An open letter to Blizzard/Netease concerning the new Druid class in Diablo Immortal
Dear Blizzard/Netease,
As a fan of casters (my main character is a Wizard and my primary alternate is a Necromancer), I really wanted to like the Druid class. Unfortunately, so far my impression is that this class is currently operating as more of a marketing stunt than a viable class. That is in both the player vs enemy (PvE) and player vs player (PvP) aspects of the game. Let me summarize the aspects of the class that really disappointed me:
- Damage is fundamentally broken and too low in PvE and PvP. Clear examples of this: my alt has a combat rating that is 1.5k above the last inferno 6 Helliquery boss (48.5 k vs 47k). A boss he can beat easily solo as a summoner or attack necromancer. Despite having a complete set of essences for Werewolf and complete set items (2 Skybreaker for dot, 4 Vithu for buffs and attack speed, and 2 Shepard’s burden to give his bear summons a damage boost), he cannot come close to doing enough damage to beat this boss before he becomes enraged. This is absurd, as he can also beat the first two bosses in Inferno 7 no issue. In PvP my Necromancer alt tops out at 1.5 M - 2M dps with viable builds he can survive reasonably well with. The only viable build I have been able to come up with for him as Druid is a caster build doing 0.6M Dps or 3-4x less damage. If he’s lucky, he will get 1-2 kills in battleground at the most with players near his resonance and secondaries. If high powered whale players show up or the matchmaking is totally imbalanced (happens constantly) he will still die a lot and be one one or two shotted even with all the defensive skills possible in place (thorn armor, damage and cc reduction oaks, and the earthquake shield).
- Damage reductions and defense for transformations are way too low. When the golem buff came out for Necromancer the damage reduction was 50% (unable to leave a good thing alone of course you guys nerfed it to 40%, basically removing the 10%-20% in defensive legendary gem bonuses and affixes I had to add to make golum viable). The werewolf has zero damage reduction at all and of course dies easily. The bear is only slightly better at a 3% per transformation. I can say as a member of a high ranking dark clan this is a joke. You would need to do 10 transformations in a match to get a 30% benefit. That is still only 75% of current damage reduction of the golum transformation which most Necromancer pvp players abandoned after it was nerfed. These transformations could be viable in pvp with at least a 50% damage reduction and even improve on golum with at least 75% higher damage. I see them as a missed opportunity. The concept of being a werewolf or werebear is fun, but the current execution is quite poor and a missed opportunity so far.
- The earthquake maelstrom spell is probably the only spell that causes other players any trouble, but it is very weak right now. Petrification lasts only 2 seconds when wizards and the everwinter set have freezes that last 2.4-3 seconds. Strangest of all though is that the description says it protects allied summons and not other players! It’s like the devs deliberately wanted Druid to have zero PvP capability.
- The battleground matchmaking appears to be broken (confused?) for my alt as a Druid with low-mid tier stats (about 2800 resonance and 4k secondaries). He has been in 25 or so matches since he became a Druid and lost at least 20. That is a 20% win rate. His improved support build seems to have zero impact on the outcome and his teams mostly get destroyed with zero chance of winning. Absurd.
So there you have it. My alt is going to ditch the Druid class and probably not return until it is fundamentally fixed. Will you fix it? I hope so, because it was a fun idea.
4 Likes
1 question. What is your essence mastery at?
My damage is decent but I find the lack of essence choices the main hinderance. Plus no two classes with have the exact same output with different skills and effects.
My essence mastery is poor. I decided not to hang around when I did at least 33% less damage to an easy Helliquery boss in PvE with a fully built out set of essences mostly doing damage. No amount of mastery seems available to fix that. The vast majority of essence choices are for transformations, which need a ton of work I think. The healing/health skills also don’t really work very well and probably need a buff to be helpful at all.
That’s usually why most give up. The mastery grind is tough. Took me 200 mystery legos to get it. Get decent damage similar to my barb
I know Barbs that do 6-7M sustained Dps on the dummies at 3k in a PvE build. Are you really doing that with a Druid? Because I’m starting at maybe 1M sustained. And that’s generous.
I don’t get up that high being f2p so gems aren’t fully optimized but the real difference I noticed is with Barb I use a tear and bleed build so there is a lot more output per second which the Druid lacks. Just because you change class doesn’t mean output will be the same.
Right but 33% less than a Necro right of the bat? Necro isn’t even a high damage class. Tbh I’d live with the lower PvE damage if the PvP options and survivability were ok, but right now they are a joke. My 4k wiz eats Druids in bg all day, and I know at least some of them are decent players with good stats.
Yeah cuz the essence selection is trash lol.
Thank you, and everybody else that has shared their thoughts on the Druid. I totally get where you’re coming from, and while I can’t share any details yet, balance talks have started up about the Druid.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that anything will necessarily happen, or what you’re particularly raising will be addressed (and I hope you get that I’m being non-committal because I can’t promise anything), but we’re looking at the data, taking your feedback, and will be making decisions based on both of those.
11 Likes
I like it and understand the mechanics well enough.
I must admit I was a little surprised after the Blood Knight and Tempest releases, that it was not more overpowered on its release like they were, even at its lowest…
2 Likes
Druid is different and I’ve played every class. It takes time to understand abilities. I have zero complaints so far. I do hope it gets stronger eventually. I’m surprised at paragon 934 in i7 difficulty the difference in power compared to what my wizard was. But I won’t switch back because I’m enjoying the play style change
3 Likes
I like the class. It has really great potential. There just aren’t enough essences for the versatility of the skills or enough power to overcome the lack of essence diversity.
2 Likes
So I looked at this last night. Wizard has 30 helm essences, guessing all the og are similar. Blood knight/ tempest just under 20 but slightly different totals. Druid has 10
I understand that new classes don’t have the update history with new essences being added but most especially with the double weapon slots. It’s a constant failure of either useless as we can’t stack them or obvious skills are missed.
1 Like
Necro not a high dmg class?? Okay… Not saying Druid is the best class everyone has ever seen, but it’s pretty okay. I’ve seen some wild pve builds for the few days the class has been running around.
A once great man said…A bear always need more toilet paper to wipe…
More ess needed
1 Like
Anybody getting more than 2-3M Dps in dungeons at ~3k Resonance on a Necro? From what I’ve observed this is not particularly high vs. other classes which do 5-10 M sustained at similar resonance. This is recent too. Before that my alt was like ~1.5M. The Druid is maybe 1M. I think the clincher for me is that he did 700k Dps vs. the last i6 boss (Doesbrae) at 1500 CR OVER the requirement, which was not close to enough to beat the boss! My fully optimized mage just beat the same boss on i7 at 200 CR UNDER the requirement doing idk about 50% more damage than the Druid case and beating him easily. This strikes me as plain broken. I realize PvE is supposed to be a challenge, but it should not be that hard to beat a lower level boss. And as I mentioned, in PvP Druids get obliterated. I call them Cute Little Forest Advertisements. I’m in a serious PvP clan and there’s no way I would want to fight Shadow War, Vigil, or Rite as a Druid. It would be a massive nerf.
1 Like
It will be interesting to see what happens. I wanted to love this class soo bad. Been a Barb since day 1 , minus a forgettable night as a BK. I found similar issues in pve and pvp. In pve couldn’t clear mobs fast enough, didn’t enjoy having to change to wold or bear to do damage, running out of power, to much going on. Take that to pvp and it’s worse as Druid. Personally I’d prefer a would build with those skills on main skill wheel as an option maybe. It wasn’t powerful enough. Perhaps less options at the start and more focus on essences and power.
Suggestion
Create an in-game feedback report system about the content itself.
Many other games already do this — I don’t understand why it isn’t done here!
I know there are several influencer partners, but they are often limited in what they can say so they don’t risk their contracts by giving honest criticism.
Feedback shouldn’t be limited to 20 people — that’s not the voice of the community!
4 Likes
I think the biggest thing holding me back from switching to druid again is the set items. I’ve spent tons of times getting the greens for my Barb, switching to Druid doesn’t even match with how I’d like to play it.
We gather feedback from all of our Community and Social Spaces, not just from our creators. You’re here and have that opportunity right now! We take the thoughts that are presented here, in comments across our Facebook/Twitter/IG, on Reddit, and our other community spaces into account.
Creators are easiest for us to have direct one on one interactions with, but we know that they are not the be-all, end-all of player feedback, and are not representative of the whole community.
1 Like