i tryed to build a classic werebear druid and there are some aspects of this skill that breaking the fun for me. I don’t like the idea of some builds, to be in werebear form and you wait until your minions killed the stuff
you are trapped in 2 skills, you can use the werebear skilltree and swipe, because your skillbar is locked - less fun
you want to stay in werebear form, the problem here is you don’t want to use skills with mana cost, because you can’t regen mana and if your mana is gone we are at number 3 - less fun
cooldown, so you have skilled 2 skills, in werebear form you only use charge if you can (Lagoon?) and swipe and after you missed some jumping mobs you return to human form and run around like a little chicken for 20 seconds - less fun
Overall the werebear is realy nice, you are more tough, you do more damage, thats great but the restrictions are destroying the fun.
What will be the counterarguments for reducing the cooldown maybe with passives in the druid tree or change something with the mana, so i can use all of the werebear skills.
A while ago I suggested they rework werebear and spriggan form to encourage switching back and forth as a viable option. The forms are too stale for my liking as you’re locked into certain skills that are supported by the skill tree like swipe or are procs like thorns. I think that’s perfectly fine as long as there’s other options. There will of course be pros and cons to staying in form versus switching that can be augmented by passives and the skill tree. I could be wrong but I think I read they’re reworking werebear form. Not sure about spriggan form.
In the last dev stream Meike touched this topic but I want to share my thoughts as well because I like shapeshifting classes.
Every build should be viable if you go for perma form or switching from bear to spriggan.
There should be more interaction with the primalist skills or skills you choose. It’s said to reduce options if you like a shapeshift skill as mentioned since the implementation.
Being able to change the button setup when shifted is another thing needed.
At least use more possible skills in the way “Bear Swipe” is working. Leap benefits apply to charge as well, roar uses warcry… something arround these lines without going the same route in the bear skilltree eeevery time just because it’s the only viable way to make the best out of skillpoints you can spent.
Give the shift skills their own skilltrees so people can descide the way they want to play.
Pet usage in shifted form is kind of not there anymore. A lot of the pets power is gone when you can’t usw said pets active anymore even with the option to buff said pets by a good ammount in the passive tree.
A third shape is mentioned every now and then an it’s needed badly for rotational playstyle but this may still take a lot of time and I get it ;).
I’ll follow this topic and put in more thoughts on the getgo this are only the first ones from the top of my head but I wrote down some stuff somewhere else :D, just need to look for my papers.
Honestly, just tried playing the werebear boy and found it really disappointing. Not necessarily because of the restrictions (I planned a swipe bear from the get-go) but because the keys for bear form don’t allow for binding swaps. I have a set-up I like to play with for my bindings, and had to totally alter it for it to make even a little sense for the werebear form skills when I’m transformed.
Perhaps this will be less of an issue if I can find a way to make staying in form or swapping more fun, but because I dont have a lot of points spec’d into it yet and the form abilities are locked into their slots it feels extremely awkward moving from my normal skill bindings into the bear form bindings, and honestly it feels like I wasted my specialization. I went down this route because I found some set gear for the bear specialization early on in the game and it seemed like fun, but I’m pretty disappointed so far.
Does anyone have any information about if the devs have said this is on their radar or not to fix? I would enjoy this class a LOT more if I could just rebind the skills, even if nothing else changed.
The problem I have with werebear is that when I play it I want to stay in werebear. Everything I choose is about maintaining the form. the builds I see also build to achieve the same thing by taking the same nodes. It feels very limiting. Getting rid of that aspect of werebear would open up more build variety.
Maybe get rid of the no regen or just give swipe the default ability to give resource when in form. Then maybe we can feel free to experiment with more of the toolkit werebear has if we aren’t concerned with building just to maintain the form.
Point 2 in the op is also a problem. Using most abilities has a mana cost so you don’t want to press buttons. The current design isn’t what I think is fun. which is disappointing because I really want to like the werebear
Perhaps if the form drained mana constantly and the skills like swipe were used to replenish it a little so that in order to stay shapeshifted you had to keep moving and swiping?
