Hello Traveler! With the release of Patch 0.8.4 and the Druid Overhaul, we’d like to hear your feedback! For this feedback, we have a quick poll.
Which transformation have you had the most fun with?
0 voters
Please feel free to let us know in the comments what it is that makes up your favorite build!
I was not a big fan of druid and I am still not.
Thematically I just can’t like the class concept.
But even when ignoring the theme of it, druid transformations are still very limiting and weaking one of the strongest aspect of LE’s skill system:
Choosing whatever 5 skills you want, combine them and make interesting synergies.
With the druid overhaul, transformations did get tons more interesting interactiosn and synergies, but for the most part you are very reliant on the synergies that are given within a skill spec tree.
Only builds that switch back to human form can use skills mroe freely.
I did vote for “I do the Human thing” the most, since all my druid builds ended up using one skill while transformed and at least 2 or 3 while in human form.
One thing that was nailed with all 3 transformations though is how smooth they play.
Transforming in and out of transformations feels incredible statisfying and smooth.
The new passive tree is very nice and I like the idea of thresholds in nodes.
The skills themselves have very good interactions.
I strongly miss the ability to activate companion skills.
I can’t say why, but I’ve lost the feeling of fun that I had with the Spriggan form. And on the opposite, the Werebear form that was boring for me before is now cool and fun.
I like the Swarmblade form, even though it seems there are not many ways to build it efficiently.
And overall, I may be wrong but I feel a loss of power for the Druid, even though the Mastery feels globally better.
Unfortunately Swarmblade is not quite what i imagened it will be. Specially summoner variant of it, creating totems that create minions imo clunky way to do it. and node that makes you summon minions yourself located behind Serpent Strike node, but don’t have synergy with it. also other skills don’t have much synergy with minions. As well as not many options to do poison minions. Like, Bear is great because all of his skills could be affected by non-form primalist skills, while Swarmblade has only Serpent Strike.
Maybe if other Swarmblade skills had skill trees of their own that would make form much much better.
Werebear: awesome changes. Playing the low life EQ variant and it’s an absolute blast. Big chunky hits, good mobility, feels like a big burly beast as it should.
Spriggan: honestly it feels like human form with skill restrictions and complete lack of mobility. People seem to be finding success with various spriggan builds but it just doesn’t feel comfortable to play in my personal opinion.
Swarmblade: cool concept, cool synergies, but the minions feel underwhelming entirely. Every time I play it, I can’t help but think “a rogue would do this better, and be more fun”.
I’ve only tried Swarmblade, and only used the Serpent Strike / Maelstrom / Tornado synergies. Currently playing my own take on the regen build and it’s solid. Building around the DoT spells is also fun.
Everything with the locusts just seems really bad though. This is coming from someone who really likes pet builds. They synergies just don’t seem to be there and the mechanic of summoning hives to then summon locusts is awkward and doesn’t feel good. I think it would be much better if the locusts just spawned passively over time, and the hive ability was replaced with something that interacts with them. Perhaps a no-cooldown ability that gives them a massive speed buff and some extra damage for a second and sets their aggro to a targeted enemy so they’ll swarm that target and then spread out to attack other nearby enemies.
For synergies it’s tricky because the druid has such limited access to summon-based abilities, and it’s further limited by the restrictions of being in a form. After Swarmblade your companion skills, where do you spend your other specializations? Also, if you’re maximizing companions rather than focusing on locusts why are you even bothering with Swarmblade rather than just playing a Beastmaster?
One option would be to give locusts some passive nodes that have the following effect - “As long as you have no Bears, your Summon Bear tree applies to your locusts”. Give them similar nodes for a few different companion skills (with rules similar to conversions that only one works at a time) and it would open up a lot of different options. Your summoner Swarmblade would want active companions, but also one other companion skill tree specialized to boost your locusts. Which tree you use would drastically alter how the locusts play, opening up a variety of build options. Being able to unleash a whole swarm of virtual spriggans, bears, or scorpions would give the Swarmblade a niche that would actually feel substantially different from the things a Beastmaster could do.
The locust stuff is an interesting idea and I really want to like it, but it just seems DoA in its current state.
I liked the Spriggan machinegun action I was creating with nodes, pet trees, shooty vines and thorn totems that were proccing constantly. I meant to try Swarmblade but kinda went all in on the tree along the way. That said, it made me want to do a hybrid tree/bug and I think there’s something to that if I were to get some more levels and passives under my belt. I think it would be very fun.
My spriggan passives worked in bug form which I thought was cool as hell and I hope that’s a synergy that exists with other forms when they switch to another one.
Please make the hotbars independently mappable for the forms. Changing the swarmblade moves around to be better for me just scrambles them in other forms. This caused issues for a few minutes until I noticed why nothing was working right.
Bear doesn’t do much for me, but that’s not the kit’s fault; just not really into the form.
I played a lot with spriggan Form. Before this patch and now. What can i say:
a) Bear is better with vines builds than Spriggan
b) castting vines is terryble slow. We must have a way to cast it faster and MORE vines.
c) Need movement. The ring that give us movement is ok, WITHOUT COOLDOWN. Or use 2 seconds of cooldown.
d) Thorn shield don’t have a way to generate Rage. It must change. Fast.
e) This form need a movement skill like MAOKAY from league of legends. A node to add this will be perfect
f) Bear form have a lot acess to other skills. Spriggan have maelstrom and… nothing more. Spriggan cannot cast Entangle Root. It is a BAAAAD choice. This must be the core skill on spriggan form.
Barbed ticket nodes must apply to us, not only to minions.
Cast thorn shield on specific targets is impossible. We have 12 vines, 6 wolfs, 3 totens.
How can we target the vines or the minions. We need a better way to target them (nodes maybe)?
It is impossible to build vines with chance to bleed. You first need that vines cast spirit thorns.
Then you need it to pierce. Than you need to make it bleed.Impossible.
HUntersbane node must add PIERCE to vine
I voted hybrid/powershifting and playing through 420s on em atm.
Its ridiculously fun but i feel people either find it too clunky or their brain will explode from speccing 2 transformation.
Cant help with the latter, but maybe can be improve by making powershiting between forms instant cast or reduce the animation
I like that there are ways to make transformed skills be affected by other skill trees. I wish that caster (specifically physical caster) spriggans had more options like that. Let spriggans make leaf tornados using the tornado tree or something I dunno.
The other thing. Swarmblade. Just let me use it on beastmaster. You know it’d be cool. I think passive trees and the mastery system in the game are really cool but building can feel overly restrictive at times.
Anything on spriggan is better on Beastmaster.
Bear is the ONLY WAY on druid. Very sad about that
I tried the unique ring to get a movement skill.
FANTASTIC - a new way to play.
But, we need to loss the belt and 1 ring to play as spriggan… that is not great.
can you show me your build. Ive been looking for some multiform build that is just better if you pick a single one,
Now I’m wondering if the Summon Locust ability still uses the Serpent Strike tree. If it did, it’d be kinda neat to spec Serpent strike for increased DoT and attack speed to boost the subsequent Locust Swarm.
Hi, I really like the new forms, although I didn’t play spriggan actively yet, just used it to generate rage and thorn shields.
Regarding swarmblade I agree with my fellow players that summon hives feels clunky to use and be better off spawning passively, and that more skill interactions would be nice.
Also I think that swarmblade should have thematically a better mobility. I think a kha’zix like jump for a winged creature would be great, which is ironic, because that’s basically fury leap.
Rampage is really nice and will be even better when you can adjust directions midway, which contributes to the popularity of the build.
+1 - exactly my thinking too!
Ive had extensive play of the Druid prior and after the patch so I can provide a quick summary:
Bear form got hugely buffed in many areas except raw attack speed but theres many build options that are all really good, although it could use some tweaks I feel this was very successful, personally Maelstrom Bear is one my favorite builds in LE so far
Spriggan form was nerfed in almost every way except Totems, you could easily get 30+ vines prior, Vale Blast was better a focus firing with Vale Spirits and they still have no movement ability which is actually a major issue in high damaging zones, also Shamans identity in question if Spriggan can be a better totem user
On a side note as I feel they worked together Spriggan Companion was highly nerfed as a DPS companion but extremely buffed as a support - honestly that CSA / Crit node is ridiculous and since Spriggan can still provide the buffs while ‘unconscious’ it feels mandatory to take it on many builds
Ive barely touched Swarmblade but insanely easy to cap crit, passive tree is a bit of a mess and Locusts need to auto respawn imo like Bee idols and maybe make the Hive skill do something else
Also I do really like what was done with the Druid passive tree where you spend ‘xx’ points to unlock a bonus as it makes point allocation much more building enabling and meaningful, im hoping that gets added to almost every passive so we can flesh out builds more
I think druid in transformed form should be able to slot at least one skill from human form, currently transformations are very limited and are not allowing much build diversity