Druids suck - convince me I'm wrong!

Yep, it seems to be a matter of playstyle preference.

The Druid as archetype of elemental chaos clearly isn't as streamlined as a Sorceress. His spells aren't made with efficiency in mind, which, in case, is needed on high player counts. The Sorc is a worktool, the Druid is decoration. Because of this, the Sorc maybe has a higher player skill ceiling and seems to be more rewarding?

All Druid builds have quite a volatile quality, with the tendency to less player interaction, be it

Tornado,

Armageddon,

Fissure or Summoning.

The Necro Summoner has to curse and blast to get his army kill stuff, for the Druid it makes not much of a difference if he kicks some urns during battle.

The Druid is true to his concept: Nature will deal with it.

You also find that resemblance in the power balancing. Archetypes that rely on randomness and automatism, cannot be too powerful, it would break the game.

So, I guess the Druid just isn't for you. I am not a fan of him in full games, too. This is Java territory.

But most of the time, I have a different approach to this game, and I really appreciate this decent aftermath of more RPG oriented times back in the past. I just accept the role of the Druid and try to play that role and identify with it as good as I can. If this means to play /p1, then I am okay with that. This is how I play my Bladesin, my Charger and the Barbs. I play solo or with a fixed team of 2-3, and we have a lot of fun combining heroes, mercs, auras and stuff.

Sometimes (to be precise: anytime I play Warlock), I wished the Druid was a bit more optimized, but in the process he could also lose his origin and identity. A two-sided sword.

Schnorki wrote: 10 hours ago

DarkSoul48 wrote: 13 hours ago

[..]
I think you got my example wrong (and of course you are exaggerating with your

Den of Evil example). I did not say that D2R needed teamplay, I just said that this is how we prefer to play because this is much more fun for us, and Druid has a really appreciated place in that. I don't think anyone ever complains either if a Druid joins a public game to bring along his army, maxed

Oak Sage to boost everyone, and at the same time he can tank (even if others do most of the killing). But no worries if you still think Druid sucks for you - we still enjoy playing our Druids very much, and I am fine with others having a different opinion
This might also be a case when we won't ever convince each other...

I'm inclined to say we just play in rather different contexts.

My lowest real char is 96 so I don't find myself in "non-endgame" situations really. And at that point, in basically any group scenario, be it organized or pugs, there's always at least one, usually more people with a build that will easily and reliably clear the entire screen on any player count, before any form of tanking or

Oak Sage life boost makes any difference whatsoever. Sometimes, depending on the class I'm on, that's me making others obsolete. At other times, that's others making something like my druid completely useless. There simply is no real team play at that stage, there is merely a carry or two and the "useless folks" following along (or in some cases struggling to even follow along, thanks to crap tele speed).

And while instant mass slaughter does have its own entertainment value, I do indeed often miss the olden days, decades and patches ago (pre-runewords and whatnot), when things were indeed still harder and somewhat more team-oriented as a result.

Really the only exception to that these days is day 1 or 2 of a new ladder for that first play-through. But even then there tends to already be certain classes just doing all the work while the others mainly watch.

That said, I'll happily not convince you. That's not my goal. Quite the opposite, I'd love to be the one who is convinced. That's the point of this topic after all, that feint sliver of hope that somewhere, somehow, there is that one elusive subjectively fun druid build after all that I simply managed to miraculously miss for some 20+ years and that someone else managed to conjure up. Not necessarily some "annihilates P8 TZ96" build but simply an "actually fun and merely not complete and utter garbage" build.

But if this is your (only) context for evaluation, I have to ask:
If you join a PI game with other players being a Mosaicsin, a

Nova sorc, a Java, and a Warlock (all lvl 96+ and GG geared), wouldn't your Barb and Necro equally suck, same as you Druid?

I have the same problem as you and to be honest, not only with Druid but with the Barb, too.

But Barb excel at

Travincal runs. So whenever Trav is terrorized, I pick up my McFlurry (WW barb) and make a few visits. FoHdin sucks in many areas but if

Chaos Sanctuary is up, it's his time to shine.

Druid in general is slower but tankier. Not my play style and obviously your neither. But a Fury druid is a solid choice for running Ubers. He is tanky, attacks super fast, can be loaded with CB, and has enough base damage for the final punch.
Going through hell on SSF with him was slow but I always enjoyed the final bosses. They went down like nothing.
The barb playthrough felt much worse tbh.

To;dr:
What's the difference compared to e.g. the Barb?
(In my opinion Barb sucks even more than druid but many people like him)

/quote/
To;dr:
What's the difference compared to e.g. the Barb?
(In my opinion Barb sucks even more than druid but many people like him)
/quote/

Don't listen to the mean man baba i will never give you up !

krathkor wrote: 1 hour ago

/quote/
To;dr:
What's the difference compared to e.g. the Barb?
(In my opinion Barb sucks even more than druid but many people like him)
/quote/

Don't listen to the mean man baba i will never give you up !

It's my fault. I never played Barb back then when WW was OP... So I'm missing on the nostalgia.

vued wrote: 2 hours ago

[..]

But if this is your (only) context for evaluation, I have to ask:

[..]

To;dr:
What's the difference compared to e.g. the Barb?
(In my opinion Barb sucks even more than druid but many people like him)

Nah, that's not the only context by any means. It was merely the limited context in direct response to "play as a team" as that sadly just doesn't exist anymore in the reality of endgame D2.
Solo, I run anything and everything from P1 to P8 so the overall context is pretty much "all of PvM".

And as I said before, it isn't just about performance. There are absolutely some druid builds that can outperform e.g. some barb builds. The (again, very subjective) difference however is that my barb is still fun, even in those builds that aren't quite as performant as some other classes/builds (or anywhere even close if you compare them to the true top-end builds).

Ultimately, I think DasNarf is circling around hitting the nail on the head with his "randomness" comment. Druids just feel exceptionally clunky in basically every build because of (among other things) that. Half the fire stuff just doesn't hit half the stuff there and you're fully capped by casting delays on top of that. Tornadoes are just beyond annoying to aim. Wolves completely fail at even engaging a target to begin with on a (very) regular basis, making them more aggravating than anything else. And most shapeshifter builds are stuck constantly shifting in and out as you can't use the more basic general moves (CtA, tele, ...) while shifted. Ultimately, they're all just unnecessarily cumbersome and annoying. The only real exception to that I guess is "full-on" shifters that don't bother with any force-a-reshift-skills (so no Enigma or anything of that sort) as they can just stay in form but those (at least to me) tend to feel like "basically a pally or barb except boring".
None of that is really about performance (though it does impact it), it is merely about basically every druid build just feeling overly cumbersome and weird to deal with.

Schnorki wrote: 1 hour ago

vued wrote: 2 hours ago

[..]

But if this is your (only) context for evaluation, I have to ask:

[..]

To;dr:
What's the difference compared to e.g. the Barb?
(In my opinion Barb sucks even more than druid but many people like him)

Nah, that's not the only context by any means. It was merely the limited context in direct response to "play as a team" as that sadly just doesn't exist anymore in the reality of endgame D2.
Solo, I run anything and everything from P1 to P8 so the overall context is pretty much "all of PvM".

And as I said before, it isn't (just) about performance. There are absolutely some druid builds that can outperform e.g. my barb. The (again, very subjective) difference however is that my barb is still fun, even in those builds that aren't quite as performant as some other classes/builds (or anywhere even close if you compare them to the true top-end builds).

Ultimately, I think DasNarf is circling around hitting the nail on the head with his "randomness" comment. Druids just feel exceptionally clunky in basically every build because of (among other things) that. Half the fire stuff just doesn't hit half the stuff there and you're fully capped by casting delays on top of that. Tornadoes are just beyond annoying to aim. Wolves completely fail at even engaging a target to begin with on a (very) regular basis, making them more aggravating than anything else. And most shapeshifter builds are stuck constantly shifting in and out as you can't use the more basic general moves (CtA, tele, ...) while shifted. Ultimately, they're all just unnecessarily cumbersome and annoying. The only real exception to that I guess is "full-on" shifters that don't bother with any force-a-reshift-skills (so no Enigma or anything of that sort) as they can just stay in form but those (at least to me) tend to feel like "basically a pally or barb except boring".
None of that is really about performance (though it does impact it), it is merely about basically every druid build just feeling overly cumbersome and weird to deal with.

OK, got you. I think this is by design though.

Druid is great for ignoring the enemies and looting the environment. Not a great play style but this "let nature deal with it" comment is quite accurate.

Unfortunately this is an issue on a lot of classes where the most fun builds require insanely expensive runewords to work. It ruins the game for me, because I will never get the high runes those builds need and I will never sink as low as to pay real money for virtual garbage.