How should Blizzard boost the Druid in the next upgrade? i

[Ed from Russia]

How should Blizzard boost the Druid in the next upgrade?

I've been playing Druid ever since the expansion came out, for about 50% of all my characters. Druids are versatile and fun to play. But there's no denying that it's one of the weakest classes in the game.

So my question is: how should Blizzard boost the Druid in 1.12?

My personal preference would be to make Raven more effective. If a Fishymancer can have 40 minions, I don't see why we can't have a raven per skill point invested. I don't care too much about more damage, but for block-lock and blinding 20-30 ravens can be awesome. You may remember the Hitchcock film 'Birds'.

Other upgrades should probably be to improve the Elemental tree, though I have no real idea how apart from simply increasing damage. Maybe boosting Hurricane and allowing you to cast it in Bear/Wolf form, so you can use it as a frost aura.

Both work great in PvM I think, but not sure about PvP since I never play that.

Next question: how can we reach Blizzard to make this reality? Any ideas are welcome here.

 

[naturebunns]

I've suggested several things


1) eliminate Hunger as a useless shapeshifting skill in the tree


replace it with a Passive Run walk skill (similar to increased speed) but that only works in wereform

2) remove the cast timers on fire skills (only tweak needed to elemental tree)

3) Increase the # of summons a druid can have (with major skill point investment, make it where you only get an increase to summon # with HARD points into it to avoid gayness with teleporting windys)

 

[superjayson]

4) get ride of the pre-req's for armageddon aka the cyclone/artic/twister/tornado/hurricane ones.

 

[Clay bizzle]

I think Naturebunns or Valvoux mentioned something like Werewolf and Bear synergizing each other. Not a bad idea to me. Lycanthropy should have a passive bonus to run/walk, either for every skill point or a nice one time bonus. I mean c'mon, animals are fast! The creeper and vines are pretty lame as well in their current status.

 

[naturebunns]

I think Naturebunns or Valvoux mentioned something like Werewolf and Bear synergizing each other. Not a bad idea to me. Lycanthropy should have a passive bonus to run/walk, either for every skill point or a nice one time bonus. I mean c'mon, animals are fast! The creeper and vines are pretty lame as well in their current status.

spirit of barbs, being the highest spirit investment wise, is pretty bad

if it were at least as good in pvm as thorns, it would be useful

 

[dodobird]

Personally i'd like the ability to be able to cast max # of one type of wolf, and a bear. Otherwise the bear feels very lonely. =[

Maybe it'll happen yay!

 

[naturebunns]

Personally i'd like the ability to be able to cast max # of one type of wolf, and a bear. Otherwise the bear feels very lonely. =[

Maybe it'll happen yay!

bliz could make ALL elemental skills castable in wereform, but not able to teleport

 

[pedu]

Yea we dont need a teleporting furball of death. 12k fury in your face after a tele... they would have to nerf it even more, and thats not fun. So no tele.

 

[Warmongers]

make it where you only get an increase to summon # with HARD points into it to avoid gayness with teleporting windys)

How about this: Nerf paladins instead. -50% to concentration's effectiveness on blessed hammers. At least -25% to the holy shield defense bonus, 50k defense is not human, nor does it anywhere near the AR bonus that druids can manage in wolf form using fury and angelic's.

Or: give a passive +1.5% fr/w per hard point into lycanthropy, as mentioned above (that would be cool, not to mention realistic).

Or even better than both of the above: remove teleport from enigma, and replace it with telekinesis so that all of the hammerdins and barbarians can pick up potions while spamming 18k damage hammers and trying to catch sneaky wolves with 12k ITD WW's while dueling, giving us a chance to tickle them before we die from a massive overdose of cookie-cutter cheapness :thumbsup:

 

[Rabbitz]

Upgrade druid. Not downgrade others.

It would be very nice to see awesomely fast wolfies running around

 

[Unchosen]

Fix Spirit of Barbs.

 

[pedu]

I dont think it can be fixed. You would have to delete it, then remake it completely. You dont see paladins running around with thorns either. Oak/how is just so much better than some damage returned.

 

[ToThePoint]

wolves dont need anything - the forgotten bears could use something and similar to the 'remove prereqs for armageddon' remove the need for 1 in wolf!
speed for bear not wolf might be fun

 

[Eilo Rytyj]

How about a bonus of 5% life per level of Werebear, on top of the +50% it already has. Wolves and Bears have essentially the same life with equal Lycanthropy investment, it would be nice to see the Bear as the hulking super-tank as he's supposed to be. With the extra life, that would allow for less reliance on Oak and more HoW users.

The fire skills need revamping, or at least make them deal equal parts fire and physical damage for Volcano, Molten Boulder and Armageddon. Synergies also reassessed to increase both fire and physical components equally of said skills. Perhaps a small rolling speed increase for Molten Boulder each level (slvl 30 MB rolls at almost sorc's Fireball speed or something)?

 

[IronCrown]

Give the spirits Physical I and Poison I in hell, not in NM. Would make PvM much better with a higher survivability in Hell.

 

[Unchosen]

No fix it.

SoB would be absolutely awesome if it was damage return +damage reduction.

It would allow for the low level of damage return because there is damage negated as well.....might even make for some interesting PvP builds since the item requirements are freed up tremendously.

 

[Metathrom]

1- Get rid of the Armageddon pre-reqs -> only fire skills should be pre-requisites
2- Add a different property to Spirit of Barbs -> resistances, maybe? Faster run-walk?
3- Add stun time for Twister -> 0.1 per hard point, Twister is a really useless skill right now
4- Allow 1 type of wolves + Grizzly to be cast together -> that'd improve the Summoner Tree
5- Pelt runewords, maybe? Out of ideas here. A boost to the Summoner and a boost to the Fire Druid would be welcome.
6- No idea as to what needs improving in the shape tree. Maybe add a new bonus to Lycanthropy?

 

[Kosmos]

Make the bear more viable. An easy solution could be to make maul an uninterruptable attack.

Remove the casting delay on the fire elementals.

thats all :wave:

 

[RareBear]

hmm lots and lots of changes, but I highly doubt there will be any

1) Improve the very low AR for Werebears, esp. maulers

2) Improve the defense for Werebears

2) Extend the duration of feral rage, should last much longer. This would be very useful for Wolf Druids, because they cant tele, so that extra F R/W would help, with a longer duration

3) With a very small summoning army, why not summon a bear along with your wolf pack?

4) Get rid of that pathetic SOB, this spirit skill just sucks.

5) Druid spirits should always be immune to physical because they are, well, spirits. And immune to another kind of attack, so they can survive without dying constantly. Barbs and Pallys dont have to worry about their auras and warcrys going away, but Druids always have to recast and recast.

6) I dont know about ravens, maybe they should be more effective?

7) All those wind skills you have to invest in if you want to max out Armageddon, if your a fire druid, should not be necessary

8) If Paladins get an exclusive runeword like that lame sheild called "exile", why not a runeword for a Druid?

9) And my last, for Blizzard, to realize that Paladins should not be the only Uber class in D2

 

[Proxyi]

a) TELE in shape form

or when this cant be then :

b) much moooooore speed for wolfies (omg for bears too ^^)

thats all ^^