I’d like to see some support and changes made to druids and companion builds. I’ve tried to make a companion build work for the druid this season (season 4), and have had some success - but there are a bunch of flaws that I would like to point out.
Aspect of the alpha has the tag that your wolf companions can spread Rabies. Afew problems I have found with it are: The animation to cast Rabies for the wolves is too long unless you invest heavy in attack speed. And Rabies in itself is practically a useless ability at this point if you intend to use it for damage. Tried tempering gear to boost Rabies to see how high it could ideally tick for. And the damage was very low compared to how much investment was put into it. So please let the rabies the Wolves use when they have “Aspect of the alpha”, scale with the wolves and their damage. And possibly make it a aura around them instead of a casted ability.
Speaking of rabies - what does it have a cooldown to begin with? And such a long cooldown aswell. You recently added a aspect to lower it per enemy hit - but thats one more aspect to cram into your build that already has better aspects for better skills. As it stands, Rabies is rather useless besides being a skill that poisons enemies. And even then, it spreads too slow (even when you’ve skilled it to spread faster) and not wide enough to even leave a impact. It just cant jump to mobs fast enough. Most of the time, the first mob hit dies before it even spreads. And when the wolves use it - the mob gets hit with Rabies and then oneshot before it even spreads. Useless. Only point in using it is against elites. But even then its like, meh. Already have poison creeper so whats the point? So change it, remove it, buff it - I dont know. I might be ignorant to it and its potential. But looking at what you need to set it up and looking at other specs dealing several million in one hit - you have to start admitting that its damage/utility is not what it could be. Let the wolves spread it like a plague, just like the Witch Doctor did in Diablo 3. Atleast when it does little to no damage. I mean 30-50k per tick? Ooo, aaa - Look at it go guys! (sorry, couldnt help myself xD But seriously, its useless)
Wolves lack survivability. Certain packs - like the ones that explode and spawn spiders dealing poison aoe damage - will kill the wolves very fast. And there is little to nothing you can do to avoid it. At lower levels, its fine. But once you push high enough - aoe damage will take them out very fast. We have no way to passivly boost companion survivability, unlike Necromancers and their minions. We have to rely on Debilitating Roar or get them damage reduction from skills like Pulverize with “Primal Pulverize” for the 20% less damage taken from enemies hit.
Wolves lack mobility. Or rather, they are very slow to engage targets. And extremely slow at following the player. The unique “Storms Companion” brings up their movement speed - but seems to do nothing with their time to engage and switch targets. They also seem to almost ramp up their speed - starting slow and then speeding up. As if sprinting on ice. The ability to move them around and deal damage when wearing Storms Companion is great - but even here they will fail alot. If they fall behind - they need to catch up to you first before they do their leap. And at times, they just get confused and refuse to leap at all, but still starting the cooldown of the ability. They flat out refuse to leap at targets close to them most of the time. Just try standing and attacking the 5 training dummies and see how they leap between targets and you will eventually find one where they just refuse to leap. Another thing that bothers me is the cooldown. With max cooldown reduction I can get it down to 2.75 seconds, thats the hard cap it seems. But that is still a long cooldown when I use it for both damage and mobility (and survivability to dash them out of danger). The damage is high, but not even close to classes/builds that deal billions in one hit. So I dont quite understand why there even is a cooldown to begin with? Also, please make it heal them alittle or summon dead wolves when they are all dead unless you’re able to just flat out give them more survivability.
Wolves/companions lack damage. At a certain point they just fall off in both damage and survivability. I think I’ve pushed my wolf spec as far as I can. I farm The Pit at 70 - but its very touch and go. I havent tried pushing it higher cause I’m pretty much at the limit of what I can do at around 76. The damage and esp survivability of the wolves, and by that extent - me, just aint there. A companion spec CAN do good things. Managed to get mine up in the top 20 on the solo druid leaderboards (currently at 18, but I expect it to drop as more people get gear for their meta builds). But the only reason for that is that the mobs are relativly low level - and two - The holy bolts potion. Without that potion, this build just cant work. The aoe damage just aint there. The wolves are spread too thin and cant deal with groups. They can dash and clear elites just fine - but they take too long to move and kill on their own. And the Creeper and Ravens dont deal enough damage without investing in them and giving up wolf damage. So the wolves would either need a cleave, or a massive buff to rabies to possibly make rabies viable. As I said earlier - make it either scale with their wolf/companion scaling - or just flat out buff Rabies. Cause its pretty useless even with gear tempered for it. From the numbers I’m seeing, with full skills in rabies (no tempering), it would need a 10x buff just to hit 500-800k per tick (mind you, thats the end damage tick as the damage ramps up for the duration of Rabies). For reference - the wolves hit for 1.5-4 million per hit non crit. And considering all the other problems mentioned with Rabies (cooldown, poor spread), I see no reason why it cant be redisigned or at the very least, buffed.
One final thing I’d like to mention is Lacerate. I played around with it alittle with a companion build and have two suggestions. One is to make your wolves also dash when you use it, having them do their damage based on their companion/wolf scaling. And two - Give the player a grace period of immunity or damage reduction after it ends. I often found that using it would just lead to a death. I mostly tried to use it to give wolves extra damage and to escape a death. But it was pretty much a failed attempt. Seeing as its not used for many builds - hopefully there is room to change it alittle to make it compatible with companions.
Apologies for any ranting and spelling errors etc. Just wanted to share my thoughts about the build and the druid in general. I dont mind playing wonky ass builds. But when the skills start to fight you and prevent you from having fun, you start to lose interest.