The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

[UrbanNomad]

The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

So there was nothing in 1.13 for fire druids and the fire druid is one of the classes that seriously needs more buffs. So I would like to start a discussion on the major weaknesses of the fire druid and possible fixes (buffs) for these downfalls. Once I get feedback and ideas I will post them on blizzard's forums and bump it constantly.

Please note that blizzard probably won't put forth too much effort, so the easier and simpler the fix, the better.

 

[UrbanNomad]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

saved post

 

[UrbanNomad]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Now I will give my $0.02. The fire druid is weak because of it's element: fire. Any character that is based purely on fire is not going to make it in Hell (read:fire immunes).

To counter this, I think fissure (the main ability) should be converted fully or partly to physical damage. The wind druid's main ability tornado is fully physical, so why not give the fire druid some physical damage. There are other hybrid-damage-dealing abilities out there (such as corpse explosion) that work well. So why not make fissure a hybrid spell?

Another opinion of mine is that a fire druid should have access to cyclone armor. The wind druid basically gets a free, fully synergized cyclone armor because its synergies are tornado's synergies. So why shouldn't cyclone armor synergize with fire spells as well. Of course if that happened it wouldn't make sense to call it cyclone armore; however, you could just easily rename it elemental armor.

 

[KillaMike]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

no need to double bump your topic, its forum, not a chat room, people will answer you in time, get some patients.

and i completely disagree that fire druids sucks. read fire + animals guide, more then capable to go through hell untweaked.

and tornado does 2/3 cold damage, and 1/3 physical.

 

[Enigmers]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Fire druids need MOAR FIRE.

 

[Flayed One]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

no need to double bump your topic, its forum, not a chat room, people will answer you in time, get some patients.

It's called "patience", and it has nothing to do with what he did, because it wasn't bumping - it was triple-posting.

and i completely disagree that fire druids sucks. read fire + animals guide, more then capable to go through hell untweaked.

Fire druids do suck, and summon druids suck too. As much as I like fire druids, the only not underpowered skill they have is fissure, and you need to max it as well as all it's synergies to make it work in hell. That's a minimum of 60 points in Fire tree, which leaves us only ~40 points to put in skills usefull against fire immunes.

Summons are good meatshields, but kill too slowly to be called a "good solution". Viable? Sure. Good? Hell no.

Wind sucks as a solution, because 40 points isn't enough to get a good attack.

Shapeshifters would be good, but they can't cast in wereform forcing the player to either shapeshift 20 times per minute, or quit playing Diablo 2 of frustration.

Fire druids lack a good FI solution.
I suggest letting shapeshifters cast spells in wereforms.

and tornado does 2/3 cold damage, and 1/3 physical.

Since when?:O

 

[KillaMike]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

It's called "patience", and it has nothing to do with what he did, because it wasn't bumping - it was triple-posting.



Fire druids do suck, and summon druids suck too. As much as I like fire druids, the only not underpowered skill they have is fissure, and you need to max it as well as all it's synergies to make it work in hell. That's a minimum of 60 points in Fire tree, which leaves us only ~40 points to put in skills usefull against fire immunes.

Summons are good meatshields, but kill too slowly to be called a "good solution". Viable? Sure. Good? Hell no.

Wind sucks as a solution, because 40 points isn't enough to get a good attack.

Shapeshifters would be good, but they can't cast in wereform forcing the player to either shapeshift 20 times per minute, or quit playing Diablo 2 of frustration.

Fire druids lack a good FI solution.
I suggest letting shapeshifters cast spells in wereforms.


Since when?:O

maxed fissure with 1 synergy, then get summons, and you forgetting about merc with hf aura -_-.

fast? no way fun? yes way

shapeshifters are absolutely different pedigree

and since when? well.... thats what i always been told

 

[Verashiden]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Why does everyone think builds need to be equal to each other in order to be viable?

Fissure as physical damage would make the game way too easy. You have skills that deal physical damage (Volcano, Molten Boulder). Granted, they're not the best at killing groups but it's still a solution.

The Fire Tree is not a tree that can stand on its own, much like single tree Sorcs. It needs to be combined with another tree in order to become viable. I don't see a problem with that.

But, since we're talking about buffs, my only suggestions would be to increase the KB capabilities of Boulder and to buff the physical damage it and Volcano deal.

 

[MCPWTB]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

What might be fun is if summons got synergies from the elemental tree. For instance, the wolves could do fire and/or cold, and physical damage.

Pumping points into the fire elemental tree makes the grizzly or wolves do fire damage on top of their physical damage. Likewise, putting points into the wind tree makes them do cold damage. Obviously it's better to specialize in one or the other, but mixing both trees would be possible. Maybe one point wonder in Hurricane to make wolves do cold damage and 'freeze' enemies on hit, while also burning them with fire...

 

[UrbanNomad]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

no need to double bump your topic, its forum, not a chat room, people will answer you in time, get some patients.

I did not bump my thread; however, I did triple post for good reason. The original post is the idea (thesis of this thread). The second post is where I will quote people's ideas on what the fire druid needs (body of this thread). And finally, I posted my opinion like any other person would. If I wanted to bump the thread I would have just simply said 'bump'.

and tornado does 2/3 cold damage, and 1/3 physical.

Wrong.

Fire druids lack a good FI solution.
I suggest letting shapeshifters cast spells in wereforms.

This is another awesome solution. Who would not want to be a werebear casting fissure?

Why does everyone think builds need to be equal to each other in order to be viable?

Why should all builds be equal? To balance the game maybe... Fire druids are underpowered in hell, they lack the arsenal to efficiently take down FIs.

Fissure as physical damage would make the game way too easy. You have skills that deal physical damage (Volcano, Molten Boulder). Granted, they're not the best at killing groups but it's still a solution.

You don't have to make fissure full physical damage, I know if you did that would be TOO overpowered; however, I see nothing wrong with giving it a percentage of physical damage to improve it's ability and speed to kill FIs.

The Fire Tree is not a tree that can stand on its own, much like single tree Sorcs. It needs to be combined with another tree in order to become viable. I don't see a problem with that.

I understand that a fire sorc is also handicapped, but they have the option of teleporting around FIs. The sorc also has many, good dual-element builds such as the orb-it-aller & meteorber. On the topic of dual-element, someone has mentioned a huge buff in arctic blast would not only give the fire druid a second element - it could be picked up by a summon druid as well.

What might be fun is if summons got synergies from the elemental tree. For instance, the wolves could do fire and/or cold, and physical damage.

Another good idea. It would fix summon druids and elemental druids at the same time.

 

[Verashiden]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Casting in Wereform is silly busted. Imagine an 8k life Windy in Werebear form running around with SW AND Nado *shudders*.

Fissure with percentage Physical would have to be done through a revision of the synergies IMO. I can see it scaling better end game but it would make early game even easier. Perhaps tack on to the synergy of Cano that it converts 1% of the damage per lvl to physical? 20% seems a good number to keep some challenge in the game but also make it more useful.

I disagree that they're that underpowered though. How does a Windy take out physical immunes? Chip them down with Hurricane or run away. Fire Druids have much the same option. You either chip them down with Boulder/Cano or avoid them.

Also, in regards to the hybrid part. Huntermentalist is a Summon/Fire hybrid that does well untwinked and is a fun build to play.

 

[Flayed One]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Casting in Wereform is silly busted. Imagine an 8k life Windy in Werebear form running around with SW AND Nado *shudders*.

Well, I only really thought about casting firespells in wereforms, when I suggested that. We already can cast Armaggedon, so why not fissure. It synergises well, but doesn't seem busted. In PvM it would allow for some new moves(fireclaws bear casting fissure from time to time, using physical attacks as a backup - hardly overpowered, fury wolf using fissure as a backup - hardly overpowered), while still doesn't seem to be that overpowered in PvP(not like I know much about it Fissure could help fury wolves against barbs probably). Wind spells + were form seems redundant in pvm(both physical) and overpowered in pvp. Oskills in wereforms could allow for some interesting combinations though...

Fissure with percentage Physical would have to be done through a revision of the synergies IMO. I can see it scaling better end game but it would make early game even easier. Perhaps tack on to the synergy of Cano that it converts 1% of the damage per lvl to physical? 20% seems a good number to keep some challenge in the game but also make it more useful.

That would be an acceptable solution, but on the other hand only suckers want to have a single skill to rule them all... ekhu.... hammerdins...ekhu...^^

It shouldn't be too overpowered. a 1000 physical and 2000 fire at skill level 35 sounds pretty good, but boring.

I disagree that they're that underpowered though. How does a Windy take out physical immunes? Chip them down with Hurricane or run away. Fire Druids have much the same option. You either chip them down with Boulder/Cano or avoid them.

First of all, Hurricane is an AOE spell, that affects many monsters at the same time not only damaging, but also slowing them down, while Cano/Boulder only affects one monster somewhat unreliably. Secondly probably 50% of monsters on hell difficulty are FI, while only 5% are PI.

It could probably be solved by giving Cano 20x physical damage and something like 1 second next delay(monsters could only be hit once per second) making it more of an AOE spell though.

Also, in regards to the hybrid part. Huntermentalist is a Summon/Fire hybrid that does well untwinked and is a fun build to play.

I found the build really great untill hell. Summons are awfully slow at killing groups of enemies, and are totally unreliable in many situations. This could probably be fixed by taking 15 frame minion-delay-after-each-attack off of druids summons. They would probably become as potent as Necros skellies.

 

[a brick]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

What I think a lot of people forget is that the game isn't supposed to balanced based on builds, but on the classes. Balancing only goes as far as making the game equally difficult for an Amazon and a druid for example.
Blizzard makes the majority of its changes to the game based on how the game was originally built (meaning SP untwinked). As far as Blizzard is concerned the game is balanced because Druids are just as good as paladins, barbs, sorcs, sins, zons, and necros. It's the personal choice of the player to build a fire druid, so Blizzard doesn't have any obligation to do what you say.
By implementing the changes ppl usually suggest, it would actually UNBALANCE the game. casting in wereform, as verashiden pointed out, is ridiculous. adjusting the synergies also isn't viable because the synergies are set up in such a way to make the game as balanced as possible.

Sorry.

-brick

 

[Verashiden]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Hurricane is not a solution to PIs. It does piddly damage and the slow is non existent in hell. Fire Druids can fix this by hybriding and a good merc. Windies, unless twinked, have no reliable solution to this problem. The percentages are indeed different, but Fire Druids have an easier, albeit slower solution to their immunity problem (FI/Phys immune excluded, punks take all day to kill >.>).

 

[UrbanNomad]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

What I think a lot of people forget is that the game isn't supposed to balanced based on builds, but on the classes. Balancing only goes as far as making the game equally difficult for an Amazon and a druid for example.
Blizzard makes the majority of its changes to the game based on how the game was originally built (meaning SP untwinked). As far as Blizzard is concerned the game is balanced because Druids are just as good as paladins, barbs, sorcs, sins, zons, and necros. It's the personal choice of the player to build a fire druid, so Blizzard doesn't have any obligation to do what you say.
By implementing the changes ppl usually suggest, it would actually UNBALANCE the game.

Sorry.

-brick

If everything is already balanced then why did they buff werebear form or immolation arrow in 1.13. These buffs were to buff certain builds.

Sorry.

-Nomad

 

[Elyxthaxzus]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Hurricane is not a solution to PIs. It does piddly damage and the slow is non existent in hell. Fire Druids can fix this by hybriding and a good merc. Windies, unless twinked, have no reliable solution to this problem. The percentages are indeed different, but Fire Druids have an easier, albeit slower solution to their immunity problem (FI/Phys immune excluded, punks take all day to kill >.>).

while i agree with this, Hurricane does help against PI's. and on my last windy, before i found/traded for a reapers, i used an Ik's hammer on switch. had a PI/CI that i took down with my merc and my Ik's hammer ...took about 10m....but I did it.

And just for the record, tornado is 100% physical.

 

[Flayed One]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

What I think a lot of people forget is that the game isn't supposed to balanced based on builds, but on the classes. Balancing only goes as far as making the game equally difficult for an Amazon and a druid for example.
Blizzard makes the majority of its changes to the game based on how the game was originally built (meaning SP untwinked). As far as Blizzard is concerned the game is balanced because Druids are just as good as paladins, barbs, sorcs, sins, zons, and necros. It's the personal choice of the player to build a fire druid, so Blizzard doesn't have any obligation to do what you say.
By implementing the changes ppl usually suggest, it would actually UNBALANCE the game. casting in wereform, as verashiden pointed out, is ridiculous. adjusting the synergies also isn't viable because the synergies are set up in such a way to make the game as balanced as possible.

Sorry.

-brick

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna call most of what you said bull... Balancing was always done in such a way to make most skills worthwile, otherwise what would be the reason to put 3 skill trees and many skills for each class? Take an amazon for example. Let's say you have a strafer, and start looking for PI solutions. There are 5 worthwile solutions that come to my mind. 5! Lightning java hybrid, Cold hybrid, Cold arrow maxed, Fire Hybrid(assuming the immolation arrow bump will make it more worthwile, or simply using exploding arrow) and Magic Arrow maxed. That's 5 ways of solving the problem and each has it's own merrit and advantages...Well, you could argue fire is worthless, but it would still be 4. There are next to no immunes to Magic Arrow, and it costs only 20 sps, but for the same price of 20 sps you can also get twice the damage conversion to cold if you max cold arrow instead... blah, blah blah and so on. You have so many ways of going about it, that you can get a headache just trying to choose the best one. Fire druids on the other hand get... This holds true for most of the other classes as well. That's not "class-balance". That's skill balance.

Majority of changes to the game based on SP untwinked my butt. At least half of the games content is utterly unobtainable in SP untwinked.

Of course casting in wereform in general would be ridicolous, but the point was about casting firespells only, and that's a totally different matter. BTW in singleplayer untwinked, casting all spells in wereform wouldn't be broken at all.

Hurricane is not a solution to PIs. It does piddly damage and the slow is non existent in hell. Fire Druids can fix this by hybriding and a good merc. Windies, unless twinked, have no reliable solution to this problem. The percentages are indeed different, but Fire Druids have an easier, albeit slower solution to their immunity problem (FI/Phys immune excluded, punks take all day to kill >.>).

Wait, weren't you the one who suggested using Cano/Boulder against FIs, which do much weaker damage, more unreliably and to single FI at a time, while there is 10 times less PIs than FIs? xD.

Hurricane@slvl 25 does 1200 Cold Damage per second to all monsters in it's radius. It's also passive and cost 20 sps(I assume synergies are free since windy is going to get them anyway)

Let's consider Nova. @slvl 25 it does 900 damage. It also costs39 mana per cast, cost 40 sps and you can pull off probably 2,8 casts in a second giving us around 2500 damage. Slightly better than twice the damage at the cost of 20 sps more, spending time on casting instead of moving and a buckload of mana. Not that much better at all.

Sure, Hurricane doesn't own PI, but you're not giving it justice by saying it's not a solution. It does really pretty well against packs of PIs, since it's damage gets multiplied by all the enemies in it's radius. I agree that waiting for it to kill a single PI monster is a drag though, but it still gets the job done.

Furthermore a windy can simply skip those PIs most of the time, while skipping FI is simply not possible.

while i agree with this, Hurricane does help against PI's. and on my last windy, before i found/traded for a reapers, i used an Ik's hammer on switch. had a PI/CI that i took down with my merc and my Ik's hammer ...took about 10m....but I did it.

And just for the record, tornado is 100% physical.

Reapers is a cheap item that does a lot for windies. There is no comparable thing for fire druids.

 

[omgwtfbbqpwned]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

@a brick: While I do respect your opinion, I'm going to have to go with FO here and say you're most likely wrong if you think this game is designed around untwinked SP play. Maybe it was at first, but it's very clear Blizzard caters to the interests of realm-play.

FI's are easy. Park and run away. There's plenty of non-FI monsters around in the game. I do agree they could use a buff.

 

[od yard]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

tornado does 2/3 cold damage, and 1/3 physical.

Lmfao look up tornado on classic.battle.net/diablo2exp

 

[Verashiden]

Re: The Fire Druid: What Does It Need?

Flayed: You would also note that I said the Fire Tree is not a tree that's not particularly meant to stand on its own. Single element trees rarely are. However, Fire Druids can sit behind a Merc and let it handle the FIs while Windies need to chip a phys immune down with Hurricane. The proximity required for Hurricane coupled with the fact that the freeze is non existent in Hell makes it a very dangerous solution for a pack of phys immunes. I wasn't saying that Boulder and Volcano are ideal solutions. I was saying that you would have to chip them down with those skills. I'd appreciate you reading my posts before you comment on them .