gonna be so much stronger once you have 75% crit from gear and paragon LOLOLOL L2P!”. Packleader is the only one that will obviously get better, but thats because its locked behind a pretty steep requirement of needing to first get a Lucky Hit, then have it also Crit, and THEN you roll the dice for the UP TO 20% chance to proc it. And honestly that just sounds like bad, old school Enhancement Shaman RNG DPS.

14

Packleader should just be “On crit reduce the cooldown of companion skills by 0.5 seconds” or something like that. That would create a nice smooth interplay between using companions and using other skills, instead of this weird all or nothing thing where there is a very small chance of a huge payoff.

15

Pack leader works good with wolf you get free crits with passive and the ultimate together give you 3 crits even if you have no crit chance so just stack lucky hit it adds to the base of the skill which starts at 20 so you can get to 50% and have every other crit reset skills but maybe it’s my gear but I don’t think so I take much longer in nightmare compared to my necro who has arguably worse gear Druid just needs flat dmg buffs at least it should be obvious dmg between werewolf and bear instead if you play wolf your just gimping your tankyness to play a dif skin type it’s the same speed for clearing

16

Necros get to waste a slot on their bar on an extra minion that cant do damage.

So, you get another minion to sack in book of the dead.

17

The quest is okay. I was finished with Spirit Bonding at Level 30.
The whole System on the other hand, very boring and uninspired. Only passive buffs who are for the most part so small they wont change your playstyle at all.

18

My main issue with the spirits is that 90% of them feel like placeholders. Put in last minute to fill a spot before launch.

There are only 2 or 3 of them that are creative and actually feel unique to gameplay (like resetting your companion cooldowns on hit). The rest are just down right boring, low effort passive bonuses that took zero creative time to add.

Blizzard needs to do better. Blizzard can do better.

And yes, during the beta it was said “Druids feel bad because they cant unlock the spirit bonuses”… Guess what, these spirits dont make the druid feel any better. The only thing that seems to make people feel better about their druid is getting the right unique items to equip. And that is just bad design all around, especially when there are other classes that dont suffer from this.

A class should feel fun and enjoyable with basic items. And with good items (especially BiS), a class should feel amazing. Druid feels awful with basic items, feels like work with moderate items, and feels “good” with amazing items.

Its clearly not a finished class.

1 Like
19

You actually only get one boon from each spirit, with two from the one you bonded with for a total of 5. None of them bring you up to par with other classes though.

20

I wish our spirit boons allow us to modify our abilities by ether giving them new effects, different nature magic forms (aka nature, earth, storm), and or different interactions between our abilities and animal forms.

That way we don’t waste our armors on trying to achieve this and leave more room for creativity and innovation.