I was thinking of playing the Druid race today but after playing around and testing some setups on my level 100 druid, I couldn’t find any way to get Werebear or Swarmblade to deal any significant damage.
I tried to look through the forum for any guides for how people are building druid now, and I only found gimmicky builds that were using maul to proc fury leap or earthquake as the only way to deal any damage, which even required collecting some niche items such as shard of the shattered lance set (for the bonus damage) or exangious to abuse the low life damage bonus just to get the builds to do acceptable damage. Outside of this playstyle of spamming maul on cooldown to proc earthquake/leap damage, I can’t see any way anyone has figured out how to build the druid anymore. Swipe scaling is basically non existent no matter which way you build it.
Am I the only one who thinks this druid patch form rework is incredibly underwhelming? The only thing I noticed between the convoluted and obtuse skill trees that don’t seem to offer any meaningful niche’s for types of druid builds is that they seem to be forcing the ‘form dancing’ nodes on us, when I am pretty almost nobody was wanting to play this type of playstyle in the first place.
Anyway, I’m just concerned that I’m going to be incredibly bored during this race once I realize that every which way I path, my druid is likely to be doing Zdps. Am I the only one thinking this way? I’m not even sure im going to play the event anymore- having a race where my only avenue is to path towards getting the earthquake mace so I can wait every few seconds to mash my movement ability to proc earthquake sounds incredibly dull to me.
First off: I am not a druid fan at all, was not before and I am still not after the Patch.
But, the interactions between various transforms and skill trees and different builds you can do is pretty substantial IMO.
And for me, exciting synergies and interactions are always more important than numbers.
Some of the new druid stuff might require some number tweaking, but I think it’s interesting nontheless.
Gameplay and how smooth something is, always comes first to me, then numbers.
Transformations in general are still very limiting and weakening one of the best aspects of LE’s: The Skill Spec Trees, since you can only have so many interactions and synergies within one Transformation Skill Spec Tree.
Ive only played Werebear this patch and level’d a new Primalist. Unfortunately thats your main source of damage on the Bear unless you stack crazy attack speed somehow and try kill everything with stacks Maelstrom as you get up to 40% per hit to proc it
Maul is on a 4cd and that the main way to do big damage from proccing Upheaval/Fury Leap or Entangling Roots. Swipe is pretty weak
Upheaval is good to level with and probably decent end game, maybe look to make a build that stays in human form and focuses on Upheaval
Swarmblade is insane for pure melee builds. Swarmblade + Serpentstrike trees don’t give much raw damage (aside from the 75% inc hit dmg to blinded enemies) but they basically make crit (10% swarm, 6% serp strike, 5% base) and attack speed a non-issue. This allows you to spec all in on crit multi and focus on weapon types that boost it for example Odachi, new Trident, dual wield Doom star + Katana or just use big weapons like Zweihander, Primalist also can get a lot of phys res from heoborean armor and bone amulet bases making the downside of Sulron’s steps negligible for another 100% crit multi. I equipped a decent trident at lvl 60 with sulron’s and instant 450% crit multi with the crazy attack speed zooms thru echoes and bosses. With idols and affixes on gear you can easily hit 600% multi which is pretty big. You can also alternatively build cold with dw shattered lance or the new cold spears since Druid has so much cold pen.
Cold spirit thorns Spriggan form builds are also pretty popular from what I’ve heard, the best way is of course crit with druid but I have a shaman version which is non crit with more focus on totem->spell dmg + maelstrom and its pretty damn strong with pretty good armor and dodge insane healing from totems+sprig and decent damage(Tho crit druid would prolly be better).
I haven’t tried Werebear yet but I think they have definitely moved it to be less of a pure attack spam playstyle to more of spellcaster/ slow big hits, Since Swarmblade seems to be the main melee transform.
Druid may be a bit underwhelming in terms of performance, but it’s a very well synergized mastery, very fun to play. I needs to be tuned a bit in terms of values, but the fun is already here.
Hi, I think the druid rework is nice, but the numbers are not there.
I also ended up playing the leap / cold shard set / maul version despite wanting to play a Multiform swipe druid, because the damage was underwhelming.
I was hoping the multiple forms would synergize with particular skills, but the only skill that is supported by more than one form is maelstrom.
I can kind of get where your issue is with requiring uniques. However the fury leap interaction is in the skill tree. Its is not niche. It is not hard to access. Why are you bringing it up in this context?
Form-dancing is actually my favorite type of build in the entire game and other games where it exists.
I’m currently loving my Lightning Bear / Human Earthquake build. Fury Leap, Werebear, Warcry, EQ, Swipe. Start in Human form, leap around and swipe smaller monsters, Warcry for stun/health, EQ for higher damage. Transform to Werebear when out of mana (which uses Warcry and heals you), Maul (with Fury Leap damage), Rampage to a better position, Swipe some, Maul once more, switch to Human and now you have full mana again. Repeat EQ Spam etc.
I’m working on some other 2 form combinations as well, Maelstrom Bear/Bug, Minion Tree/Bug and Poison Tree/Human. I’m also planning a 3 form build, but am only in the design phase and haven’t determined if Human will be one of the 3 forms or not.
This. So nothing have change from 0.8.3. Alot think its “new” from patch 0.8.4 but its not.
Was already playing self cast EQ on 0.8.3 without maul. Hence the changes in 0.8.4 does nothing for me.
Deliberately leveled a druid pre patch to lv90 to test builds but alas very boring changes, and still consider low damage for 200 corrupt, not even 300 or 400.
Patch to patch, 0.8.4 Druid changes is definitely underwhelming for me as compared to 0.8.3 Void Knight changes.
I kind of have to agree. To be honest, though, I was never much of a fan of primalist. I typically play either bladedancer or sentinel builds, since I mostly like melee, so you’d think I’d like primalist, but I just don’t really feel it. Bear is super tanky, but the damage is seriously underwhelming compared to even other tanky classes, like pally.
I’d have to say, though, that swarmblade is probably the biggest disappointment. I was hoping for some interesting elemental builds, or some kind of synergy with all kinds of other abilities, but compared to werebear, it more feels like swarmblade and spriggan were designed as a dual-form multispec, because I just found it kind of… un-interesting?
I may just be burned out on the game, though. I’ve honestly not played it much this past year, just came back for a couple of weeks after each major patch… I might just wait until new masteries become available.
But yea, I’d have to agree that the new specs are kind of… meh… but maybe that’s just because I’m not much of a fan of primalist in general. I really want to like Shaman… too bad.
Cooldown interactions are too long between abilities. Werebear rampage needs to be reworked. The way I would do the skill is there is a max 4-second timer with independent movement, not just linear. So if you wanted to rampage in a counterclockwise circle you can. If you cut off the movement before the full 4 seconds you lose remaining time starting the cooldown upon release. Allow for some synergy between roar and warcry in werebear form as it is a useless ability as it stands, the stun is so brief that I took it off the bar to keep from hitting it. Roar should be like an intimidation style where the targets take more temporary damage from all sources not stunning the skill just seems odd to me.
I think people were talking about different things. Some were talking about the forms and others like me about how the damage feels underwhelming. That said, the last patch fixed a lot of bugs, so I think druids will be fine. I’m having so much fun with mine and I’m getting to know more interactions every day.
Warcry skilltree affects the Roar tree as well and it has a node in the cold side that makes frozen enemies take more dmg from all sources.
Rampage was supposed to have the ability to change the direction in the trailer (not full circle but can turn a bit). I heard this was removed on release due to some bugs.
You can now get Cooldown recovery while transformed on helmets so along with the regular cdr mod, you can get 25-30% cdr on helmets for druid form skills.
Warcry is not even close to other skill choices, such as fury leap and spriggian form. Taking enough points in those two superior choices uses up any remaining points and skill mastery. My point was that it should have intimidation not stun.
Why build cold when I want to do fire and ignite, this is what I am meaning by synergy. There is only one direction. There in lies the problem. For its cooldown, even with mods, it is still out of cycle with the rest of the archtype. It is herky-jerky button watching or time counting to make sure you do not miss that one millisecond window to do max dps. It is awful.
Far better than Entangling Roots/Maul crap. Ive tried all of them and Maelstrom on Roar/Swipe, has the best clear, best boss DPS and is the least irritating to play
My Druid is only 90 and made a few days ago but I hit 12k Maelstrom tooltip and I can get up to 18-20 stacks on a boss. At 150 corruption most mobs just die still as I walk past. I autocast Warcry to maintain stacks constantly
I have a Druid but don’t typically like the playstyle (even dating back to D2). I can’t say for sure how good or bad it is, especially since I’m still learning how to layer mechanics in this game, but I will say that last night I used my free respec to turn my Werebear build to a Cold Swarmblade build and without changing any gear, having several pieces of gear 20 levels lower than me, and having all of my skills respec’d to lvl 6, I went into a same level zone and was staying alive easily and doing decent dmg. I wasn’t one shotting packs like my Glacier Mage, but I had good enough clear. I’m thinking if all my skills were 15+ and had gear appropriately stated and leveled, it would actually be pretty good. Here is the build that I VERY QUICKLY PUT TOGETHER to give me a guide as I play. I’m sure it needs a lot of changes but I was face tanking last night Druid, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.4d) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Here we go with the one build type better than another silo mentality. I wanted to play a fire/ignite. This is the problem I am trying to address. Why is warcry with cold getting that much love and not the fire? I can care less about Maelstrom as I have already built and played that I was testing the differences and there is a clear preference for one over the other, that should not be.
I am talking about skill diversity without being forced to do a perceived meta based on dominating verse underperforming skill setups.
