Diablo IV State of the Druid Class - What Needs To Change?
wowhead.comDiablo IV's Open Beta gave us great insights into each of the five playable classes — but none were as polarizing as the Druid. While the reviews were mixed between being severely undertuned, just right, or even outright unplayable, one thing was clear: players had quite a lot to say. One of our own guide writers, RenataKane, reviewed the Shapeshifting builds available to Druids — giving us the good, the bad, and the furry.
RenataKane: During Open Beta, I tested a Werewolf build and a Werebear build.In both cases, I wanted to see how these shapeshifting builds performed, how the synergies worked together, and how to make these beloved D2-reminiscent builds work. I ran both builds up to 25 on separate characters to test not only their abilities, but also how well they leveled. Put simply: neither work best as «pure» versions.
The Werewolf is in a far better place, but the Werebear skills, particularly in the 1-25 range we were given for Beta, are a conflicting mess of abilities that don't hang together. The Werebear abilities lack good synergies and have abilities that outright conflict with one another. This was disappointing because early theorycrafting seemed to indicate that the Werebear build, particularly with Overpower, would be a great, tanky build that could dish out as much damage as it took.
Sadly, this was not the case. I did not switch out to any Elemental abilities, because I wanted to test these two shifter builds as laid out within the Werewolf- and Werebear-specific skills. While I definitely believe that making a shifter/elemental hybrid would work very well, particularly with interesting Legendary aspects combining Lightning with Werewolf and Earth with Werebear, testing things this way allowed me to.
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