Druid: Uber Tank of Sanctuary.

[Fireheart]

This is a post for all suggestions dealing with and about Druids--any insights, ideas, or thoughts on what changes might work well for the Druid based on your experience are welcome. I've got some ideas myself on this one I'll be talking about in the near future....

[Myhrginoc]

The Elemental Druid isn't a very viable variant. I am sure there must be room for improvement, perhaps more easily realized in 1.10.

[Fireheart]

I've got some real Druid ideas. Thought:

I think having Were forms wear off (no pun intended) is stupid. There's no real game value to having to recast the spell every three minutes--it doesn't really add strategic depth, doesn't require conservation of mana, and doesn't do much of anything--other than occasionally require a fast hotkey in the middle of battle.

Therefore:

I'd like to make Were forms "free" and effectively permanent, save when purposefully de-activated by the caster.

Also--

I'm not sure if this is possible--but I'd like to change attacks like Fire Claws, Rabies, etc, etc. Instead of having them be hit-activated and require mana-per-shot, what if they continually drained a small amount of mana when active? Want to run around with Fire Claws on as your primary attack? That's fine--but your mana is going to slowly drop. To prevent people from spamming hotkeys around this we could give the spell a very long duration once cast.

Basically I'm trying to build a three-varient Druid. I want an Elementalist Druid, a Summoning Druid, and a Were-creature Druid (with an understanding that both Elementalist and Were-Druids will overlap into the Summoning category. Other ideas for nerfing the Druid's current enormous tank-ability include limiting him to more traditional Druidic weapons--ie no metal armor, no swords, etc.

Just tossing out some ideas, but let me know what you think.

[Myhrginoc]

It remains to be seen what changes are happening to skills with 1.10, but they will be major. However, some of these ideas might still require code editing. Is that an arena you willingly enter? There are quite a few modders who won't touch code.

[Fireheart]

We dont' code-edit the Fusion series. Blizzard forbids it, and though I dont' think they'd ever crack down on a modder for doing it, we worked with Blizzard in the early stages of developing CF--so I'm not going there. Its a respect thing as much as anything else.

[Fireheart]

I think at this point my goal is to split the Druid into three functioning sub-types--Summoner, Elementalist, and Were-creature. I'd like to engineer the character so that these types are fairly exclusive but overlap a bit in the Summon category. What do people think of this? Could a Summoner only Druid be a fun way to play?

[Maiken]

I think the Necro is the summoner only class so I don't think a summon only druid would be that fun. The summons for Druid's are more of an addition than a stand alone type thing.

[Fireheart]

We certainly would never want to force Druids into playing a Summoning character, but the goal is to make such a character possible. Some people like odd D2 combinations--I'll never forget Ember, the FireBolt only Sorceress, for example, who was popular back when CD2 was big.

The biggest potential problem with Druid summons is the fact that he can basically carry a mobile aura with him at all times. He's got the Paladin's ability to buff the group, but he gets it essentially for free. If a Paladin wants to buff combat abilities, for example, he does so at the expense of buffing his own personal attacks. The Druid can buff group combat or group life and continue on his merry way.

My idea for the Druid at this point is for a character whose summons are powerful enough for him to rely on them primarily (with enough points) but which can also be used as effective--but not overwhelming--support. (the latter applying mainly to the various "Spirits."

[FoxBat]

[quote=Fireheart";p="98135"]We dont' code-edit the Fusion series. Blizzard forbids it,[/quote]

Are you sure about this? Isolde has been quite helpful at times to the code editors. Long ago there was the perception among the keep that Blizzard did make a distinction between data and code editing, but I don't recall this perception having much ground. Both are technically copyright infringement and reverse engineering, and yet both are a part of "Total Conversions" which are for the most part accepted by Blizzard (check out their legal FAQ.) Lets not forget that this distinction completely fails on D1 where everything was hex-edited, yet V&K get barbarians named after them.

Blizzard has always been annoyed at cheaters, yes: but much code editing is not turned towards this purpose.


About the druids, the synergys are a great way to handle this. Pump them up a bit, so that a druid might invest points in grizzly just to increase the damage of his wolves. Then someone can invest lots of points in the summon skills in order to gain strong summons

[Fireheart]

Foxbat,

I wrote and spoke with Bill Roper directly on this point to be absolutely sure. Blizzard forbids DLL editing, not modding via txt files.

Good thoughts on the synergy skills. I like that idea.

[Hermit]

If you wanted to make summoner druids viable but not allow them to be "multi-classed" too much, you could always raise the skill limit although I don't know how that would affect the balance of other characters.

[Desocupado]

You could two kinds of were shapes... Mayba a caster shape and a Tank shape. I mean: One shape would grant casting speed and the other phisical prowess. Of course the were forms could have their own weakness... Like the atack speed of the current were forms.

[Fireheart]

Well I've now played a Druid through Act IV and I must say I think its going to be a very interesting class to work with. One thing is for sure--mana cost and lycanthropic shift time is going away. CHanging into were-form is going to be, essentially, a "free" skill--and its only going to go away when the caster chooses for it too.

[Desocupado]

What about changing druid's minions auras? It could work...

[Fireheart]

I'd be amazed if 1.10 made that possible. Pre 1.10, for sure, auras and skills were very hard coded.

Skills that did damage of certain types could have the amount of damage done changed, or usually the type of damage done could change. Thus "Poison Nova" could become "Bone Nova", "Inferno" could become "Frostbite."

But the fundamental nature of the skill did not change. A nova was still a nova, a continual-blast skill was still a continual blast skill--even "Blizzard" changing to "Volcano" just took a bit more adjustment of the visuals to make it look at least somewaht volcano-ey.

If 1.10 makes skills so plastic that they can be redesigned to that degree? Hoo boy. Watch out. We'll go back and hit all the characters.

[Horazon]

Why not allow the Druid to cast spells in were form?

I think that Hurricane is better suited to a melee Druid than to a ranged one. And the other fighter/mage classes have no such restrictions on how they can use their attacks.

Also, why not give the Druid the Blizzard spell (Replace Armageddon with Blizzard, change it to do cold damage and chill.)

Arctic blast damage could be changed, perhaps to ligntening damage (the Druid's Lightening breah of death - could even make it pink! ) This allows the Druid to do all three types of elemental damage, and removes some redundancy with the sorc "Frostbite" skill. (Actually the Druid would be able to do all elemental types - fire, cold, lighening, poision, physical -- only the necromancer has this much flexibility.)

Finally, make poison creeper good enough for 20 skill point investment. It is a really cool skill.

[Horazon]

Oh, yeah, one more idea that I forgot to put in the last post...

This may not be possible, but I'm thinking that Firestorm should be the hard-hitting level 40 fire spell for the Druid.

Not only must the damage be substantially increased, but the flames must last a good bit longer (that's the part I'm not sure can be modded) The skill should behave somewhat like Diablo's fire storm, with range, damage, and duration increased per level (might need a timer to balance it out a bit.)

So the tree would shift a bit, Blizzard (formally Armageddon) at level 32, firestorm at level 40. Molten Boulder would replace Firestorm as the level 1 fire skill.

[Fireheart]

Firestorm over Armageddon for L40? That's an interesting swap. I can definitely change the spell's duration--I can probably make it last indefinitely if I wanted to (or practically so).

Why do you think Firestorm over A-geddon for Lvl 40?

[SaTaN]

bah so much druid changingyea firestrom whould be good over a-geddon super high mana cost liek send 40 peices of fire lotsa dmg hmmm amke it only worth it if theres alot of monsters around so its not the only skill used put a big mana cost on it

[Fireheart]

Satan is there any way you could try to clean up your spelling, punctuation, and grammar? English may not be your first language (I'm inclined to think it isn't) but your posts are exceedingly hard to read and understand.

[Horazon]

Firestorm over Armageddon for L40? That's an interesting swap. I can definitely change the spell's duration--I can probably make it last indefinitely if I wanted to (or practically so).

Why do you think Firestorm over A-geddon for Lvl 40?

I'm thinking here of the Diablo firestorm, which was arguably his most dreaded attack, and that being brought to the Druid. A spell like that which does massive fire damage and can cover much of the screen could be lvl40. However the spell would have to behave differently (like big-D). Curently firestorm pretty well sucks because it just sends out some rolling flames but they don't last and there is only a few of them.

[Fireheart]

From what I understand of 1.10 we could make the Druid tapdance as a skill if we wanted to. From what I've seen of him in 1.10 I was pretty disapointed. My Lvl 48 ass-kicker suddenly was getting his ass handed to him pretty much all over the place in Act I. I gambled at least 8 million in gold (reloads) just to find items to keep me in the game.

I've started an Assassin from scratch--we'll see how that makes a difference.