Played sorc, rogue and necro so far. These classes are way more fun and their skills, damage feel satisfying.
The druids skills feel sad and weak. Tried the light storm which seems decent for damage but the animation feels weak, have you seen the sorc blizzard it looks amazing.
My fav skill is trample, feel like a powerful charge with a bear form but within 2 sec it’s over. Make sure skills like this for the druid they need movement speed abilities. Rabies felt alright but the animation barely shows it moves from one monster to another.
Idk why anyone would play druid in d4.
The d2 druid had more impacting skills than the d4 version. Also what’s with the sound effects? Werewolf? Werebear they are terrifying creatures not some zerlings. Their sound effects needed to be improved.
Most disappointing were the companions, the poison creeper is probably the best in terms of damage and animation, but the wolves against look and are weak in their damage.
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Druid is an acquired taste when it comes to class choice in D4. It takes time to bring any solid build up to speed because many are unique and aspect dependant. The movement speed and attack speed are very slow from the start and resource/cooldown management is something that you also need to build for. Until around level 50 the class often feels exactly how it looks. Heavy and slow.
That is until you start cobbling together the right combination of aspects, gear and a couple paragon glyphs. That lightning storm build really feels strong when you get the new unique gloves along with lightning dancers and overcharged aspects and it starts to surpass sorc lightning builds.
My only issues with Druid are the initial levelling speed from 1-50 and the reliance on lucky hit late game for sustain.
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Druid is a class with a smattering of “Fun” skills and then alot that falls flat, sadly.
Like, for example, werewolf’s shred feels good, but most other werewolf skills are a mess. Rabies feels pointless (Shred werewolf doesn’t really benefit from stacking multiple poisons on a target anymore, you just use poison to buff up shred’s basic damage), blood howl isn’t a good defensive skill but is instead used for its secondary damage buff aspects (Spirit, increased attack speed, ect.), and lacerate is just TERRIBLE (The hits should be small line aoe’s). And claw doesn’t synergize with werewolf builds either, because stacking multiple poisons (As stated before) doesn’t really work with WW’s and the other skills provide actual tangible benefits like stormstrike’s defense.
Summons are basically reliant on a single OP crutch (Shepard’s aspect), where you don’t actually CARE about the summons, they’re just there to try and squeeze as much of a % buff to yourself as possible. Blizz is very allergic to traditional summoners, hence summons are window dressing disguising that most of their power is put into their active, not the actual summons.
So summoner druid isn’t really a summoner so much as “Let me cheese out as many as possible so I can get +200% core damage!”.
This leaves Druid with basically just a couple builds likes Pulverize werebear, lightning storm, Tornado and shred.
The problem’s lie inherently in alot of D4’s core design though, so I don’t see things really changing until an expac.
So for druid just pick one of the handful of builds that “Work” and focus on those, and if you don’t want to do those, roll another class. (not saying “don’t like it, leave”, I meant that its basically the state of things)
I think your post makes sense. I try to play a different class each season by the time I play s4 I’ll try rogue or barb. That way I am somewhat trying new things in the game…
Not giving up on druid by any means but from.the classes I have tried so far this one seems the weakest at least at the start and the fun factor is really not there. Perhaps I must put the blame on season 3.
I have tried many builds so far only ones I am missing are tornado and shred.
I really enjoyed sorc and necro I made two necromancers both to 100 in softcore and hardcore season 2.
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The issue with both Necro and Druid summons are what you have to sacrifice in order to give them any real power. In the case of the Druid you are at least loading up on your own power but it both weaker and less durable than making the same build without the pets.
To make shepherds aspect work you have to give up 2 of the essential survival skills in this game. Blood howl is almost necessary for passive resource generation, though with the construct you may be able to drop it when resource support is maxed out. Bulwark is essential in many builds as a source of unstoppable though many builds go with trample for this instead. The final and most essential skill for survival is hurricane with its 20% DR.
I’m running a pet lightning storm build this season and using the pets to power up the build. With 6 skills total, half are dedicated to pets. I still need a generator and my core skill which leaves 1 utility slot currently filled by blood howl. I’m hoping to get enough resource support when maxed out to drop the generator and blood howl in order to slot bulwark and hurricane. But that’s at maxed construct which will happen likely after level 100.
First time playing druid this season, level 54 pulverize build…
Only at level 40± I started to wnjoy it… And also now I am still struggling a little with resource management.
Druid is a late bloomer. Only at 80± I believe it shines as it should.
Also, I tried companions build, and changed back after an hour… A waste of time.
Druid is an EXTREMELY backloaded class. All of their power and cool things are tied to paragon boards, uniques, and item only aspects that won’t drop until WT3 at the earliest. If you can make the slog through the first 50 levels, you are definitely rewarded.
Doing a nature’s fury druid this season, and teammates keep complaining that I’m killing mobs before they can do anything. And I’m ten levels lower than them. 
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Absolutely- druids are a slog until the early to mid 80s.
I played Pulverize in S2, and it really didn’t get fun until the end. But with good gear it is fun at 100. Big angry bear smash everything!
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If your playing something unfun for 80 levels then it gets fun then why bother with druid.
Just lost a 49 HC druid. I don’t know if I have it in to rinse and repeat. Druid leveling feels like a slough watching other classes breeze through. Also druid feels like the most squishy class with, all defensives on large cool downs.
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the druid is fine it just takes more time to get him to the point where you want him, and do your research for what stats are important and what stat is not depending on what spec you are running it matters for a druid.
Lightning storm werewolf is a challenge to get set up properly. But once it is, it is like a 75% ball lightning sorc (pre nerf) that melts everything on and just off the screen.
Problem is you need TR for druid to start feeling as good as other classes.
Most will quit Druid well before getting this item.
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I plugged TR into my current lightning storm rabies setup last night and was not really impressed to be honest. Everything still died instantly, but the overall damage output seemed lower, at least to my eyes at 2:30 in the morning.
Worth noting, the helm dropped during a tech farm. I’ve also got the new gloves and Flickerstep boots from tech farming. They aren’t the same 925 drops you will get from under bosses, but they work fine until you get into that loop.
But for sure the jury is still out for me regarding tempest roar. Will probably do better once I add grizzly rage to the build, but that requires 2 more aspect slots that I don’t have at the moment.
Dont think I’ll touch Druid again until they rework how some of its aspects work, its now become a meta 3 pet build to maximize Stampede + Shepherds aspect for 200% multiplier, no matter what build you want to go. Just doesnt appeal to me at all.
Rabies has some promise now with the new aspect that reduces its cooldown. It lacks a bit of potency still. There is a neat interaction if you pair this with pulverize, shockwave and changelings debt aspects where you can apply rabies while walking through a couple packs of enemies with its fast cooldown reset then spin around and send a pulverize to instantly delete them.
You could likewise run something similar with rabies, pain gorger and stowmclaw gathering enemies while spreading rabies and executing them with a claw once marked.
I’ve been a fan of rabies since preseason but its damage is still lackluster. I’m sure chan. debt still works good to clear content but want more builds to be all rounders with bossing and not having to rely on Shepherds. I’ll probably just hold off to see what s4 brings.
I don’t know if its the aspects as much as it is game difficulty. When you can kill everything before they can even touch you, might as well go all offense with build. No need for much utility/defensive on the skill bar. At a certain point in AoZ last season, it became to squishy to run pets.
I like my druid in this game. My first character. I started as a werebear druid. But after i got in helltide i mostly loot werewolf items. (Its weird because when you choose a board to make a specific build, so you choose a direction) and so it was werebear focussed.
From start i am using wolves until i discovered landslide ability’s.
An item that does landslide a second time with a bonus in damage + poison creeper and trampende that does landslide. Its fun to see and hear that the landslide go 4 times.
But i got some problems with treasure goblin. But i got a weapon that makes boulder a core skill with 240% damage. I really like this. Its fun how a bear throws big stones at enemy’s while they also got knocked back a few times. I hope i will loot a lvl 70+ version of it with a lucky hit buff. I combined this skill with a helm equipment that makes earth skills a werebear skill. So that it stays in werebear form when throwing rocks.
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I am going to weigh in here for the sake of anyone considering a druid in S3. I started one the other day and I’m having a ball (lightning storm version). He’s tanky as hell and does a ton of damage. I’m also leveling very quickly. Don’t let the negative comments dissuade you there is nothing at all wrong with the druid this season.
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There was never anything wrong with Druid from the beginning except it was slow to level and some unique drop rates were pretty bad. Its had the most diversity and most transformative builds this whole time. Only a few overly sensationalized builds can compete with the class.
As for barbarian, it was kind of awful and got beat to hell with the nerf hammer. They deserve a couple seasons to shine before being taken back to the woodshed again. Just fair warning here that Blizzard might do this the wrong way and also drag Druid down with it. (Overpower)