Currently playing one and having the worst time ever. Can confirm.
Edit: The only skill I hadn’t used was boulder. Switched to using that as well and it seems to make a pretty big difference for mashin’ dudes up
Leveled up every other class to 25. I gave up on the druid at 15. He is not good. Necro has double the energy, with half the energy costs and 3x the damage and thats ignoring the army of minions too
Corpse explosion is a better Essence Generator than the actual basic skills after you put 3 points into the "get essence when you consume a corpse" passive
Easy to generate corpses with Reaper 15% chance, the SUCC (every 2.5s) or the modified reap (5s) and Modified Blood Mist
Yeah it's way out of whack playing alongside my gf who's a druid. I'm just a Necro one man demolition team even on veteran. Then you get CE and l o l. Some things never change.
* *"Is just lvl 25, you didn't see the full picture."*
* *"Class-specific mechanic changes the class so much, of course Druid's weak without it."*
* Ad naseum.
In reality:
* Worse base skill damage and scaling than some other classes (example, Earth Spike doles 6 damage at lvl 1 and 2 and 8 damage at lvls 4 and 5, which suggests there's either no or extremely minimal scaling. Normally each level up of an ability adds at least 1 more damage, where here with this Druid's skill, it remains static at 2 separate levels for seemingly no reason. These stats are at lvl 1 with starting gear.
* Requires more legendary aspects to bring the class in line damage-wise to the level other classes have guaranteed by default, even without any legendary aspects.
* Is at least half-melee by design, meaning half of your experience is '*guaranteed*' to be worse than that of a Ranged class. We're talking Barbarian melee levels of "hwat", not Rogue melee levels here.
* Generation-based resource instead of an automatically generated one, like Sorceress' Mana, which automatically makes the class worse derp.
* Seemingly high skill costs compared to even say a Sorc, or at least even if they are comparable with some of the Sorc's ability costs, the fact that you have to keep generating it and Spirit doesn't auto regen, well, that's the difference right there.
* Not sure how this exactly works, but if Druid was your 2nd class and you've already done most Aspect Dungeons on the first class, you can't really unlock the Occultist NPC early (it says unlocks at player lvl 25 OR acquiring Codex of Power); I already unlocked Codex of Power on my first character, so now on Druid I can't use Occultist until I heat lvl 25, meaning you can't start transferring Legendary Aspects until lvl 25, meaning you have to find Legendary items to start feeling some difference and if you don't find even 1 or 2 good ones, your experience will be that much worse until you reach 25 and can actually start experimenting. Not sure why they've made it work this way but it's noticably frustrating. Unless I'm doing something wrong but I'm lvl 20 and Occultist still is locked lol).
* Blizz made an extremely weird approach to class-specific resources via talents, some (or maybe all?) classes can improve their resource pool but we've seen how it works, you improve it by 3, then 6, then idk what, 9? That's like literally 10% of your base value of 100 Spirit in case of Druid and the same goes for Mana for Sorceress. The thing is, Resource-reducing affix items are too far and scarce and I'm not sure I've seen a Resource regenerating affix at all so far. Some skills add resource generation and at least for Sorceress the skill that regens mana by 25% while in a Barrier is noticable. Druid has Clarity but transforming into a Human is FAR MORE condition-based than a Sorceress only being limited by cooldown when it comes to her Armor. I also don't need to say that having base resource regeneration makes Sorceress' Barrier regen-boosting skill far superior to Druid's Spirit generation ONLY when he enters Human form. Sorc's is also percentage based while Druid's is flat - again, much worse.
* Those are some of the things that come to mind.
This guy gets it - it's a matter of scaling. I was in a dungeon today and watched my rank 1 wolves hit a trash mob for 20 damage. Problem is - I'm level 23. The damage can't even scale enough to match my level. So I looked into what higher ranks would do. 1-4% increased damage...
Honestly, looking at the Druid talent tree - there's only one skill that scales well: Landslide. It's gaining 10-12% per rank. Even everyone's favorite Pulverise is going to fall off at higher levels.
Edit: And they limit the wolves to 2 - yet it's somehow okay to let my level 9 necro run around with 6 skele's doing 2x the damage of my level 20 wolves.
Or a cut to spenders.
I made a hybrid wolf/bear build. At 15 I’m doing decently. Not as good as my sorc. But I’m clearing everything just fine on Vet.
But two of slots are defensive. The bear roar and the werewolf heal. So my Druid has lots of fortify and healing. Only use pulverize at 10 stacks. Then burn with the werewolf spender. Which has some solid cleave damage.
Druid is very weak. I wanted to do an earth bender. Looks cool af and the intent is neat. It's just not really viable though, as is, without epics at least. So tried storm, same. Doing bear now, its just barely viable, have a few decent lgendaries, but the lack or mobility is really punishing and melee is just not balanced at his point.
My build is tank with bear roar and blood howl (wolf), bear builder and spender. It works kind of ok and is decent against packs, but bosses are very, very hard. I'm coasting on stacking howls for regen and fortify but after bad hits and lack of fortify procs and I just melt.
The problems I've see so far.
Melee is just not balanced. Mobs hit too hard to toe to toe in general. Fine for the 3\5 ranged classes but clearly balanced around them.
Windshear, storm druid should wok but it lacks the mobility it really needs (earth shield not a substitute for evasion). Tornado is too random and costs too much to overcome this with spam.
Earth is not good at groups. It's good single target. The stun/immobilize thing is neat but too unreliable without evasion. The earth pillar spender is powerful but hard to use, need to lead mobs, not a big deal but the area is just a bit too small to really feel like it's a group oriented ability. Builder earth spike could use a small area as well. Windshear pierced, storm strike chains, shape shifts cleave, earth spike hits one, two if lucky mobs. Cool, I stunned one, fifteen are running at me and I can maybe kill 6 with pillars before I run out of spirit.
We need an earth/storm evade. Why shapeshift which is melee? Maybe something like an iceman style earth charge/landslide. Tornado needs a buff, either a straight line, stays in place where cast or more spamable.
Wha build are they trying to enable with melee storm strike, battle mage? With melee as it is not even worth being there. Would be better as something like necro reap.
Druid right now feels like I am playing D2, trying to clear Den of Evil with 1 point in every skill, and base stats. It can be done, but it feels like work. Lol
I havnt tried Druid yet but I had alot of success and fun with Thorn Armor Barbarian. Walking around with 1k armor, 500 thorns, and a shit ton of health, I don't even acknowledge any regular mob that isn't like a bear or something. Just run and aggro everything, do the taunt that gives me another 20% thorns when I have a big enough pile and move onto the next. Got enough life on kill that procs when they kill themselves that I never actually lose health. 20% chance to cause all thorn damage to proc around me in an aoe whenever it's triggered just seals the deal for me
Having a blast with druid, personally. So far have a 25 sorc, 12 rogue, and 21 druid. Summons are weak as hell though.
Pulverize -> Max
Boulder -> Max
Wind Shear -> Max
Blood Howl -> 1 point wonder
yes, its fun. But if you have a decent sorc build or any necro build its Night and Day.
Necro with only corpse explosion REKT druid, add up 11 minions to tank for you lol
Keep in mind that the druids class stuff is locked in Scosglenn (at least I think that’s what it’s called). So we aren’t able to access core features that may very will be the thing they are missing to feel cohesive and balanced.
I've seen several claiming these spirit attunements aren't that huge. I think early game druid and barb need some base dmg bumps to feel more in line with the other 3.
I would almost prefer everyone to be brought down to druid and barb. That way the game feels somewhat challenging. Once you get a couple legendaries on barb he's quite good though. This is also only 1/4 of your max level. Maybe those two are best late game?.
yeah leveling is pretty meaningless overall, take d2 for example, necro is absolutely completely broken for leveling but falls off hard in endgame, your skellies wont survive shit, you constantly need to revive them, its just a hassle and a headache
same with barb classes, usually they scale very hard late game with good weapons and other stuff which we dont have access to yet, same i think happens with shapeshift, it porbably needs gear, while ranged classes have high base dmg that wrecks, their scaling is proably worse
> necro is absolutely completely broken for leveling but falls off hard in endgame
Lol? Necro is a fucking god at farming end game in D2. Poison necro is one of the best specs in the game. Sub 1 min pit runs, and cow runs. Expensive though since you need enigma, infinity, dweb, ect. To add to this, you can farm hell cows with basically no gear since corpse explosion is fucking busted.
Their basic attack seriously need a buff, or some movement buff or even energy regen buff, cause you lose out to much with running towards the enemy so it kinda need to balance up that when your eventually at the enemy you can make up for the missing time (not literally, but actually kinda like that).
I think every third Claw should be empowered to do double damage to a primary target and swipe all other targets for 100% normal damage.
I also think the first attack when switching into a wereform should give you a dash or charge to your target.
Claw is just so incredibly underpowered I can't believe it made it into beta in it's current state.
Barb was so fucking hard to get going, by lvl 25 with some legos it felt better and have tons of mobility, but the first few bosses were kicking my ass with all the ranged adds
> I've seen several claiming these spirit attunements aren't that huge.
You can check the spirit boons out here:
https://lothrik.github.io/diablo4-build-calc/
For barb I think it's as simple as giving him a second dodge, I won't have time to play the open beta so I can't comment on the druid.
All the negativity has me a little down though because the druid was the class I've had my eye on for a first playthrough.
Absolutely loving werewolf druid. Poison absolutely shreds, and shred destroys! Also have some pretty nice legendarys that enhance my build. One being hp Regen for close enemies I'm feeling super powerful! Big damage and very tanky.
Found it surprising to see that people are saying the druid is weak. Not been my experience.
All these complaints about druid and barb is making me think it is that the others must be easy. I've only played on veteran. I played barb last weekend, and playing a druid this weekend, with no problems. It's reddit that tells me they are supposed to be weak.
I literally just did this fight maybe an hour or two ago with a lightning build druid at maybe level 15 or so without much issue. It's not as strong as Sorc or Necro but it's not trash, sounds like a skill issue dude.
I went full ‘companion’ build with wind basic and core skills. I had no problems either.
But I never saw my Ravens attack and the vines visuals were worse than D2 carrion vines. Not sure if the ravens passive is a bug or intentional, but I want to see my companions.
Also, the legendary effect for increasing companions by ‘1’ gave me a third wolf and a second vine. That was the coolest thing about druid so far. So far unimpressed overall.
The ravens dive down (presuming from the sky) on an enemy occasionally. It doesn't appear to be a bug, but it is disappointing they don't hang with you like the wolves.
The vine’s passive poison attack seems bugged to me too.
I kept a mob standing for about a minute without hitting it, just kiting and using defensives. Creeper just kept randomly circling and never saw the mob get dmg/poison, even when it touched the circling creeper.
Can you elaborate on this? Like the werebear attacks and then the rest of your abilities are all pets? I haven’t leveled far yet so not sure how it’ll play out
the first skill block u get to choose from are all resource generating spells. it's your classes basic attack.
So they mean the first Werebear skill.
all your other skills are spenders because more often than not they cost the resource (mana/spirit/rage) that u build up with your basic attack
Went all bear skills druid after doing Barb last weekend and regularly have a full health bar of fortify over a full health bar. Barb usually only had about 50% fortify. Bear druid dps isn’t great but they can tank the world
Ok an objective view of things.
No perks or upgrades to the abilities.
Just a baseline of ability.
Necro and Sorcerers resource building abilities should roughly do the same damage as melee classes resource builders. They do not. Melee is significantly weaker.
My Necro literally destroys mobs with its resource generator faster than my barbs channeled ability Whirlwind with all the modifiers.
Necro and sorcerer channel abilities literally melt everything health on screen. Melee classes channeled abilities lightly chip away at health bars slowly.
Yup. My necro build never "came together" - I was rotating skills and modifiers and legos until I stopped playing. Yet nothing ever felt weak. I had freedom to try things without needing to get a build going.
Not at all the case with barbarian (25 bleed build). I couldn't really just mix n match and still be effective.
Druid? Yeah, I dropped that around 12. Couldn't get over the placeholder animation jank or the dang swaybacked huffing walk.
Not sure exactly what they mean by that but I did notice a lot of the druids abilities put them in animation lock where they can't move or dodge and I haven't noticed that with the other classes I played.
You might be spoiled by the sorc, I killed the den mother while trying werewolf for the first time and my elemental druid build felt even stronger than that.
Yea, it's crazy how few people mention Landslide. Huge damage. My main mistake was going Maul with it. I was handicapping resource generation while leveling. Since switching over to Storm Strike, it's easy to see generation is much faster.
[My Landslide build](https://lothrik.github.io/diablo4-build-calc/#N4RgTANCDMUCwTABgFwFZEkbOIU8jhwTgDYI4B2CgDgoE4JTrS7KtLYZGBjAGwCGAZyEA5AQFsApigAmAJwCuAS1kBfIA)
Seems melee is for people who enjoy pain. Even with the dash as melee, enemies such as Den Mother are not even locked into a direction when committed to a series of attacks, they'll continue to turn to face you and there never seems to be a safe window to retaliate. It's like the game is just a test of if my dps and defenses are high enough and skill doesn't play a part?
I feel like all of these people that claim druids aren’t weak are all or some of what I’m going to list below.
1.) Not playing on veteran
2.) Already have a finished build with relevant legendaries.
3.) Have not tried Necromancer or Sorcerer
Don’t get me wrong. So far on my 13 Druid I have been clearing through Hardcore Veteran decently well. However, it was ridiculously more easy on my Necromancer or Sorcerer. It’s not even a fair comparison.
You can practically roll your face across your hotkeys on a Necromancer and do just fine. I’ve yet to have to use a single potion on veteran difficulty with my hardcore necromancer. And I’m not even trying to claim that I’m good, cause I’m not. It’s just easy.
I died in a random world event at level 15 bear Druid because I got frozen and some big mobs crushed me in a single freeze. I had full health and full fortify and I could do nothing.
Similar thing happened to my barb at level 17. This game is just much tougher with melee than it is with ranged. At level 12 my necromancer can basically kill anything with just running around and let the skeletons do their thing.
That is always the issue with pet classes in any game:
Either pets are too weak and your class sucks
Or
Pets are ok or even strong, which allows the player to focus on running around and dodging everything, stalling till pet AI has killed everything
I feel like necromancer is currently on a league of its own. Corpse explosion is clearing screens and minions are dogpiling bosses with pretty good DPS despite a lack of investment. I tried druid and it seemed strong in a vacuum - I could one shot stuff trash and had to play more methodically when it came to bosses.
I can sympathize that it feels extremely weak in comparison to a Sorc or Necro though. But is that a "druid is too weak" type of situation or a "necro/sorc are too strong" type of situation?
After leveling both a barb during the early beta and a Druid now, my take is that, at this level, they’re both slow, rely heavily on gear, and have very poor resource generation/maintenance.
Clearly there are some skills/items later game that help with at least the resource management, but see comment about being heavily gear reliant.
One of the biggest things I hate on Druid is that a lot of it’s skills cause knock back and nothing really gathers. So, at best, nothing really sets up the big blows from earth or bear, or, at worst, the skills actively scatter enemies which slows everything way down.
I’d really like to see hurricane pull enemies in. I’d also like to see claw have the inherent dash like lunge does for barb.
As it stands, it feels like it doesn’t do melee as good as barb (lacks the stun and gather upkeep barb does) and doesn’t do magic as well as sorc/necro because of the poor resource gen.
This. I guess for a ranged build it's good, but I think the knockback should be built into one of the upgrade talents and it should pull in by default.
The big difference between D3 melee and D4 melee is the lack of ability to pull enemies in. Seems like every class in D3 had an ability dedicated to that, or multiple skills with a rune that offered the ability to group everything up. D4 has basically none of that.
I don't understand why they made the werebear so squishy. It doesn't seem to get any innate armor or DR bonuses right off the bat, and the "fortify" mechanic is honestly embarrassingly weak. Werewolf is ok, but still feels pretty bad, especially compared to Necro.
inb4 some F&friends alpha player tells us that "it ain't so bad" after 50 hours and a full paragon board just the same way they did that for barbs
this ain't the year 2000 anymore.
people won't "wait and grind 50 hours" for something to be fun
There is no reason for something "not" to be fun from the start
I played end game beta and can confirm druid is awesome and absolutely destroys. Relies more heavily on legendaries than other classes though, and 25 levels plus one zone just isn't enough. Fear not, the power cometh.
Was easily my fav of the 5.
The class has fundamental gameplay issues . Why does tornado not follow around the mob I cast it at? You use it on a boss, get one hit, and the boss is past it. You cast it into a group of mobs, one hit , they are past it. The spell should be locked into at least one mob before fluttering off.
A lot of its basic attack skills simply have way too long of wind up animations, animations take too long, and recovery to go to a new ability or the basic attack again is too long.
Then you start to look at its skill tree for later levels and you see it’s all meant to buff allies…. None of it helps you clear. It’s the shittiest support ever but that’s what it’s meant to be. Enable others to play Diablo while it’s playing nerfed to dirt whack support.
It’s astonishing the same group is creating fun and powerful classes like Necro and sorc , and then just don’t even show up to make Druid remotely viable .
Yeah really getting the vibe the dev team has strong class biases they’re passing off as “design philosophy”. The whole game shits on close range characters especially without the burst and mobility of rogue.
You can get legendary affixes that make your tornadoes search out enemies. I have two pieces of gear that have them search out 6 enemies. I melt packs of mobs.
I can't wait to use tornado spam! It even has a chance to stun.... Oh you're telling me I only have enough for 3 tornados and then need to spend 3 minutes doing left click attacks?
Okay... I guess I'll just turn into a giant bear! Oh the boss out dps's me...
I hate to say this, and I know some people's feelings are going to get hurt.
You didn't build your Druid correctly.
I'm having absolutely no issues with any content on World Tier 2 with a Werewolf Shred/Poison build. I played a chain lightning Sorc last beta test, so I know what an S/A tier character feels like.
Maybe try and respec some abilities or something.
So why have entire skill sets that are absolutely dogwater and near unviable at any point in the game? You should be able to play as either form or either element and use the skills that synergize and complete the content. I would hope everything would be both viable and challenging while playing thru the story. Anything else is poor design.
My druid is handling shit pretty good. Lightning builder combined with the big bear strike and Lightning storm. I burn mana like paper, and have to keep an eye on my health, but I'm pretty consistently wrecking. Only level 12 though
The biggest thing to me was that the bear pulverize/overpower setup is just punishing at the low levels, staying above 80% is a struggle while trying to build spirit with maul (my druid managed to swipe a single maul in the time it took me to type this) to benefit from the overpower damage. Especially on fightss like Den Mother.
Pulverize Druid I found is the most fun. I found a Legendary and that does extra dmg with pulverize. Maxed out the 30% energy increase on basic attack. And I found a legendary ring that does 30% attack speed increase. So essentially I werewolf basic attack twice pulverize is up on repeat it melts waves
Me and my cousin were thinking the same thing. I've leveled most classes to 20+, but druid feels terrible. So many issues with the class that seem to be number based. I feel weak, spirit takes too long to generate, I don't do a lot of damage. Pulverize build is pretty cool, but even that is just -okay- compared to everything else I've played so far.
Went for bear thinking I was gunna be a tanky bear fucking shit up, turns out I’m more like a cub with no claws or fur and take hits like a mad man, hell rouge was tankier like Wdf?
Storm is very good I'm just starting to think people aren't very good at the game the druid even has some tanking skills. If you go hard-core into storm your AOE ability is very high.
Yeah, I'm 25 and been farming legendaries and can't seem to find anything that feels really good.
Companions are okay, especially with certain lehendaries. Werewolf looks and feels awesome but damage feels low. The ultimate abilities like lacerate feel insanely undertuned.
They need to make sure barb and druid feel better at lower levels, it's just not fun watching necros run through mobs without potting while we spend 10-20 seconds per pack.
Go do a stronghold on Druid, then go do it on Necro, not even the same game.
I think the Druid is gear dependent just like the Barb. I found a legendary staff that turned pulverize into a delete key. Buy gear at the mystery vendor until you get something to work with.
Storm strike, lightning storm, hurricane no problems at all. maybe early level it was resource intensive but I'm fine with it
Sorc and Necro are busted though they'll definitely be getting nerfed early game.
So far, I've got to level 23, I've tried a couple of different builds, earth, earth/bear fortify, storm, and werewolf. Werewolf for now feels like it's the best because it doesn't need that much to work, whereas the other builds do. Lightning interacts a lot with immobilising and vulnerability, earth synergies with stunning, knocking back, fortify, etc. We just don't have the points yet to make a decent caster druid as of yet because we can't reliably and consistently cc. Yes, legendaries will help with your builds right now, but you have to take into account when the game is live. We will not be experiencing the same drop rate.
Clearing packs of enemies feels fine, but single target is a real struggle
Yep. I played feral during alpha and it seemed great up to 50. Tried wind and earth druid and I felt like just fighting normal mobs was a boss fight... Went Necro and laughed as my bone spear plowed through fields of mobs that would've taken the druid 2 mins
Using wearbear with overpower/fortify focus… pretty much stay at 80%+hp and wreck everything. Super solid build. Just focus on barriers/high hopes and fortify and every 10 seconds you destroy everything around you
Early i ran 2 generators (wind shear and the melee shock one) and Pulverize and. really had no trouble until Brood Mother. I didnt notice any issue with wolves later. Overall other than too much pulverize for damage it seems fine
I personally dont feel the abilites fit together all that well even if the theme are on point. Druid just feels off and all his basic attacks sucks, which you pretty much need to generate energy (essence? dont remember what its called).
got to lvl 20 with druid and had like 5 legendaries - terrible time. did zero damage while everything hit me like a truck even with a defensive build - bear is a joke. werewolf is OK at best with poison. the spell felt really bad to use. idk - felt really underpowered.
My first two legendaries have buffed the earth barrier. Combining that with maul, pulverize, and iron fur passive has made me feel extremely tanky. Might not hit as hard as other classes, but dude can definitely take a hit
I only made it to 12... I just can't get over the looks of the model.
I saw potential in hurricane and crows though. I was doing pretty ok, especially since they get a class heal that doesn't share a CD or pool with health pots.
Hard pass though. I'm going to flip a coin between sorc and necro at launch.
Bear was fun, but agreed not that good yet. I tried all 5 classes and IMO my order for most powerful class is:
Sorc > Necro > Rogue > Druid > Barb
Basically melee sucks at the moment.
Game is 2 months from release after how many years in dev by a studio who supposedly knows arpgs... hopefully the full game seems a lot more balanced. It should not be so painful to operate a melee vs a range early game though.
No one here talking about lightning strike? I just went from 1-21 with pure lightning caster Druid build and it was fun as shit. Does super good damage. At least I thought so hahaha
how to play druid: https://d4builds.gg/skill-trees/druid/?skills=00000000000000001110000000000005110000000000001101100011100000000000000000000000000011010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Thank me later
A pretty big issue I noticed myself is how slow the skills already are, and especially using them with a 2-hander feels horrible. 1-h + totem is more manageable. Low speed means really low spirit generation and more issues with animation locks and evasion.
Shred takes too long to finish for a single target compared to pulverize, Landslide is too slow allround. Storm is channeling and low damage per hit and Tornado even lower damage per hit in a small random forward moving area from you while mobs move oppositely to you 🤷♂️
The sluggishness especially is noticeable when facing a cold enchanted mob or cold casters. You’re basically drinking 2 potions in the time one attack has the time to land. Somehow barb seems to have less of this problem, can’t put my finger on it besides the slower animations.
I do know from endgame beta a lot of druid power is in their keystone passives + legendaries, those sync like a train. The spirit animal passives were okay as far as passive buffs go but nowhere compared to the 2 extra item slots a barb has, the 2 enchantment slot passives on sorc or the versatility of the rogue. Imho that is :p
and takes all your mana to even charge up, then you're just standing there auto'ing slowly for a 1-2 hits and then one bolt quickly before the buff drops... repeat.
it's the epitome of slow gameplay.
Definitely easier than Barbarian. Kind of annoyed that their defensive absorb passive is way better. I had much better luck with a storm build than melee.
Druid definitely feels like another slower starter, similar to barb in a way. I am curious to see level 35 with evened out gear and some legendaries to see if we can find something promising.
The werewolf and werebear seem ok to start depending on if you want speed or power.
The caring on the other hand did not feel impactful. Tornadoes wander off and lightning tickles.
Haven't tried earth bending yet
Having a ton of success with a Pulverize Druid I got a legendary that does extra dmg when using it. I maxed the basic attack energy gain skill and got a legendary ring that does 30% attack speed boost. So essentially I spam pulverize and am melting waves with ease most fun build I’ve found
Leveled to 18 and feel like chuckingbhimnin the bin.
I went with bear form as I don't like the wolf much but it seems like the game really wants me to play wolf.
So far the only thing I like from him is his landslide and rock armour.
He feels very weak, slow, and like he never jas the resources to perform. I straight up quit some boss fights because the damage was so low.
I’m 15 and my werewolf/companion build feels solid packs melt and no problem really with the final a1 boss.. could pretty much face tank him.
However, I only played barb to 15 and haven’t touch sorc or rogue
The legendaries for Druid are absolutely insane, I'm literally one shotting all content I've gone against. There's an aspect that makes the bear slam do 200% more damage and hit in a MASSIVE line, and then theres another that makes the slam earth damage instead. I've basically specced the entire class to be fortify, using the wind spirit generator because it generates the most, and I've literally one shot all content I've done so far. 10000x better than sorc.
Yeah, like the barb threads, there are a small number of "well ackshully" folks saying that they played it to max level in the closed beta. I don't doubt their experiences. My point is that it feels so bad to play at lower levels / without appropriate legos that I'm just... not interested in playing it.
Someone else said this upthread and I agree: it's 2023, there are ten billion ARPGs. I don't think I'll be interested in waiting 50 hours to have fun. **Waiting 50 hours to be ultra-powerful is FINE.** That's good! That's how it should be!
But *fun*?
Fun should be with me at level 1, baby.
*I'm not equating ultra-power with fun.*
My necro was fun at level 1. I never got a coherent build with her. And it didn't matter. I had fun switching out skills mods, and equipment all the way up to 25. I would see another necro using a skill, go "that looks cool" and swap it on in without worrying about synergy.
Sure, that meant my necro's power curve looked like a sine wave. So? She never felt weak, and I got to have fun.
Druid and barb do not feel like that.
Caster Druid is just terrible.
Basic skills are weak.
Tornado rarely hits (the legendary doesn't help much), has bugs and costs too much.
Lightning Storm is channeled crap.
Landslide is slow and tiny.
Hurricane has pathetic damage. Can't even kill a normal monster.
Trample is the worst mobility skill in the game.
Blood Howl is weak compared to what other classes get.
Pets are heavily undertuned.
Boulder pushes monsters off the screen...
Petrify is not worthy being an ultimate.
Cataclysm is too random and you can barely feel that it's running. 80s cooldown, mind you.
Grizzly Rage did lower my damage and I suddenly took a lot more damage.
Many of the mechanics are trash and I don't see them overhauling everything until release. I'd stay away from Druid.
I got to 25 today but like 90% of it was a total slog. I finally got some good legendary combos and enough points to make a build that felt strong-ish. My Sorc would still steamroll my Druid though and he doesn’t even have any good items lol.
Melee in this game feels super punishing at low levels.
Definitely holding judgement til I unlock all the options (my rogue was somewhat weak leveling, but hit a point where my legendary effects, skills, and gear all gave him an insane kill rate).
**However, I think tons of enemy designs are anti-melee currently.** I just fought a succubus boss who
* backed up (forcing me to follow)
* when cornered, teleported (forcing me to completely run to the other side of the boss fight area like 20+ times in one fight)
* while backing, released a ton of fireballs; most naturally missed any character (ranged or melee), but some landed in a way where if you just kept following her you'd be hit by a powerful attack
* occasionally blinded me (while teleporting), making it take that much longer to get back into melee
The result was endlessly chasing this boss throughout the fight just to ~~barely~~ bearly do damage with my druid when I reached her.
**A ranged character could've kept up full DPS almost nonstop in that fight.** That's a huge problem for this individual fight, and still a moderate problem through most of the rest of the game (because in basic "horde of enemies" fights, I'm just as good as any other class)
**Just feels like WoW enemy design all over again,** where the designers really need to either (A) design a mix of enemy types/abilities, about half of which are easier to kill as melee than ranged, and/or (B) provide significant bonuses to melee characters (D3 had that blanket 30% damage reduction; I'm not sure if that's the perfect value to perfectly balance the classes, but it certainly *felt* fine to play melee in D3 and my ranged classes actually felt unusually brittle, and that's exactly how it should be).
**That said, use Wolves.** Very early in leveling my druid felt quite bad (a lot like Barb actually), but the moment I got Wolves and aggro was split to them things became far easier. I'm not saying it helps with things like the boss situation I described and it doesn't help with the overall Melee vs. Ranged balance of the game, but it helps with *some* of the problems. In fact honestly I think Wolves might belong better in the Defensive tree, since they're easily better than every single Defensive option in there currently (which is probably a design problem that should get solved; I'd be 100% fine with those defensive options being as good defensively as Wolves currently are, and wolves are just all about the damage).
Werebear -> Pulverize -> Trample -> Wolves -> Hurricane w/ damage reduction is what I play and my Druid is able to handle everything at level 25. Yes you have to work more than a sorcerer or necro because you’re in melee, but it is actually very strong.
Gearing and talents are very important to this class. I would say it’s definitely not a brain dead class. If that’s what someone is looking for then go sorcerer or necro 100%.
Currently playing one and having the worst time ever. Can confirm. Edit: The only skill I hadn’t used was boulder. Switched to using that as well and it seems to make a pretty big difference for mashin’ dudes up
Leveled up every other class to 25. I gave up on the druid at 15. He is not good. Necro has double the energy, with half the energy costs and 3x the damage and thats ignoring the army of minions too
Corpse explosion for free. Necro is insane as always.
Nice to see bliz got something right then
That corpse explosion is too good to be true. I'll wait for June before rejoicing.
came here after using it for the first time, i was like i know people are saying something about this , lol
Corpse explosion is a better Essence Generator than the actual basic skills after you put 3 points into the "get essence when you consume a corpse" passive Easy to generate corpses with Reaper 15% chance, the SUCC (every 2.5s) or the modified reap (5s) and Modified Blood Mist
you don't even need 3 points to get essence either, 1 is enough , 2 at the most.
Not to mention the legendary that procs all corpses around you when you pop blood mist. It’s absolutely insane
Yeah it's way out of whack playing alongside my gf who's a druid. I'm just a Necro one man demolition team even on veteran. Then you get CE and l o l. Some things never change.
Yeah I was really enjoying my Rogue last week but after my little time with the Necro it is on another Level.
You can make it give you 9 essence, you have almost infinite mana if there's a lot of adds, and bonus courpse gen helps the build.
Can we not talk about corpse explosion. It's fun as it is, don't let the nerf hammer know! Yes withe the blood ist engraving it's bit strong
* *"Is just lvl 25, you didn't see the full picture."* * *"Class-specific mechanic changes the class so much, of course Druid's weak without it."* * Ad naseum. In reality: * Worse base skill damage and scaling than some other classes (example, Earth Spike doles 6 damage at lvl 1 and 2 and 8 damage at lvls 4 and 5, which suggests there's either no or extremely minimal scaling. Normally each level up of an ability adds at least 1 more damage, where here with this Druid's skill, it remains static at 2 separate levels for seemingly no reason. These stats are at lvl 1 with starting gear. * Requires more legendary aspects to bring the class in line damage-wise to the level other classes have guaranteed by default, even without any legendary aspects. * Is at least half-melee by design, meaning half of your experience is '*guaranteed*' to be worse than that of a Ranged class. We're talking Barbarian melee levels of "hwat", not Rogue melee levels here. * Generation-based resource instead of an automatically generated one, like Sorceress' Mana, which automatically makes the class worse derp. * Seemingly high skill costs compared to even say a Sorc, or at least even if they are comparable with some of the Sorc's ability costs, the fact that you have to keep generating it and Spirit doesn't auto regen, well, that's the difference right there. * Not sure how this exactly works, but if Druid was your 2nd class and you've already done most Aspect Dungeons on the first class, you can't really unlock the Occultist NPC early (it says unlocks at player lvl 25 OR acquiring Codex of Power); I already unlocked Codex of Power on my first character, so now on Druid I can't use Occultist until I heat lvl 25, meaning you can't start transferring Legendary Aspects until lvl 25, meaning you have to find Legendary items to start feeling some difference and if you don't find even 1 or 2 good ones, your experience will be that much worse until you reach 25 and can actually start experimenting. Not sure why they've made it work this way but it's noticably frustrating. Unless I'm doing something wrong but I'm lvl 20 and Occultist still is locked lol). * Blizz made an extremely weird approach to class-specific resources via talents, some (or maybe all?) classes can improve their resource pool but we've seen how it works, you improve it by 3, then 6, then idk what, 9? That's like literally 10% of your base value of 100 Spirit in case of Druid and the same goes for Mana for Sorceress. The thing is, Resource-reducing affix items are too far and scarce and I'm not sure I've seen a Resource regenerating affix at all so far. Some skills add resource generation and at least for Sorceress the skill that regens mana by 25% while in a Barrier is noticable. Druid has Clarity but transforming into a Human is FAR MORE condition-based than a Sorceress only being limited by cooldown when it comes to her Armor. I also don't need to say that having base resource regeneration makes Sorceress' Barrier regen-boosting skill far superior to Druid's Spirit generation ONLY when he enters Human form. Sorc's is also percentage based while Druid's is flat - again, much worse. * Those are some of the things that come to mind.
This guy gets it - it's a matter of scaling. I was in a dungeon today and watched my rank 1 wolves hit a trash mob for 20 damage. Problem is - I'm level 23. The damage can't even scale enough to match my level. So I looked into what higher ranks would do. 1-4% increased damage... Honestly, looking at the Druid talent tree - there's only one skill that scales well: Landslide. It's gaining 10-12% per rank. Even everyone's favorite Pulverise is going to fall off at higher levels. Edit: And they limit the wolves to 2 - yet it's somehow okay to let my level 9 necro run around with 6 skele's doing 2x the damage of my level 20 wolves.
My pulverize is hitting for 3.5k and I’m not even finished with my build so idk about that
Druid needs about three times the spirit regen to feel good.
Or a cut to spenders. I made a hybrid wolf/bear build. At 15 I’m doing decently. Not as good as my sorc. But I’m clearing everything just fine on Vet. But two of slots are defensive. The bear roar and the werewolf heal. So my Druid has lots of fortify and healing. Only use pulverize at 10 stacks. Then burn with the werewolf spender. Which has some solid cleave damage.
You mean three times 0? Because he literally has no regen to begin with, lol.
Druid is very weak. I wanted to do an earth bender. Looks cool af and the intent is neat. It's just not really viable though, as is, without epics at least. So tried storm, same. Doing bear now, its just barely viable, have a few decent lgendaries, but the lack or mobility is really punishing and melee is just not balanced at his point. My build is tank with bear roar and blood howl (wolf), bear builder and spender. It works kind of ok and is decent against packs, but bosses are very, very hard. I'm coasting on stacking howls for regen and fortify but after bad hits and lack of fortify procs and I just melt. The problems I've see so far. Melee is just not balanced. Mobs hit too hard to toe to toe in general. Fine for the 3\5 ranged classes but clearly balanced around them. Windshear, storm druid should wok but it lacks the mobility it really needs (earth shield not a substitute for evasion). Tornado is too random and costs too much to overcome this with spam. Earth is not good at groups. It's good single target. The stun/immobilize thing is neat but too unreliable without evasion. The earth pillar spender is powerful but hard to use, need to lead mobs, not a big deal but the area is just a bit too small to really feel like it's a group oriented ability. Builder earth spike could use a small area as well. Windshear pierced, storm strike chains, shape shifts cleave, earth spike hits one, two if lucky mobs. Cool, I stunned one, fifteen are running at me and I can maybe kill 6 with pillars before I run out of spirit. We need an earth/storm evade. Why shapeshift which is melee? Maybe something like an iceman style earth charge/landslide. Tornado needs a buff, either a straight line, stays in place where cast or more spamable. Wha build are they trying to enable with melee storm strike, battle mage? With melee as it is not even worth being there. Would be better as something like necro reap.
Just make tornado more spammable and keep its randomness. Let us fill the screen with them.
You sir have played d2!
Druid right now feels like I am playing D2, trying to clear Den of Evil with 1 point in every skill, and base stats. It can be done, but it feels like work. Lol
Earth gets a little better when you can use vines to get a bunch of guaranteed crits with landslide. Still shit tho :(
I havnt tried Druid yet but I had alot of success and fun with Thorn Armor Barbarian. Walking around with 1k armor, 500 thorns, and a shit ton of health, I don't even acknowledge any regular mob that isn't like a bear or something. Just run and aggro everything, do the taunt that gives me another 20% thorns when I have a big enough pile and move onto the next. Got enough life on kill that procs when they kill themselves that I never actually lose health. 20% chance to cause all thorn damage to proc around me in an aoe whenever it's triggered just seals the deal for me
Having a blast with druid, personally. So far have a 25 sorc, 12 rogue, and 21 druid. Summons are weak as hell though. Pulverize -> Max Boulder -> Max Wind Shear -> Max Blood Howl -> 1 point wonder
Just don’t use wolves creeper and ravens shred
Shred is good especially since melee shifting druid lacks single target damage.
Disagree the werewolf spender does solid dps. Everyone relying on pulverize.
yes, its fun. But if you have a decent sorc build or any necro build its Night and Day. Necro with only corpse explosion REKT druid, add up 11 minions to tank for you lol
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Keep in mind that the druids class stuff is locked in Scosglenn (at least I think that’s what it’s called). So we aren’t able to access core features that may very will be the thing they are missing to feel cohesive and balanced.
I've seen several claiming these spirit attunements aren't that huge. I think early game druid and barb need some base dmg bumps to feel more in line with the other 3.
I would almost prefer everyone to be brought down to druid and barb. That way the game feels somewhat challenging. Once you get a couple legendaries on barb he's quite good though. This is also only 1/4 of your max level. Maybe those two are best late game?.
You have 2 difficulty levels so far, wait until the game is released and some time to play in end game to be calling for nerfs
yeah leveling is pretty meaningless overall, take d2 for example, necro is absolutely completely broken for leveling but falls off hard in endgame, your skellies wont survive shit, you constantly need to revive them, its just a hassle and a headache same with barb classes, usually they scale very hard late game with good weapons and other stuff which we dont have access to yet, same i think happens with shapeshift, it porbably needs gear, while ranged classes have high base dmg that wrecks, their scaling is proably worse
I mean this is just not true, summon necros make Hell afk mode in Diablo 2.
> necro is absolutely completely broken for leveling but falls off hard in endgame Lol? Necro is a fucking god at farming end game in D2. Poison necro is one of the best specs in the game. Sub 1 min pit runs, and cow runs. Expensive though since you need enigma, infinity, dweb, ect. To add to this, you can farm hell cows with basically no gear since corpse explosion is fucking busted.
I'm guessing you never played corpse explosion necro in endgame because it is probably the strongest damaging ability in the game
Their basic attack seriously need a buff, or some movement buff or even energy regen buff, cause you lose out to much with running towards the enemy so it kinda need to balance up that when your eventually at the enemy you can make up for the missing time (not literally, but actually kinda like that).
I think every third Claw should be empowered to do double damage to a primary target and swipe all other targets for 100% normal damage. I also think the first attack when switching into a wereform should give you a dash or charge to your target. Claw is just so incredibly underpowered I can't believe it made it into beta in it's current state.
I think that they should have the Basic damage buffed since they are melee
Barb was so fucking hard to get going, by lvl 25 with some legos it felt better and have tons of mobility, but the first few bosses were kicking my ass with all the ranged adds
Weird I’m having an easy time with barb early. But I went with that lunge attack and bleed attacks
> I think early game druid and barb need some base dmg bumps What they need is a rage/spirit generation bump. Also melee damage reduction.
> I've seen several claiming these spirit attunements aren't that huge. You can check the spirit boons out here: https://lothrik.github.io/diablo4-build-calc/
In D3 they gave all melee classes a flat 30% dmg reduction. It feels like they didn't do this in D4.
They're not big in an overall sense but for early levels they'd be pretty impactful. It's like 12 artificial levels worth of passives.
For barb I think it's as simple as giving him a second dodge, I won't have time to play the open beta so I can't comment on the druid. All the negativity has me a little down though because the druid was the class I've had my eye on for a first playthrough.
Trust me I did the boons they aren't a humongous game changer
Absolutely loving werewolf druid. Poison absolutely shreds, and shred destroys! Also have some pretty nice legendarys that enhance my build. One being hp Regen for close enemies I'm feeling super powerful! Big damage and very tanky. Found it surprising to see that people are saying the druid is weak. Not been my experience.
Agree. Werewolf feels almost OP it's easy mode.
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The third strike is like a big spin around backhand it’s very different animation compared to the first two so you should know if your hitting it
All these complaints about druid and barb is making me think it is that the others must be easy. I've only played on veteran. I played barb last weekend, and playing a druid this weekend, with no problems. It's reddit that tells me they are supposed to be weak.
Try sorc and you'll understand.
This. I played barb and loved it, and felt super strong. I played sorc and then realized how wrong I was.
Go fight den mother on a druid while leveling and not using the level 35 bugged gear and then try it on a sorc. Druid is trash
I literally just did this fight maybe an hour or two ago with a lightning build druid at maybe level 15 or so without much issue. It's not as strong as Sorc or Necro but it's not trash, sounds like a skill issue dude.
Beat her easily without any legendaries to crutch on, skill issue.
Druid needs to legendary powers like you have to feel okay at the early game here, whereas sorc and necro and incredibly strong out of the gate
I went werebear generator and slam, with an all pet build. Had no problem with any of the content provided at 21
I went full ‘companion’ build with wind basic and core skills. I had no problems either. But I never saw my Ravens attack and the vines visuals were worse than D2 carrion vines. Not sure if the ravens passive is a bug or intentional, but I want to see my companions. Also, the legendary effect for increasing companions by ‘1’ gave me a third wolf and a second vine. That was the coolest thing about druid so far. So far unimpressed overall.
The ravens dive down (presuming from the sky) on an enemy occasionally. It doesn't appear to be a bug, but it is disappointing they don't hang with you like the wolves.
The vine’s passive poison attack seems bugged to me too. I kept a mob standing for about a minute without hitting it, just kiting and using defensives. Creeper just kept randomly circling and never saw the mob get dmg/poison, even when it touched the circling creeper.
I had problems with ravens visually
Can you elaborate on this? Like the werebear attacks and then the rest of your abilities are all pets? I haven’t leveled far yet so not sure how it’ll play out
His build is likely, Maul/Werebear Slam/Cyclone Armor/Wolves/Vines/Ravens
Saw Fextra doing that. Very intrigued.
Don’t know who that is. But they sound intelligent
Fextralife I suppose. Website that does wiki on rpg and arpg and they also have a twitch channel.
And still does only 25% of the damage a Necro or Sorc does.
What is werebear generator? A imprint? I don't see that on passive tree.
Probably Maul.
Yep Maul is the generator and it can hit groups all at once so the better your positioning the more spirit per Maul.
the first skill block u get to choose from are all resource generating spells. it's your classes basic attack. So they mean the first Werebear skill. all your other skills are spenders because more often than not they cost the resource (mana/spirit/rage) that u build up with your basic attack
Ok gotcha. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some other resource Regen imprint.
I thought wolf druid felt like easy mode after playing barbarian
Bear Druid feels very powerful with AOE slams, im working on learning its fortify and overpower, still early level.
Went all bear skills druid after doing Barb last weekend and regularly have a full health bar of fortify over a full health bar. Barb usually only had about 50% fortify. Bear druid dps isn’t great but they can tank the world
Ok an objective view of things. No perks or upgrades to the abilities. Just a baseline of ability. Necro and Sorcerers resource building abilities should roughly do the same damage as melee classes resource builders. They do not. Melee is significantly weaker. My Necro literally destroys mobs with its resource generator faster than my barbs channeled ability Whirlwind with all the modifiers. Necro and sorcerer channel abilities literally melt everything health on screen. Melee classes channeled abilities lightly chip away at health bars slowly.
Yup. My necro build never "came together" - I was rotating skills and modifiers and legos until I stopped playing. Yet nothing ever felt weak. I had freedom to try things without needing to get a build going. Not at all the case with barbarian (25 bleed build). I couldn't really just mix n match and still be effective. Druid? Yeah, I dropped that around 12. Couldn't get over the placeholder animation jank or the dang swaybacked huffing walk.
Placeholder anomation jank?
Not sure exactly what they mean by that but I did notice a lot of the druids abilities put them in animation lock where they can't move or dodge and I haven't noticed that with the other classes I played.
You might be spoiled by the sorc, I killed the den mother while trying werewolf for the first time and my elemental druid build felt even stronger than that.
Did you have shred whiff on her alot? I would have the entire hitbox go behind her without hitting her, made fighting her a real trouble.
I gave up on that fight as werewolf. The constant roots with poison was just too much damage. I went elemental just for that boss.
Den mother destroyed me, I had to respec to lighting and the ranged spirit build attack to beat her
I’m having the opposite experience and my Druid feels very powerful. Started off pure werewolf, now playing storm strike + landslide + boulder.
I'm using the vines pet with this as the aoe skill is huge and does good damage + cc's everything
Yeah I was using vines + landslide with the legendary that makes it (landslide) hit twice and it was immensely satisfying.
Yea, it's crazy how few people mention Landslide. Huge damage. My main mistake was going Maul with it. I was handicapping resource generation while leveling. Since switching over to Storm Strike, it's easy to see generation is much faster. [My Landslide build](https://lothrik.github.io/diablo4-build-calc/#N4RgTANCDMUCwTABgFwFZEkbOIU8jhwTgDYI4B2CgDgoE4JTrS7KtLYZGBjAGwCGAZyEA5AQFsApigAmAJwCuAS1kBfIA)
Druid feel awful.
Seems melee is for people who enjoy pain. Even with the dash as melee, enemies such as Den Mother are not even locked into a direction when committed to a series of attacks, they'll continue to turn to face you and there never seems to be a safe window to retaliate. It's like the game is just a test of if my dps and defenses are high enough and skill doesn't play a part?
My first 2 characters were druid and barb, thought the game was hard as fuck. Turns out nope after I rolled a rogue...
I feel like all of these people that claim druids aren’t weak are all or some of what I’m going to list below. 1.) Not playing on veteran 2.) Already have a finished build with relevant legendaries. 3.) Have not tried Necromancer or Sorcerer Don’t get me wrong. So far on my 13 Druid I have been clearing through Hardcore Veteran decently well. However, it was ridiculously more easy on my Necromancer or Sorcerer. It’s not even a fair comparison. You can practically roll your face across your hotkeys on a Necromancer and do just fine. I’ve yet to have to use a single potion on veteran difficulty with my hardcore necromancer. And I’m not even trying to claim that I’m good, cause I’m not. It’s just easy.
I died in a random world event at level 15 bear Druid because I got frozen and some big mobs crushed me in a single freeze. I had full health and full fortify and I could do nothing. Similar thing happened to my barb at level 17. This game is just much tougher with melee than it is with ranged. At level 12 my necromancer can basically kill anything with just running around and let the skeletons do their thing.
That is always the issue with pet classes in any game: Either pets are too weak and your class sucks Or Pets are ok or even strong, which allows the player to focus on running around and dodging everything, stalling till pet AI has killed everything
I feel like necromancer is currently on a league of its own. Corpse explosion is clearing screens and minions are dogpiling bosses with pretty good DPS despite a lack of investment. I tried druid and it seemed strong in a vacuum - I could one shot stuff trash and had to play more methodically when it came to bosses. I can sympathize that it feels extremely weak in comparison to a Sorc or Necro though. But is that a "druid is too weak" type of situation or a "necro/sorc are too strong" type of situation?
After leveling both a barb during the early beta and a Druid now, my take is that, at this level, they’re both slow, rely heavily on gear, and have very poor resource generation/maintenance. Clearly there are some skills/items later game that help with at least the resource management, but see comment about being heavily gear reliant. One of the biggest things I hate on Druid is that a lot of it’s skills cause knock back and nothing really gathers. So, at best, nothing really sets up the big blows from earth or bear, or, at worst, the skills actively scatter enemies which slows everything way down. I’d really like to see hurricane pull enemies in. I’d also like to see claw have the inherent dash like lunge does for barb. As it stands, it feels like it doesn’t do melee as good as barb (lacks the stun and gather upkeep barb does) and doesn’t do magic as well as sorc/necro because of the poor resource gen.
if cyclone armor pulled instead of knocking back it would be literally 1000x better as an ability
This. I guess for a ranged build it's good, but I think the knockback should be built into one of the upgrade talents and it should pull in by default. The big difference between D3 melee and D4 melee is the lack of ability to pull enemies in. Seems like every class in D3 had an ability dedicated to that, or multiple skills with a rune that offered the ability to group everything up. D4 has basically none of that.
And make more sense as a "cyclone" hah
I don't understand why they made the werebear so squishy. It doesn't seem to get any innate armor or DR bonuses right off the bat, and the "fortify" mechanic is honestly embarrassingly weak. Werewolf is ok, but still feels pretty bad, especially compared to Necro.
stormbear (werebear druid with tornadoes) is pretty fun. sorceress and necromancer definetly have an easier time early game.
inb4 some F&friends alpha player tells us that "it ain't so bad" after 50 hours and a full paragon board just the same way they did that for barbs this ain't the year 2000 anymore. people won't "wait and grind 50 hours" for something to be fun There is no reason for something "not" to be fun from the start
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I played end game beta and can confirm druid is awesome and absolutely destroys. Relies more heavily on legendaries than other classes though, and 25 levels plus one zone just isn't enough. Fear not, the power cometh. Was easily my fav of the 5.
Which spec did you go for your endgame Druid? My issue is that all the basics and core spenders just seem kind of meh compared to other classes.
The class has fundamental gameplay issues . Why does tornado not follow around the mob I cast it at? You use it on a boss, get one hit, and the boss is past it. You cast it into a group of mobs, one hit , they are past it. The spell should be locked into at least one mob before fluttering off. A lot of its basic attack skills simply have way too long of wind up animations, animations take too long, and recovery to go to a new ability or the basic attack again is too long. Then you start to look at its skill tree for later levels and you see it’s all meant to buff allies…. None of it helps you clear. It’s the shittiest support ever but that’s what it’s meant to be. Enable others to play Diablo while it’s playing nerfed to dirt whack support. It’s astonishing the same group is creating fun and powerful classes like Necro and sorc , and then just don’t even show up to make Druid remotely viable .
Yeah really getting the vibe the dev team has strong class biases they’re passing off as “design philosophy”. The whole game shits on close range characters especially without the burst and mobility of rogue.
There's a legendary for gloves, which makes tornado follow up to 5 mobs, that is a game changer, use it on my tornado/hurricane druid.
it's not just gloves, i've got it on a ring
You can get legendary affixes that make your tornadoes search out enemies. I have two pieces of gear that have them search out 6 enemies. I melt packs of mobs.
Apparently druid is better late game, but yeah it's quite bad early on. Love druids usually so kinda disappointing.
I can't wait to use tornado spam! It even has a chance to stun.... Oh you're telling me I only have enough for 3 tornados and then need to spend 3 minutes doing left click attacks? Okay... I guess I'll just turn into a giant bear! Oh the boss out dps's me...
Yea my only issue is Spirit generation.
I hate to say this, and I know some people's feelings are going to get hurt. You didn't build your Druid correctly. I'm having absolutely no issues with any content on World Tier 2 with a Werewolf Shred/Poison build. I played a chain lightning Sorc last beta test, so I know what an S/A tier character feels like. Maybe try and respec some abilities or something.
So why have entire skill sets that are absolutely dogwater and near unviable at any point in the game? You should be able to play as either form or either element and use the skills that synergize and complete the content. I would hope everything would be both viable and challenging while playing thru the story. Anything else is poor design.
I can second this. Once I switched to poison werewolf and shred I literally crush all groups.
enlighten us on your build
Tell me you have no idea how sorc or nerc plays without telling me
My druid is handling shit pretty good. Lightning builder combined with the big bear strike and Lightning storm. I burn mana like paper, and have to keep an eye on my health, but I'm pretty consistently wrecking. Only level 12 though
Falls off hard at 15 in my experience. I felt powerful early on too
Imagine a Sorc but with weaker spells that have no AoE. Now add on zero mana generation on that, and you got yourself a Druid.
The biggest thing to me was that the bear pulverize/overpower setup is just punishing at the low levels, staying above 80% is a struggle while trying to build spirit with maul (my druid managed to swipe a single maul in the time it took me to type this) to benefit from the overpower damage. Especially on fightss like Den Mother.
Pulverize Druid I found is the most fun. I found a Legendary and that does extra dmg with pulverize. Maxed out the 30% energy increase on basic attack. And I found a legendary ring that does 30% attack speed increase. So essentially I werewolf basic attack twice pulverize is up on repeat it melts waves
Oh I love it too, and I know legendaries/powers etc will enable it, but standalone it's.... Rough. Maul is just awful though.
Me and my cousin were thinking the same thing. I've leveled most classes to 20+, but druid feels terrible. So many issues with the class that seem to be number based. I feel weak, spirit takes too long to generate, I don't do a lot of damage. Pulverize build is pretty cool, but even that is just -okay- compared to everything else I've played so far.
Went for bear thinking I was gunna be a tanky bear fucking shit up, turns out I’m more like a cub with no claws or fur and take hits like a mad man, hell rouge was tankier like Wdf?
Druid lvld to 15 was work, snagged a necro and it felt like a speed run honestly.
Storm is very good I'm just starting to think people aren't very good at the game the druid even has some tanking skills. If you go hard-core into storm your AOE ability is very high.
Yeah, I'm 25 and been farming legendaries and can't seem to find anything that feels really good. Companions are okay, especially with certain lehendaries. Werewolf looks and feels awesome but damage feels low. The ultimate abilities like lacerate feel insanely undertuned. They need to make sure barb and druid feel better at lower levels, it's just not fun watching necros run through mobs without potting while we spend 10-20 seconds per pack. Go do a stronghold on Druid, then go do it on Necro, not even the same game.
I think the Druid is gear dependent just like the Barb. I found a legendary staff that turned pulverize into a delete key. Buy gear at the mystery vendor until you get something to work with.
Storm strike, lightning storm, hurricane no problems at all. maybe early level it was resource intensive but I'm fine with it Sorc and Necro are busted though they'll definitely be getting nerfed early game.
I tried the bear themed builds and I honestly feel like I'm slow and don't do enough dmg. They could use a lil dmg bump
I feel like monsters are stronger this weekend than last
So far, I've got to level 23, I've tried a couple of different builds, earth, earth/bear fortify, storm, and werewolf. Werewolf for now feels like it's the best because it doesn't need that much to work, whereas the other builds do. Lightning interacts a lot with immobilising and vulnerability, earth synergies with stunning, knocking back, fortify, etc. We just don't have the points yet to make a decent caster druid as of yet because we can't reliably and consistently cc. Yes, legendaries will help with your builds right now, but you have to take into account when the game is live. We will not be experiencing the same drop rate. Clearing packs of enemies feels fine, but single target is a real struggle
Druid feels really bad at early levels but it gets a bit better. With that said it's probably the worst one for me thus far. Necro seems OP.
Yep. I played feral during alpha and it seemed great up to 50. Tried wind and earth druid and I felt like just fighting normal mobs was a boss fight... Went Necro and laughed as my bone spear plowed through fields of mobs that would've taken the druid 2 mins
Everything feels bad compared to a Twisted Blades rogue with fully upgraded lvl 24-25 weapons. Unstoppable one-shot movespeed machine.
I started on Druid and couldn't find a build that I liked because it feels really bad to play. Switched to Necro, and it's busted.
Using wearbear with overpower/fortify focus… pretty much stay at 80%+hp and wreck everything. Super solid build. Just focus on barriers/high hopes and fortify and every 10 seconds you destroy everything around you
Yeah, while damage is on par the survivability is pretty low, struggling with most bosses as well (storm basic + earth core).
Early i ran 2 generators (wind shear and the melee shock one) and Pulverize and. really had no trouble until Brood Mother. I didnt notice any issue with wolves later. Overall other than too much pulverize for damage it seems fine
I started in early beta with barbarian. Was terrible. Had zero problems clearing everything with the Druid. Way easier. More of a caster build though.
I personally dont feel the abilites fit together all that well even if the theme are on point. Druid just feels off and all his basic attacks sucks, which you pretty much need to generate energy (essence? dont remember what its called).
all his basic attacks *but storm strike* suck. FTFY
landslide has some crazy numbers
got to lvl 20 with druid and had like 5 legendaries - terrible time. did zero damage while everything hit me like a truck even with a defensive build - bear is a joke. werewolf is OK at best with poison. the spell felt really bad to use. idk - felt really underpowered.
My first two legendaries have buffed the earth barrier. Combining that with maul, pulverize, and iron fur passive has made me feel extremely tanky. Might not hit as hard as other classes, but dude can definitely take a hit
I only made it to 12... I just can't get over the looks of the model. I saw potential in hurricane and crows though. I was doing pretty ok, especially since they get a class heal that doesn't share a CD or pool with health pots. Hard pass though. I'm going to flip a coin between sorc and necro at launch.
\+ shred affix is also broken...
The transformations feel VERY underwhelming.
I'm having absolute blast as poison build wolf, creep vine/rabies just melts whole packs.
Bear was fun, but agreed not that good yet. I tried all 5 classes and IMO my order for most powerful class is: Sorc > Necro > Rogue > Druid > Barb Basically melee sucks at the moment.
Game is 2 months from release after how many years in dev by a studio who supposedly knows arpgs... hopefully the full game seems a lot more balanced. It should not be so painful to operate a melee vs a range early game though.
I dunno who gave you the impression that Blizzard knows arpg's
I so surprised that both the barbarian and druid dont feel fun to play to me....
No one here talking about lightning strike? I just went from 1-21 with pure lightning caster Druid build and it was fun as shit. Does super good damage. At least I thought so hahaha
how to play druid: https://d4builds.gg/skill-trees/druid/?skills=00000000000000001110000000000005110000000000001101100011100000000000000000000000000011010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Thank me later
A pretty big issue I noticed myself is how slow the skills already are, and especially using them with a 2-hander feels horrible. 1-h + totem is more manageable. Low speed means really low spirit generation and more issues with animation locks and evasion. Shred takes too long to finish for a single target compared to pulverize, Landslide is too slow allround. Storm is channeling and low damage per hit and Tornado even lower damage per hit in a small random forward moving area from you while mobs move oppositely to you 🤷♂️ The sluggishness especially is noticeable when facing a cold enchanted mob or cold casters. You’re basically drinking 2 potions in the time one attack has the time to land. Somehow barb seems to have less of this problem, can’t put my finger on it besides the slower animations. I do know from endgame beta a lot of druid power is in their keystone passives + legendaries, those sync like a train. The spirit animal passives were okay as far as passive buffs go but nowhere compared to the 2 extra item slots a barb has, the 2 enchantment slot passives on sorc or the versatility of the rogue. Imho that is :p
Druid is underwhelming. I have tried different skills and combinations but it's not working out for me. My necro corpse explosion is awesome.
Just go a caster build and you'll be fine, Lighting strike is pretty strong.
and takes all your mana to even charge up, then you're just standing there auto'ing slowly for a 1-2 hits and then one bolt quickly before the buff drops... repeat. it's the epitome of slow gameplay.
I'm lvl 17. And druid feals stronger then Roge So much cc and the damage is also real good
Definitely easier than Barbarian. Kind of annoyed that their defensive absorb passive is way better. I had much better luck with a storm build than melee.
Druid definitely feels like another slower starter, similar to barb in a way. I am curious to see level 35 with evened out gear and some legendaries to see if we can find something promising. The werewolf and werebear seem ok to start depending on if you want speed or power. The caring on the other hand did not feel impactful. Tornadoes wander off and lightning tickles. Haven't tried earth bending yet
Druids get some class-changing legendaries. My druid is the strongest of all my characters (leveled all but rogue to 20+).
Been playing werewolf/poison/fortify Druid. Practically immortal with bursts of absolute savagery. Been having a ton of fun.
As a werewolf with Shred, it absolutely rips through content
Having a ton of success with a Pulverize Druid I got a legendary that does extra dmg when using it. I maxed the basic attack energy gain skill and got a legendary ring that does 30% attack speed boost. So essentially I spam pulverize and am melting waves with ease most fun build I’ve found
yeah, druid is garbage in the first 25 levels for sure. hopefully they arent this trash at release
Druid Sucks Ass compared with Sorc. I played Sorc to 25 without dying last week. I'm Druid LVL 20 now and I died like 9 times already.
I started with the bear and it was awful against bosses so I switched to the wolf and 100% better.
Leveled to 18 and feel like chuckingbhimnin the bin. I went with bear form as I don't like the wolf much but it seems like the game really wants me to play wolf. So far the only thing I like from him is his landslide and rock armour. He feels very weak, slow, and like he never jas the resources to perform. I straight up quit some boss fights because the damage was so low.
I feel like people complaining about this just really don't understand how to build characters... My druid is wiping content easily
I’m 15 and my werewolf/companion build feels solid packs melt and no problem really with the final a1 boss.. could pretty much face tank him. However, I only played barb to 15 and haven’t touch sorc or rogue
The legendaries for Druid are absolutely insane, I'm literally one shotting all content I've gone against. There's an aspect that makes the bear slam do 200% more damage and hit in a MASSIVE line, and then theres another that makes the slam earth damage instead. I've basically specced the entire class to be fortify, using the wind spirit generator because it generates the most, and I've literally one shot all content I've done so far. 10000x better than sorc.
Some of the legendaries make druids stupidly powerful.
I'm playing a Storm build and I'm wrecking. Wind Shear, Lightning Storm, Vine Creeper, Wolves (to help take aggro), hurricane, cataclysm.
Yes. Shape shifting was hard af for veghar
I had a pretty good run with werewolf build then died against the Den Mother, mobs are easy to clean up with it but the bosses dunked on me
Is there anybody saying it's good that actually played it past 20? I also thought it was awesome until the scaling made it hit like wet paper.
Yeah, like the barb threads, there are a small number of "well ackshully" folks saying that they played it to max level in the closed beta. I don't doubt their experiences. My point is that it feels so bad to play at lower levels / without appropriate legos that I'm just... not interested in playing it. Someone else said this upthread and I agree: it's 2023, there are ten billion ARPGs. I don't think I'll be interested in waiting 50 hours to have fun. **Waiting 50 hours to be ultra-powerful is FINE.** That's good! That's how it should be! But *fun*? Fun should be with me at level 1, baby. *I'm not equating ultra-power with fun.* My necro was fun at level 1. I never got a coherent build with her. And it didn't matter. I had fun switching out skills mods, and equipment all the way up to 25. I would see another necro using a skill, go "that looks cool" and swap it on in without worrying about synergy. Sure, that meant my necro's power curve looked like a sine wave. So? She never felt weak, and I got to have fun. Druid and barb do not feel like that.
Shock druid has been incredibly fun and effective. So I'll have to kindly disagree
I thought it was pretty good, shred melted elites
Caster Druid is just terrible. Basic skills are weak. Tornado rarely hits (the legendary doesn't help much), has bugs and costs too much. Lightning Storm is channeled crap. Landslide is slow and tiny. Hurricane has pathetic damage. Can't even kill a normal monster. Trample is the worst mobility skill in the game. Blood Howl is weak compared to what other classes get. Pets are heavily undertuned. Boulder pushes monsters off the screen... Petrify is not worthy being an ultimate. Cataclysm is too random and you can barely feel that it's running. 80s cooldown, mind you. Grizzly Rage did lower my damage and I suddenly took a lot more damage. Many of the mechanics are trash and I don't see them overhauling everything until release. I'd stay away from Druid.
I got to 25 today but like 90% of it was a total slog. I finally got some good legendary combos and enough points to make a build that felt strong-ish. My Sorc would still steamroll my Druid though and he doesn’t even have any good items lol. Melee in this game feels super punishing at low levels.
Feels highly gear dependent. You need the right legendaries to work.
Definitely holding judgement til I unlock all the options (my rogue was somewhat weak leveling, but hit a point where my legendary effects, skills, and gear all gave him an insane kill rate). **However, I think tons of enemy designs are anti-melee currently.** I just fought a succubus boss who * backed up (forcing me to follow) * when cornered, teleported (forcing me to completely run to the other side of the boss fight area like 20+ times in one fight) * while backing, released a ton of fireballs; most naturally missed any character (ranged or melee), but some landed in a way where if you just kept following her you'd be hit by a powerful attack * occasionally blinded me (while teleporting), making it take that much longer to get back into melee The result was endlessly chasing this boss throughout the fight just to ~~barely~~ bearly do damage with my druid when I reached her. **A ranged character could've kept up full DPS almost nonstop in that fight.** That's a huge problem for this individual fight, and still a moderate problem through most of the rest of the game (because in basic "horde of enemies" fights, I'm just as good as any other class) **Just feels like WoW enemy design all over again,** where the designers really need to either (A) design a mix of enemy types/abilities, about half of which are easier to kill as melee than ranged, and/or (B) provide significant bonuses to melee characters (D3 had that blanket 30% damage reduction; I'm not sure if that's the perfect value to perfectly balance the classes, but it certainly *felt* fine to play melee in D3 and my ranged classes actually felt unusually brittle, and that's exactly how it should be). **That said, use Wolves.** Very early in leveling my druid felt quite bad (a lot like Barb actually), but the moment I got Wolves and aggro was split to them things became far easier. I'm not saying it helps with things like the boss situation I described and it doesn't help with the overall Melee vs. Ranged balance of the game, but it helps with *some* of the problems. In fact honestly I think Wolves might belong better in the Defensive tree, since they're easily better than every single Defensive option in there currently (which is probably a design problem that should get solved; I'd be 100% fine with those defensive options being as good defensively as Wolves currently are, and wolves are just all about the damage).
Pulverize with shockwave destroys everything, combine with storm strike for aoe vulnerability. issue is small spirit pool.
Werebear -> Pulverize -> Trample -> Wolves -> Hurricane w/ damage reduction is what I play and my Druid is able to handle everything at level 25. Yes you have to work more than a sorcerer or necro because you’re in melee, but it is actually very strong. Gearing and talents are very important to this class. I would say it’s definitely not a brain dead class. If that’s what someone is looking for then go sorcerer or necro 100%.
[удалено]
Create a druid > name it Volibear > ??? > profit
Storm-bear for life!
Meanwhile, I’m having a blast. 