Druid - Most of the Skills are not useful for a druid imo

Druid
1

I’ve found through usage, that there’s only a few skills that actually do any serious damage and many of them don’t even need 5 points in them. For example Debilitating Roar, Heals you, nerfs close enemy damage and only needs 1 point. The other points only reduce the CD on it. So you can save 4 pts by speccing to it.

The companion skills are all rubbish. The Raven passive doesn’t even seem to work, the wolves do so little damage all they really do is distract the enemies… and the creeper is ok, but not worth 7 pts investment.

Alot of the other skills are just placeholders to get access to better skills in their respective minitrees for example Heart of the Wild is a complete waste of skill point, gives 3 more spirit, 9 more if you waste 3 points in it. But the 2 branching skills off it, abundance and wild impulses are somewhat useful. Although I only put 1 point in each of them.

Tornado and Lighting Storm are both decent skills, Maul is somewhat useful, but slow and limited, Shred and Landslide are useless.

The best lineup of skills I can find are Barrier, Cataclysm, Debilitating Roar, Hurricane with Storm Strike as your basic attack with 7 points in it and either Tornado or Lightning Storm as your Core skill. All the other skills are junk. Blood Howl for example heals you, but that’s all it does… DR is much better to use. Cyclone Armour… I mean, why? What a stupid design, pushes stuff away… so it’s harder to kill it?

Boulder, usually rolls off in completely the wrong direction… Rabies is somewhat useful and Trample is also useful, but I have no space for it…

Lacerate is pretty good for small groups, quite a fun skill, rage is kinda rubbish, petrify might be useful in harder difficulties. And for the last one, well only Perfect Storm seems useful the others are all junk.

The most important item a Druid needs… is his main hand weapon.

For that I’ve found the 2hand Axe with % damage v close, ranged and crowd controlled is about the most useful, with Basic Skill Attack Speed being essential.

The Druid is basically a simple Barbarian with more survivability… It’s a melee class for killing entire groups with, it isn’t specialised enough to kill bosses tho, and they are all abit grindy, but at the same time, none of them can hurt you.

Opinions? Alternative Views?

My Druid is lv 50.5

1 Like
2

I kinda agree. Many of Druid’s skills doesn’t worth picking.
It kinda forcing us to play hybrid specs and not to focus as Werebear for example exclusively,

3

I’m actually a total different build using companions and blowing everything away.
I don’t even have a skill that uses spirit.

I have storm strike maxed out, crit chance maxed at 6%, defensive abilities, hurricane.
All 3 companions with a couple of extra points in wolves.

With CC, AoE dmg and companions as well as my melee damage and no down time as I don’t need spirit it actually feels too overpowered.

4

The problem with druid is it scales very late and with good items. As for the builds, Werewolf is more for bossing and Werebear for clear (you could make it work vice-versa as well though…). If you get 3 boards into paragon, it’ll probably be very noticeable in power - most skills are crippled by default without some paragon glyphs or legos/uniques, unlike other classes. Also, tornado and lightning storm are both garbage!
For maul you’ll need attack speed, but once you get it, it’s smooth sailing - you get 2 AA’s in and then pulverize.
For Pulverize, Shockwave is an absolute must! If you get a max roll Shockwave, it basically 3x your Pulverize damage (if you imprint it into a 2H) to whatever you target in front of you melee range.
For this very specific case, aim for basic&core skill damage on weapon - and later on, follow those with crit damage, overpower damage and maybe some other of your choice based on your playstyle.

5

I’l see what I have, I find tornado and LS is all i have right now to do any damage, pulversize is good, it’s abit like tornado in that you fill your spirit and empty it in 2 shots, instead of wasting all that time channeling LS…

I’ll revisit companions… actually have some +companion aspects… can have 4 wolves i think… and raven, other than the active I haven’t found it to be that useful tbh.

Taking some time out to clear some map and grind some gear. I’m actually running out of gold… i’ve been respeccing so much…

6

For the companions, there’s a paragon glyph as well, but you deff need some legendaries and the uniques for wolves. companions are the most crippled base, they’re only viable later on.
I’m currently running werebear myself, with maul, pulverize, debilitating roar, ravens and grizzly rage.
Still doing map completion on WT1 atm, but I tried WT3 as well, and it seems to handle it just fine. Did the capstone dungeon @51, would’ve done it sooner, but I was unlucky getting shockwave…
All things considered, I think Druid - although kind of slow - feels better to play compared to other classes. You’re improving gradually, while some other classes get big spiky improvements somewhere mid-game and then it feels really bad, at least that’s the impression I got.

7

Again I have to disagree when it comes to companions.

I am only in level 20s with my druid and having all the companions works so well.
It isn’t their base attacks, although the wolves do take some aggro, it is more their special attacks.
You really have it all, CC, AoE and off tanking just from these 3 companions.
Also having AoE skills myself as well as being melee based druid you really do burn through groups as well as bosses.

My build is made up of …

Wolves, Raven and Vine Creeper.
Storm Strike.
Earthen Bulwark
Hurricane.
Also melee damage increased to +6 crit chance.

I play on World Tier 2 and I am really not having any problems with this build, any sticky moments there is always a way out before getting back in the fight.

8

The only companion skill that has a decent base is Vine Creeper. The active components sound nice on paper, yes. But you’re not accounting for their downtime. Check his clip from the world boss. They don’t scale properly without legendaries, uniques and glyph.
By no means am I saying not to play them, but you have to have the right stuff for it to work.
Also, up to 30’ish, pretty much anything goes, but you’ll deff run into problems, when you have to run the capstone dungeon for example.
As for Hurricane, that skill is DoA, it barely does anything - you’re better off having cyclone armor, it will benefit you more.

9

We’ll agree to disagree then, I see no problems with them at all, I am going through the story quest and side quests with no problems, again I play in Tier 2.

The downtime is also not a problem, if managed properly, given I have no spirit skills I don’t have to manage spirit at all like some other builds might, also the downtime from the skills isn’t that bad given you have 3 of them on different timers and you also have your own attacks, as long as you are not just running in hitting all the buttons at once you are fine. :wink:

10

I don’t want Cyclone Armor as I already have Earthen Bulwark.
You can certainly have both of them but again, given there is enough CC going on I feel it is a bit much having both with the 3 companions.

11

Ok, not trying to convince you otherwise. But for you to have an idea of what the legendaries, uniques and glyph do, you’re missing 200% damage for wolfs, another 20% for all companions, and 80% for the passive components. This right here is the problem. They are designed around these.

the two are different in what they do, one is a barrier while the other is damage redux. not saying you HAVE to pick it, i was just comparing it to Hurricane - which by the way is a meme more than a skill.
In all honesty I wanted to play a Werewolf build as well at first with Wolves, Vine, Ravens, Howl and lacerate, but the problem is I need too much stuff for it from the start - 2 uniques and like 5 very specific legendaries (all drop-only). I ended up going Werebear instead, and to be completely honest I’m kind of glad I did, it is quite satisfying.

12

I am just focusing on a levelling build, which is what I have.
Nothing is set in stone, I can always respec later when it comes to end game and things like uniques are more important.

I am only my level 20s now and was just pointing out that a companion build is more than viable.

13

I fully agree with that, as long as you’re having fun the rest is irrelevant, but he was asking how to improve his damage because he hit a point where he pretty much has to swap.

14

To be honest I am having so much fun with this class and build, I will see how it fairs at end game, if I need certain items to make it workable I will put the time in to try and get them.
It’s an ARPG and for me it is the fun you have playing and not the whole min/max thing.

Also it’s Blizzard… By the time I get to end game and seasons the Druid will be totally different … :wink:

1 Like
15

Aye, some things are wonky atm, we’re all hoping they’ll improve. At the moment, you’re pretty much forced into certain choices because of how wonky things are. My only concern is, they’re doing nerfs without really addressing the root of the issues.
We’ll see I guess, time will tell.

16

i haven’t played druid endgame yet but from what i’ve seen on streams they seem to absolutely destroy packs of mobs with one button click, pulverize.

clears whole screens lol

1 Like
17

Yeah, but it’s a rocky road until you reach that stage. Not that I’m rushing anyway - I’m still doing map completion for the account-wide bonuses. Once I’ve finished, I’m going straight into Helltide, lol

18

same for barb leveling. nothing really good feeling until we get all the correct set pieces for our build

im level 55 barb at end game and have all me legendary aspects except for one and i still suck ass without that one aspect

19

I feel you man… didn’t get my skockwave aspect until like 52. But once I got it, my god how satisfying it is!
But once you get yourself into WT3 at least, you get a lot more legendaries, so you’re bound to find what you need. Not to mention you can target-farm in helltide.

20

While I agree that some of the Druid spells feel a little bit lacklustre and maybe not that exciting visually, I’m having a blast with my Elemental druid. Storms, storms and more storms. I do agree about the companions skills, I completely skipped that. I think they should change the ravens to circle around you so that it would stack with Hurricane better :slight_smile: