I love melee characters, and I love Druid Werebear because I like the power fantasy of being a big bear and beating things to death with my hands (Swipe), but at 300 corruption I’m starting to struggle with damage. I can’t get the DPS of Swipe to ever compete with Earthquake Aftershock DoT in human form. My transformation feels more like a handicap for my damage than a benefit at this point in the game.
I checked the ladder for build ideas but 80% of Druids on ladder are doing the Tornado/Bolt spam thing which I don’t like. I want to be in Werebear permanently and I want all my damage to come from Swipe, Maul, and Rampage. Storm Bolts are cool as long as they’re consequences of melee and not replacing the melee itself.
Right now in Werebear form I rely on multiple “+x% Chance to create Aftershock on Melee Hit” adorned idols and I hate how inconsistent and clunky it feels, but no matter how I build Swipe it cannot compare to even a single Aftershock proc. I tried Lightning Swipe which looks cooler and Physical Swipe but they perform kinda the same, with EQ DoT eclipsing them significantly.
Hence the question of what are some good melee DPS non-EQ perma-Werebear builds? To me good just means being able to kill a Harbinger at 300 corruption within 2-4 mins. Specifically, builds where Swipe can outperform EQ DoT without ridiculous gear. I can’t do it without the EQ idols which feels like a vestigial deus ex machina and I want to do it without.
Idea is to use Swipes for clearing and damage and Maul as single target nuke. Maelstrom and Berserk stacks give more damage and attack speed. Pretty basic aside from using Vaion’s chariot as an additional 40% more multi for Maul.
It deals 80-100K crits with Swipe and my Maul (3 sec cooldown) hits around 600K max on the boss dummy.
Boss damage is pretty bad, Harbingers take ages. I tried the build against Aberroth and reached the threshold for his first ward bar after 2 vortex slams. Game(bosses in particular) is pretty unbalanced for melee right now which makes it worse.
Defensively melee werebear lost the powerful Aspect of Boar but its defense is still good IMO (even on a dual wield setup).
Offensively it is crap. Maul is supposed to be a big damage Slam skill with a cooldown and it is really bad at that. Its damage effectiveness is 250% which is pretty low. Look at other big Slam skills: Erasing Strike 550% damage effect, Judgement 350% (and an additional DoT), Forge Strike 500%, Void Cleave 400%, Earthquake 700%. But that’s not its only problem, it also lacks good more multipliers. It can get 60% more damage from the Werebear tree and 24% + 30% from the fury leap tree. This sucks for a skill with a 2-3 second cooldown, Earthquake for example can get 200% from a single node(Shatterquake) and it has multiple other nodes too!
But wait there is one more node that buffs Maul, Pummel and Bash which gives a 75% more damage against stunned enemies. This node is useless as stun is not a mechanic that can reliably be procced and generally stuns do not last long enough to make use of this (particularly on bosses). Stuns also have the fun ability of glitching certain bosses eg: Julra.
Melee Werebear could use major buffs IMO my suggestions would be:
Replace the useless Ruthless node in Werebear skill tree (-12% rage decay per point) Change it to 10% more melee damage in Werebear form and 20% less spell damage per point.
Fury Leap skill tree could use major buffs on Savage Impact, Brutal Impact and Panther strike nodes. Buffing Fury Leap’s damage in general could also buff the niche cooldown reset on kill nodes for non-Werebear builds. Even if EHG double the effects of these nodes, I doubt it will be broken or unbalanced.
Change Pummel and Bash to rely on Bleed or Slow… damage to stunned enemies is such a bad modifier.
It’s my first ARPG and I have seen people say melee kinda sucks vs ranged in this game in general. I have experienced this because most melee abilities make you either stop or force you to navigate bullet hell, which I feel favours ranged more (looking at you Julra). I don’t feel rewarded for needing to get close to the enemy, or in the time I waste navigating the ground hazards to get next to the boss.
I’m not a pathological corruption pusher, but I do want to be able to kill Aberroth. I got close a few times, but I keep getting killed by his final form insta kill bullshit, so I feel like I need more damage, since true tanking in this game is not possible (there are some attacks that are simply untankable).
From your posts it sounds like I’m trying to play a weak archetype. I kind of had this impression when I started poking around the forums but I didn’t want to let that stop me from trying to enjoy the roleplay/power fantasy of big buff bear.
The main point of my post was that EQ aftershock DoT is the only damage that feels competitive at 300 corruption, you didn’t address EQ DoT directly but it seems overall you feel the archetype is lacking, which makes me sad since it’s the only one I want to play.
I want to add on to your suggestions by adding my own thoughts on Werebear and Druid transforms in general:
I feel transforms are underpowered, they feel more utility, when I feel like it should make you feel like a killing machine. Additionally, the transforms lock you out of other abilities, which makes builds pretty homogenous, as other abilities can be only be used indirectly.
I feel that many of the damage nodes in transforms are poor compared to other choices (Earthquake clearly stands out) and since EQ is available to all masteries, everything else, especially your mastery specific abilities, must be competitive.
Therefore, like you I feel like some abilities should be changed, and transforms need more synergy with the base druid kit. Some suggestions as follows:
Allow Werebear Swipes / Armblade Slashes some crossover with Swipe and Serpent Strikes so players don’t need to spec 2 completely separate melee trees for dual-forming, and give give them both access to nodes options to be replaced by Tempest Strike completely.
I feel there should be more scaling abilties in general for transforms, these abilities are often phrased as “gain x benefit for y of your other attribute”, similar to Wisened Claws for Werebear. For example, there could be a node such as “Your Thorn Shields have an additional +1 second duration for every 15% uncapped Physical Resistance”. For the case of the Pummel and Bash node, maybe the stun condition can be kept, but instead of extra damage to enemies, it enables a kill threshold of 11%/22%/33%. on stunned enemies. Might be busted but this also gives it better synergy with the node that makes Fury Leap do extra damage to undamaged enemies (which itself currently has anti-synergy with your minions), so maybe that node as well can be changed to the condition of enemies that are above your kill threshold, rather than undamaged enemies.
Make more transform uniques that aren’t specific to one form (right now there are a ton of mid Spriggran items, 1 Swarmblade item, and 2 Werebear items, and only one or two generic items such as the Chimaera’s Essence ring. )
Replace the Druid passive of 70% DR with something more universal and less extreme, as perma-form builds don’t benefit in any way from this. This is actually more a symptom of my first point. Here are a few separate replacement suggestions:
+50% mana regen in human form. +15% to elemental resists when transformed.
+2 skill point levels to transform skills
They can even take away the bonus 20% health and mana, I think it’s an incredibly boring passive.
Rework the bottom right half of the Druid passive tree. The shiftshifter boons are kinda weak even if you go for them specifically, and only benefit active shifting. No suggestions here, just turn it into something less conditional, I’m sure most people don’t use it now.
Controversial, but instead of refilling your rage completely every time you transform, replenish it by 40% instead. Discourages the lame utility-like “mana battery” playstyle, makes mana regen relevant for Druid, and all the above buffs in power can make up for it by being a better reward.
Make Werebear Melee Damage and Health bonus multiplicative, and Swarmblade Form Attack Speed bonus multiplicative.
Lastly, I feel like Entangling Roots could use a few more interesting synergies with each transform, as this is the final node for Druids, but is rarely seen used.
