Druid Update Preview

[Torc]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.

GENERAL CHANGES

1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.



[*=1]Somewhat hand-wavy Lore Explanation: The weapon is used as the magical source to enchant and create the properties of the claw or tooth of the druid. It's magic....so it works that way....yeah...

[*=1]Design Explanation: We want druid's melee attack progression to scale with loot normally so the druid's melee attack progression is easier to balance going forward.

[*=1]Primal Avatar will be given some kind of damage boost to maintain its hard-hitting style with this change. It will also get Cleave animations to fix a bug with Cleave attacks caused by lack of animations.



2. Existing combat style bugs are being fixed.



[*=1]No combat style specific bonuses will function while in animal forms aside from Natural Fighting, and any bonuses native to the form (no duel wielding, glancing blows or single weapon attack speed).

[*=1]Using a two-handed weapon still grants the 1.5 damage from your modifying stat, and Power Attack feat adjustments in animal form as well, for its additional bonus.

[*=1]Attacks that require a specific weapon to be held in your hand will still not work in animal form (cause you don't have hands!)



3. Wolf form attack animations are being adjusted.



We are reducing the Basic Wolf Form attack speed bonus to 15%. Winter wolf remains about the same speed at 30%. We are also fixing some flaky behavior in the attack chain.


4. The Bear attack animation chain will be improved to make its attack rate match other weapon styles.



This will result in an approximate 15% increase in attack speed.


5. Bear & Dire Bear form's AC bonus is now typed Exceptional.



Improved Mage Armor will also be typed Exceptional.


6. Water and Fire Elemental form will now grant 65% Absorption to their element, instead of Damage Reduction, and 15% Vulnerability to their opposite element.



[*=1]The bonus will not stack with Fire Shields or Energy Sheath.


7. Existing Enhancement Trees revamped and new tree "Nature's Protector" added. - Found below in this thread:

8. Specific Spell Changes:



[*=1]Reincarnate's casting time and cool down will be put on par with Raise Dead.
[*=1]Baiting Bite bluff skill check will use the player's spot score instead of their bluff skill, wisdom bonus applies of course.
[*=1]Call Lightning Storm and Storm of Vengeance will have their damage progressions and values change to be an X per caster level to better benefit from increasing in caster level and max caster level effects.
[*=1]Call Lightning Storm now does 1d10 every 2 druid levels, max 15.
[*=1]Storm of Vengeance's Acid damage now scales at d8 per 3 druid levels, and its lightning damage 1d10 every 2 druid levels. Max of 25. Duration is 30 seconds. (duration will not scale with level, which didn't work anyway)
[*=1]Rising Fury's cooldown will be reduced to 30 seconds and the extend meta magic will work on it. (new)
[*=1]Produce Flame Projectile speed is being increased (new)
[*=1]Creeping cold and Greater creeping cold will now stack with each other when cast by other druids (two can each have their own copy on a target now)

(New additions to come) Anger of the Noon Day Sun, Elemental Toughness and Fires of Purity are under review to be improved.



9. Cosmetic Changes: (new)



[*=1]These may come AFTER the pass, time permitting. This is stretch goal stuff.
[*=1]Either or some combination of new Wolf & Bear forms Appearances or dyes.
[*=1]Nature’s Veil: A Toggle Feat that suppressed the texture swap used for fire/water elemental forms but keeps the vfxs.





10. Removing pets damaging the druid/artificers on death (new)


[*=1]We’re going to be cutting the death penalty for pets and are discussing give a few more pet rez charges at certain levels. The arty enhancement that touches this will be reworked to something else.


11. Natural Fighting Feats will be revamped, more details to come.




Note: Druid pets will be reworked in a separate pass with Artificer pets.



ENHANCEMENT TREES

NATURE'S WARRIOR

CORES:


1. Nature's Warrior: every point spent in tree gives 1 hp, and every CORE; gives 1 sneak attack die in wolf form, and +1 base melee damage while in all animal forms

2. Natural Senses: Your attacks penetrate 10% of your enemies fortification, +3 to listen, spot and search

3. Nature's Bounty: While in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 2.0. Does not stack with Nature’s Protector cores.

4. Nature's Hunter: In wolf or bear form you gain a +1 competency bonus to crit damage multiplier on your weapon. Requires a weapon to be equipped.

5. Howling Frost: Casting Howl of Terror now grants you "Winter Hunt" for 10 seconds which grants +10 double strike and, 25% bonus to spell crit and 50% to spell crit damage to all cold damage spells. This will only occur once every 30 seconds.

6. Avatar of the Hunter: You have mastered the art of wielding divine magic in animal form, and using it to empower your body in physical combat. While in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 1.5. Does not stack with Nature’s Protector cores.

Passive: +2 strength and wisdom and +10 to double strike and physical resistance


TIER 1


Nature's Empathy: 3/3, increases use of animal empathy, 5/10/15 increase to positive spell power. AP COST: 1

Snapping Jaws: Whenever you bluff or use an ability that triggers a bluff check such as baiting bite your target is debuffed losing -2 AC and you gain a stack of "Snapping jaws" for +2 AC for 15 seconds. Stacks 1/2/3 times. AP COST: 1

Take Down: Increase trip DCs by 1/2/3, AP COST: 1

Bestial Nature: Increase reflex fort saves by 1/2 (no longer a toggle) AP COST: 1

Athletic Hunter: Bonus to move silent,hide, jump and swim, tier 3 grants one charge of wild empathy 1/2/3 AP COST: 1


TIER 2


Flight: Gain an uncapped dodge bonus of 20% for 10/20/30 seconds, costs 1 wild empathy to activate, 30 second cooldown. AP COST: 1

Improved Dodge: +1/2/3 Dodge. AP COST: 1

Ghost Wolf: Requires wolf form. Activate, gain 50% incorpreal defense for 30 seconds, cooldown 5 minutes. Passive: Gain ghost touch while in wolf form to your melee attacks AP COST: 2

Prey on the Weak: 8/15% Damage Bonus against helpless targets AP COST: 1

Action Boost: Double Strike: Activate to gain a +[10/20/30]% action boost bonus to Doublestrike for 20 seconds. AP COST: 1

TIER 3


Fight: increase melee damage and AC, 1, 2, 3 in wolf or bear forms AP COST: 1 (requires: flight)

Brother Wolf: While your wolf pet is alive and within 40 meters it gains 5/10/15 hps every 12/9/6 seconds and 10/15/20 mrr & prr and you gain 1/2/3 to hit and damage AP COST: 1

Stalking Prey: Staying in stealth gains you a damage bonus to critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers) every 3 seconds. Effect lasts for 10 seconds and can stack up to 3 times. or a total of +[3/6/9]. AP COST: 1

Essence of Nature: If you score a crit hit in melee you are granted 10/20 temp spell points for 8 seconds. Your pet has a 10% chance to proc this on its base attacks. Passive: + 5 Positive SP/10 AP COST: 1

Strength or Wisdom AP: 2 (new)

TIER 4


Fatal Harry: Killing an opponent grants a +3 moral bonus to double strike bonus for 12 seconds. Can stack up to 1/2/3 times. Weaker opponents may not trigger this effect. AP COST:1 (new replaced stand your ground)

Four Legs Good: You become immune to most knock down effects in animal forms AP COST: 2

Ferocity: You gain +2/4/6 melee power in bear or wolf form. This bonus is doubled when under the effects of true rage (rage that prevents spell casting) AP COST: 1

Great White Wolf: +10/20/30 cold spell power, while in winter wolf form you gain 10/20/30% cold absorption. AP COST: 1

Strength or Wisdom AP: 2 (new)

TIER 5


Alpha Strike: AOE Melee Attack - Requires animal form: You fight for leadership of the pack. Area damage melee attack dealing +2[W]/+3[W]/+5[W]. This attack can doublestrike. On targets above 85% health it reduces their attack, range and spellpower by 25 for 15 seconds. Activation Cost: 12/9/6 sp, Coodown: 18/15/12. AP COST: 1 (requires: fight)

Nature’s Swiftness: Wolf forms gain evasion. Armor restrictions apply. AP COST: 2

Throat Rip: Requires wolf form, Stealth Melee Attack. +6 sneak dice, On Sneak attacks: Against living targets silences target for 15 seconds on Fort save 10 + Druid level + Wisdom negates and inflicts a bleed that causes 6d6 damage every 2 seconds for 12 seconds. Bleed Scales with melee power. Against bosses the silence is replaced with a 25 pt spell power debuff. 15 Second cool down. AP COST: 2

Jaws of the Great White Wolf: The spell Jaws of Ice now grants gain temporary hps equal to 10 times your character level. AP COST: 2

Strength or Wisdom AP: 2

NATURE'S PROTECTOR - new bear tree!

CORES:


1. Nature's Protector: +2 hp for every point spent in the tree, and 3 MRR for every core in the tree.

2. Nature's Defense: Defensive Combat Stance +8 phy and magic resistance while any wildshape forms. Cannot be active with other defensive stances but can be used while raging. (new – elemental forms can now use it the base version and vase upgrades)

3. Magical Beast: Gain heavy armor prof. In addition while in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 2.0. Does not stack with Nature's Warrior Cores.

4. Big Claws: Adds Great Maul to your spell book. This is a version of the maul spell with the same cost and stats but stuns instead of causing a bleed on it. Shares cool down with maul. Stun DC: 10 + Druid level + Wisdom + Stun Modifiers.

5. Big Bear: The Tremor spell now deals 5-8 blunt damage per druid level in addition to it's knock down effect. This damage scales with melee power.

6. The Great Bear: Your attack speed in bear form is increased by 10% combat style bonus.
+4 str, +4 con.
While in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 1.5. Does not stack with Nature’s Warrior Cores (new – mirror spell casting benefit from wolf tree and updated stats.

TIER 1


Rage of the Beast: Activate to rage gaining +4 strength and Con, +2 will saves, -2 ac for 40 seconds, but disallowing the casting of magic. Requires bear or wolf form. This ability shares cool down and charges with Barbarian class rage. Effects that modify barbarian rage also effect Rage of the Beast and using it counts as a use of barbarian rage and vice versa. Effect persists through shape changes Can be used 1/2 per rest. AP COST: 1

Fey’s Blessing: Gain +2/4/6 MRR AP COST: 1

Improved Nature's Defense: Competence bonus to one of three, Increase Threat by 50/100/150%, PRR MRR 4/8/12, Saving Throws by 1/2/3 AP COST: 1

Bloody Claws: Using Maul grants a stack of "Killer instincts" granting +1 damage for 15 seconds. Stacks 1/2/3. AP COST: 1

Animal Brutality: Gain a +1/2/3 bonus to intimidate, swim, jump AP COST: 1

TIER 2


Primal Beast: Gain an additional +1/2/4 strength when raging in animal form. At Rank 3 Gain one more use of rage. AP COST: 1 Requires Rage of the Beast

Thick Hide: Nature Armor Bonus 2/4/6 AP COST: 1

Improved Nature's Defense: Competence bonus to one of three, Increase Threat by 50/100/150%, PRR MRR 4/8/12, Saving Throws by 1/2/3 AP COST: 1

Sharp Bloody Claws: Shred now also applies killer instinct AP COST: 1

Defense Boost: Action boost grants 5/10/15 ac 7/12/20 mrr for 20 seconds. 30 second cool down. AP COST: 1

TIER 3


Undying Beast: While raging in animal form you gain immunity to death effects and energy drain. Gains one more use of rage. AP COST: 2 Requires: Primal Beast

Spirit Refreshed: When shape shifting forms below 33% health you heal to full and cure all fatigue. This benefit can only occur once every 3 minutes. AP COST: 2 (new – applies to all forms now)

Improved Nature's Defense: Competence bonus to one of three, Increase Threat by 50/100/150%, PRR MRR 4/8/12, Saving Throws by 1/2/3 AP COST: 1

Ursa Protector: While in bear form nature's defense now does one of these, +2/4/6 con, +3/6/9 MRR, +15/20/25 % to max hp AP COST: 1

Strength OR Wisdom AP COST: 2

TIER 4


Enduring Beast: while raging Increase healing amp by 10/20 in any animal forms. At rank 2 gain one more use of rage. AP COST: 1 Requires: Undying Beast

Spirit Renewed: When shifting forms below 33% health you heal to full and benefit from a restore spell. This can now occur once every 2 minute. Still removes fatigue. AP COST: 2 Requires: Spirit refreshed

Savage Roar: Using the Roar spell with 1 stack of killer instinct active now triggers a burst of sonic damage around the druid for 1d3 per rank of wilderness lore. Scales with melee power. If you have 2 stacks it also stuns at DC: Wilderness Rank + Strength Mod At 3 stacks the damage is 1d10 per rank of wilderness lore and stuns. AP: 2

Ursa Protector: While in bear form nature's defense now does one of these, +2/4/6 con, +3/6/9 MRR, +15/20/25 % to max hp AP COST: 1

Strength OR Wisdom AP COST: 2

TIER 5


Beast unleashed: Gain one additional uses of Rage of the Best per rest. While raging you gain 15% double strike. and while in bear form 50% increase in threat generation and 15% bonus to your armor class. AP COST: 2
Requires Enduring Beast

Spirit Bear Charge: Requires bear form Charge forward inflicting +3W and knocking down enemies, reflex save vs DC 19 + Wis + Trip Bonuses. 15 second cooldown. AP COST: 2

Lightning strikes the Mountain: Activating calls down a bolt of lightning that strikes the druid granting a 100% bonus to threat and MRR for 15 second. 20 MRR / 40 MRR in nature’s protector stance. Nearby enemies take 1d8 in lightning damage per wilderness lore rank. Scales with melee power. SP Cost: 15. 30 Second cooldown. (new – Replaced/Improved Great roar)

Ursa's Protector: While in bear form nature's defense now does one of these, +2/4/6 con, +3/6/9 MRR, +15/20/25 % to max hp AP COST: 1

Force of Nature: You gain 10/15/20% resistance against force damage and 2/4/6 con. AP COST: 1

SEASONS HERALD

CORES:


1. Child of Summer: You gain the ability Child of Summer: Activate to grant +5 Spellpower when casting fire, force, light, sonic and positive spells. This seasonal Spellpower is multiplied by one for every Core enhancement possessed in Season's Herald (starting with this one), up to +30 when you have all six Enhancements. Lasts until death or change of season. Fire Elemental form changes you into this season automatically.

Passive: +1 Universal Spellpower per AP spent in this tree.

2. Child of Winter: You gain Child of Winter: Activate to gain +5 Spellpower when casting water, acid, earth and electric spells per core in this tree. Lasts until death or season change. Water elemental form changes you into this season automatically.

Passive: +1 caster levels to spells in your active season.

3. Nature's Wellspring: The effects of your shillelagh are doubled. +1 max caster level in your active season

4. Sun Burst: Gain Sun Burst as an SLA, SP: 4, Cooldown: 20 seconds (new – lowered cooldown)

5. The Storm of Change: Gain Storm of Vengeance as an SLA, SP 20 cost. 2 minute cool down.

6. Hierophant: You are wise and skilled in the art of wielding divine magic to summon aid and change the world around you. +4 Wisdom +4 Con +10 Universal spell power. Your Conjuration and Evocation spells gain +1 DC, +2 caster level and +2 max caster level. (new – increased wis/con bonus)

TIER 1:


Beguile: Whenever you attack or cast a spell on an enemy, there is a 50% chance to Beguile an affected enemy [1/0-2/0-3] times for [3/0-6/0-9] seconds. Beguile: -2% attack speed, -2 Spellpower. Beguile stacks up to 25 times, and one stack fades every few seconds. Up to one enemy affected each second (by up to [1/2/3] stacks). Does not affect bosses. AP COST: 1

Shared Spirit: Your wolf pet gains 3/6/10% bonus to hps. Passive: You gain 1/2/3 spell power. AP COST: 1

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Force, Light, Positive, Force and Sonic
-AP COST: 2

Produce Flame: Spell Like Ability: Produce Flame. Cost: 6/5/3, Cooldown: 10/6/4 AP COST: 1 (new – lowered cooldown)

Druidic Wisdom: Gain a +1/2/3 to heal, spellcraft and diplomancy skills. AP COST: 1

TIER 2:


Efficient MetaMagic: Reduce the cost of a meta magic, empower, enlarge, maximize, quicken AP COST: 2

Efficient MetaMagic: Reduce the cost of a meta magic, empower, enlarge, maximize, quicken AP COST: 2

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Light, Force, Positive, Force and Sonic
AP COST: 2
Requires previous tier.

Creeping Cold: Spell Like Ability: Creeping Cold (Cost: [6/5/3] SP. Cooldown: [12/10/8] seconds) AP COST: 1 Requires produce flame

Action Boost: Spell Power: Action boost grants 10/20/30 spell power for 20 seconds. 30 second cool down. AP COST: 1

TIER 3


Autumn Leaves: Toggle ability: Leaves always seem to blow around the druid. Grants feather fall, +2 dodge and 5% proc chance on anyone hitting you in melee to be knocked down by a blast of air. Costs: 15 SP Lasts until death or toggled off AP COST: 1

Efficient Heighten AP COST: 2

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Force, Light, Positive, Force and Sonic
AP COST: 2
Requires previous tier

Call Lightning: Spell Like Ability: Call Lightning (Cost: [10/8/6] SP. Cooldown: [12/8/6] seconds) AP COST: 1 Requires: Creeping cold (new - lowered cooldown)

Wisdom +1 AP COST: 2

TIER 4:


Spring Resurgence: Fill an ally with the vitality of spring. When that ally falls below 50% hit points, that ally and any other allies near him are healed by 20d6
positive energy, and receive a +2 primal bonus to attack rolls. (Lasts 5 minutes or until triggered.) (Activation Cost: [8/6/4] Spell Points.)
Cooldown: [8/4/2] seconds) AP COST: 1 (new – lowered cooldown to make buffing party easier)

Strength of the Solstice: +1 to the save DC's of your Evocation and Conjuration spells AP COST: 2

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Force, Light, Positive, and Sonic
AP COST: 2

Salt Ray: Spell Like Ability: Salt Ray (Cost: [12/10/8] SP. Cooldown: [12/10/8] seconds) AP COST: 1

Wisdom +1 AP COST: 2

TIER 5


Crown of Summer: A target of your choice is filled with the light and vitality of summer. That target gains a 15% enhancement bonus to Healing Amplification, and 10 melee power and 5 ranged power. (Activation Cost: 1 Spell Point. Cooldown: 6 seconds) Only one target can have the crown at a time. AP COST: 1

Master of the Elements: Gain 5/10/15 spell power in your season. Passive rank 3: If the character has 17 druid levels they gain anger of the noonday sun or mantle of icy when changing in the appropriate elemental form. This effect costs 8 spells points when it occurs.

Time and Time again: increase your caster level and max caster level by +1 AP COST: 2

Word of Balance: Spell Like Ability: Word of Balance (Cost: [12/9/6] SP. Cooldown: [20/15/10] seconds) AP COST: 1 Requires: Salt Ray (will fix bug with this spell getting blocked by spell resistance)

Armor of Winter: Gain 8 times your wisdom in temporary Hit points that lasts 60 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds, Sp Cost: 12) AP COST: 2 (new – moved spell power and allow it to work in any elemental form/season)

[Cordovan]

I also had an opportunity today to sit down with Torc during the Weekly Wednesday Lunchtime Livestream. You might find it fun to watch this video before/during/after/whatever, as it contains some Q&A and insight into the work being done:


https://youtu.be/PCFGyFF1coA

[DaveyCrockett]

That's a lot of reading, so comments and opinions will come later. For now, thank you for finally taking on this monumental task...

[Captain_Wizbang]

As for pets, include Rangers. it makes little sense to alter just 2 classes when there are more classes with same lame pets.

[Teeaaa]

One Question....

When....

I've been dying for this for so long

[Xaxx]

I dont suppose there will be any animation work done on the transition mask between character model to wolf/bear model done on this pass.... (cant play a druid because all the nice green sparkly transition effects that were put on to mask the model replacement give me a headache after an hour or so of watching them every time i have to use something or open a door, or climb a ladder, or scratch my back end.... granted I'm the only one I've heard make this complaint so I cant figure any work is being done on it, just asking for clarification while we're here. If not, while the post looks interesting I think I'll hold any comments on something that I'll never run because its painful to watch it.

[Xaxx]

I dont suppose there will be any animation work done on the transition mask between character model to wolf/bear model done on this pass.... (cant play a druid because all the nice green sparkly transition effects that were put on to mask the model replacement give me a headache after an hour or so of watching them every time i have to use something or open a door, or climb a ladder, or scratch my back end.... granted I'm the only one I've heard make this complaint so I cant figure any work is being done on it, just asking for clarification while we're here. If not, while the post looks interesting I think I'll hold any comments on something that I'll never run because its painful to watch it.

[cru121]

[*=1]Call Lightning Storm now does 1d10 every 2 druid levels, max 15.


Is this also going to affect Half-Elf dragonmark? The dragonmark says it deals 1d10 per character level, not sure if it's true. Fix description perhaps?

[math92]

1. Nature's Protector: +2 hp for every point spent in the tree, and 3 MRR for every core in the tree.

sorry but why MRR? arent druids bear form known for tanking physical damage?

[silinteresting]

wow im so looking forward to play a druid caster again and this time it looks like a pure
one and not splashing 3 sorc to make it better.

your friend sil :)

[Arlathen]

Call Lightning Storm and Storm of Vengeance will have their damage progressions and values change to be an X per caster level to better benefit from increasing in caster level and max caster level effects.
Call Lightning Storm now does 1d10 every 2 druid levels, max 15.



Please, please, please, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE fix the Call Lightning Storm Dragonmark while you are doing this as well, allowing it scale to both Character Level and with Electric Spellpower!

[Lonnbeimnech]

No combat style specific bonuses will function while in animal forms aside from Natural Fighting, and any bonuses native to the form (no duel wielding, glancing blows or single weapon attack speed).

Does that include the shield mastery bonus to double strike?

[Rofaust]

I like it so far. I would still like to see new animal forms at some point.

[Gratch]

Thanks for the preview of all the great changes. Can't wait to see how bear performs on Lama someday.

But for the love of all things geek cool. CAN YOU PLEASE MAKE IT SO RUNE ARMS DON'T BREAK DRUIDIC OATH AND CAN BE FIRED OUT THE ANIMAL FORM'S MOUTH.

K thanks.

More on topic... why does Ursa's defense only has MRR and less of it than Improved Nature's Defense for the same AP? Poor Ursa...

Improved Nature's Defense: Competence bonus to one of three, Increase Threat by 50/100/150%, PRR MRR 4/8/12, Saving Throws by 1/2/3 AP COST: 1
Ursa Protector: While in bear form nature's defense now does one of these, +2/4/6 con, +3/6/9 MRR, +15/20/25 % to max hp AP COST: 1

[Torc]

Does that include the shield mastery bonus to double strike?

Yes as a combat style bonus this will not stack with animal forms. Our current approach is to balance the animal forms and natural weapon feats against the combat styles as it's own style.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Yes as a combat style bonus this will not stack with animal forms. Our current approach is to balance the animal forms and natural weapon feats against the combat styles as it's own style.

Any chance of making a "perfect natural fighting" epic destiny feat while you are at it?

[Andoir]

Any chance of dropping the Druid Min. LvL 9 requirement to start taking the Natural Fighting feats?

[cru121]

Looks like a lot of changes.
Not sure if it's enough :)
Lot of bad spells could use update.
Particularly form-specific spells. Starting with Anger of the Noonday Sun...

Some class abilities use Wisdom, some use Strength. I think some streamlining would be nice here. Use STR OR WIS for most abilities. Make sure the form spell DCs are achievable.

I think I don't like how lot of stuff is restricted to animal forms. Not sure if we needed two trees for that. Not many options for caster druid to invest spare AP.

The trees also seem fairly uninviting to multiclass characters. For example, I have a character called Swashee who always uses swashbuckling. I like to take 3 bard and combine it with various classes to pick up odd past lives. Well, with a druid... There's not much to get :(
(Unless I can swashbuckle in animal form)

[Torc]

Any chance of making a "perfect natural fighting" epic destiny feat while you are at it?

We're waiting for complete certain parts of the pass to do DPS testing. This will help direct changes to natural fighting which will most certainly change. At the very least we'll be probably making that line of feats accessible at lower levels so their progression is more comparable to the other combat styles.

[Tom116]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.

GENERAL CHANGES

1.Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.



[*=1]Somewhat hand-wavy Lore Explanation: The weapon is used as the magical source to enchant and create the properties of the claw or tooth of the druid. It's magic....so it works that way....yeah...
[*=1]Design Explanation: We want druid's melee attack progression to scale with loot normally so the druid's melee attack progression is easier to balance going forward.
[*=1]Primal Avatar will be given some kind of damage boost to maintain its hard-hitting style with this change. It will also get Cleave animations to fix a bug with Cleave attacks caused by lack of animations.


[B]2. Existing combat style bugs are being fixed.



[*=1]No combat style specific bonuses will function while in animal forms aside from Natural Fighting, and any bonuses native to the form (no duel wielding, glancing blows or single weapon attack speed).
[*=1]Using a two-handed weapon still grants the 1.5 damage from your modifying stat, and Power Attack feat adjustments in animal form as well, for its additional bonus.
[*=1]Attacks that require a specific weapon to be held in your hand will still not work in animal form (cause you don't have hands!)


3. Wolf form attack animations are being adjusted.



We are reducing the Basic Wolf Form attack speed bonus to 15%. Winter wolf remains about the same speed at 30%. We are also fixing some flaky behavior in the attack chain.


4. The Bear attack animation chain will be improved to make its attack rate match other weapon styles.



This will result in an approximate 15% increase in attack speed.


5. Bear & Dire Bear form's AC bonus is now typed Exceptional.



Improved Mage Armor will also be typed Exceptional.


6. Water and Fire Elemental form will now grant 65% Absorption to their element, instead of Damage Reduction, and 15% Vulnerability to their opposite element.



[*=1]The bonus will not stack with Fire Shields or Energy Sheath.



Overall the changes look great :)

A few questions though-

1. "Animal forms will now use the stats of the main hand weapon for melee attack purposes", does this include alternative stats for to-hit and damage? As in Dex from one of the trees that give it, Int from harper/arti,Wis/Cha from FvS, etc?

2. Any plans for Perfect Natural Fighting? All the other fighting styles have one, so it would make sense to have an option for animal forms there too.

3. Reflex saves? Wolf form getting evasion is great and a long time coming, but with druids having a poor base reflex and only a +2 to reflex in the tree...without dex being a primary stat, evasion won't do anything. Would you consider Dex to Damage/to Hit in an early core, maybe first (hit) and second (damage) in the wolf tree like ninja? And maybe improved evasion as a capstone so there's a reason to stay rather than splash henshin to get better saves and more melee power?

4. +1 to critical range is nowhere to be found. Why? Without it, it's hard to rationalize not taking 6 fighter and grabbing the kensei bonuses for crit range, if not also the multiplier. Would hate to see the T5's in the new and improved tree go to waste because Kensei T5 is the easiest place druids can get a bonus to crit range...unless you want people using Vistani cores for it? Would reccomend putting it in as a T5 so that people can't just splash druid to get the range without building around druid T5's rather than X class tree. Or maybe put a +1 to crit range in the bear tree and +1 to crit multiplier in the wolf tree as the 4th (level 12) cores?

5. Forgot to ask, the creeping cold changes are great but will the bug regarding Niac's Biting Cold be fixed?

[Tilomere]

10/10!

Unique flavor. Works in heroics. Interesting build possibilities.

For epics, Stalwart Defender 18 fighter/2 druid is better than the NW and bear trees combined, because defensive sweep doubles your dps, which out damages NW, and it is roughly equal for defense. Especially since the stun DC is too low to scale into epics.

Savage Roar: Using the Roar spell with 1 stack of killer instinct active now triggers a burst of sonic damage around the druid for 1d3 per rank of wilderness lore. Scales with melee power. If you have 2 stacks it also stuns at DC: Wilderness Rank + Strength Mod

A legendary bear with 20 ranks and 40 mod (90 strength) is looking at a stun DC of 60, which is about half the DC that would make it good in legendary content. You mentioned that this ability was going to be the core of the tree in the video, but it seems to be missing stunning bonuses to make it work?

[elvesunited]

well that's going to require a lot of +20 hearts of wood.

Will Items like Dethek shield be altered for this update?

If you have an enhancement that allows you to do other stat for damage will it work in animal form?

What about monk unarmed damage in wolf form?

Improved Critical feat needs to be of the weapon type or bludgeon(unarmed)? How about feats like weapon focus?

If Natural Fighting is going to be the only fighting style a druid can use in animal form can it at the very least provide +2 Combat Style Melee Power per feat taken like the other fighting feats do?

I notice no mention of shield mastery or improved shield mastery. Will that continue to function with Natural Fighting like it already does with the other weapon feats?

Can it be assumed that being in animal form will still protect weapons from weapon damage?

Wolf form gets trip bonuses but no innate trip attack. Bear gets innate stun attack ( wisdom, guess they're monks ) but no stun bonuses.

Ghost wolf has an awful cooldown.

Stealth attacks for the wolf despite druid not having move silently as a class skill. My druid wolf ( and I suspect most ) has never used stealth instead relying on bluff attacks and deception items to get sneak attack damage.

Alpha strike nerfed I supposed because of weapon damage.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

I dont suppose there will be any animation work done on the transition mask between character model to wolf/bear model done on this pass.... (cant play a druid because all the nice green sparkly transition effects that were put on to mask the model replacement give me a headache after an hour or so of watching them every time i have to use something or open a door, or climb a ladder, or scratch my back end.... granted I'm the only one I've heard make this complaint so I cant figure any work is being done on it, just asking for clarification while we're here. If not, while the post looks interesting I think I'll hold any comments on something that I'll never run because its painful to watch it.

I don't get a headache from it, but my previous computers all threw fits with it. It got to the point where I simply refused to open chests or doors or pull levers if anybody else was in the party. And ladders made me cry because there was no getting out of it save dropping form.

[Daveodude]

Yes as a combat style bonus this will not stack with animal forms. Our current approach is to balance the animal forms and natural weapon feats against the combat styles as it's own style.

Does this mean the Natural weapon feats will be changed as well. Right now, doing the math for my druid, my double strike will be as follows.
23% molten silver gauntlets
9% Doublestrike Past life's
5% PTWF
10% Natures Warrior Core 6
15% Legendary Silent Avenger Set
10% Legendary Lore-Fueled Packbanner
9% Fatal Harrier (which is 11% less than killer, maybe make this a 5% attack speed bonus instead I mean the old Fatal Harrier was only a 10% increase after haste, so that's not that much)
18% Natural weapons Feats
=
99% Doublestrike just with Nature's warrior. If I wanted I could get an extra 5% from Vistani tier 3 core, (which I probably would because haste boost out of vistani) and be at 104% before any doublestrike boosts, rendering the core "Howling Frost", the doublestrike action boost, and the reaper doublestrike action boost completely useless.

[edrein]

Yes as a combat style bonus this will not stack with animal forms. Our current approach is to balance the animal forms and natural weapon feats against the combat styles as it's own style.

Are bears going to get glancing blows similar to THF? I like the idea but currently it feels like on paper the bear druid is going to be greatly inferior to other tanks on a defensive and offensive level. Let alone wolf druids can double dip into the 'bear' tree and get even more defensive buffs on top of their high offensive buffs.

[ComicRelief]

Not trying to derail the druid thread, but seeing as how most casters are being slated for passes, and how "Eschew Materials" (EM) is relevant for most (if not all) casting classes (including druid), are there any plans for updating the list of spells that EM will work with? (While I don't have a specific druid spell for an example, I do know for a fact that EM does not work on the arty spell "lucky cape" - and it should.) There seem to be a few (presumably newer) spells that should benefit from the EM feat, but don't. (In fact all spells with material components - with very few exceptions [such as "stone skin"] - should be able to use EM instead of said components, and right now that is simply not the case.)

If nothing else, maybe it can be put on the RADAR to be looked at (and maybe even queued up)?
;)

[elvesunited]

Are bears going to get glancing blows similar to THF? I like the idea but currently it feels like on paper the bear druid is going to be greatly inferior to other tanks on a defensive and offensive level. Let alone wolf druids can double dip into the 'bear' tree and get even more defensive buffs on top of their high offensive buffs.

I think the reason essence of the shrike was renamed essence of nature and moved to Tier 3 of the wolf tree was so that bears could more easily dip into it where as before they couldn't use it at all.

[ggalhano]

From somewhat community marketing to guerrilla marketing.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

We're waiting for complete certain parts of the pass to do DPS testing. This will help direct changes to natural fighting which will most certainly change. At the very least we'll be probably making that line of feats accessible at lower levels so their progression is more comparable to the other combat styles.

So your plan is to have Natural Fighting, Improved Natural Fighting, and Greater Natural Fighting, rather than 3x Natural Fighting? Spiffy. I also support the idea of Perfect Natural Fighting.

[GramercyRiff]

At first glance, I am quite underwhelmed at most of this.

Also does "attk power" mean melee power?

[Daveodude]

I want so bad for pure druid wolf builds to be viable, because I love the class, and have been playing my completionist as a wolf almost exclusively since the end of 2013. I love the attack animation, and I really love the class, but with this enhancement line, there is still simply no point in going pure druid. I'd be better off as 10 druid, 6 fighter, 4 monk, and I still probably wouldn't spend any points in Nature's Warrior as I feel like I am forced to now. Sure I lose a lot of casting capabilities, and some doublestrike (which is made up for by standing in wind stance with grandmaster of forms) but the net gain is a threat range, and 20 melee power. The Nature's Defender might be nice for that build though. I'd be able to save points from shintao and stalwart defender to dip into Nature's defender, and I'd probably end up being able to tank raids with a few gear swaps, so that's nice, and I think that would be pretty nice.

Honestly the biggest thing wolf builds get out of this is the fact that +W will start working. All the new weapons with +5W dice do absolutely nothing for them, so this should be a significant increase in damage, but the loss of SWF attack speed is probably going to put them at a loss in dps, but maybe if I take all the Natural Fighting feats, I might even out in the end.

[Torc]

Overall the changes look great :)

A few questions though-

1. "Animal forms will now use the stats of the main hand weapon for melee attack purposes", does this include alternative stats for to-hit and damage? As in Dex from one of the trees that give it, Int from harper/arti,Wis/Cha from FvS, etc?

2. Any plans for Perfect Natural Fighting? All the other fighting styles have one, so it would make sense to have an option for animal forms there too.

3. Reflex saves? Wolf form getting evasion is great and a long time coming, but with druids having a poor base reflex and only a +2 to reflex in the tree...without dex being a primary stat, evasion won't do anything. Would you consider Dex to Damage/to Hit in an early core, maybe first (hit) and second (damage) in the wolf tree like ninja? And maybe improved evasion as a capstone so there's a reason to stay rather than splash henshin to get better saves and more melee power?

4. +1 to critical range is nowhere to be found. Why? Without it, it's hard to rationalize not taking 6 fighter and grabbing the kensei bonuses for crit range, if not also the multiplier. Would hate to see the T5's in the new and improved tree go to waste because Kensei T5 is the easiest place druids can get a bonus to crit range...unless you want people using Vistani cores for it? Would reccomend putting it in as a T5 so that people can't just splash druid to get the range without building around druid T5's rather than X class tree. Or maybe put a +1 to crit range in the bear tree and +1 to crit multiplier in the wolf tree as the 4th (level 12) cores?

5. Forgot to ask, the creeping cold changes are great but will the bug regarding Niac's Biting Cold be fixed?

.....

1. Stat Switching: Favor Soul or any other stat swap ability will work normally.

2. Natural Fighting: As above, we'll be reviewing this line later in the pass

3. Reflex Saves: We'll see if they need the help.

4. Crit Range: Classically we like to leave the full crit package in pure melee classes only but we'll see how it goes.

5. Niac's Biting Cold: Could use some clarification here, what bug?

[bloodnose13]

its nice to see druid updated however. i dont know if i can aggre with the two handed weapons working normaly in shapeshifted form, if no other combat bonuses will work then two handed will be forced upon anyone who intends to build a shapeshift melee druid due to the best benefits.

personaly i would rather like to see this as a shapeshifting would summon a weapon like "claws or fangs", such generalized shapeshift weapon could be then affected by enchancements and spells to make it customizable and scaling.


btw, did i miss cleric and fvs pass or its on hold?

[Xanthrawl]

.....

1. Stat Switching: Favor Soul or any other stat swap ability will work normally.

2. Natural Fighting: As above, we'll be reviewing this line later in the pass

3. Reflex Saves: We'll see if they need the help.

4. Crit Range: Classically we like to leave the full crit package in pure melee classes only but we'll see how it goes.

5. Niac's Biting Cold: Could use some clarification here, what bug?

Creeping Cold removed all stacks of Niacs. Has for years.

[guardiankaiser]

I have been away for many months from this game, but i have been considering coming back soon with a few friends that also used to play. Caster Druid was my favorite class by far so I am excited to see this update. Just wanted to say hopefully with the season's being reworked to stances and the capstone being reworked hopefully you look closely at caster level / max caster level effects as many of them were not working as intended for Druid. As well as a few of the spells, not that i can recall many on the top of my head but, Anger of noonday sun being completely insignificant to Mantle of the icy Soul, and Word of Balance being stopped by spell resistance (even though its pure damage, while its counterparts like Holy Smight, order's wrath carry status effects and ignore spell resistance)

Also it would be really nice is Primal Avatar (Epic Destiny) could offer a little more for casters, while it appears like its like its okay, many of the spell effects are poorly functional, terrible targeting (Tsunami) or have DCs that simply fail to scale in a relevant way (most of the time not including bonuses from Evocation) even if all of them functioned it seems to lack enough punch not to chose Exalted Angel instead.

Edit: It's possible Spiked Growth was another spell that had issues with the caster level (possible capstone transmutation specific) / Max caster level / DC to transmutation effect in the tree, it has been some time, although i do know the visual effect and its tendency to float in the air instead of actually being placed on the ground cause much announce to people i played with

[Tom116]

.....

1. Stat Switching: Favor Soul or any other stat swap ability will work normally.

2. Natural Fighting: As above, we'll be reviewing this line later in the pass

3. Reflex Saves: We'll see if they need the help.

4. Crit Range: Classically we like to leave the full crit package in pure melee classes only but we'll see how it goes.

5. Niac's Biting Cold: Could use some clarification here, what bug?

1. Great! Is there a possibility of wolf form getting dex to hit/damage ?* la Ninja Spy to complement the evasion without splashing out for dex?

2. I saw that after I posted, sounds good :)

3. Fair enough.

4. That's fair, and for those who want to focus on melee there are still ways like vistani/kensei.

5. Niac's gets removed whenever Creeping Cold is cast on an enemy with any stacks of Niac's, I assumed it was a known issue as it has been going on for quite a while. As Xanthrawl said, "Creeping Cold removed all stacks of Niacs. Has for years."

[Memnir]

https://i.imgur.com/VPJZ7Ik.gif

Can't wait to give the changes a go in-game. Might actually dust off the Druids I got tired of struggling with.

[PsychoBlonde]

No combat style specific bonuses will function while in animal forms aside from Natural Fighting, and any bonuses native to the form (no duel wielding, glancing blows or single weapon attack speed).


What about Shield Mastery and Improved Shield Mastery? How will this stuff interact with using a weapon and a shield? Especially important given that the Dethek Runestone is an important Druid item so using a shield is very much part of many druid builds. I would suggest removing the requirement that you need 9 druid levels to get the FIRST rank of Natural Fighting as this means the Natural Fighting feats eat unnecessarily high-level feat slots. Make it require TWO druid levels (enough to get access to an animal form).

If a weapon has alt-stat options on it, will those *work* now? If I equip a Flame Blade and go into animal form, will I get Wis to hit and damage? Will 100% of my damage still be fire, or will the animal form replace that and I'll only get the bonus damage procs?

Will your weapons still be immune to damage when you're in animal form?


Water and Fire Elemental form will now grant 65% Absorption to their element, instead of Damage Reduction, and 15% Vulnerability to their opposite element.

Is this going to also affect elemental form sorcerers?

For the spell adjustments, I suggest REMOVING SPELL RESISTANCE from WORD OF BALANCE. It's like the ONLY spell druids get that has spell resistance aside from Finger of Death. They get nothing that BOOSTS their SPELL PENETRATION so it's basically just TAUNTING us. The spell has NO effect other than damage and damage-only spells otherwise DON'T GET SPELL RESISTANCE.


Either or some combination of new Wolf & Bear forms Appearances or dyes.

^^^ ALL OF THIS. I SENDS COFFEE.




5. Howling Frost: Casting Howl of Terror now grants you "Winter Hunt" for 10 seconds which grants +10 double strike and, 25% bonus to spell crit and 50% to spell crit damage to all cold damage spells. This will only occur once every 30 seconds.

It seems weird as a core since Howl of Terror can only be cast by druids in wolf or winter wolf form, and everything else in the tree so far has been independent of specific animal form.


Ghost Wolf: Requires wolf form. Activate, gain 50% incorpreal defense for 30 seconds, cooldown 5 minutes. Passive: Gain ghost touch while in wolf form to your melee attacks AP COST: 2

5 minute cooldown is nuts. 2. 2 minute cooldown.


Fight: increase melee damage and AC, 1, 2, 3 in wolf or bear forms AP COST: 1 (requires: flight)

AC should be 2/4/6, I think.



Brother Wolf: While your wolf pet is alive and within 40 meters it gains 5/10/15 hps every 12/9/6 seconds and 10/15/20 mrr & prr and you gain 1/2/3 to hit and damage AP COST: 1

I like this.


Stalking Prey: Staying in stealth gains you a damage bonus to critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers) every 3 seconds. Effect lasts for 10 seconds and can stack up to 3 times. or a total of +[3/6/9]. AP COST: 1

I realize that druids can cast Camouflage and Pass Without Trace but I still doubt this will see much use. Still, maybe it's a good thing to start dishing out more stealth-related abilities. They could seriously use some Faster Sneaking, though.


Nature’s Swiftness: Wolf forms gain evasion. Armor restrictions apply. AP COST: 2

*blink* Okay, wow, this is interesting.


Strength or Wisdom AP: 2

Wait . . . so Nature's Warrior gets THREE stat points?! Or was this a typo in Tier 5?


1. Nature's Protector: +2 hp for every point spent in the tree, and 3 MRR for every core in the tree.

What, no PRR?!


Rage of the Beast: Activate to rage gaining +4 strength and Con, +2 will saves, -2 ac for 40 seconds, but disallowing the casting of magic. Requires bear or wolf form. This ability shares cool down and charges with Barbarian class rage. Effects that modify barbarian rage also effect Rage of the Beast and using it counts as a use of barbarian rage and vice versa. Effect persists through shape changes Can be used 1/2 per rest. AP COST: 1

Does this also make it so that you can't use your Animal Form spells? Kinda sucks, if so. Overall the Nature's Protector tree looks pretty beefy. I see some neat potential synergies with Barbarian (obviously).

Wouldn't it make more sense for this tree to be Strength/Con instead of Strength/Wis?


3. Nature's Wellspring: The effects of your shillelagh are doubled. +1 max caster level in your active season

WEAK. Add: Shillelagh adds +1/3 druid levels to your weapon's enhancement bonus. Also, it's not clear when the season changes now. Is it still a timer that is started when you switch forms? So you could hypothetically stay in one season forever by toggling your form on and off? I'd prefer that it just be tied to your elemental form the end no timer.


4. Sun Burst: Gain Sun Burst as an SLA, SP: 4, Cooldown: 20 seconds (new – lowered cooldown)

LOWER IT MORE the spell hardly does damage except vs. undead!


Shared Spirit: Your wolf pet gains 3/6/10% bonus to hps. Passive: You gain 1/2/3 spell power. AP COST: 1

BE STILL MY HEART THREE WHOLE SPELLPOWER! 5/10/15, thanks. :P


Spring Resurgence: Fill an ally with the vitality of spring. When that ally falls below 50% hit points, that ally and any other allies near him are healed by 20d6
positive energy, and receive a +2 primal bonus to attack rolls. (Lasts 5 minutes or until triggered.) (Activation Cost: [8/6/4] Spell Points.)
Cooldown: [8/4/2] seconds) AP COST: 1 (new – lowered cooldown to make buffing party easier)

Could just make it AoE to make buffing party easier. :P

I strongly approve of adding Salt Ray SLA and moving everything else down a tier. Fabulous, thumbs up.

Overall the changes look pretty good, although I'm going to repeat ZOMG TAKE SR OFF OF WORD OF BALANCE PLEASE THANKS.

[guardiankaiser]

1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.


[/INDENT]

So animal form + flame blades, will work identical to outside of animal form such that it will deal pure fire damage and wisdom scale?

Also are there any plans to allow flame blades in anyway to scale in to epic levels though any means? Epic feat, automatic scaling, an epic destiny feature? They already scale a little poorly after the item rework.

[fmalfeas]

Um...that Heavy Armor gain in Bear Form...

Are there going to be any non-metal heavy armors introduced that aren't raid items or ultra-grind? Because the only non-metal heavys that I know of are all Dragonscale. Doesn't help much to have Heavy prof when you can only wear level 14 (very grindy) heroic dragonplate, Epic Red Dragonscale (good luck), Level 23 Cormyrian Red and Green (Comm of Heroism and Oversword required), level 25 epic Blue, Black, and White (Comm of Heroism and grindy for scales), and Shadow Dragonplate at 26/28 (Deathwyrm).

Makes getting the prof at level 6 kinda...sad.

After all, if you put on any metal heavy, you lose your wild shape, SLAs, and spells until you take it off.

[guardiankaiser]

For the spell adjustments, I suggest REMOVING SPELL RESISTANCE from WORD OF BALANCE. It's like the ONLY spell druids get that has spell resistance aside from Finger of Death. They get nothing that BOOSTS their SPELL PENETRATION so it's basically just TAUNTING us. The spell has NO effect other than damage and damage-only spells otherwise DON'T GET SPELL RESISTANCE.

Overall the changes look pretty good, although I'm going to repeat ZOMG TAKE SR OFF OF WORD OF BALANCE PLEASE THANKS.

I just want to reiterate these two very important points, the spell on any druid fails 100% of the time against any Spell Resistance, and it's a damage only spell

Without this change, the lowered cooldown only amounts to being able to waste SP faster.

[Lonnbeimnech]

any chance the wolf form movement rate bonus could be made something other than an enhancement bonus? like rogues/artis/bards/fighters/paladins all got?

[Cordovan]

https://i.imgur.com/VPJZ7Ik.gif

Can't wait to give the changes a go in-game. Might actually dust off the Druids I got tired of struggling with.

That's quite good, but you're missing out on using Boston's own Keytar Bear!

http://www.thebostoncalendar.com/system/events/photos/000/014/523/original/Ikxek9b.jpeg?1443860889

[Iriale]

The changes seem good mostly, devs, but I ask you to consider one thing: that you improve Efficient Metamagic (and not only for druids, but for all spellcasters) In epics you have to have all the metamagics feats active permanently and the spells are very expensive for the damage they do. It is not good to limit spellcasters to their SLAs. While spells would still be more expensive in spell points than SLAs if you improve Efficient Metamagic, they would be more competitive if the metamagic feats cost less spell points.

Think about it, devs: Efficient Metamagic cost 2 APs for a very small reduction in the cost of a single metamagic feat. It is very little and very expensive in APs for what it does. Please please please. Improve Efficient Metamagic for all spellcasters.

[guardiankaiser]

3. Nature's Wellspring: The effects of your shillelagh are doubled. +1 max caster level in your active season

This effect, or the base effect of shillelagh, is not potent enough, in the caster tree to provide any use to druid. If this is intended for the caster they already have flame blade, and in a few levels attacking with a melee weapon wont even cross a casters mind.

Possibly making shillelagh additionally scale with level and granting Wisdom to hit/damage as well (Hey 5e D&D's Shillelagh does it, that should be more then enough reason).

With Wis scaling on Shillelagh it might have some use to Caster Druids

[Bluenoser]

Any chance of dropping the Druid Min. LvL 9 requirement to start taking the Natural Fighting feats?

This. Part of the reason so many of us splashed in shield mastery or SWF line was so druid melee didn't stink up the joint until lvl 9. Frankly, it will still stink if all you're getting at lvl 9 is 6% doublestrike, not to mention the 15% nerf to basic wolf form attack speed. I'm also not seeing anything in the proposed changes that amps melee power in line with other fighting style feats (unless it's that "+2/4/6 attk power" in tier 4 Nature's Warrior, which is kinda late at lvl 4 and expensive at 21-23 AP), or the (excessive) bonuses given to monks via Henshin (+10 melee power at lvl 1 for 1 AP. Ahem. Still not sure how that one got past the goalie). Seems like an easy fix to add some melee power to the Natural Fighting feats while lowering their ML, if the goal is balancing combat styles.

I agree with another poster that not giving a crit range boost somewhere kind of screams "take tier 5 kensei". If it's too clunky to add to druid enhancement trees, it could be added as a stacking bonus via an auto-granted Druid class feat at, say, lvl 12 or 15. All of that said, note in the interest of balance: Rangers can get +1 crit range at 12 via DWS, but have to wait until 18 and burn 31 AP to get the +1 multiplier from AA, and even then it's only for equipped bows. Melee rangers can get +1 multiplier from Tempest lvl 12 core, but only while TWF. So, I wouldn't go overboard on druids, who can generate DPS and crowd control from spells while also meleeing, and have good self-healing and buffs to boot. Torc's point that they want to see how melee druids are doing without a crit range boost (besides Improved Critical feat) seems prudent.

I didn't have time to read all of the responses after the OP, but will animal forms still work with Precision or Combat Expertise? (I saw a Power Attack mentioned, but not the other combat feat stances).

Thanks!

[Godzuki420]

Can the team make earth elemental form and air elemental forms for new wild shapes for the druid?

[Wongar]

Does Thick Hide stack with other natural armor sources like Barkskin and Augments?

Rage of the Beast is Barbarian Rage for Bear and Wolf.
- Does Cleric Destruction Domain allow casting spells while raging?
- If you take a level of Barb, do the rage charges from each class stack?
- Does Past Life: Berserker's Fury rage add to the Beast Rage Count?
- If you have both Barbarian Rage and Rage of the Beast what is the duration of the rage? 40 sec or 18 + (Constitution modifier x 6) seconds
- Are Druids getting dismiss rage?
- Can Innate Attacks be used while raged? Or are they considered magic since they consume SP?

Does Spirit Refreshed require shifting between animal forms or does it work when changing from/to native race form (eg human, dwarf, etc) as well?

Lightning strikes the Mountain: Does this provide 100% bonus MRR for 15 seconds and passive constant 20/40 MRR in stance? Or is the the 20/40 MRR only active during the 15 seconds?

[Drag-]

We're waiting for complete certain parts of the pass to do DPS testing. This will help direct changes to natural fighting which will most certainly change. At the very least we'll be probably making that line of feats accessible at lower levels so their progression is more comparable to the other combat styles.

What kind of dps are you aiming for here?
Are wolf builds supposed to be heavily reliant on spell damage as a part of there DPS now? This will make feats super tight on wolves trying to fit in all the necessary feats and also make gearing a nightmare.

Also what about the doublestrike issue here. Currently doublestrike doesnt do anything when it goes above 100%. With all of the doublestrike you are adding to wolves it is easy to hit above 100% so are you going to change the doublestrike cap? Maybe an idea for perfect natural fighting?

Also the enhancements are solely lacking in melee power.

As the enhancements look currently without major improvements to natural fighting the dps of wolves will be significantly less with these changes.

[CeltEireson]

The changes seem good mostly, devs, but I ask you to consider one thing: that you improve Efficient Metamagic (and not only for druids, but for all spellcasters) In epics you have to have all the metamagics feats active permanently and the spells are very expensive for the damage they do. It is not good to limit spellcasters to their SLAs. While spells would still be more expensive in spell points than SLAs if you improve Efficient Metamagic, they would be more competitive if the metamagic feats cost less spell points.

Think about it, devs: Efficient Metamagic cost 2 APs for a very small reduction in the cost of a single metamagic feat. It is very little and very expensive in APs for what it does. Please please please. Improve Efficient Metamagic for all spellcasters.

I'd be happy if they just dropped the cost to 1 AP per level, for all casters ;)

[Avocado]

Initial thoughts:
Core 6 natures warrior only 10 double strike and prr? seems pretty small. Add 30 melee power (in both bear and wolf trees 10 core 5, 20 core 6) to make it MORE competitive with fighter and monk. Add a haste boost option for the action boost - doublestrike for a pure druid could be running around 90ish making this boost less appealing.

Wisdom to damage maybe? Make it an option for druids either in each 5-6 core or as 17 level druid. It's clear from these trees that druids are not getting a significant beef in damage but as MUCH stronger support role. For animal from wolves you will be relying on wisdom to get most of your take down, baiting bite, etc. dcs high but you will be sacrificing your attack and damage stat. The point being made that monks didnt get wis to damage, but they got tons of melee power and weapon die improvement which are far better then wisdom to damage, druids will be getting none of this. They get some very nice defensive stuff but what the point if you cant do any dps.

IMPORTANT! Add tactics dc to things like termor, jaws of winter, throat rip, takedown, etc. Take down uses the same formula as trip, but druids cannot get their wisdom (maybe max 90) to a level equal to that of a fighter or barbarian who can run 130+ str, limiting the dc to a useless level (at 90 wisdom its a dc of 51 for take down, 58 for jaws of winter, 70 for throat rip, useless for normal, hard or elite epic/legendary content) Also if you dont do wisdom to damage, this will make a fvs split more appealing with war soul changes to divine might. Wisdom only goes so high and getting around 90 is hard enough. Wisdom at 90 means a 10 + 20 + 40 = 70 dc pure 20 for things without tactics in them. 70 isnt enough for hard or elite end game content. Please let them scale effectively into content by adding a tactics bonuses to dcs, like almost every other class/tactic.

Throat rip is interesting, make it give vulnerability stacks (5-7?) Scale bleed damage with melee power. Abilities should scale into epic better and 6d6 isnt much for epic mobs. Considering most melee power is gained in epics, you should make the bleed damage scale with melee power.

Remove seasons. I asked this awhile ago. Current meta and always meta has been to spec for one element. Dont make druids pick based on an arbitrary time limit what spells they should be casting. and really you need 3 druid (2core) to get season of winter stuff? No that should all be in core 1. You get season in core 1 end of story. Make the core 2 more appealing by keeping the caster level bonus. IF you truly must keep seasons. Make the season a multi selector. You get choose a season to run in and it limits you tree choices to winter based stuff and slas. Make a crown of winter :), in winter season crown of summer gives crown of winter: 10 prr and mrr and 10% force/elemental absorb. Create SLAs for both seasons: winter druid: saltray, creeping cold, call lightning, ice storm, word of balance. (take this directly from the core 5). Fire slas: saltray, produce flame, firewall, sunburst/sunbeam, word of balance. Saltray is a pretty bad tier 4 sla! Put it in tier 1. Move everything else up.
Season requires does NOT require you run in the proper elemental form.

Fatal harrier was better with an attack speed increase. Dont know why it was changed. This ties into thought 1. Make it a melee power boost instead or along with a doublestrike boost.

Core 4 and 5- lower cooldowns more for slas to 15 on sunburst and 75 seconds on storm of vengeance OR add more caster level stuff for both these cores. +1 max for core 4 and 5.

[edrein]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.
9. Cosmetic Changes: (new)



[*=1]These may come AFTER the pass, time permitting. This is stretch goal stuff.
[*=1]Either or some combination of new Wolf & Bear forms Appearances or dyes.
[*=1]Nature’s Veil: A Toggle Feat that suppressed the texture swap used for fire/water elemental forms but keeps the vfxs.




I have a two part question based on this. Will these options apply to our pet wolf as well? I'd love to see a pet bear or even mini owl bear? Will there be owl-bear cosmetics, or the option to use the normal bear rather than dire bear? (Never was a fan of the bones/spikes sticking out of Dire Bear's model.)

Secondly; while not entirely cosmetic it is based on models. We aren't getting new wildshapes? No Air or Earth elemental re-used from the savant trees? We have enough spells in both of those categories on druids to warrant such. No new animal forms? No cat forms? I'd love to actually use the Children of Winter sect forms; you know vermin based? Rat (sneak attack), spider, and scorpion.

I was really hoping to see druids gain access to their sects similar to the addition of Domains. As it would certainly give more variety to playstyles, even if it was as simple as the domain formula.




Salt Ray: Spell Like Ability: Salt Ray (Cost: [12/10/8] SP. Cooldown: [12/10/8] seconds) AP COST: 1


It's been ages since I've used Salt Ray but has the spell been fixed? I recall the damage does not scale as it is supposed to and the stun never landed. Pleasure make sure this is fixed before you decide upon this as an SLA.

[Thar]

We're waiting for complete certain parts of the pass to do DPS testing. This will help direct changes to natural fighting which will most certainly change. At the very least we'll be probably making that line of feats accessible at lower levels so their progression is more comparable to the other combat styles.

When you do DPS testing, how about survivability testing too. The tanking aspects of the bear don't jump out as anything more than a weak defensive pally tree. And Pally's are bad with DPS and Defense right now. You need 400+ AC 300PRR to tank at end game which isn't possible on a straight class build. that shouldn't be the case. And of course holy sword has been nerf batted so much that Pally doesn't even make a bad fighter as they don't get the melee power boost.

Don't make bear form useless or it would be in the same place it is today. no role in a raid or party. it has to soak damage or avoid damage. so more prr or more ac or both.

[Torc]

1. Great! Is there a possibility of wolf form getting dex to hit/damage ?* la Ninja Spy to complement the evasion without splashing out for dex?


5. Niac's gets removed whenever Creeping Cold is cast on an enemy with any stacks of Niac's, I assumed it was a known issue as it has been going on for quite a while. As Xanthrawl said, "Creeping Cold removed all stacks of Niacs. Has for years."

Aaaah!!!!! Good to know. We'll get this fixed.

-T

[Kylstrem]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.

GENERAL CHANGES

1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.




[*=1]Primal Avatar will be given some kind of damage boost to maintain its hard-hitting style with this change. It will also get Cleave animations to fix a bug with Cleave attacks caused by lack of animations.



Need details on what this actually means for the build.
Will the cleaves remain a fast attack like they are now, or will we be a getting slow motion cleave like the trees current normal attacks?
Explain this more.

Been here since 2006 and this may just be the thing that makes me leave depending how badly you mangle the trees.

[Nandos]

NATURE'S PROTECTOR - new bear tree!

3. Magical Beast: Gain heavy armor prof. In addition while in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 2.0. Does not stack with Nature's Warrior Cores.



Instead of adding heavy armor prof, how about some PRR or something? Because 98% of the heavy armor in the game is metal and will break Druid's oath. This may cause confusion especially to newer players.

[Torc]

I just want to reiterate these two very important points, the spell on any druid fails 100% of the time against any Spell Resistance, and it's a damage only spell

Without this change, the lowered cooldown only amounts to being able to waste SP faster.

Straight damage spells are typically not suppose to be resistible by spell resistance. We'll throw this on the list.

[Torc]

This. Part of the reason so many of us splashed in shield mastery or SWF line was so druid melee didn't stink up the joint until lvl 9. Frankly, it will still stink if all you're getting at lvl 9 is 6% doublestrike, not to mention the 15% nerf to basic wolf form attack speed. I'm also not seeing anything in the proposed changes that amps melee power in line with other fighting style feats (unless it's that "+2/4/6 attk power" in tier 4 Nature's Warrior, which is kinda late at lvl 4 and expensive at 21-23 AP), or the (excessive) bonuses given to monks via Henshin (+10 melee power at lvl 1 for 1 AP. Ahem. Still not sure how that one got past the goalie). Seems like an easy fix to add some melee power to the Natural Fighting feats while lowering their ML, if the goal is balancing combat styles.

I agree with another poster that not giving a crit range boost somewhere kind of screams "take tier 5 kensei". If it's too clunky to add to druid enhancement trees, it could be added as a stacking bonus via an auto-granted Druid class feat at, say, lvl 12 or 15. All of that said, note in the interest of balance: Rangers can get +1 crit range at 12 via DWS, but have to wait until 18 and burn 31 AP to get the +1 multiplier from AA, and even then it's only for equipped bows. Melee rangers can get +1 multiplier from Tempest lvl 12 core, but only while TWF. So, I wouldn't go overboard on druids, who can generate DPS and crowd control from spells while also meleeing, and have good self-healing and buffs to boot. Torc's point that they want to see how melee druids are doing without a crit range boost (besides Improved Critical feat) seems prudent.

I didn't have time to read all of the responses after the OP, but will animal forms still work with Precision or Combat Expertise? (I saw a Power Attack mentioned, but not the other combat feat stances).

Thanks!

Combat stances will work as normal regardless of form unless the ability specifically says it will not. (swash buckler for example currently).

[edrein]

To expand on my previous post; I decided it'd be smart to give examples of druidic sects using the cleric domain formula.

Gatekeeper:

Level 2: You gain +1 to the DC of your Abjuration and Evocation spells. This increases by +1 at 6th, 12th, and 18th level Druid.
Any spell cast against an Aberration or Outsider deals an additional 4d4 bane damage. This effect scales with spell power.
Level 5: You gain Dismissal as an SLA. 15 Spell Points, 4 second cooldown.
Level 9: Your spells cast against an Aberration or Outsider deals an additional proc of 10d10 bane damage. This effect is a secondary damage proc in addition to the level 2 variant and scales with spell power.
Level 14: You gain Banishment as an SLA. 20 Spell Points, 8 second cooldown.


Children of Winter:

Level 2: You gain +1 to the DC of your Evocation and Necromancy spells. This increases by +1 at 6th, 12th, and 18th level Druid.
Your cold spells will use negative Spell Power if it is higher. Your negative spells will use cold Spell Power if it is higher.
Level 5: You gain Necrotic Ray as an SLA. 10 Spell Points, 8 second cooldown.
Level 9: Your gain Frost Lance as an SLA. 5 SP, 6 second cooldown.
Level 14: You gain Negative Energy Burst as an SLA. 15 Spell Points, 10 second cooldown.



Additionally; with the druidic sect feats in place. You would be able to add epic level druidic wildshapes or feats based upon that sect's lore. Such as Black Dragon Bolt SLA for the Gatekeepers, or Ice Spider wildshape for Children of Winter.

[Avocado]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.



[/B]

[*=1]No combat style specific bonuses will function while in animal forms aside from Natural Fighting, and any bonuses native to the form (no duel wielding, glancing blows or single weapon attack speed).
[*=1]Using a two-handed weapon still grants the 1.5 damage from your modifying stat, and Power Attack feat adjustments in animal form as well, for its additional bonus.
[*=1]Attacks that require a specific weapon to be held in your hand will still not work in animal form (cause you don't have hands!)


[/INDENT]
This is confusing-ish.
What about shield mastery? Can you still use a sword and board to fight? Are animals still considered unarmed meaning Can you still take Two weapon fighting line to get offhand attacks?

So wolves get a 30% attack speed increase over other forms of fighting (not single weapon with feats tho). So their base attack speed bonus with everything is 45% (30 + 15 alacrity)?

EVERY melee in game uses some form of combat style. Monks get twf, twf gets twf, single weapon gets swf feats, and thf gets thf. Monks get 80% (actually 90 with enhancements) more hits, THFs get 30% more glancing blow damage, SWF gets 30% more hits and 1.5 stat to damage and druids get 30% more attacks 18% chance to double hit. Maybe add a natural fighting style bonus to melee power with each natural fighting feat similar to THF and SFW. And maybe increase the doublestrike amount to 8.

Why it should be increased to 8% or more! All other melees get some bonus feats for their fighting styles. Monk gets 3 bonus feats. Fighter gets a bunch of bonus feats. Rangers get theirs for free with ranger levels. Druid gets no bonus feats for taking a fighting style and their fighting style feats (natural fighting) are not part of any bonus feats that another class can take. Meaning you are limited to choosing natural fighting for feats granted at levels 1,3,6, etc. While making choices for quicken, empower heal, etc. Maybe add them to bonus feats for those classes to add to multiclass potential.

[AbyssalMage]

Yes as a combat style bonus this will not stack with animal forms. Our current approach is to balance the animal forms and natural weapon feats against the combat styles as it's own style.
Please rethink this. Currently, we can do THF/SWF + SM/ISM which are both combat styles that compliment each other. Allowing Natural Fighting to the list shouldn't cause game imbalance for those who wish to spend the 5! feats to acquire such a bonus.

Second, please break Natural Fighting up into Natural Fighting (level 1), Improved Natural Fighting (level 3 or 6), and Greater Natural Fighting (Level 9 or 12) like the other combat styles.

[GeoffWatson]

Natural Fighting needs a massive improvement. It gives 6% doublestrike, which is a lot less than 20% off-hand strikes, 10% attack speed, or 10% glancing blows.
Making it available at lower levels would help too.

[CaptainSpacePony]

Because 98% of the heavy armor in the game is metal and will break Druid's oath. This may cause confusion especially to newer players.

I think the core should at least get reminder text for said players. I can see this being a source of frustration for them--not cool.

[Mryal]

Nice! Fixes, buffs to spells, some new enhancements.I like.
I mainly play caster druid and got epic completionist as Caster Druid, so i will comment on season's herald, and spellcasting in general.

First of all any buff in season's herald is a step in the right direction, SPECIALY tying the season mechanic to the elemental form you are.Adding salt ray SLA is a good idea too.
But honestly, there is still a lot to do.Caster druids have always been in a strange spot where unlike other casters they use several different elements at once and also several schools while recieving little support to some of the schools they use.Additionaly there is the ED/Epic feat issue.More into that bellow.

Elemental Forms - Ice : In this form you have a very usefull usefull buff: Mantle of the Icy Soul, and a special form spell: Ice Flowers, wich is a neat spell, neat animation , good concept, but... it's a Transmutation school spell.Why?
Proposal : Change Ice Flowers to Evocation.

Elemental Forms - Fire: In this form you have Anger of the Noonday Sun wich is honestly useless, and a very good damaging spell in the form of Body of the Sun.On top of that you also have good Fire spells alredy in the druid spellbook, Firewall,Flame Strike.
Proposal: Change Anger of the Noonday Sun into a usefull buff that helps maximize damage, a spell version of Radiant Glory from Lantern Ring is a good idea.

Master of the Wilds and Epic Destinies: Master of the Wilds is a neat feat, but in order to use it you must be in an Epic Destiny from the Primal Tree to gain druid Caster Levels and all of them are honestly depressive for a Caster Druid.Solving this requires changes into the ED system, in wich all ED's meant for casters would give caster levels for all casting classes, this would also open room for other kinds of builds from other classes.

Epic Spells and ED based SLA's : As mentioned before Druids are WIS casters that use several elements, right now several good epic feats such as Hellball, and good ED SLA's such as the ones from Draconic do not offer a WIS choice.It's time to make it so all ED based SLA's and epic feats use WIS/CHA/INT for their DC's.This would also help other casting classes that would want to use things like Tsunami, for instance, not just druids.

[tanuki013]

Kensei Focus: Druidic Weapons?(Fighter enhancements)?can apply to this New Animalform?

[AbyssalMage]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.

SEASONS HERALD

TIER 3

[INDENT]Autumn Leaves: Toggle ability: Leaves always seem to blow around the druid. Grants feather fall, +2 dodge and 5% proc chance on a gust of wind knock down anyone hitting you in melee. Costs: 15 SP Lasts until death or toggled off AP COST: 1


Am I correct in thinking that, "5% proc chance on a gust of wing knock down anyone hitting you in melee" will remove your AoE spells? If this is the case, can you please leave the "flavor text" but replace it with the actual ability that the Bard - Swashbuckler enhancement does (i.e. no save knock them prone/down)? Losing mine (or my teammates) AoE spells will be some major griefing that could lead to death/wipe.

[Cantor]

Really like the looks of the trees and changes to seasons.

Melee will 100% depend on what change is done with natural fighting, it's garbage. Take away twf and animal has nothing, the new natural fighting has a lot to make up.

[Avocado]

ll.



[*=1]Primal Avatar will be given some kind of damage boost to maintain its hard-hitting style with this change. It will also get Cleave animations to fix a bug with Cleave attacks caused by lack of animations.

[/INDENT]

Question on this as well. What does this mean? Elaborate please, it has potential to eliminate an entire unique play style from the game. Tree builds work for a very specific reason and this sounds a lot like that wont be the case anymore. Dont doom primal avatar to uselessness.

[bucket4]

Nice! any chance you can get the wolf collars and defender collars to work? I have played Druid 3 lives and artificer 3 lives and the collars have NEVER worked...

Thank You.

[thanytos]

As for pets, include Rangers. it makes little sense to alter just 2 classes when there are more classes with same lame pets.

I've been saying for a while now, also...why has vulkoors avatar never been brought into line with other types of pets...seems like such a cool idea is kind of wasted by being limited to only being useful at lvl 10. Why can't it progress in power/lvl with the cleric/fvs who summoned it like a wizards skelly, etc...

[PsychoBlonde]

I just want to reiterate these two very important points, the spell on any druid fails 100% of the time against any Spell Resistance, and it's a damage only spell

Without this change, the lowered cooldown only amounts to being able to waste SP faster.

And, to add insult to injury, the damage is already highly dependent upon what alignment the target mob is. Some mobs are just flat out immune.

[PsychoBlonde]

Elemental Forms - Fire: In this form you have Anger of the Noonday Sun wich is honestly useless, and a very good damaging spell in the form of Body of the Sun.On top of that you also have good Fire spells alredy in the druid spellbook, Firewall,Flame Strike.
Proposal: Change Anger of the Noonday Sun into a usefull buff that helps maximize damage, a spell version of Radiant Glory from Lantern Ring is a good idea.

I like the idea of just adding a spell damage proc based on which form you're in. (Let's face it, even the best druid spells are mediocre damage.) Along the lines of Lantern ring. So if you're a Water elemental, you get a cold proc, if you're a fire elemental, you get a fire proc.

[PsychoBlonde]

Big suggestion:

Add an ability to Nature's Warrior that gives you a big boost to Animal Form spell DC's. Since there aren't really any good alt stat options for the animal form, boosting your DC's enough to make them useful AND have decent attack/damage stats is going to be problematic. So a boost to animal form spell DC's is in order.

Or, alternatively, change animal form spells to not have standard Spell DC's but to use STR/DEX/CON as their DC base. (perhaps Str for the wolf ones and Con for the bear ones).

[Avocado]

Big suggestion:

Add an ability to Nature's Warrior that gives you a big boost to Animal Form spell DC's. Since there aren't really any good alt stat options for the animal form, boosting your DC's enough to make them useful AND have decent attack/damage stats is going to be problematic. So a boost to animal form spell DC's is in order.

Or, alternatively, change animal form spells to not have standard Spell DC's but to use STR/DEX/CON as their DC base. (perhaps Str for the wolf ones and Con for the bear ones).

Or just make it so tactics bonuses apply. Win for all. Affected by past lives, reaper, gear racial trees, etc.

[AbyssalMage]

From my initial reaction, looks like you have a good start.

Pure Druid Animal Form still looks too weak.

Wolf Form:

Needs boost to SA dice/damage. For being a hybrid Rogue/Monk/Ranger, they didn't get much additional love. "Bleed" type affects are worthless against undead. No additional explaining needed.
Evasion needs to be addressed (already pointed out in previous post). I love the fact that you gave them this ability. Now they need to have a "natural" way to get their reflex saves to respectable LE number so they can actually make those saves.
Damage is still lacking (which is why there are so many exploited melee Druids).
I didn't notice so if it was there in the "wall of text" I am sorry for including. Did you add additional Fortification Bypass? It doesn't need to stack with Ranger or any other class, but if those classes are absent, it would be nice to also have.


Bear Form:

The tree looks better than before but what is the "point" of the tree. Originally it was to be the "Tanky" form (original development) but it seems you have moved away from that (which I applaud). So if it is supposed to be a hybrid Barbarian (i.e. added Rage/"True" Rage) can we please add more to that concept.
As pointed out, the DC's are low at level 30 for all content levels (actually you may need to look at DC's in ALL animal forms, they are most likely all too low).
Thanks for giving them access to Heavy Armor, unfortunately unless you address Wolf Evasion, this will be the defacto only option.
Along the hybrid Barbarian theme, please add a CC option. Call it "Bully of Nature" or whatever. Basically a "trip attack" similar to the Bard's Knockdown enhancement usable only in Bear Form.


Overall, I really do like the first pass but you need to address Damage (in form) because currently I see 8 Druid being the max anyone will take after the "glow" wears off. 8 Druid/8 Fighter/4 Monk (or Rogue) will be better. That's if anyone wants to bother with Animal Form in the first place.

[PsychoBlonde]

Really like the looks of the trees and changes to seasons.

Melee will 100% depend on what change is done with natural fighting, it's garbage. Take away twf and animal has nothing, the new natural fighting has a lot to make up.

Well . . . I did a 100% doublestrike build on a druid a while back that was working quite well. Attack speed can stand to be rather lower than a true "exploiter" wolf and still work just fine.

It's really impossible to know where it stands until it goes up on Lamannia and we can actually SEE what the tweaks to attack speed and animations and so forth MEAN.

[PsychoBlonde]

Thanks for giving them access to Heavy Armor, unfortunately unless you address Wolf Evasion, this will be the defacto only option.
Along the hybrid Barbarian theme, please add a CC option. Call it "Bully of Nature" or whatever. Basically a "trip attack" similar to the Bard's Knockdown enhancement usable only in Bear Form.
.

Uh, Tier 5 wolf . . . Evasion. So it's addressed.
CC option on bear . . . stun. DC 10+Druid+Wis+stunning. So it's basically like Stunning Fist.

And the Nature's Defender is hecka tanky, they basically get the defensive stance from the Defender tree but can ALSO rage at the same time. MASSIVE Con boost. That's quite tanky.

[PsychoBlonde]

Or just make it so tactics bonuses apply. Win for all. Affected by past lives, reaper, gear racial trees, etc.

This is also a very functional option.

[Mindos]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment...



We are reducing the Basic Wolf Form attack speed bonus to 15%. Winter wolf remains about the same speed at 30%. We are also fixing some flaky behavior in the attack chain.


5. Bear & Dire Bear form's AC bonus is now typed Exceptional.



Improved Mage Armor will also be typed Exceptional.


6. Water and Fire Elemental form will now grant 65% Absorption to their element, instead of Damage Reduction, and 15% Vulnerability to their opposite element.



[*=1]The bonus will not stack with Fire Shields or Energy Sheath.


1. What are your design goals here? Are you improving or nerfing? IMHO, it looks like you are removing avenues of choice from players, and offering them ??? in exchange. For example:

A. Wolf attack speed. YES its exploity, and yes (it can be) crazy fast. But why wrap this fix in shiny christmas update paper? I know it HAS to be done, but whats the draw for players here? Yes the nerf will move them away, but what makes them decide to play this class then???

B. Is there an AC exploit you don't like? Why can't these stack? Would it REALLY be too high?

C. Elemental form ABSORPTION!!! YES, very very good! This is a great change... but then you say "bonus will not stack with... or Energy Sheath" I can see Fireshield not stacking, but Energy Sheath? EPIC DESTINIES SHOULD STACK WITH EVERYTHING AND EACH OTHER. Reduce the Elemental Form absoption to 55% if you need to, but it should always stack with energy sheathe.

Good luck fixing/updating this class. Its been broken for so long, and used for so long that people have an expectation of damage and speed stuck in their heads. You are (lets be honest here) basically starting OVER with this update. So ask yourself, why would anyone play this class? Why go pure? What makes it unique? What are the good splash points/levels?

It's like making a brand new class, but people are gonna hold all this time that druid has been broken against your changes. IE, they are gonna say: "hey, this was broke for so long and so wrong, and all they did was..." or they say: "insert bug is STILL broken...they fixed one thing but another..." ETC

Like I said, good luck!

[PsychoBlonde]

There hasn't been a single set of druid-friendly heavy armor since Update 20. Plz add at least one druid-friendly heavy armor in next update.

[Quazi-moto]

Combine bear and wolf forms into 1 tree, and adjust the tree to be for all druid forms. The druid form itself should have the unique skills.

3rd tree should be something that fits druids place, divinity. Better summon and animal controls, heals, manipulation of environment (entangle, spike growth, creeping death as SLA's) would make a much more diverse and challenging tree.

Also I'd like to see more druid forms. Cats, rust monsters, Gelatinous cubes, basilisks, treants, so much great potential.

[Avocado]

There hasn't been a single set of druid-friendly heavy armor since Update 20. Plz add at least one druid-friendly heavy armor in next update.

Hadnt thought about this but so true. Basically shadow dragon armor is all.

[apocaladle]

Pets not hurting you when they die is nice, any chance they can be a no facter when it comes to scaling?

As is they make dungeons harder than the help they provide.

Bit weird seeing as it is a core class feature.

[ToshiK]

hmm..I need the lesser heart for rebuild. https://www.ddo.com/forums/images/smilies/biggrin.png

[edrein]

Combine bear and wolf forms into 1 tree, and adjust the tree to be for all druid forms. The druid form itself should have the unique skills.

3rd tree should be something that fits druids place, divinity. Better summon and animal controls, heals, manipulation of environment (entangle, spike growth, creeping death as SLA's) would make a much more diverse and challenging tree.

Also I'd like to see more druid forms. Cats, rust monsters, Gelatinous cubes, basilisks, treants, so much great potential.

While I agree with the idea that animal forms should share a singular tree, and that the third tree should be some sort of summoner/support tree, and a tighter DPS focus should be placed in Season's I doubt that'll happen. From my experience in the PC I can inform you that once a tree gets to the point of being shared either publicly or within the PC, the devs will not majorly deviate against that idea.

[Hipparan]

One thing I'd like to see is extra SP granted to Druids in the Season's Herald tree. Wizards have access to getting extra SP as do Clerics, Bards, Artificers, and even Rangers, so why not Druids?

*cough*(Also Creeping Doom would make a wonderful SLA)*cough*

[J-mann]

.....

1. Stat Switching: Favor Soul or any other stat swap ability will work normally.

2. Natural Fighting: As above, we'll be reviewing this line later in the pass

3. Reflex Saves: We'll see if they need the help.

4. Crit Range: Classically we like to leave the full crit package in pure melee classes only but we'll see how it goes.

5. Niac's Biting Cold: Could use some clarification here, what bug?

Torc you need to modify the dcs of the form spells to include tactics dcs at bare minimum. What also needs to happen is some stat consolidation. Right now a druid animal for build would need: str for to hit and damage, Dex for reflex saves and ac, Con for hit points, int for Know the Angels, Wis for their dcs. Thats insane. At bare minimum they need their own version of divine might using wisdom like FVS has to bring them to 4 stats instead of 5 needed. Ideally the correct solution would be to get them wis to hit and damage as well to take them down to only needing 3 stats to bring them more on par with ranged and caster statting needs. In fact this is an issue all over for melee builds, and not just for druid melees.

[GramercyRiff]

I'm going to hold judgment until we get a more concrete version of what will be updated, as well being able to test some stuff.

As of right now, after more than a first glance, I don't like most of what's been done. Nothing jumps out and says play me I'm fun.

[Torc]

Am I correct in thinking that, "5% proc chance on a gust of wing knock down anyone hitting you in melee" will remove your AoE spells? If this is the case, can you please leave the "flavor text" but replace it with the actual ability that the Bard - Swashbuckler enhancement does (i.e. no save knock them prone/down)? Losing mine (or my teammates) AoE spells will be some major griefing that could lead to death/wipe.

No the gust of wind is single target effect in this case and will not effect spell effects in play. The term gust of wind is perhaps unfortunate. We'll look at re-writing the description to something that doesn't use that term.

-T

[Steelstar]

There hasn't been a single set of druid-friendly heavy armor since Update 20. Plz add at least one druid-friendly heavy armor in next update.


Hadnt thought about this but so true. Basically shadow dragon armor is all.

There'll definitely be more Druid-friendly heavy armor options in the future, but in the meantime I'll point you at the one from Update 35: Scales of Avarice, which drop in the quest Black and Blue.

[Lensa]

Aaaah!!!!! Good to know. We'll get this fixed.

-T

The bug with biting cold also happens every time a stack of chill of winter is applied (The biting cold stacks disappear). Interestingly enough, they also seem to remember their stack count when you reapply it (Not sure why or if this persists past the point where biting cold would have timed out).

[Torc]

Question on this as well. What does this mean? Elaborate please, it has potential to eliminate an entire unique play style from the game. Tree builds work for a very specific reason and this sounds a lot like that wont be the case anymore. Dont doom primal avatar to uselessness.

Primal Avatar's current damage output will be considered when it's adjusted as will how it compares to other builds. We know the attack rate will slow down when we make the tree animate properly but we can compensate for that with bigger damage numbers. We want the build to be competitive and keep it's thematic appeal, a big tree squishing it's enemies under foot.

But for now we have yet to determine our exact plan. We're running the numbers on a variety of builds, some for considerations outside of this pass. Once we figure out an approach we'll post it.

-T

[CPDK9]

Consider restricting the druid to choosing one form wolf or bear (third and fourth form at later time) with two size increases as you level up - standard (start), dire (level 6?), and giant (level 12?). Each size increase certain abilities and of course size of your form. Pet to be same as chosen form - come on bear form you should have a cute cub running around with you. Form tree is exclusive to that form.

I like the idea of eliminating all the fighting style feats and using strictly Natural Fighting. In doing this each animal form in its tree should replicate in some ways a certain fighting style. Wolf - two weapon style and double strikes, Bear - two hander style and glancing blows, third and fourth forms to replicate sword & board with defensive benefits and single weapon with attack speed. By doing this each animal form will have certain weapons that will work best with their forms and other classes that synergize. Wolf - Ranger, Bear - Barbarian, Third - Fighter, Fourth - Bard.

[Silverleafeon]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/493731-Comprehensive-list-of-Druid-Bugs-(updating)

Some of these you have already addressed.
Will start working on a feedback post.

[Saekee]

I am seeing a possible stealth wolf build but not going deep in druid. I would add faster sneaking to the tree, maybe add it with that stealth crit feature and make sure it stacks with other faster sneaking enhancements (which stack from different trees, Sev said WAI). I assume natural fighting feats can be taken as high as possible even if the wolf is only level 3 in case of multis.

If a rogue splash gets dex to hit & damage, will that work in animal form? if not, but the weapon has alternate stat hit & damage, will that take precedence? (like Tiefling blade or something)

[PsychoBlonde]

One thing I'd like to see is extra SP granted to Druids in the Season's Herald tree. Wizards have access to getting extra SP as do Clerics, Bards, Artificers, and even Rangers, so why not Druids?

*cough*(Also Creeping Doom would make a wonderful SLA)*cough*

Creeping Doom needs to be assigned to an *actual spellpower type* instead of being the weird Poison Damage which . . . doesn't seem to fall under anything?

[QuantumFX]

There hasn't been a single set of druid-friendly heavy armor since Update 20. Plz add at least one druid-friendly heavy armor in next update.

Um... wat?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Scales_of_Avarice

[Torc]

Torc you need to modify the dcs of the form spells to include tactics dcs at bare minimum. What also needs to happen is some stat consolidation. Right now a druid animal for build would need: str for to hit and damage, Dex for reflex saves and ac, Con for hit points, int for Know the Angels, Wis for their dcs. Thats insane. At bare minimum they need their own version of divine might using wisdom like FVS has to bring them to 4 stats instead of 5 needed. Ideally the correct solution would be to get them wis to hit and damage as well to take them down to only needing 3 stats to bring them more on par with ranged and caster statting needs. In fact this is an issue all over for melee builds, and not just for druid melees.

We'll look at the tactics DCs on the melee attack style abilities. They really do need either that or a spell school associated with them to boost their DCs and the first is probably the better fit.

Wisdom to hit/damage was an option we considered, and haven't ruled out entirely. We're waiting to see how the pass pans out a little more first. Druids hybrid ability is to encouraged to a degree, but at the same time we don't want to create a top tier dpser that has full spell pool for nothing but earth quake and healing on the side because that will then eclipse many melee builds.

-T

[Avocado]

Um... wat?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Scales_of_Avarice

overlooked it myself. But yeah only 1 armor set. Not much in the ways of variety of options to choose from.

[Avocado]

Creeping Doom needs to be assigned to an *actual spellpower type* instead of being the weird Poison Damage which . . . doesn't seem to fall under anything?

Should just be made untyped.

[Drag-]

Primal Avatar's current damage output will be considered when it's adjusted as will how it compares to other builds. We know the attack rate will slow down when we make the tree animate properly but we can compensate for that with bigger damage numbers. We want the build to be competitive and keep it's thematic appeal, a big tree squishing it's enemies under foot.

But for now we have yet to determine our exact plan. We're running the numbers on a variety of builds, some for considerations outside of this pass. Once we figure out an approach we'll post it.

-T

Again what DPS are you comparing too? Full blown melee power monks? Probably not. Full DPS Fighters? Maybe atleast it would still be good dps. Crossbow Arty DPS? Sword and Board Pally DPS? Or are you just puling numbers out of your behinds?
Please explain what you expect "competitive" DPS is?

[Drag-]

We'll look at the tactics DCs on the melee attack style abilities. They really do need either that or a spell school associated with them to boost their DCs and the first is probably the better fit.

Wisdom to hit/damage was an option we considered, and haven't ruled out entirely. We're waiting to see how the pass pans out a little more first. Druids hybrid ability is to encouraged to a degree, but at the same time we don't want to create a top tier dpser that has full spell pool for nothing but earth quake and healing on the side because that will then eclipse many melee builds.

-T

I will tell you right now that running a top tier DPSer that still has top tier DCs for earthquake at endgame high level reapers is not possible.

[Torc]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/493731-Comprehensive-list-of-Druid-Bugs-(updating)

Some of these you have already addressed.
Will start working on a feedback post.

Ah this thread was long overdue for some love.

At first glance I see many bugs that should be quite fixable inside of the pass, and we'll look at some of the other stuff. I'm not sure we'll get to every lack luster spell listed, but it's good feedback. Thanks!

-T

[ThomasHunter]

I've been dreaming of Wisdom for damage on my druid for years! I'm thinking that wouldn't make him too powerful, then again, none of my toons are uber. :cool:

I can still dream though!!!! (kind of like you did for FvS!!!)

[draven1]

Spirit Refreshed: When shape shifting forms below 33% health you heal to full and cure all fatigue. This benefit can only occur once every 3 minutes. AP COST: 2 (new – applies to all forms now)

Could this work on reaper?
Full heal for every 3 min
If so, isn't it over-powered when others have significant self-healing penalty?

[SpardaX]

I don't know how possible this would be, but in regards to armor that druids can wear (not just at cap, and not just at specific levels), would it be possible to add an option in Giant Hold, in addition to the current dragonscale armors we can make, to use the Dragon Scales (and Epic Dragon Scales) to create a blank Dragonscale armor (of Cloth / Light / Medium / Heavy / Docent) at either ML 1 to be crafted on, or perhaps at the main AMLs for armors. (1, 4, 10, 16, and 22 requiring the epic scales), that we can Disjunct and craft on to.

These would go with the other armor types such as Skirmish / Feycraft / Spiritmail / Celestial, or the other names used for the other armors. Call them some dragon words perhaps :D But yea, it might work to cut out making a bunch of new druid usable armors, and instead allow us to make some blanks, and make our own.

It would mean that players would need to get to at least Giant Hold level and get some materials together before they would be able to get to work on them. But they would not be Bound to Character, so we would be able to make them for alts, or it might even re-invigorate Dragonscales as currency. especially if you lower the level required to get to GH, or some other strategy I haven't thought of.

[Avocado]

Another idea came up from a friend for wisdom to damage. At druid level 11+ or 13+ you have the option to give up an elemental form or animal form feat for wisdom to damage. This feat for wis to damage could add half your wisdom to damage in elemental form and full wisdom to damage in animal form (or full/half for both) with any weapon you are proficient with. Adding proficiencies from other enhancement that give proficiency with certain weapons makes wis to damage work with those weapons.

[AnubisPrime]

I dont suppose there will be any animation work done on the transition mask between character model to wolf/bear model done on this pass.... (cant play a druid because all the nice green sparkly transition effects that were put on to mask the model replacement give me a headache after an hour or so of watching them every time i have to use something or open a door, or climb a ladder, or scratch my back end.... granted I'm the only one I've heard make this complaint so I cant figure any work is being done on it, just asking for clarification while we're here. If not, while the post looks interesting I think I'll hold any comments on something that I'll never run because its painful to watch it.

https://youtu.be/WPHIfCstm5A?t=46

That's how it should be done!

[Torc]

[/LIST]

1. What are your design goals here? Are you improving or nerfing? IMHO, it looks like you are removing avenues of choice from players, and offering them ??? in exchange. For example:

A. Wolf attack speed. YES its exploity, and yes (it can be) crazy fast. But why wrap this fix in shiny christmas update paper? I know it HAS to be done, but whats the draw for players here? Yes the nerf will move them away, but what makes them decide to play this class then???

B. Is there an AC exploit you don't like? Why can't these stack? Would it REALLY be too high?

C. Elemental form ABSORPTION!!! YES, very very good! This is a great change... but then you say "bonus will not stack with... or Energy Sheath" I can see Fireshield not stacking, but Energy Sheath? EPIC DESTINIES SHOULD STACK WITH EVERYTHING AND EACH OTHER. Reduce the Elemental Form absoption to 55% if you need to, but it should always stack with energy sheathe.

Good luck fixing/updating this class. Its been broken for so long, and used for so long that people have an expectation of damage and speed stuck in their heads. You are (lets be honest here) basically starting OVER with this update. So ask yourself, why would anyone play this class? Why go pure? What makes it unique? What are the good splash points/levels?

It's like making a brand new class, but people are gonna hold all this time that druid has been broken against your changes. IE, they are gonna say: "hey, this was broke for so long and so wrong, and all they did was..." or they say: "insert bug is STILL broken...they fixed one thing but another..." ETC

Like I said, good luck!

Basic wolf form nerf, maybe...or net buff? mini nerf? mini buff? Like druids, we seek neutrality ;) So a bunch of builds splash 2 druid to get that 30% attack speed currently, and perhaps they are taking advantage of combat styles which were never supposed to operate with wolf form (ahem), or maybe they are not, but they all have two problems. Their damage die and their weapons proc effects don't scale with loot upgrades. These problems were worth the trade certainly for a long time, but the base damage of legendary weapons and proc effects has expanded over the years, and it's going to keep expanding. Fix this, and throwing in new trees and well, if we didn't lower their attack speed they'd be in for an insane buff.

30% attack speed that stacks with all other sources of haste for 2 class levels strikes me as a godly bargain. 15% seems as a more reasonable bargain, but these numbers are just educated guesses until they are tested. Base wolf form might become 20% or it might drop 10%, it all depends on our dps tests once the pass is testable. We're not really looking to lower the DPS of wolf splash builds so much, but we're not trying to super boost them either. Breaking up the 2 wolf forms from each other gives us better control to account for the weapon boost everyone will be getting at different rates of druid commitment.

2) Bear AC and Mage Armor: This didn't start as so much about AC inflation as we want tank players who really don't like the idea of looking like a bear to have options that are for them and not also for the bear. It's about tank racing more than overall power creep, though it's nice to avoid that to really.

3) Absorption: Hrmmm. We kinda like to keep things simple on absorption because how the math works when these effects stack isn't intuitive. We'll noodle on this some more.

4) Fresh Start: I think it's a good way to think about it. Druids have been stuck a while being helped and hampered by a weird mash up of bugs. We are very sensitive that players do not like to be slowed down, but they do also like bigger numbers, and when the monster falls over that's what really counts in the end, so hopefully all of these adjustments will be positive or at least forgivable in the view of the pass as a whole.

[edrein]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.

GENERAL CHANGES

1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.



After looking at this; I was wondering if this will take all bonuses into account before the player shapeshifts? By this I mean the following effects:
A Dance of Flowers
Improved Power Attack
Weapon Attachment
Deadly Blades
Dancing with Flames
Combat Brute
etc...


Additionally how will these changes interact with things such as weapon-based passives as opposed to active abilities which you stated won't work. Will for instance Bleeding Cuts or Double Daggers from Vistani apply?
What about weapon stances such as Sting of the Ninja?
Would the Deadly Striker competence bonus from Ninja Spy also acknowledge that animal forms are infact not handwraps/unarmed per the old coding and apply the crit bonus to a ninja druid?
How about Blood of Vol's ability The Blood is the Life, will the vampirism apply as you are technically holding a dagger in your mainhand?
Will Silvanus' Blessing of Silvanus apply the threat range as you have maul equipped?
What about Flame Blade or Celestia; will these apply their unique damage type effects, will you deal fire/light damage instead of normal damage types?
How about Occult Slayer, with the barbarian bonuses in the guardian tree will the game identify my weapon for the purpose of that tree's benefits?

Will we finally be able to use Sundering Swing, Momentum Swing, and Lay Waste? Will Wolves be allowed to use Volcano's Edge? Bears be allowed to use Lightning Mace or Anvil of Thunder? Is there any form of backend changes here to make use of these? Will a bear have access to Pulverize, or if you equip an axe in your mainhand will you get the benefits of Headsman's Chop?

A lot of these things can affect potential use and DPS effects for wildshaped druids. I know that personally I'd be saddened if half the things listed by myself didn't work, certainly on the base weapon damage end. Although no functional cross over between vistani and druids would be the final nail in the coffin based on what I understand of the rework to identify you've got a weapon in your hand before the shapeshift.

[lifestaker]

Just for the tanking build you fall far too short for druid tanking.

Bear form attack speed penalty currently is about 30% based off BAB. Updated to 15% pen that can be reduced to 5% pen with capstone. Fighters/paladins have no pen, and can gain up to a 20% increase to attack speed with cores in vanguard. This still leaves the bear 25% slower then current tanks, with no additional hate over their counterparts. This is a lot better then the current 50% slower attack speed, but still hurts the builds viability.
Current bear AC is able to reach about 430 if built around it, while non bear tanks should be able to reach 450. IMA not stacking lowers max bear AC to about 380, and has no effect on non bear builds.
Defensive stance of fighter or paladin is +10 PRR/MRR +50% bonus hate but can not be used while rages. Natural is +8 PRR/MRR, can be used while raged. The 2 points is not much, but 50% hate should be added.
Overall hate generation still renders the bear into a intim tanking only build.
Fighter/paladin can choose STR as a major stance improvement. Natural tanking can grant +9 MRR (3 points less then the lower tier improvement.

There are many other shortcoming with the "bear" tree. The improvements do not make the bear into a viable tank, and are only slightly helpful to wolf builds. The spells added via cores only help bear builds, and only first 3 cores are worth anything to a wolf, this hinders the versatility of builds having a viable DPS mode.

Going forward we are looking at lower max AC, lower PRR, lower attack damage, and poor synergy with multi-class building. Gains include minor HP gain, MRR gains, and increased spell damage. Add in removal of shield feats working in animal form you drop even more defenses making bears even more dead then they currently are.

Sorry but for a caster to focus on pulling its magical energies from the world around it to enhance a magical form around itself for protection this falls very far from target. Those who desire to build a druid, holding true to the strict and gear depriving oath should not also fall far behind other tanking classes.

---------------

Additional failures IMO:

Animal casting times being a capstone for 1.5 hurts druid animals. Multiclass animal forms currently can choose that cool down at level 12 with just 5 levels of druid. Now they need to be pure to achieve it.
Baiting Bite pulls from spot, but snapping jaws enhancement pulls from bluff checks.
Not sure if oversight or what, but requirements seem amiss in NW tree. Mainly seems like four good legs no longer requires dodge.
Jaws of the Great White Wolf references 'jaws of ice' one could assume it references jaws of winter the level 7 druid spell. A spell that one would not even have at level 12 when the enhancement can be taken.
Armor of winter HP lines up well with ES, but I fail to understand why it is only good for 60 seconds. I see no reason to not match the duration, timer, and costs with shining though. 60 seconds seems a bit low, 10 minutes seems high, how about somewhere in the middle for both of them (and any future temp HP enhancements along these lines)
See no way to change between seasons, but wording says that form change will force season to become respective of elemental form. Does not explain if season stays locked while in that elemental form.
was wand and scroll master so OP to remove it entirely from the enhancements?


There are many other changes I would have liked to see, and some have already been touched on. Just feel this is falling far short of my expectations, seem to hinder the class, and almost comes across as a fix to animals being overpowered (by use of things not working correctly in form). A pure built bear or wolf is looking at lower numbers (not taking into account of the weapon change) at first glance. I can't say all too much about elemental builds, but bear is only getting hurt by the additional 'bear' tree, and wolf seems about the same with lower MWP, attack speed (wolf), and versatility in builds.

[Torc]

Spirit Refreshed: When shape shifting forms below 33% health you heal to full and cure all fatigue. This benefit can only occur once every 3 minutes. AP COST: 2 (new – applies to all forms now)

Could this work on reaper?
Full heal for every 3 min
If so, isn't it over-powered when others have significant self-healing penalty?

The devil is in the details here and the description should probably be more precise. Say the effect healed for your "current max hp value", but then reaper scaling took effect. So, if your on 10 skulls, that's only 4% of your max health. This ability will probably still be very nice in reaper 1 - 5. Good healing amp might keep it effective in 6 to 7.

-T

[redmage761]

over all I love the new reworks for the druid class. I just have one thing that would make it better give druid players the option of picking though a list of animal companions other then just a wolf at all times

[Hollowgolem]

its nice to see druid updated however. i dont know if i can aggre with the two handed weapons working normaly in shapeshifted form, if no other combat bonuses will work then two handed will be forced upon anyone who intends to build a shapeshift melee druid due to the best benefits.
It looks like the alternate, if you have a wooden or stone shield, is sword-and-board. So you trade the damage from a quarterstaff for the survivability of shield Sheltering. I'd say it's a fair trade.


btw, did i miss cleric and fvs pass or its on hold?


Happened months ago. Clerics got Domains, FvS got a pat on the head.

[Nandos]

I like the updates to the existing Druid trees, but honestly I'm disappointed that the new tree is so similar to the existing tree. I was hoping the third tree would include stuff not in either tree like bonuses to using Druid weapons and heals.

Could you please slip in a box somewhere that improves Druid healing, especially the Vigor spells?

Thanks

[Gargoyle69]

A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.
<snip>

Hi Torc & Steelstar.

First off, THANK YOU SO MUCH for doing this !

Second, some questions from me:

1) Since handwraps were recoded as actual weapons, and druid animal forms will be recoded to work with actual weapons, will unarmed monk / animal form druids still be viable ? Is there "much crunch under the covers" to work out how to make this work, or will it be pretty straight forward now that wraps are actual weapons ?

2) Do you have a comment on the vision of druids basing their build concept on using the Flame Blade spell ? I love the flavour of this spell so much, and the ability to have wis to hit and dmg is incredible for build options, but the fact that this doesn't really scale, and with the new vision of using actual weapons, I'm wondering where this fits ?

3) Spring's Resurgence, the cd reduction is nice but the real issue with this ability isn't the cd it's the bug. When this ability activates (regardless of who it is cast on), only the druid and his wolf receive the healing, the healing doesn't land on anyone else. If this could be fixed, this would be a wonderful ability !

4) Separating the "wolf and bear tree" into a "wolf" tree and a "bear" tree is an interesting idea, and I get that it lets you make specific things for dps and tank roles to a much greater extent, but many (incl myself) were hoping that when the 3rd druid tree came along it would be a healer / support tree, as Season's Herald offers mostly caster dps and not much for the healing / support playstyle (although, see 3, if Spring's Resurgence is fixed that will certainly help!). Can you please share your design vision here ? Do you feel that Regenerate + Earthquake already give druids enough in that role and that they would outshine other support classes if the role if given more breadth / options ?

5) Love the changes for fire / water elemental but am concerned they might fall a bit into no-man's land in terms of role, not enough dps to be a dps, not able to tank, not offering much to help support / healer .... perhaps you could share your intentions for these forms ?

Thanks again, loving what I'm seeing so far !

[J-mann]

Ah this thread was long overdue for some love.

At first glance I see many bugs that should be quite fixable inside of the pass, and we'll look at some of the other stuff. I'm not sure we'll get to every lack luster spell listed, but it's good feedback. Thanks!

-T

While you are looking at bugs, heres 2 that are bothering me now, Favored soul hp falling off if you die until you rezone, and loosing blitz in RL portals......

[J-mann]

We'll look at the tactics DCs on the melee attack style abilities. They really do need either that or a spell school associated with them to boost their DCs and the first is probably the better fit.

Wisdom to hit/damage was an option we considered, and haven't ruled out entirely. We're waiting to see how the pass pans out a little more first. Druids hybrid ability is to encouraged to a degree, but at the same time we don't want to create a top tier dpser that has full spell pool for nothing but earth quake and healing on the side because that will then eclipse many melee builds.

-T

Tactics in general need an overhaul and have for a long, long time, its part of why melee is less desirable in the current meta. As for these spells they need to be able to add tactics dcs to them or else they will never have attainable dcs by a melee druid.

You seriously need to do wis to hit/damage and or add a wis based divine might like ability as the statting requirements of your proposed druids is flat out insane (you need FIVE of the six stats to effectively build it). Further, a "top tier" dpser will NEVER be able to cast spells like a caster, they are mutually exclusive as you cannot gear for casting and melee at the same time. Heck, melee cannot even fit all the things they want/need NOW as they have by far the most effects they need to slot (on top of having more stat needs than casters ie casters are main stat and con, most melee need at least 3 stats and some 4+, this is why you need to consolidate it on druids or they will not make it past meh dps). Also how are you testing your dps? does the mob get to swing back? because kobold tests are horribad indicators of your effective dps in a dungeon because dead dps does NO dps.

Also if you are worried about healing and melee, how come casters/ranged can get that and still be top tier in dungeons but for some reason the devs seem to think thats bad on melees? Seriously, why is it ok on a ranged/caster toon with great cc to be able to heal and do great things in a quest but not ok for a melee?

Edit: Further going animal form nerfs your casting cds. I cannot see where and how the devs are worried about an op casting/melee hybrid here. It really isnt possible due to feat, style, and gearing restrictions. For example, a full melee built druid, even with max wis, will be at least a dozen dc behind caster druids with 1.5x the cds. And those caster druids can heal themselves perfectly well too (and so can artis now too.....). So again, I do not see the point in gimping melees if you are not going to do the same to ranged toons.

[Silverleafeon]

QUOTE=Torc;6065092]A major revamp on druids is in progress! This our working plan at the moment.

Thanks, looking forward to reading!


GENERAL CHANGES

1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.

This is exactly the right approach.


[*=1]Somewhat hand-wavy Lore Explanation: The weapon is used as the magical source to enchant and create the properties of the claw or tooth of the druid. It's magic....so it works that way....yeah...
[*=1]Design Explanation: We want druid's melee attack progression to scale with loot normally so the druid's melee attack progression is easier to balance going forward.
[*=1]Primal Avatar will be given some kind of damage boost to maintain its hard-hitting style with this change. It will also get Cleave animations to fix a bug with Cleave attacks caused by lack of animations.


Nods.
Be bold and make things right.


2. Existing combat style bugs are being fixed.



[*=1]No combat style specific bonuses will function while in animal forms aside from Natural Fighting, and any bonuses native to the form (no duel wielding, glancing blows or single weapon attack speed).
[*=1]Using a two-handed weapon still grants the 1.5 damage from your modifying stat, and Power Attack feat adjustments in animal form as well, for its additional bonus.
[*=1]Attacks that require a specific weapon to be held in your hand will still not work in animal form (cause you don't have hands!)


This is definately the right approach.
Well done.

You can always adjust and control the trio of Natural Fighting feats.
Would suggest:

Natural Fighting {insert buffs here} : Requirements: Wild Shape any
Improved Natural Fighting {insert buffs here} : Requirements: Natural Fighting, BAB +6
Greater Natural Fighting {insert buffs here} : Requirements: Improved Natural Fighting, BAB +11

This leaves open a possible NoN Druid wildshaping class later on.


3. Wolf form attack animations are being adjusted.



We are reducing the Basic Wolf Form attack speed bonus to 15%. Winter wolf remains about the same speed at 30%. We are also fixing some flaky behavior in the attack chain.


This is very good, making Winter Wolf > Wolf rewards deeper investment in the Druid Levels.


4. The Bear attack animation chain will be improved to make its attack rate match other weapon styles.



This will result in an approximate 15% increase in attack speed.


A welcome and badly needed change


5. Bear & Dire Bear form's AC bonus is now typed Exceptional.



Improved Mage Armor will also be typed Exceptional.


Typing the bonus is way to control it, and allows you to be more generous.


6. Water and Fire Elemental form will now grant 65% Absorption to their element, instead of Damage Reduction, and 15% Vulnerability to their opposite element.



[*=1]The bonus will not stack with Fire Shields or Energy Sheath.


This is very welcome and favorerful.
Druid Spellcasters rely heavily on absorption, as their ref saves are poor.
This makes one interested in adjusting to the dungeon.

I assume one can cast Energy Sheath in a different energy than the current fire/cold form and still benefit from both?

Obviously that is important for raids/dungeons that contain electric dangers?
If so, that is fine not stacking cold shield with fire form OR fire shield with cold form Or fire sheath with fire form Or cold sheath with cold form.



7. Existing Enhancement Trees revamped and new tree "Nature's Protector" added. - Found below in this thread:

Thanks for working on this massive project.


8. Specific Spell Changes:



[*=1]Reincarnate's casting time and cool down will be put on par with Raise Dead.

Thank you, that is very generous.

[*=1]Baiting Bite bluff skill check will use the player's spot score instead of their bluff skill, wisdom bonus applies of course.

Very thematic.

[*=1]Call Lightning Storm and Storm of Vengeance will have their damage progressions and values change to be an X per caster level to better benefit from increasing in caster level and max caster level effects.
[*=1]Call Lightning Storm now does 1d10 every 2 druid levels, max 15.
[*=1]Storm of Vengeance's Acid damage now scales at d8 per 3 druid levels, and its lightning damage 1d10 every 2 druid levels. Max of 25. Duration is 30 seconds. (duration will not scale with level, which didn't work anyway)

Muchly appreciated.
Call Lightning Storm & Storm of VEngeance will be much more usable now.
Since Lightning Storm is techically a self buff, it should be considered for Extend to be applied to it, just a Body of Sun allows extend to be applied to thus. This would make a more efficent spell.

[*=1]Rising Fury's cooldown will be reduced to 30 seconds and the extend meta magic will work on it. (new)

Nice.

[*=1]Produce Flame Projectile speed is being increased (new)

Very welcome changed as this spell is often used even at level cap.

[*=1]Creeping cold and Greater creeping cold will now stack with each other when cast by other druids (two can each have their own copy on a target now) (new)

Thanks. Be sure and fix these two spells overwriting Niac's Biting Cold.

You also need to fix the following spells:

Word of Balance needs to have its Spell Penatration check removed.
Reasons why: No other Alignment Spell has a Spell Pen check.
No other direct damage Spell that I am aware of in all of DDO has a Spell Pen check.
Spell Pen checks lore in D&D / DDO are used for spells that incapacite foes or instant kill foes.

Pack aptitude - Only grants +4 to an ability.
{It should be +6.}


Body of Sun needs to have its graphic effects toned down.
The Pale Master's aura had a similar strong color aura and washing machine sound,
but was fixed within months. This has been years ~ shame on DDO Devs for waiting this long.

THIS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A HEALTH HAZZARD AND GIVEN PRIORITY.
{Insert picture of torches and pitchforks here.}

In the meantime, might I recommends a pair of orange computer glasses from players to wear such as:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06X15SX77/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&th=1


Anger of the Noonday Sun has very poor benefits, please upgrade to some sort of scalable effects such as:
[I]Valid Forms: Fire Elemental. You are enveloped in the anger of the noonday sun. The targets of your fire spells suffer a (caster level/3)% fortification penalty, and a -(caster level) penalty to fire resistance.
Or simply use higher numbers when a toon is in epic levels.


Spells that I would like you to consider changing but as not as urgent:

Flame Blade and Elemental Toughness do not scale well into Epics.

Enveloping Swarm does not apply Max to itself nor does it do much damage.
It does not scale well either.

Firestorm's effects could be speeded up, its very slow to land.
If you cast Firestorm then Flame Strike right after, they hit at about the same time.
Considering Flame Strike is also too slow...and could be speeded up too...
{This is a change that would benefit Clerics, Favored Souls, and Druids.}


Spells that thematically do not make sense:

Sleet Storm should be affected by Gust of Wind.

Earthquake should not be affect by Gust of Wind.


More spells listed here:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/493731-Comprehensive-list-of-Druid-Bugs-(updating)


Spells:
Lvl 2: Roar - the discription implies that it casts an imediate intimidate check, it does not.
Lvl2: creeping cold - see greater creeping cold (lvl 6)
Lvl 3: Salt ray - this spell does not grant helpless condition (it should its a stun)
Lvl 3: sleet storm is not cleared by wind spells.
Lvl 4: Enveloping swarm - maxize/empower and spell power do notimprove the spell dmg.
Lvl 5: Harrowing pack - knockdown does not trigger on pets or player.
Lvl 5: Call lighting storm - this does 5d10 dmg/strike when i should be doing (1d5+5 per caster lvl). Can’t Be extended. Does not trigger often enough.
Lvl 5: Pack aptitude - Only grants +4 to an ability.
Lvl 6: fire seeds - quicken causes only 2 seeds to fire.
Lvl 6: Greater creeping cold (and lesser creeping cold): these 2 spells over-right and prvent the wiz/sor spell niaks bitting cold (lvl 5) from applying. Crushing wave (from weapon’s) over-right the damage. Only one druid may cast these spells on a target, a second druid’s spells have no effect. The primal avatar’s winter cold guard overrights/prevents these spells (nead confermation!)
Lvl 7: Creeping doom - this spell does not have loaded dice. It should use 1d5+5 instead of 1d10. This spell is typed as posion damage when it should be pysical or untyped damage. This spell is over-writen by the primal avatar ability insidius spores. 2 druids may not both have creaping doom on a taget.
Lvl 8: howl of terror - this spell should make the target helpless, it does not. Draconic Presence (in draconic incarnate epic destiny) does not give +3 DC to this fear-bassed spell.
Lvl 8: ice flowers - it has a 8 second duration but only damages one time, it should hit 4 times.
Lvl 8: Earthquake is cleared away by wind spells. Earthquake causes other players screans to shake. Some players claim earthquake creates lag effects.

*Mantle of invulnerability prevents these spells when it should not be: sunburst (lvl 8) and its SLA, Sunbeam (lvl 7), Word of balance (lvl 5) and its SLA, and Wall of fire (lvl 5) - wall of fire is also a lvl 4 wizard spell. *note* i tested these 3 years ago, if they were fixed disrecard this.
*All of the vigor and regeneration spells break invisibility (while normal heal does not).
*The lightning strikes of druid spells in an environment of mist or fog effects causes the entire screen to brightly flash white.




9. Cosmetic Changes: (new)



[*=1]These may come AFTER the pass, time permitting. This is stretch goal stuff.
[*=1]Either or some combination of new Wolf & Bear forms Appearances or dyes.
[*=1]Nature’s Veil: A Toggle Feat that suppressed the texture swap used for fire/water elemental forms but keeps the vfxs.




The appearance and dyes for Wolf & Bear sounds like fun.

If one want to overwrite the fire/elemental form, all one has to do is cast a stoneskin scroll.
After the effect wears off, one is in normal armor/robes until one changes form.
But its a nice thought to have the toggle.



10. Removing pets damaging the druid/artificers on death (new)



[*=1]We’re going to be cutting the death penalty for pets and are discussing give a few more pet rez charges at certain levels. The arty enhancement that touches this will be reworked to something else.


My Druid seems to have about 20% of Full Spell Points removed every time the wolf pet dies.
That gets very expensive and unaffordable.
In other words, if my Druid has 51% of her spell points and the wolf dies, then she now has 31% of her spell points.

Thank you very much for making Pets usable again.

I usually just cast a Resurection Scroll on my wolf, but adding more pet rez charges would be nice.
Suggestion of adding 1 additional Rez charge each time one gains an additional wild shape.
Or add +2 rez charges when one gains Improved Wild Empathy.

Note: Druid pets will be reworked in a separate pass with Artificer pets.

That is completely understandable.
I would much rather have these changes made sooner than waiting for pet changes too.


ENHANCEMENT TREES

NATURE'S WARRIOR

CORES:


1. Nature's Warrior: every point spent in tree gives 1 hp, and every CORE; gives 1 sneak attack die in wolf form, and +1 base melee damage while in all animal forms

Smart assigning each core and making the tree more interesting.

2. Natural Senses: Your attacks penetrate 10% of your enemies fortification, +3 to listen, spot and search

Nice.

3. Nature's Bounty: While in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 2.0. Does not stack with Nature’s Protector cores.

I like your moving this out of Tier 5, and make it multi-step.

4. Nature's Hunter: In wolf or bear form you gain a +1 competency bonus to crit damage multiplier on your weapon. Requires a weapon to be equipped.

Nice to see a Crit bonus in play.

5. Howling Frost: Casting Howl of Terror now grants you "Winter Hunt" for 10 seconds which grants +10 double strike and, 25% bonus to spell crit and 50% to spell crit damage to all cold damage spells. This will only occur once every 30 seconds.

Very flavorful, you are going to make the animal forms much more interesting to play.

6. Avatar of the Hunter: You have mastered the art of wielding divine magic in animal form, and using it to empower your body in physical combat. While in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 1.5. Does not stack with Nature’s Protector cores.

Passive: +2 strength and wisdom and +10 to double strike and physical resistance

Looks good.


TIER 1


Nature's Empathy: 3/3, increases use of animal empathy, 5/10/15 increase to positive spell power. AP COST: 1

Nice

Snapping Jaws: Whenever you bluff or use an ability that triggers a bluff check such as baiting bite your target is debuffed losing -2 AC and you gain a stack of "Snapping jaws" for +2 AC for 15 seconds. Stacks 1/2/3 times. AP COST: 1

I like. Creative and Interesting.

Take Down: Increase trip DCs by 1/2/3, AP COST: 1

Very Welcome.

Bestial Nature: Increase reflex fort saves by 1/2 (no longer a toggle) AP COST: 1

Nice

Athletic Hunter: Bonus to move silent,hide, jump and swim, tier 3 grants one charge of wild empathy 1/2/3 AP COST: 1

Nice


TIER 2


Flight: Gain an uncapped dodge bonus of 20% for 10/20/30 seconds, costs 1 wild empathy to activate, 30 second cooldown. AP COST: 1

Improved Dodge: +1/2/3 Dodge. AP COST: 1

Nice Dual changes to Dodge, well done.

Ghost Wolf: Requires wolf form. Activate, gain 50% incorpreal defense for 30 seconds, cooldown 5 minutes. Passive: Gain ghost touch while in wolf form to your melee attacks AP COST: 2

Very Cool effect.

Prey on the Weak: 8/15% Damage Bonus against helpless targets AP COST: 1

Definitely thematic, and I like your changes to tier two.
Bloodmoon will not be missed by me.

Action Boost: Double Strike: Activate to gain a +[10/20/30]% action boost bonus to Doublestrike for 20 seconds. AP COST: 1

Nice


TIER 3


Fight: increase melee damage and AC, 1, 2, 3 in wolf or bear forms AP COST: 1 (requires: flight)

Brother Wolf: While your wolf pet is alive and within 40 meters it gains 5/10/15 hps every 12/9/6 seconds and 10/15/20 mrr & prr and you gain 1/2/3 to hit and damage AP COST: 1

A better version than Blood Moon, thank you.
Would be nice to see some bonus for being in Epic Levels?
Say maybe Triple Healing Effect?

Stalking Prey: Staying in stealth gains you a damage bonus to critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers) every 3 seconds. Effect lasts for 10 seconds and can stack up to 3 times. or a total of +[3/6/9]. AP COST: 1

This I like a lot.
Could have some interesting strategies.

Essence of Nature: If you score a crit hit in melee you are granted 10/20 temp spell points for 8 seconds. Your pet has a 10% chance to proc this on its base attacks. Passive: + 5 Positive SP/10 AP COST: 1

Hmm...could be interesting as a melee multi-class will be lacking as much sp.

Strength or Wisdom AP: 2 (new)

Typical

TIER 4


Fatal Harry: Killing an opponent grants a +3 moral bonus to double strike bonus for 12 seconds. Can stack up to 1/2/3 times. Weaker opponents may not trigger this effect. AP COST:1 (new replaced stand your ground)

Hmm...very interesting.
I am liking your changes to this tree.

Four Legs Good: You become immune to most knock down effects in animal forms AP COST: 2

Yes!

Ferocity: You gain +2/4/6 attk power in bear or wolf form. This bonus is doubled when under the effects of true rage (rage that prevents spell casting) AP COST: 1

I assume you mean melee power?
Looks nice, and I like the rage bonus as we needed more of this sort of thing.

Great White Wolf: +10/20/30 cold spell power, while in winter wolf form you gain 10/20/30% cold absorption. AP COST: 1

Definitely nice to add flavorful absorptions throughout Druid.

Strength or Wisdom AP: 2 (new)

Typical

TIER 5


Alpha Strike: AOE Melee Attack - Requires animal form: You fight for leadership of the pack. Area damage melee attack dealing +2[W]/+3[W]/+5[W]. This attack can doublestrike. On targets above 85% health it reduces their attack, range and spellpower by 25 for 15 seconds. Activation Cost: 12/9/6 sp, Coodown: 18/15/12. AP COST: 1 (requires: fight)

Nice
An attack worthy of tier 5.

Nature’s Swiftness: Wolf forms gain evasion. Armor restrictions apply. AP COST: 2

Definitely Thematic and well deserved in tier five.

Throat Rip: Requires wolf form, Stealth Melee Attack. +6 sneak dice, On Sneak attacks: Against living targets silences target for 15 seconds on Fort save 10 + Druid level + Wisdom negates and inflicts a bleed that causes 6d6 damage every 2 seconds for 12 seconds. Bleed Scales with melee power. Against bosses the silence is replaced with a 25 pt spell power debuff. 15 Second cool down. AP COST: 2

Nice
Another attack worthy of tier 5.
Love the anti-caster effect, many players don't realize how powerful null magic effects are.

Jaws of the Great White Wolf: The spell Jaws of Ice now grants gain temporary hps equal to 10 times your character level. AP COST: 2

Wow.
That will get players to use their spells.


Strength or Wisdom AP: 2

Out of place, as Ability Scores are usually found in tier 3 & 4, likely a copy/paste work over.
However, I don't object.



NATURE'S PROTECTOR - new bear tree!

Finally, some True Love for Bears!

CORES:


1. Nature's Protector: +2 hp for every point spent in the tree, and 3 MRR for every core in the tree.

Nice

2. Nature's Defense: Defensive Combat Stance +8 phy and magic resistance while any wildshape forms. Cannot be active with other defensive stances but can be used while raging. (new – elemental forms can now use it the base version and vase upgrades)

Ok...unexpected but interesting.
I assume this does not affect spellcasting?

3. Magical Beast: Gain heavy armor prof. In addition while in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 2.0. Does not stack with Nature's Warrior Cores.

Nicely done.
Bears would be expected to have heavy armor options.

4. Big Claws: Adds Great Maul to your spell book. This is a version of the maul spell with the same cost and stats but stuns instead of causing a bleed on it. Shares cool down with maul. Stun DC: 10 + Druid level + Wisdom + Stun Modifiers.

Stun & Trip are the bread and butter of good fighters.
Nice addition.
I assume a Bear/Wolf could use Improved Trip & Stunning Blow if they purchased such?

5. Big Bear: The Tremor spell now deals 5-8 blunt damage per druid level in addition to it's knock down effect. This damage scales with melee power.

Very nice. Well Done!
Makes my elemental caster jealous enough to ask that Earthquake be give scaling damage even if in minor amounts?

6. The Great Bear: Your attack speed in bear form is increased by 10% combat style bonus.
+4 str, +4 con.
While in animal form, the cooldown penalty for non-animal form spells is reduced from 2.5 times the usual length to 1.5. Does not stack with Nature’s Warrior Cores (new – mirror spell casting benefit from wolf tree and updated stats.

I like.


TIER 1


Rage of the Beast: Activate to rage gaining +4 strength and Con, +2 will saves, -2 ac for 40 seconds, but disallowing the casting of magic. Requires bear or wolf form. This ability shares cool down and charges with Barbarian class rage. Effects that modify barbarian rage also effect Rage of the Beast and using it counts as a use of barbarian rage and vice versa. Effect persists through shape changes Can be used 1/2 per rest. AP COST: 1

Very nice addition.
Would love to see Barbarian Bears!

I assume this will auto grant the feat "Dismiss Rage"?

Fey’s Blessing: Gain +2/4/6 MRR AP COST: 1

Nice.

Improved Nature's Defense: Competence bonus to one of three, Increase Threat by 50/100/150%, PRR MRR 4/8/12, Saving Throws by 1/2/3 AP COST: 1

Nice. I like triple choices. Threat is important for Tank builds.

Bloody Claws: Using Maul grants a stack of "Killer instincts" granting +1 damage for 15 seconds. Stacks 1/2/3. AP COST: 1

Does this apply to Great Maul as well?


Animal Brutality: Gain a +1/2/3 bonus to intimidate, swim, jump AP COST: 1

Very Bear like, and typical of tier one.

TIER 2


Primal Beast: Gain an additional +1/2/4 strength when raging in animal form. At Rank 3 Gain one more use of rage. AP COST: 1 Requires Rage of the Beast

I assume this stacks with Barbarian Bonuses?

Thick Hide: Nature Armor Bonus 2/4/6 AP COST: 1

Nice for tanks

Improved Nature's Defense: Competence bonus to one of three, Increase Threat by 50/100/150%, PRR MRR 4/8/12, Saving Throws by 1/2/3 AP COST: 1

Good as all three are useful. This gives one options when climbing up the tree.

Sharp Bloody Claws: Shred now also applies killer instinct AP COST: 1

Ok.

Defense Boost: Action boost grants 5/10/15 ac 7/12/20 mrr for 20 seconds. 30 second cool down. AP COST: 1

Looks good.

TIER 3


Undying Beast: While raging in animal form you gain immunity to death effects and energy drain. Gains one more use of rage. AP COST: 2 Requires: Primal Beast

I like.
Again, make sure you grant the feat "Dismiss Rage."

Spirit Refreshed: When shape shifting forms below 33% health you heal to full and cure all fatigue. This benefit can only occur once every 3 minutes. AP COST: 2 (new – applies to all forms now)

Very interesting, might even be attractive to a Caster Druid.

Improved Nature's Defense: Competence bonus to one of three, Increase Threat by 50/100/150%, PRR MRR 4/8/12, Saving Throws by 1/2/3 AP COST: 1

Ursa Protector: While in bear form nature's defense now does one of these, +2/4/6 con, +3/6/9 MRR, +15/20/25 % to max hp AP COST: 1

I like this.
It gives an alternative to Combat expertise.

Strength OR Wisdom AP COST: 2

Typically expected.
Would prefer you leave Wisdom available as a choice and not changed wisdom to constitution, especially since you are attracting spell casters towards this tree.

TIER 4


Enduring Beast: while raging Increase healing amp by 10/20 in any animal forms. At rank 2 gain one more use of rage. AP COST: 1 Requires: Undying Beast

Nice.

Spirit Renewed: When shifting forms below 33% health you heal to full and benefit from a restore spell. This can now occur once every 2 minute. Still removes fatigue. AP COST: 2 Requires: Spirit refreshed

Definitely interesting, melee and spell casters are likely to shift forms more often.

Savage Roar: Using the Roar spell with 1 stack of killer instinct active now triggers a burst of sonic damage around the druid for 1d3 per rank of wilderness lore. Scales with melee power. If you have 2 stacks it also stuns at DC: Wilderness Rank + Strength Mod At 3 stacks the damage is 1d10 per rank of wilderness lore and stuns. AP: 2

Will the Stun have bonus effects applied to it?
It should have equipment & enhancement bonuses.
Nice thematic effect.
I assume this does not clear the stacks?

Ursa Protector: While in bear form nature's defense now does one of these, +2/4/6 con, +3/6/9 MRR, +15/20/25 % to max hp AP COST: 1

Nice Chain of bonuses for the defensive stance that extends into tier five like fighter trees do.

Strength OR Wisdom AP COST: 2

Prefer not to bring Con into here.

TIER 5


Beast unleashed: Gain one additional uses of Rage of the Best per rest. While raging you gain 15% double strike. and while in bear form 50% increase in threat generation and 15% bonus to your armor class. AP COST: 2
Requires Enduring Beast

Nice Tier Five ability.

Spirit Bear Charge: Requires bear form Charge forward inflicting +3W and knocking down enemies, reflex save vs DC 19 + Wis + Trip Bonuses. 15 second cooldown. AP COST: 2

Woot.
Please make sure this works right.

Lightning strikes the Mountain: Activating calls down a bolt of lightning that strikes the druid granting a 100% bonus to threat and MRR for 15 second. 20 MRR / 40 MRR in nature’s protector stance. Nearby enemies take 1d8 in lightning damage per wilderness lore rank. Scales with melee power. SP Cost: 15. 30 Second cooldown. (new – Replaced/Improved Great roar)

Love this.
Consider adding a bonus if Call Lightning is already active?

Ursa's Protector: While in bear form nature's defense now does one of these, +2/4/6 con, +3/6/9 MRR, +15/20/25 % to max hp AP COST: 1

Force of Nature: You gain 10/15/20% resistance against force damage and 2/4/6 con. AP COST: 1

Interesting defense.
As you can see there is plenty of +con already in your tree.
Suggest you don't reduce dps by removing str from your tier 3&4 ability choices.



SEASONS HERALD

Yah!
My favorite tree in DDO!

CORES:


1. Child of Summer: You gain the ability Child of Summer: Activate to grant +5 Spellpower when casting fire, force, light, sonic and positive spells. This seasonal Spellpower is multiplied by one for every Core enhancement possessed in Season's Herald (starting with this one), up to +30 when you have all six Enhancements. Lasts until death or change of season. Fire Elemental form changes you into this season automatically.

Very much approve of removing the random cycling.
Very much approve of auto entering this when you become a Fire elemental.

Passive: +1 Universal Spellpower per AP spent in this tree.

Always welcome, especially since Druids only have one caster tree.

2. Child of Winter: You gain Child of Winter: Activate to gain +5 Spellpower when casting water, acid, earth and electric spells per core in this tree. Lasts until death or season change. Water elemental form changes you into this season automatically.

Waiting till level three to get this is fine.
Frankly level 1 DRuids pick up a Qstaff, cast shillelagh and go to town, regardless of their Str scores.

Passive: +1 caster levels to spells in your active season.

Nice, thanks. Now that we can control our season, this is very nice.

3. Nature's Wellspring: The effects of your shillelagh are doubled. +1 max caster level in your active season

At level six, a druid is starting to question whether the Qstaff approach is still working.
Its also about the time that a Druid begins to seriously work on spellcasting.
Grant shillelagh a bonus will help the Druid get to level 8 wherein Call Lightning becomes a Reaper Killer.

4. Sun Burst: Gain Sun Burst as an SLA, SP: 4, Cooldown: 20 seconds (new – lowered cooldown)

The lowered cooldown is Greatly appreciated. Thank you for each and every cooldown reduction here.
Druids have a lot of SLAs but their cooldowns were too long. Thank you.

5. The Storm of Change: Gain Storm of Vengeance as an SLA, SP 20 cost. 2 minute cool down.

Any chance we can reduce this cooldown slightly?
No biggie...

6. Hierophant: You are wise and skilled in the art of wielding divine magic to summon aid and change the world around you. +4 Wisdom +4 Con +10 Universal spell power. Your Conjuration and Evocation spells gain +1 DC, +2 caster level and +2 max caster level. (new – increased wis/con bonus)

Wow, you sure listened to our feedback on this capstone.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.


TIER 1:


Beguile: Whenever you attack or cast a spell on an enemy, there is a 50% chance to Beguile an affected enemy [1/0-2/0-3] times for [3/0-6/0-9] seconds. Beguile: -2% attack speed, -2 Spellpower. Beguile stacks up to 25 times, and one stack fades every few seconds. Up to one enemy affected each second (by up to [1/2/3] stacks). Does not affect bosses. AP COST: 1

Looks to be the same as before.

Shared Spirit: Your wolf pet gains 3/6/10% bonus to hps. Passive: You gain 1/2/3 spell power. AP COST: 1

Very nice. When I have all my essentials, then I look for things like this. Actually, since 1 point spent = 1 spell power, this enhancement grants +2 total spell power per point spent.
Oh, and more hp for wolfie is nice too.

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Force, Light, Positive, Force and Sonic
-AP COST: 2

First nerf of the tree, since Seasons repeated itself and made this apply to both seasons at once.
But its a bug and we are finally fixing bugs.
What I do like is the possibility of less lag from overlapping Season applications.
Anyway, expected and welcome.

Produce Flame: Spell Like Ability: Produce Flame. Cost: 6/5/3, Cooldown: 10/6/4 AP COST: 1 (new – lowered cooldown)

Love SLAs. Lower cooldowns are very nice.
Wow, you cut the cooldown in half!
Thank you! I use this one a lot.
Interesting you dropped this to tier one, thank you!
Maximize for the win!

Druidic Wisdom: Gain a +1/2/3 to heal, spellcraft and diplomancy skills. AP COST: 1

Another double spellpower enhancement. Good for those extra action points to spend.


TIER 2:


Efficient MetaMagic: Reduce the cost of a meta magic, empower, enlarge, maximize, quicken AP COST: 2

Efficient MetaMagic: Reduce the cost of a meta magic, empower, enlarge, maximize, quicken AP COST: 2

Interesting, you removed Spell Pen and replaced it with Spell Point conservation.

You make your own theory that Efficiency > Spell Pen, which says to me that you think Druids don't need Spell Pen as much as other Spell Casters since there are only two spells that require Spell Pen: Finger of Death (which is a save or die spell that deserves Spell Pen) and Order Wrath (which I have already asked you to remove the Spell Pen check from). Removing Spell Pen from Season's Herald is telling me you want to remove the Spell Pen check from Order's Wrath.

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Light, Force, Positive, Force and Sonic
AP COST: 2
Requires previous tier.

Nods Sagely

Creeping Cold: Spell Like Ability: Creeping Cold (Cost: [6/5/3] SP. Cooldown: [12/10/8] seconds) AP COST: 1 Requires produce flame

And again you surprise us by moving Creeping Cold downward to tier two.
Its ok for this to have a higher cooldown, because it has a duration of 12 seconds.

Action Boost: Spell Power: Action boost grants 10/20/30 spell power for 20 seconds. 30 second cool down. AP COST: 1

Nods Sagely

TIER 3


Autumn Leaves: Toggle ability: Leaves always seem to blow around the druid. Grants feather fall, +2 dodge and 5% proc chance on a gust of wind knock down anyone hitting you in melee. Costs: 15 SP Lasts until death or toggled off AP COST: 1

Very creative and interesting.
Well done.
I like thus.

Efficient Heighten AP COST: 2

As before.

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Force, Light, Positive, Force and Sonic
AP COST: 2
Requires previous tier

Call Lightning: Spell Like Ability: Call Lightning (Cost: [10/8/6] SP. Cooldown: [12/8/6] seconds) AP COST: 1 Requires: Creeping cold (new - lowered cooldown)

And again, you moved an SLA down a tier and reduced its cooldown from 8 seconds to 6.
I suppose asking for a 5 second cooldown would be greedy?
Thanks for reducing it by 25%.

Wisdom +1 AP COST: 2

As expected, anyone this deep in the tree only wants wisdom.

TIER 4:


Spring Resurgence: Fill an ally with the vitality of spring. When that ally falls below 50% hit points, that ally and any other allies near him are healed by 20d6
positive energy, and receive a +2 primal bonus to attack rolls. (Lasts 5 minutes or until triggered.) (Activation Cost: [8/6/4] Spell Points.)
Cooldown: [8/4/2] seconds) AP COST: 1 (new – lowered cooldown to make buffing party easier)

Thank you for the lowered cooldown.
I appreciate that.
Druids have a lot of single target buffs to cast upon entering a dungeon.
Are you going to add a casting animation to thus?
Currently this ability has unlimited range, can be cast underwater, and is difficult to tell whether the spell even went off.

Strength of the Solstice: +1 to the save DC's of your Evocation and Conjuration spells AP COST: 2

Oh...very nice, and in a tier four spot.
Thank you.

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Force, Light, Positive, and Sonic
AP COST: 2

Nods Sagely

Salt Ray: Spell Like Ability: Salt Ray (Cost: [12/10/8] SP. Cooldown: [12/10/8] seconds) AP COST: 1

WOOT!!!!!
I love this.
Finally I can afford to Heighten/Meta this spell and actually make it work at high levels.
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
After all, Druid Casters will be taking most all the Metas due to having so many nice SLAs.

Wisdom +1 AP COST: 2

Nods

TIER 5


Crown of Summer: A target of your choice is filled with the light and vitality of summer. That target gains a 15% enhancement bonus to Healing Amplification, and 10 melee power and 5 ranged power. (Activation Cost: 1 Spell Point. Cooldown: 6 seconds) Only one target can have the crown at a time. AP COST: 1

Oh, the melees are going to love this ~ stacking melee power.
Also no longer a conflict with overwriting Deady Weapon Buff since this is now a personal buff not a weapon buff.

Master of the Elements: Gain 5/10/15 spell power in your season. Passive rank 3: If the character has 17 druid levels they gain anger of the noonday sun or mantle of icy when changing in the appropriate elemental form. This effect costs 8 spells points when it occurs.

This is much better than Winter's Heart.
I love the auto Season + Mantle when you change forms.
It will make adapting to the dungeon even more interesting.

Time and Time again: increase your caster level and max caster level by +1 AP COST: 2

Hmm...this is not season dependent.
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!

Word of Balance: Spell Like Ability: Word of Balance (Cost: [12/9/6] SP. Cooldown: [20/15/10] seconds) AP COST: 1 Requires: Salt Ray (new – lowered cooldown)

Very nice, lowered cooldown.
Thank you.
Now if we could only convince you that direct damage spells do not deserve spell pen checks?


Armor of Winter: Gain 8 times your wisdom in temporary Hit points that lasts 60 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds, Sp Cost: 12) AP COST: 2 (new – moved spell power and allow it to work in any elemental form/season)

Hmm...interesting.
Nice for reaper dungeoneering.
Definitely not overpowered as Druid are superior healers anyway.



Overall, I am very impressed with your work here so far.
Well done!

In summary, very nice but would like to see some additions:

Remove Spell Pen check from Order's Wrath

Consider granting Druids another Acid Spell of some sort.

Allow Extend to work on the self buffing Call Lightning Storm as I tested thus and the Lightning Storm does move with the character.

Make sure Creeping Colds do not overwrite any spells including Niac's Biting Cold.

Correct Pack aptitude to grant +6 to an ability instead of the bugged +4.

Improve Anger of the Noonday Sun in some way.

Make Flame Blade scale into Epics better.

Speed up Firestorm.

and please reduced the graphic effects of Body of Sun by at least 50+%
(you could simply trim off the outer edges of the effect since they are the strongest).


Thanks Torc, good job.

[Silverleafeon]

Also of interest, a long-ago discussion about the many possibilities of the third druid tree:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/448053-Third-Druid-Tree-Lost-Trees-Project?highlight=lost+tree+project

Please feel free to cherry pick ideas and theories therein.

[Andu_Indorin]

This feat needs some basic work as well so that it might become useful once again. Like the Reincarnation spell, this feat is way too time-consuming. Consequently, it is usually useless in group play because the target is dead before the action can be completed.

And running solo, I don't know how many times I've tried to use wild empathy on a wolf out in wilderness area, only to be told I'm no longer facing the target because the wolf has flanked me while I'm waiting for the action to be completed.

Some adjustment from PnP is required for the MMORPG environment in terms of "casting" time is needed. Furthermore, this skill check should be WIS based instead of CHA based. (Think "Horse Whisperer"; I never could quite grasp the original rationale for basing this skill on Charisma in the PnP milieu, as "force of personality" sort of implies, well, a "person".)

Perhaps not a top priority, but something that is long overdue.

And speaking of overdue: the Hireling A.I.; I don't know how many times my Druid's Onyx Panther has ceased functioning over the course of the last five years. Granted, those golden eyes looking at me from up close and personal are mesmorizing ... um, where was I?

[Silverleafeon]

5. Niac's Biting Cold: Could use some clarification here, what bug?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Creeping_Cold


Interactions with other spells:
Only a single Creeping Cold spell can affect a target at the same time. If you or other player casts another Creeping Cold, the old spell is gone, replaced by the new one. This means you're losing the increased damage from phase 2 and phase 3. Recast only after the final tic.
Creeping Cold and Greater Creeping Cold can affect a target simultaneously.
Creeping Cold suppresses Niac's Biting Cold of all arcane casters.
Creeping Cold spell might stack with the Season's Herald Creeping Cold SLA (DDO Forums)
Crushing Wave on various weapons and Ruby of the Crushing Wave may reset the counter

[Silverleafeon]

3) Absorption: Hrmmm. We kinda like to keep things simple on absorption because how the math works when these effects stack isn't intuitive. We'll noodle on this some more.

I am fine with Fire Form not stacking with Cold Shield or Fire Sheath as long as it stacks with equipment bonuses, Epic Destiny abiities such as Block Energy, racial bonuses such as Amaunator's Flames, and feats such as Shield Deflection multiplicatively.

I do hope Fire Shield will help mitigate the +15% damage from Cold Spells while in Fire Form, such as (115% * 50% = 58%)


4) Fresh Start: I think it's a good way to think about it. Druids have been stuck awhile being helped and hampered by a weird mash up of bugs. We are very sensitive that players do not like to be slowed down, but they do also like bigger numbers, and when the monster falls over that's what really counts in the end, so hopefully all of these adjustments will be positive or at least forgivable in the view of the pass as a whole.

Be bold and fix the problems here and now or they will haunt DDO for a very long time.

Yes some players will need to redo their toon, but with all the new Past Lives available that is very doable.

[AbyssalMage]

Question on this as well. What does this mean? Elaborate please, it has potential to eliminate an entire unique play style from the game. Tree builds work for a very specific reason and this sounds a lot like that wont be the case anymore. Dont doom primal avatar to uselessness.
The developers only accept Blitz as the official Melee DPS ED. It has been this way for awhile. This was their glaring weakness to this doctrine.

[Pilgrim1]

Hi, so I am a big fan of druids. I know many of there quriks. I like to play a druid at end game. I would say I am one of the better caster druid players on cannith. I play Duplicant atm.

I am also maintain a thread on various druid bugs:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/493731-Comprehensive-list-of-Druid-Bugs-(updating)

So first before i get to the specifics of your new enhancment trees let me talk about some of the issues that druids face.

First off caster druids are great in lots of ways, they have very versitile crowd controll, are very strong healers, and can situationaly push out a large amount of single target boss damage. Pets can at times be used effectivly as well.

This that the druid class strugles with and really should not:
1) AoE damage. For a cloud based toon druids are realy really poor at AoE damage.
Sugestion: Add some thematic AoE dmg options - chain lighting, acid rain.

2) Druids are a reflex save only class. 95% of our spells that we can viablely cast require reflex saves, making dealing with high reflex mobs dificult.
sugestion: add a will save evocation spell.

3) Druids have an enormous amount of diffrent spell power types in the spells they have access to. I think even more than wizards and sorcers. But unlike our arcain buddies we can’t specilize effectivly because we are so limited in our diversity of spells. For example our pinical spell call lighting storm... is the only acid damge dealing spell in the druid tree. we have 2 light damage spells, 2 physical damage spells, 1 rust damage spell, and a 4-5 of each cold/fire/lighting. It is extreamly difficult to deal with the diversity of spell power required for gearing a druid.
sugestion: consolidating summer spells into fire/devotion, and winter into water/impulse.

4) High level Reaper play is excesivly punititive to druids. Our primary CC (eartquake) lasts only 6 seconds and the first 2 seconds (the first tick) it will not even land. Only blind spells have any lasting duration. Our ability to use healing via heal over time becomes much weaker vs large burst damage.


So that said lets talk about the new druid caster enhancments (ill make a post later about the other 2 trees)
First off I aprove of much of what you have her, below are things that i think are potential issues.




6. Hierophant: You are wise and skilled in the art of wielding divine magic to summon aid and change the world around you. +4 Wisdom +4 Con +10 Universal spell power. Your Conjuration and Evocation spells gain +1 DC, +2 caster level and +2 max caster level. (new – increased wis/con bonus)


Dont leave out transmutation! Druids have a few decent transmutation spells neglecting there DC really lowers there potential use. There are 4 druid spells with a transmutation DC and only 2 conjuration. I would sugest +2 trans/con and +1 evocation of this capstone.



Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.

Since druids are so seasonly specilized how about making this 3% instead, or adding a t5 ability that gives an extra few % crit chance?



Action Boost: Spell Power: Action boost grants 10/20/30 spell power for 20 seconds. 30 second cool down. AP COST: 1


This is a general request: spell power scales 3-4x more then melee power yet the boosts are the same. Consiter upping the boost to 100 spell power and/or add crit chance and damage. Spell casters never really use boosts.



Spring Resurgence: Fill an ally with the vitality of spring. When that ally falls below 50% hit points, that ally and any other allies near him are healed by 20d6
positive energy, and receive a +2 primal bonus to attack rolls. (Lasts 5 minutes or until triggered.) (Activation Cost: [8/6/4] Spell Points.)
Cooldown: [8/4/2] seconds) AP COST: 1


At the moment spring resurgence does not apply any spell power. Thus it is great in heroics but falls off in epics, adding spell power, even 50% scalling, would help this very cool ability scale into epics. Keep in mind there is a 1-2 second delay for getting the healing from this spell, you can even not be healed by the spell if you move from where it was triggered.



Strength of the Solstice: +1 to the save DC's of your Evocation and Conjuration spells AP COST: 2


Again, dont forget transmutation! Hell give it +1 to all DC’s and give 1 enchantment and 2 necro spells a chance to be cast.



Salt Ray: Spell Like Ability: Salt Ray (Cost: [12/10/8] SP. Cooldown: [12/10/8] seconds) AP COST: 1


This is one of my bigges issues, this spell is poor. It does week damage, is single target, and doesn’t even add helpless damage to the stun aspect of the spell. As the spell stands now its very unapealing, its a single target week damage daze. I would strongly suggest adding a AoE spell to the SLA line up. Chain lighting seams like a great fit, or improve the spell salt ray - make it truly stun would be a nice improvment.



Crown of Summer: A target of your choice is filled with the light and vitality of summer. That target gains a 15% enhancement bonus to Healing Amplification, and 10 melee power and 5 ranged power. (Activation Cost: 1 Spell Point. Cooldown: 6 seconds) Only one target can have the crown at a time. AP COST: 1


When heal amp was changed from 10/20/30 to 20/40/60 this was improved to 30% amp. Might be a good chance to make sure it stays 30%.



Master of the Elements: Gain 5/10/15 spell power in your season. Passive rank 3: If the character has 17 druid levels they gain anger of the noonday sun or mantle of icy when changing in the appropriate elemental form. This effect costs 8 spells points when it occurs.


I like this addition a lot. But... Anger of the noonday sun is a truly bad spell. I think you need to improve that spell if you want to make it a focus of fire elementals.

Thanks for reading, hope this gives some food for thought.

[PermaBanned]

Some interesting stuff here, my first and most primary suggestion is that given the vast differences in Druid before & after the changes... all y'all pre-schedule in more Lamania time than usual for when you get to that stage.

There are two things that jumped out at me as real head scratchers from the new Bear Tree, and some enlightenment would be appreciated:

1) Heavy Armor proficiency
• What is developments' vision for using this without breaking the Druidic Oath?
•• Please don't say "We plan to introduce more of..." I still remember that response - and it's subsiquent lack of follow though longevity - regarding Small Shields.

2) Rage of the Beast
What is developments' vision for a Bear form Druid that cuts off it's own spell casting abilities?

I'm sure I'll have more questions/comments later, but those 2 I find genuinely confusing.

Edit: seems I missed this one...

There'll definitely be more Druid-friendly heavy armor options in the future, but in the meantime I'll point you at the one from Update 35: Scales of Avarice, which drop in the quest Black and Blue.
And if that's the first of more to come, then great :) 'Cause even with that recent addition, working backwards we have Shadow Scale (26), Epic Blue/Black/White (25), Cormyrian Green/Red (23) & Epic Red (20) - with Heroic's being even bleaker of just the Scales of Avarice (10) & Blue/Black/White (14)... And that's before considering how these pre Black & Blue named items' properties have held up over time. I do suppose there's Canith Crafting options, but so many armors belong to a Set Bonus now... ouch.

[AbyssalMage]

Uh, Tier 5 wolf . . . Evasion. So it's addressed.
I am addressing an earlier post that pointed out Evasion on a Druid is worthless at 30. Without addressing it in the tree, you will not Evade in LE content. Considering Evasion is already "under attack" because of the new content and Reaper, this needs to be addressed ASAP.


CC option on bear . . . stun. DC 10+Druid+Wis+stunning. So it's basically like Stunning Fist.
So...

Undead are stunned how? How much content uses undead?
You are assuming Bear will go Wisdom. What about Con, Dex, or Str because melee tend to go that route?
That is why I suggested a "Trip" because it works on 90% of the content unlike Stun.



And the Nature's Defender is hecka tanky, they basically get the defensive stance from the Defender tree but can ALSO rage at the same time. MASSIVE Con boost. That's quite tanky.
Which brings me back to the point. Is Bear supposed to be "Tanky" or "Barbariany"? This initial pass would say they are supposed to be more towards Barbarian which is a good idea. They won't be able to cast spells while "Truly" raged preventing Earthquake, Sleet Storm, ect... which are damage mitigators. Therefore they need CC options which they initially have some. They just need something that works on more targets.

[AbyssalMage]

No the gust of wind is single target effect in this case and will not effect spell effects in play. The term gust of wind is perhaps unfortunate. We'll look at re-writing the description to something that doesn't use that term.

-T
Thanks for the reply. That will allow everyone to rest a little bit easier.

[FuryFlash]

Some comments on the trees:

Nature's Warrior
The cores are lacking - Core 1 is good, but all the other ones feel a bit empty. Cores are typically multi-bonus enhancements or single significant boosts. A buff to one spell as an entire level 18 core feels a bit weak for example.
Snapping Jaws should do more - AC debuff is mostly pointless because in my experience a melee character won't be missing on anything other than a 1. I guess this could help a little at endgame or when just starting out, but even the AC self-buff it gives doesn't feel worth the AP. Perhaps add a bit of fort bypass in here? Overall, the T1 here feels a bit weak, so this would help.
Ghost Wolf cooldown should be like Uncanny Dodge - Uncanny Dodge has a 3 minute cooldown and Improved Uncanny Dodge has a 2 minute cooldown. The effect here is similar to Improved Uncanny Dodge in terms of power, but a bit longer, so halving the cooldown it's at now would make sense.
Stalking Prey should give Faster Sneaking - Other than solo, the time it would take to charge this in a group would be time trying to catch up to the group and therefore losing DPS. It makes sense in terms of gameplay and the ability name to put a 50% or 75% stealth movement speed buff in here.
Fatal Harry is just a weak Killer - despite both abilities being T4s, Killer manages to have a higher stack size, a higher amount of doublestrike (and it gives doubleshot!) and a longer duration. If you're going to add an ability like Killer in this tree, just add Killer. It makes sense for the tree and for balance.
"Ferocity: You gain +2/4/6 attk power" - What is this? Attack bonus? Damage bonus? Melee power?
Alpha Strike says it reduces enemy "range" - What is this? Ranged attack distance? Melee attack distance? Threat Range? :P
Why is there a Str/Wis selector in T5? - Is this a placeholder?
Jaws of the Great White Wolf should be renamed - It's too long, and doesn't indicate at all what it actually gives. Maybe something like "Frozen Feast" would be better suited.

Nature's Protector - Yay! Finally, a new druid tree!
Heavy Armour Prof. is underwhelming - The only heavy armour druids can wear are made of dragonscales, which severely limits the number of options. That said, medium suffers pretty heavily in this department too, but at least you can craft those. Not saying to remove this, just pointing this out as others have. At least there's a couple good choices in epics, but I think the lowest level armour you could use would be level 10, despite getting this ability at level 6.
Again, somewhat lackluster cores - For one thing, the core should give both PRR and MRR, if not just PRR. It's a bear tree. Both the T4 and T5, typically big checkpoints in how far you go into a tree, just give buffs to a single spell. I find this sort of ability cool, but not as an entire high-tier core.
Spirit Refreshed seems a bit unwieldy - Having to switch forms (which currently induces painful graphical craziness and lag depending on the computer) for a heal is kinda annoying. Cool ability, but it would be nice if it was triggered some other way.
Ursa MRR Values are low - Compared to the rest of the tree, even Improved Nature's Defense is better. Not only should this be worth more, it should be PRR/MRR or even just a large amount of PRR.

Season's Herald
Do seasons still work the same as before? - I don't quite understand how seasons are implemented with the current proposition. Are the first two cores just mutually exclusive toggles? That would be a huge QoL improvement over the mess it was before.
The cores are, yet again, too light - I'm fine with core 1 and 2 (assuming I'm understanding how seasons work correctly), but 3, 4 and 5 are quite lackluster. Shillelagh is a melee DPS buff as far as I understand it, and the +1 max caster levels for your season isn't enough on its own for a core 3. Sunburst and SoV are both fine, but they should accompany some other benefit(s) from the core 4 and 5, which are both typically strong markers in tree power.
Beguile shouldn't be so random - Beguile already only has a 50% chance to activate - there's no reason for that 50% to also include a chance of 0 stacks added or a chance of 0 duration. That is, if I'm reading this correctly.
Shared Spirit needs to give more spellpower - 1/2/3 is simply miniscule. You get that much just from taking three ranks of any ability in the tree (including this one of course, which would make it max 6 spellpower, still nothing) thanks to the core 1. Try 5/10/15.
What is the DC of Autumn Leaves' knockdown? - Assuming it has one.
Will Spring's Resurgence stack with spellpower? - I would also like to point out that this ability is very finicky/buggy and I have found that it often doesn't heal like it should. It seems from my experience like the healing part (the leaves that spawn) waits a little while to hit, and it only looks for people to heal from the distance it was placed, meaning if you're running and it ticks, it won't even land on you. I'm sure others can provide their experiences with this.
Master of the Elements should be a toggle - since it will cost spell points when it activates, some players may want to take this for the spellpower but not want to use up extra spell points to have those spells auto-cast. I'm also confused about what is considered changes seasons now - this makes me wonder if I'm misunderstanding the way the current plans for seasons work.
Crown of Summer specifies a % bonus for heal amp - Since it's heal amp, using % bonuses is a relic of the past system. Please change this to appropriate values.


The trees look cool so far, but could use some work to make them fit into the current power level of balance-passed classes better. Good work overall, and I very much look forward to seeing more changes!

[Pilgrim1]

Ok I’m lumping these together to emphisize my most importaint point:

Combine wolf and bear tree into one tree with multiple abilities

You did this in the vistani tree by giving people a melee boost and a ranged boost with the idea that they could only use one of them. This is the same thing, you can only be in wolf or bear form, not both at the same time. So much of these two trees could be combined into one tree with both abilities given. Doing this will allow people flexability to move between animal forms rather then creating builds around specific forms. Combining does not give more power, it gives more flexability.


Ok that min-rant asside lets move to the enhancements:
Firstly, why not auto cast magic fang when entering bear/wolf form like you have for the elementals.

Natures warrior:
*The focus on stealth is silly, the changes to the stealth mechanic make it extreamly unlikly that anyone will use these abilities.

*howl of terror will never land, its got a dc of 17+wis+enchantment, with a spell pen check. It lasts for ~15 seconds and doesn’t render anything helpless. You need to change the DC on this spell to make it viable or change the spell to make people intrested in investing into it.

*the capstone is to weak to give people serious consiteration about multiclassing.

*ghost wolf: Neat ability but anything on a 5min cooldown is not fun to play with. Try a 2 min cooldown. Its not over-powered, think about how many reapers and champions bypass incorpral these days.

Overall this tree is lack-luster. I see some small bonuses here and there but its not very apealing. It looks like the old tree with a few small tweeks. The old tree was really poor.


natures protector
*spirit refreshed: Why all the limitations on this? Are you really conserned that a druid is able to self heal? This requires at least 2 animal forms. To take advantage of this will require swiching to alternitive form, waiting several seconds to be able to swich back, activating whatever stances you lost by swiching out of bear form, then casting bear specific buffs and animal fang. It will take almost 10 seconds to get a full heal, on a self healing class already! Just make it a 20 second cooldown or something so people dont spam it as a full heal.

*im not sure why you nead to restrict the ursa protector’s to bear form. Do you not want wolves to get this bonus? People can already splash fighter and/or pally to acheave these results. This just gives another option.

*savage roar: wilderness lore is just 1/2 druid levels. It neadlessly complicats things. Also re-work the DC this has a inefectualy DC.

[Silverleafeon]

Straight damage spells are typically not suppose to be resistible by spell resistance. We'll throw this on the list.

Does happy dance!!!

Thank you!

[Silverleafeon]

I dont suppose there will be any animation work done on the transition mask between character model to wolf/bear model done on this pass.... (cant play a druid because all the nice green sparkly transition effects that were put on to mask the model replacement give me a headache after an hour or so of watching them every time i have to use something or open a door, or climb a ladder, or scratch my back end.... granted I'm the only one I've heard make this complaint so I cant figure any work is being done on it, just asking for clarification while we're here. If not, while the post looks interesting I think I'll hold any comments on something that I'll never run because its painful to watch it.

I used to suffer from that problem.

Then I got a computer with a decent graphics card and it all went away.

[Silverleafeon]

Season's Herald

Are the first two cores just mutually exclusive toggles?


Yes

[Silverleafeon]

Would love to see added as a thematic level nine Druid spell:


http://ddowiki.com/page/Black_Dragon_Bolt



Name:
Black Dragon Bolt
School:
Conjuration (Acid)
Level:
Sor/Wiz 8
Spell Point Cost:
15
Components:
Verbal, Somatic, Focus
Metamagic:
Empower, Maximize, Quicken
Range:
Double
Target:
Foe, Directional, Breakable
Duration:
6 seconds
Saving Throw:
None
Spell Resistance:
No
Cooldown:
5.5 seconds (Wiz), 3.25 seconds (Sor)

Description:
A powerful green bolt of corrosive acid springs from your hand. The bolt deals 1d3 acid damage per caster level, (Maximum 25d3 at caster level 25) every 2 seconds for 6 seconds.
Features fast casting animation and free double range like most ray spells.





but I would settle for a level five druid spell:


http://ddowiki.com/page/Acid_Rain


Name:
Acid Rain
School:
Conjuration (Creation) (Acid)
Level:
Sor/Wiz 4
Spell Point Cost:
15
Components:
Verbal, Somatic, Material (Heart of a Hen)
Metamagic:
Empower, Enlarge, Eschew, Maximize, Quicken
Range:
Standard AOE
Target:
Foe, Positional, Breakable
Duration:
8 seconds
Saving Throw:
Reflex half on initial tic only
Spell Resistance:
No
Cooldown:
5 seconds (Wiz), 4 seconds (Sor)

Description:
You create a storm that sends down a single torrent of caustic rain. Any creatures that are hit with the rain take 1d4 per caster level (max 15d4) in acid damage every 2 seconds for a duration of 8 seconds. Targets first entering the rain may make a reflex save for half, but remaining in the rain they will take damage with no saving throw.




or honestly, even this level seven druid spell would work:


http://ddowiki.com/page/Acid_Fog


Name:
Acid Fog
School:
Conjuration (Creation) (Acid)
Level:
Sor/Wiz 6
Spell Point Cost:
35
Components:
Focus, Material, Somatic, Verbal
Metamagic:
Empower, Enlarge, Eschew, Maximize, Quicken
Range:
Standard AOE
Target:
Foe, Positional
Duration:
40 seconds +2 seconds per caster level
Saving Throw:
None
Spell Resistance:
No
Cooldown:
10 seconds (Wiz), 6 seconds (Sor)

Description:
A billowing mass of misty vapors causes several effects:
Slows movement (~-5%).
Obscures sight, giving all creatures in the fog concealment (Attackers have 20% miss chance).
Deals 2d6 acid damage every 2 seconds to targets within the cloud.
Enemies within this cloud also suffer a -4 penalty to their armor class.




Just one more acid spell would be kind of nice, although its a luxury...

[Wizza]

Great communication Torc. This thread has over 15 of replies from SSG while Arties are glad if they have 1. And even fixing Niacs/Creeping cold bugs.

If SSG ever touches Arcanes, I hope it's you who is gonna be in charge of it/its thread and not another Developer. Good job :)

[Xyfiel]

Silverleafeon in all the DnD games I can recall playing with spell resistance, it most definitely applies to direct damage spells. Not all of them though. Here are the first two I looked up. Granted this is changed in DDO and WOB should be changed to match. As for another spell, Negative Energy Burst.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/scorchingRay.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireball.htm

[Arkitektonik]

Given that you can get more than 100% doublestrike without the natural fighting feats - these feats should give something better, like equivalent of the TWF that is now being "fixed".

The proposed wolf form will fall behind other builds without an increase in melee power or an alternative method of increased attacks.

The only reason why we see even the few wolfs around now is due to the TWF "bug".

[glmfw1]

[*=1]Somewhat hand-wavy Lore Explanation: The weapon is used as the magical source to enchant and create the properties of the claw or tooth of the druid. It's magic....so it works that way....yeah...



Nothing "hand-wavy" there. Seems perfectly logical. Weapons are made from materials that are part of the natural world. Druids use nature based magic, so the weapon they concentrate on as they transform becomes part of them, strengthening their animal form's natural weapons. It's probably about the least hand-wavy part of "you are a humanoid, but can turn into a wolf/bear", yet we already accept that as "by the power of nature".

[Ballrus]

[B]30% attack speed that stacks with all other sources of haste for 2 class levels strikes me as a godly bargain. 15% seems as a more reasonable bargain but these numbers are just educated guesses until their tested. Base wolf form might become 20% or it might drop 10%, it all depends on our dps tests once the pass is testable. We're not really looking to lower the DPS of wolf splash builds so much, but we're not trying to super boost them either. Breaking up the 2 wolf forms from each other gives us better control to account for the weapon boost everyone will be getting at different rates of druid commitment.

Hello.

A lot of work here, good job!

15% speed, for 2 lvls splash, depending on build, is OP.
10% in wolf and 20% dire wolf. It's enough.

OR

Split the speed bonus in the Nature warrior core:
5% at each core while in all animal forms, and remove the innate bonus from wolf and bear forms.

[janave]

Armor of Winder (Herald) ideally would be closer in power to Shining Through.

Winter's heart was a better T5 than WoB SLA. I would move WoB elsewhere, it isn’t all that good.


Winter's Heart: You represent the chill invitability of winter and life's end. Your cold spells have a 5% chance to trigger a sudden blast of cold and snow, centered on you. Enemies struck by this attack take 1d10+30 cold damage.

I would update this to.
*******************
(1d6 + 12) / Druid level (or character level if you really want players to TR into this :P )

Debuff for 9s
-2 reflex
10% cold vulnerability
*******************
It would hold up in epics, and 5% makes it fairly balanced, altho it may need extra balancing on dots, to only proc on cast 5%.

[Claver]

*savage roar: wilderness lore is just 1/2 druid levels. It neadlessly complicats things. Also re-work the DC this has a inefectualy DC.

Rangers and Barbarians gain equal amounts of wilderness lore to the druid - one rank per level so 20 ranks by level 20 . Its the bard who gets 1/2 rank per level. I rather like the flavor and the support for odd multi-class build from the primal sphere.

I hope SSG keeps the wilderness lore as a feature

You make a fair point re: the DC

[Arkai]

I'm impressed and got shocked by those new trees, wow! :D

But I have to ask also... are you planning to modify Enveloping Swarm or Anger of the Noonday Sun? Everytime I cast this on my druid I feel it's just for flavour, not a real ingame effect :)

Thanks!

[Vish]

Roar!

Lions and tigers and bears,
Oh my!

Looks fine. Never seen a bear anyway
Like an arti healer
So obscure you only find them in static groups
But whatever,
I'm glad you're going sideways as well as up
I'll never play either,
Or a Druid for that matter,
But I'm sure it will impact
Wolves pretty rare these days too
As always a slight resurgence
But it would? Be cool? To see bears tank
But pretty stoopid, but whatever
Sounds like exploit builds be dyging
Well, rip
I never played em anyhow

All I got to say,
Maybe wisdom to hit damage around core 12
That would be about right
Then some monk Druids,
And maybe some animal cleric bears
And whatever else dr Moreau has in mind

[HuneyMunster]

TIER 2:


Efficient MetaMagic: Reduce the cost of a meta magic, empower, enlarge, maximize, quicken AP COST: 2

Efficient MetaMagic: Reduce the cost of a meta magic, empower, enlarge, maximize, quicken AP COST: 2



TIER 3


Efficient Heighten AP COST: 2






Am I reading this correctly that T2 Efficient Metamagic Enhancement now only require 1 rank for the full effect down from 3 ranks at 2 AP each?

While Efficient Heighten is now 2 AP for full effect down from 2 ranks at 2 Ap each?

If so, does this mean that Divines and Arcane will see a similar change?

[Ladislaio]

There'll definitely be more Druid-friendly heavy armor options in the future, but in the meantime I'll point you at the one from Update 35: Scales of Avarice, which drop in the quest Black and Blue.

The lack of a docent and a non-metallic armor for the ravenloft heavy armor set is currently holding back druid and robot tanks a bit.


Will the change to how druid forms interact with combat style bonuses mean that the 2x MRR bonus for using a large/tower shield vs reflex effects not work? What about the shield deflection feat?

Also could we pretty-please get some numbers on the BAB/to hit of mobs in current legendary content so those of us who like tanks can have a better idea of what AC values work well? It isn't really simple to test this like it is to test what DC's you need for stunning blow or finger, especially on higher reaper difficulties.

[ShadowLordVegas]

Honestly, not sure if anyone else feels this way, but I think many might have preferred Master of Many Forms Prestige as an enhancement tree. Many people want more than 2 animal forms. Wolf and Bear get rather boring. Now I understand a character turning dragon is slightly an issue for visuals and gameplay based on the size of the creature and most quests being indoors and such, however it wouldn't be hard to apply small - huge type creatures that player can become. Becoming a boar, or jaguar, to giants, even to oozes and a mindflayer could be fun to a number of players. Players still don't gain spell like abilities but to gain access to their extraordinary abilities can prove useful in a number of variances.

[Kza]

The devil is in the details here and the description should probably be more precise. Say the effect healed for your "current max hp value", but then reaper scaling took effect. So, if your on 10 skulls, that's only 4% of your max health. This ability will probably still be very nice in reaper 1 - 5. Good healing amp might keep it effective in 6 to 7.

-T

For me- you should treat all kind of false Life like this. Reaper is the devs way of going for the kill aye? So plz reaper scale all false Life effects! Kill us more, and in the same time it makes the balance better and easier among the classes.

Regarding the druid Changes. This work seems to be awesome! So fun and thematic Changes, smoother and easier to understand.

My wishlist: downtune body of the sun graphic and downtune earthquake effects plz plz, i love druids but got such headache from all my quakes casted so i had to switch to Another class.

(Or is it any ui setting that i have missed that turn off earhquake shakes on screen and the extreme light from body of the sun?)

[Chacka_DDO]

3) Absorption: Hrmmm. We kinda like to keep things simple on absorption because how the math works when these effects stack isn't intuitive. We'll noodle on this some more.

To keep things simple on abortion is a good attitude... currently, we have:

MRR (Items with different types, Enhancements, Feats)
Absorption (feats, items some stack and others not, enhancements, epic destinies
Resistance (feats, enhancements, items with different types, Epic Destinies)
Protection

I certainly have forgotten something but this shows already that the whole system around the reduction of damage from magical sources is way too complicated.
Personally, for me, the stacking rules, especially for % reduction, are still not clear and the character sheet and DDOWIKI cannot help me out.
I just assume there are only a few players who know how this works exactly.
By the way, if someone read this and knows how it works exactly, he could maybe make a complete guide on DDOWIKI, I would really appreciate it :)

Anyway, for the developers, I can say I would strongly recommend reducing the system to MRR and Protection only and in the character sheet should appear how high the MRR for each magical damage is (quite similar to the Spell Power).
Then it would be far easier to understand it and you could see on the character sheet instantly if things stack and if they are working correctly.
Of course this with the assumption that the scores who are displayed in the character sheet show the number that is actually used for the calculation.

Much in DDO needs in my opinion urgently a simplification to make this game not only attractive for veterans.

For example, the resistance is just not a good system at all because in low-level dungeons they are too strong and in legendary content, they are too weak.
This is why you should drop this completely and reduce it to one percentage damage reduction for each magical damage type.


The damage reduction from magic is only one of many things that urgently needs an overhaul.
Currently, you have a quite confusing mix of things you had adopted from pen and paper and new addition you made.
You should have the general rule, if you introduce something new it replaces something old or "the game suffocates itself."

[burlicconi]

Seems quite good and quite different from what I expect. I like the fact that both shapeshifting trees are not mutual exclusive, you can benefit from both of them in both forms.

What I expected more is bigger support for pets- I suggested that druid should have some aura which benefits both owner and pet and I'm glad that you take that int consideration. Aim is to have much more players that actually HAVE pet by their side, so probably one or two enhancement spot for boosting pets should be enough (Blood Moon Frenzy, Imbue Summons), or, at least, allow pets to wear ring and shield, for example.

What MUST be done is to upgrade some druid innate attack's spells- I suggest that Natural Fighting feat, beside doublestrike bonus, gives +1 to all innate attack spells (and probably consider giving it +1 to some core enhancement).

And one suggestion, which can be considered as QoL suggestion- either druid or all classes should have some way to order all his pets to attack one single target.

[Chacka_DDO]

And for the elemental forms, I think they should have the same characteristics as the elemental form a sorcerer can transform in to.
Both, the druid and the sorcerer transform e.g. in a fire elemental why should they be different?
Also here, one should strive for consistency

[Chacka_DDO]

In my opinion, also the druids spell Flame Blade needs attention.
It should be a spell that makes it possible to have a fire or ice version, which would fit the druids in DDO who can transform into fire and water elementals.

And just to mention it again, anything that normally adds a damage breaking advantage (like the artificer buff Adamantine Weapon) removes the DR breaking property from this weapon (normally this weapon breaks all physical damage reduction).
And the next is if you attack a monster that is resistant to fire (an iron golem e.g.) the damage gets reduced by this, which is quite logically.
But it would be logically too if a monster is vulnerable to fire (like ice mephits) would take more damage too.
Both of this "problems" apply also on Celestia, Brightest Star of Day (http://ddowiki.com/page/Celestia,_Brightest_Star_of_Day).
I just assume this issue is not easy to fix and you would most likely not do it with the changes to the druid you announced here, but maybe you can surprise us. ;)

[Silverleafeon]

I am glad we are not wasting a whole tree to make Druids better healers.

The only complaint I had about solo healing end game raids was having to use Resurrection scrolls.

Does happy dance to see the generous reduction of Reincarnation casting times and cooldowns.
Waves hand at party member ~ you are now a kobold ~ live long and prosper.

[LeoLionxxx]

Oh, something that should be looked at is the "Stone Paws" effect on the Dethek_Runestone (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Dethek_Runestone). At the very least, it should be thrown into the list of test cases to ensure it works as intended after these changes.

http://ddowiki.com/images/Dethek_Runestone.png

[Hipparan]

Creeping Doom needs to be assigned to an *actual spellpower type* instead of being the weird Poison Damage which . . . doesn't seem to fall under anything?

Poison Spellpower does exist! The only place in the game where it exists though is on Vol from the Mark of Death raid. It would be nice if Druids could have Poison Spellpower added to Summer considering Summer is when all of the venomous insects/spiders/snakes and things come back out into nature. Also, could you consider adding Negative spellpower to Winter? It will help a little for Druids who use Finger of Death and the enemy makes the save.

[Rathdranalon]

Hadnt thought about this but so true. Basically shadow dragon armor is all.

Is it just me or does no one know about the scales of avarice?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Scales_of_Avarice

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Scales_of_Avarice

These got added in on update 35 but I do agree, more flexibility in choice would be great with some more armour choices.

[Torc]

Am I reading this correctly that T2 Efficient Metamagic Enhancement now only require 1 rank for the full effect down from 3 ranks at 2 AP each?

While Efficient Heighten is now 2 AP for full effect down from 2 ranks at 2 Ap each?

If so, does this mean that Divines and Arcane will see a similar change?

No these enhancements are like all the other meta-magic cost reducers in all of the other trees. I was just being lazy typing them up. They work exactly the same and the only real change is Season's Herald now gets to pick an extra meta magic to reduce than they did before.

[Torc]

And for the elemental forms, I think they should have the same characteristics as the elemental form a sorcerer can transform in to.
Both, the druid and the sorcerer transform e.g. in a fire elemental why should they be different?
Also here, one should strive for consistency

We actually hope to get to a Sorcerer's pass next (arcanes as a whole, but we feel that Sorcerors needs the most help). Those forms will get re-worked soon if they don't get an adjustment in this pass as a pre-cursor.

[Hipparan]

Oh also, will Salt Ray be added to Master of the Wilds so epic level characters can get some higher max caster level/damage out of Salt Ray?

[Saekee]

thanks devs for the incredible responsiveness in this thread +1

[Silverleafeon]

I suggest that Natural Fighting feat, beside doublestrike bonus, gives....

+1 nods

Expecting some pretty beefy impressive but balanced rewording of
Natural Fighting
Improved Natural Fighting
Greater Natural Fighting

[Silverleafeon]

In my opinion, also the druids spell Flame Blade needs attention.
It should be a spell that makes it possible to have a fire or ice version, which would fit the druids in DDO who can transform into fire and water elementals.

+1 Cool Idea ;)

Ice Blade sounds really cool, especially is Flame Blade scales into epics better..

[Silverleafeon]

We actually hope to get to a Sorcerer's pass next (arcanes as a whole, but we feel that Sorcerors needs the most help). Those forms will get re-worked soon if they don't get an adjustment in this pass as a per-cursor.

Neat.

Sorcerer Capstone needs to have spell casting penalty removed for starters.
Looking forward to seeing your (or others) ideas on the subject.

[Silverleafeon]

Oh also, will Salt Ray be added to Master of the Wilds so epic level characters can get some higher max caster level/damage out of Salt Ray?

Interesting +1

[Silverleafeon]

Rangers and Barbarians gain equal amounts of wilderness lore to the druid - one rank per level so 20 ranks by level 20 . Its the bard who gets 1/2 rank per level. I rather like the flavor and the support for odd multi-class build from the primal sphere.

I hope SSG keeps the wilderness lore as a feature

You make a fair point re: the DC

+1

Big fan of more Wilderness/Religious/Arcane lore usages when possible.

[OfElectricMen]

Hi!

because how the math works when these effects stack isn't intuitive.
That means you need to redo the math. The guiding philosophy for things things should always be "how would this work at the table?"

[Silverleafeon]

I have seen Qstaff builds splash Druid in the past.
It might happen again with the core 3 in SH.

Will interesting to ponder the Rise of the 6/6/6 Druid/Monk/Rogue ???
LOL

[Kza]

thanks devs for the incredible responsiveness in this thread +1

Agree 100%

So fun, you feel as a player a part of the pass in a way you dont do othervise. Gj ssg, gj!

And as other ppl have stated, plz plz get salt ray into the Epic feat so it will be decent even at endgame! :-)

(big tradeoff anyway ruin gruin master and intensify- no sure you take it anyway tbh)

[Chacka_DDO]

8. Specific Spell Changes:



[*=1]Reincarnate's casting time and cool down will be put on par with Raise Dead.
[*=1]Baiting Bite bluff skill check will use the player's spot score instead of their bluff skill, wisdom bonus applies of course.
[*=1]Call Lightning Storm and Storm of Vengeance will have their damage progressions and values change to be an X per caster level to better benefit from increasing in caster level and max caster level effects.
[*=1]Call Lightning Storm now does 1d10 every 2 druid levels, max 15.
[*=1]Storm of Vengeance's Acid damage now scales at d8 per 3 druid levels, and its lightning damage 1d10 every 2 druid levels. Max of 25. Duration is 30 seconds. (duration will not scale with level, which didn't work anyway)
[*=1]Rising Fury's cooldown will be reduced to 30 seconds and the extend meta magic will work on it. (new)
[*=1]Produce Flame Projectile speed is being increased (new)
[*=1]Creeping cold and Greater creeping cold will now stack with each other when cast by other druids (two can each have their own copy on a target now) (new)



For the spells, I see in general no point why they should cap at a certain level at all.
A level 30 character needs to do more damage at level 30 if a spell does the same damage at level 30 as it does at level 15, something is obviously wrong.
You should give them a matching number of damage dices per character level and not caster level.
Because I see no point why a character with 10 druid level should not have trained the spells he knows to the same level as a build with 20 druid levels.
That a 10 level druid build cannot use all druid spells is, of course, ok in my opinion.

In times with the max level 10 or 20 this was no issue but now with level 30, it needs to be addressed in my opinion.

Furthermore, this should be a general rule in a game with multiclassing.
If you get any ability, this ability should scale with the character level.
A really good example is Stunning Fist (http://ddowiki.com/page/Stunning_Fist), there are a lot Spells, Feats etc. that don't match this requirement and you cannot change all at once but you should change them in the right way as you touch them in my opinion.

[ValariusK]

Do you have a target for how much melee DPS a melee-focused druid should do? How about a melee hybrid?
My take is a pure druid with melee focus in feats/gear etc in wolf should do a bit less than a swashbuckler, because they bring a lot more utility to the table and have comparable defensiveness. A melee hybrid, like the 10 druid/ranger/fighters should be able to put out comparable DPS to a swashbuckler.

[ThomasHunter]

In general, I like the thoughts and designs here. A couple of comments:

First, how about adding some cold damage to the Great White Wolf enhancement (or somewhere?). That seems flavorable and really cool. It would scale with Spell Power since that is granting spell power already?

Second, and most important, I feel like you all left off an important play style - "pack mentality". I just don't see the support for pets in any druid tree that comes close to what we see in the Warlock Enlightened Spirit tree. I mean, I absolutely love those abilities and when I have leveled my Warlock, I have switched into those enhancements. Please change those over to Druid or make something equally spicy there! This would make not only your pet better, but all summons. Fun stuff!

(note that I am going to copy this part over to the Arti conversation so that Steelstar sees this as it applies there as well).

Thanks for all of the many cool upgrades!
Taleisin

[CeltEireson]

No the gust of wind is single target effect in this case and will not effect spell effects in play. The term gust of wind is perhaps unfortunate. We'll look at re-writing the description to something that doesn't use that term.

-T

Torc, sorry for the somewhat off topic question, but is it possible for the cyclonic blast spell to also not effect spell effects in play (at least player ones) as its a pain to have the tier 5 AM SLA somewhat incompatible with some of our other spells like discos etc. Happy for the actual gust of wind to remain as is because there are some occasions when you would want to be able to disperse other players lasting AOE effects.

[Hipparan]

8. Specific Spell Changes:



[*=1]Reincarnate's casting time and cool down will be put on par with Raise Dead.
[*=1]Baiting Bite bluff skill check will use the player's spot score instead of their bluff skill, wisdom bonus applies of course.
[*=1]Call Lightning Storm and Storm of Vengeance will have their damage progressions and values change to be an X per caster level to better benefit from increasing in caster level and max caster level effects.
[*=1]Call Lightning Storm now does 1d10 every 2 druid levels, max 15.
[*=1]Storm of Vengeance's Acid damage now scales at d8 per 3 druid levels, and its lightning damage 1d10 every 2 druid levels. Max of 25. Duration is 30 seconds. (duration will not scale with level, which didn't work anyway)
[*=1]Rising Fury's cooldown will be reduced to 30 seconds and the extend meta magic will work on it. (new)
[*=1]Produce Flame Projectile speed is being increased (new)
[*=1]Creeping cold and Greater creeping cold will now stack with each other when cast by other druids (two can each have their own copy on a target now) (new)



Could you consider increasing the projectile speed of Creeping Doom as well? I know that sounds like it takes away the "creeping" aspect, but it also applies a DOT effect which is where I get more of the "creeping" vibe.

[Aelonwy]

+1

Big fan of more Wilderness/Religious/Arcane lore usages when possible.

Me too. I wish they would use the lore feats for more quest optionals, and dialogue optionals too.



In my opinion, also the druids spell Flame Blade needs attention.
It should be a spell that makes it possible to have a fire or ice version, which would fit the druids in DDO who can transform into fire and water elementals.


I support this Flame Blade/Ice Blade concept, it would be no different than the spell Fire Shield (which has a fire and cold version).

[Hipparan]

For the spells, I see in general no point why they should cap at a certain level at all.
A level 30 character needs to do more damage at level 30 if a spell does the same damage at level 30 as it does at level 15, something is obviously wrong.
You should give them a matching number of damage dices per character level and not caster level.
Because I see no point why a character with 10 druid level should not have trained the spells he knows to the same level as a build with 20 druid levels.
That a 10 level druid build cannot use all druid spells is, of course, ok in my opinion.

In times with the max level 10 or 20 this was no issue but now with level 30, it needs to be addressed in my opinion.

Furthermore, this should be a general rule in a game with multiclassing.
If you get any ability, this ability should scale with the character level.
A really good example is Stunning Fist (http://ddowiki.com/page/Stunning_Fist), there are a lot Spells, Feats etc. that don't match this requirement and you cannot change all at once but you should change them in the right way as you touch them in my opinion.

There are some Epic Feats that help boost the cap for certain spells. For example, Call Lightning has a maximum caster level of 15, but with the Master of the Wilds feat it will have a maximum caster level of 25. A pure Druid at level 20 will have a caster level of 20 and if they are in Primal Avatar or another Primal Sphere Epic Destiny that has been maxed out, they will have a caster level of 25.

One reason why spells don't scale with character level is that some spells don't scale damage but scale the number of projectiles (Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Frost Lance, etc). Because of this, if you had a level 30 character casting Magic Missile, they would be firing off 15 missiles every time they cast the spell which would be a Shiradi's dream but too powerful.

[ned_ellis]

First off : Thank you!!
Much appreciated work being done...love visual adjustments (add the suggested downtune of circle of fire visual pls), pet adjustment (just the death penalty is worth it!), tree adjustments overall, spell cooldown reductions and dmg scaling improvements, elemental absorption, etc.
I also thought the new tree would be utility/generalist but if it brings bears to my parties I'm all for it! :D

With regards to changes I can only really speak for the elemental/caster side :

If I've understood the new seasons mechanic (essentially depends on your form and no longer a timed change) I approve with, however, the need to modify the fire mantle and bring it up to par with the ice one - I would add that in general most of the work needed is on the spells.

What you have put down seems a good start (and I'm jiving along with Silverleafon's happy dance r.e. the raise cooldown especially!!) but I would add, as well as the fire mantle adjustment as mentioned above, the addition of two lvl 9 spells to replace them. With the autocast of the mantles, gated by lvls of pure druid and the lack of high level awesomeness you could kill two birds with one stone by replacing them in the spellbook with something else. This would also mitigate the huge sacrifice of being an 'all spell pwrs needed' class. Maybe this would be a way of using the suggestions of others in this thread (i heard chain lightning for eg; it's a 6lvl wiz spell for a top lvl spell slot after all so seems quite balanced to me)...?

With regards the missing spell changes we have the major, glaring, plsplsplshelpthese ones :
Flameblade - scaling pls! could tying something to spellpwr be a way perhaps?
Snare - as someone said, a web-like mechanic would be great
Enveloping Swarm - anything to make this more than a flavour cosmetic would be fantastic! From someone who can no longer justify the sp cost :(
Creeping Doom - same really, anything would help; much has been said by others (too slow, poison spell pwr, low dmg, etc.)
Elemental Toughness - less glaring but some scaling would be appreciated
Splinterbolt - I rly want to love it and use it but...cant...quite....
Lvl 9 Mantles - pls see above : replace them pls!!!

Also, if salt ray is top sla now pls fix it first - must cause helpless and better dmg scaling.
I'll shut up now! again thank you for the work guys!

p.s. rly tired so missnomered a lot of stuff but hope its still clear!)

[ned_ellis]

Oh also, will Salt Ray be added to Master of the Wilds so epic level characters can get some higher max caster level/damage out of Salt Ray?

+1

[Chacka_DDO]

[*=1]Attacks that require a specific weapon to be held in your hand will still not work in animal form (cause you don't have hands!)


I would give the reason, that in wolf or bear form the weapons are the fangs and claws ;)




We are reducing the Basic Wolf Form attack speed bonus to 15%. Winter wolf remains about the same speed at 30%. We are also fixing some flaky behavior in the attack chain.


It would be nice, if the attack speed bonus is displayed in the character sheet, I just assume this is also currently working but it is not displayed.
This is also the case for the Fatesinger ED ability Echoes of the Ancestors: Shiradi Champion, my testing confirmed that it seems to work, but the attack speed bonus for ranged attacks is not displayed in the character sheet.

[zonelad]

I am commenting here as one of the players who has used melee druid builds for a long time. I understand the need to tweak the druid class, but I have a number of concerns that I would like to voice while you are in the planning phase.

"Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes"

Does that mean wild shape is no longer is considered unarmed combat? How do the changes affect monk unarmed combat in wild shape? How will this affect armed (yet-unarmed in wildshape) ED abilities such as Pulverize, Headman's Chop?

There was a particular, if unintended balance to combat style working in wild shape. This allowed each style to be unique and have its pros and cons: SWF, TWF, THF, Shield/orb. What will be done to maintain the balance and uniqueness of each type of weapon fighting? The only viable options will be THF or shield/orb offhand, as dual wield is scrapped and single weapon fighting has been gutted.

[Cantor]

Think about it, devs: Efficient Metamagic cost 2 APs for a very small reduction in the cost of a single metamagic feat. It is very little and very expensive in APs for what it does. Please please please. Improve Efficient Metamagic for all spellcasters.

One enhancement to grant them all. It is way too costly. Of course, any touch here will probably remove player beneficial bugs.


What about Shield Mastery and Improved Shield Mastery?

5 minute cooldown is nuts. 2. 2 minute cooldown.

AC should be 2/4/6, I think.

WEAK. Add: Shillelagh adds +1/3 druid levels to your weapon's enhancement bonus. Also, it's not clear when the season changes now. Is it still a timer that is started when you switch forms? So you could hypothetically stay in one season forever by toggling your form on and off? I'd prefer that it just be tied to your elemental form the end no timer.

BE STILL MY HEART THREE WHOLE SPELLPOWER! 5/10/15, thanks. :P


SM is an important aspect, and needs to be addressed.

5minute is long, but it's also a very strong effect. Is it stacking or not?

2/4/6 AC should be obvious.

Shillelagh and flame blades both need better scaling.

5 universal spellpower per rank is prob too much, those are specific power values, I'd say 2-3 per rank.




IMPORTANT! Add tactics dc to things like termor, jaws of winter, throat rip, takedown, etc.

Remove seasons.

Agreed, without tactics they are not going to hit or scale in the future.

Rotating seasons is super annoying, I gathered that in elemental form they will not rotate anymore? not clear but kinda implied. Will the still rotate for animals? or is it a selector?


Need details on what this actually means for the build.
Will the cleaves remain a fast attack like they are now, or will we be a getting slow motion cleave like the trees current normal attacks?
Explain this more.

Been here since 2006 and this may just be the thing that makes me leave depending how badly you mangle the trees.

I would expect it to neuter trees if there isn't some other adjustment. The only thing that makes trees at all playable is using cleaves to bypass the speed. If you kill cleaves, you MUST change base tree attack speed.


Spirit Refreshed: When shape shifting forms below 33% health you heal to full and cure all fatigue. This benefit can only occur once every 3 minutes. AP COST: 2 (new – applies to all forms now)

Could this work on reaper?
Full heal for every 3 min
If so, isn't it over-powered when others have significant self-healing penalty?

Not sure I would say OP since it does have a nice long cooldown and a low hp requirement. But it would be darn convenient compared the scrolling.


I don't know how possible this would be, but in regards to armor that druids can wear (not just at cap, and not just at specific levels), would it be possible to add an option in Giant Hold, in addition to the current dragonscale armors we can make, to use the Dragon Scales (and Epic Dragon Scales) to create a blank Dragonscale armor (of Cloth / Light / Medium / Heavy / Docent) at either ML 1 to be crafted on, or perhaps at the main AMLs for armors. (1, 4, 10, 16, and 22 requiring the epic scales), that we can Disjunct and craft on to.


Great idea, some option for a heavy armor non-metal blank would be great.


After looking at this; I was wondering if this will take all bonuses into account before the player shapeshifts? By this I mean the following effects:
A Dance of Flowers
Improved Power Attack
Weapon Attachment
Deadly Blades
Dancing with Flames
Combat Brute
etc...
.

I'd say no to weapon attachment, as you are no longer forged. But all the others should hopefully see some testing.



was wand and scroll master so OP to remove it entirely from the enhancements?


Ouch, big annoyance for scrolling. It is a caster class and should get this.

[Hipparan]

I am commenting here as one of the players who has used melee druid builds for a long time. I understand the need to tweak the druid class, but I have a number of concerns that I would like to voice while you are in the planning phase.

"Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes"

Does that mean wild shape is no longer is considered unarmed combat? How do the changes affect monk unarmed combat in wild shape? How will this affect armed (yet-unarmed in wildshape) ED abilities such as Pulverize, Headman's Chop?

There was a particular, if unintended balance to combat style working in wild shape. This allowed each style to be unique and have its pros and cons: SWF, TWF, THF, Shield/orb. What will be done to maintain the balance and uniqueness of each type of weapon fighting? The only viable options will be THF or shield/orb offhand, as dual wield is scrapped and single weapon fighting has been gutted.



SM is an important aspect, and needs to be addressed.


Based on my understanding of the proposed changes, Wolf form and Bear form essentially become their own combat styles. The THF, TWF, SWF, and SM feats will not work with animal forms because they are two different combat styles. However, some enhancements tied to weapons should still work such as Dex to attack and Damage for Quarterstaves from Thief Acrobat. Dex to attack and damage would not work from the Tempest tree because it requires dual wielding which is a combat style.

[XmortalX]

Add earth elemental Forms?
Add Air Elemental forms?

[silinteresting]

i would also like to say it would be nice if flameblade scailed alot better than it does now, also seeing
a ice blade as a multi selector would be fantastic but only if it scales better or whats the point.

your friend sil :)

[Arkat]

Add Electric Elemental forms?

That would be an Air Elemental.

[XmortalX]

That would be an Air Elemental.

updated lol

[MasterKernel]

Existing Enhancement Trees revamped and new tree "Nature's Protector" added.

Another melee tree ? :-( Oh, well. I was hoping for the healing one.



Water and Fire Elemental form will now grant 65% Absorption to their element, instead of Damage Reduction, and 15% Vulnerability to their opposite element. The bonus will not stack with Fire Shields or Energy Sheath.

While it's OK to not stack with the Spell, while shouldn't it stuck with the Destiny ?



Master of the Elements: Gain 5/10/15 spell power in your season. Passive rank 3: If the character has 17 druid levels they gain anger of the noonday sun or mantle of icy when changing in the appropriate elemental form. This effect costs 8 spells points when it occurs.

Anger of the Noonday Sun is a terrible buff. It should be reworked.



Nature's Wellspring: The effects of your shillelagh are doubled. +1 max caster level in your active season

Shillelagh ? Why would you put this into the caster's tree ? O_o


Autumnal Susurrus and Winter's Heart are gone… Not updated to some strong wersions, but gone. Well, it doesn't matter much I think.

2×Efficient MetaMagic + Efficient Heighten ? Why ? Sadly, they don't lower the SP cost enough to invest points in these.

The SLAs line is 1 tier lower. Yay ! And a new SLA too ! But Salt Ray ? That spell does something like "nothing at all". You should rework the spell first or (and ?) choose another one for the SLA. (Maybe some new spell/SLA ?)
Plus, only 1 new SLA feels like it's not enough, IMO. Especially, after Clerics got tons of the new SLAs within Domains. Maybe you can combine Child of Summer and Child of Winter into one, and squeeze another SLA (Flame Strike/Wall of Fire (!!!)/Sunbeam) into the Cores ? Pretty please ?

[Ghwyn]

Wisdom to hit/damage was an option we considered, and haven't ruled out entirely. We're waiting to see how the pass pans out a little more first. Druids hybrid ability is to encouraged to a degree, but at the same time we don't want to create a top tier dpser that has full spell pool for nothing but earth quake and healing on the side because that will then eclipse many melee builds.

-T


I think that evening out all classes is not good for the game. It is good to have some builds be better, especially multiclass, as that rewards players that know the game. Pure is the easy button, but easy is no fun.

[Seikojin]

Mmmm rage bearians. Nice! I guess I won't delete that bank toon that I thought was a waste of a build.

Great work so far and makes me reroll/tr at least once. :)

[fmalfeas]

There'll definitely be more Druid-friendly heavy armor options in the future, but in the meantime I'll point you at the one from Update 35: Scales of Avarice, which drop in the quest Black and Blue.

Still, first option is at 10, and named.

Might I suggest a new lootgen heavy? Something like Direpelt, made from hides of Dire beasts (and thus sturdier and heavier than hide armor)? You could even use it as a basis for neat things like a named Direbear pelt that actually looks like you're wearing a bear. Barbarians will fight over getting one of those to use a mirror on!

[slarden]

Primal avatar is a niche tree for tree builds. Please consider boosting the SLAs so it's a consideration for caster druids.

[edrein]

There are some Epic Feats that help boost the cap for certain spells. For example, Call Lightning has a maximum caster level of 15, but with the Master of the Wilds feat it will have a maximum caster level of 25. A pure Druid at level 20 will have a caster level of 20 and if they are in Primal Avatar or another Primal Sphere Epic Destiny that has been maxed out, they will have a caster level of 25.

One reason why spells don't scale with character level is that some spells don't scale damage but scale the number of projectiles (Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Frost Lance, etc). Because of this, if you had a level 30 character casting Magic Missile, they would be firing off 15 missiles every time they cast the spell which would be a Shiradi's dream but too powerful.

From a purely damage standpoint (removing the 15 hit proc for Shiradi) a level 30 magic missle would be a little bit under par of an Eldritch Wave from T5 Soul Eater. Which to me would be a solid boon to arcanes for bringing them up to the modern caster DPS standard.

[dunklezhan]

I am hangpy. That is, happy and angry.

I am very happy about: many things. The responsiveness in this thread, the general retooling, gawd, all kinds of stuff. This is great.

I am VERY ANGRY. You waited until the week after I finally TRd to a caster druid when all I've ever wanted to play with Druids was a pure druid bear tank. Its just been pointless trying up to now. And so now. After years of waiting, after two false starts where I just deleted the character at about L7-8 in frustration because I just didn't feel it, after I finally cave and TR into a caster druid just to support my guildies on the TR train... YOU GO AND REVAMP BLOODY BEAR NOW I'VE BUILT A CHARACTER WHOLLY UNSUITED TO IT. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH HAVE YOU ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TAKES ME TO RUN 1-20 WHY GOD WHYYYYYY WHEN DO I GET TO SEE THE SAILBOAT?!!!.

Thank you. And also I hate you.

But mostly thank you.

[Hipparan]

Primal avatar is a niche tree for tree builds. Please consider boosting the SLAs so it's a consideration for caster druids.

I agree with this whole-heartedly. Tsunami is nice except that it washes away Earthquakes which is really unhelpful. I really like Insidious Spores but due to the lack of Poison Spellpower and the 30 sp cost, it's costly to stack it up on enemies. Primal Avatar could certainly use new Tier 5 and Tier 6 abilities for casters as well.

[edrein]

Could Nature's Protector be renamed to "Ursine Avatar" and the tree be split into multiselector roles?

I think it's fair to say that the community of druids have been split on what bears can do for a long time, and the current idea of the tree seems to reflect that. There's a clear lack of decisive decision making on whether or not the tree is purely a tank or a tank DPS hybrid like vanguard (albeit severely weaker).

I think it would be easier to diverge them into two different playstyles within the same tree. For the more DPS oriented make use of the rage theme, as bears are often the personification of nature's wrath. For the tanky bear? They should have elemental absorption built in, fear immunity, a hearty amount of PRR for shrugging off attacks from their thick hide.

I however, hope the devs have listened to the years of feedback about THF glancing blow style bonuses for bears. Both types would need this to keep aggro/deal damage. A good tank needs an insane amount of threat generation to even garner aggro, they need sustained hate (DPS) to keep that aggro off actual DPSers. This is what makes the vanguard tree useful. One can go purely DPS oriented with Vanguard if they wish, or they can splash points into it as an actual Defender tank to get some useful aggro sustaining damage and CC.

[Lonnbeimnech]

I am hangpy. That is, happy and angry.

I am very happy about: many things. The responsiveness in this thread, the general retooling, gawd, all kinds of stuff. This is great.

I am VERY ANGRY. You waited until the week after I finally TRd to a caster druid when all I've ever wanted to play with Druids was a pure druid bear tank. Its just been pointless trying up to now. And so now. After years of waiting, after two false starts where I just deleted the character at about L7-8 in frustration because I just didn't feel it, after I finally cave and TR into a caster druid just to support my guildies on the TR train... YOU GO AND REVAMP BLOODY BEAR NOW I'VE BUILT A CHARACTER WHOLLY UNSUITED TO IT. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH HAVE YOU ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TAKES ME TO RUN 1-20 WHY GOD WHYYYYYY WHEN DO I GET TO SEE THE SAILBOAT?!!!.

Thank you. And also I hate you.

But mostly thank you.
good news is that you have months before this sees the light of day, to cap and tr back into a bear and play it from lvl 1.

[Chacka_DDO]

There are some Epic Feats that help boost the cap for certain spells. For example, Call Lightning has a maximum caster level of 15, but with the Master of the Wilds feat it will have a maximum caster level of 25. A pure Druid at level 20 will have a caster level of 20 and if they are in Primal Avatar or another Primal Sphere Epic Destiny that has been maxed out, they will have a caster level of 25.

Of course, I know there are such feats but:
1. they do what the spells should have anyway
2. they add only 10 maximum caster level so some spells lifted from ridiculous 5 caps to sill, not sufficient 15
3. they apply only on a few spells.
This feat is a good idea but they should apply to all spells of one kind. e.g. mastery of light spells should enhance all spells that do light damage and because spells should be uncapped those feats could increase the character level when you cast the spell by 3 e.g.


One reason why spells don't scale with character level is that some spells don't scale damage but scale the number of projectiles (Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Frost Lance, etc). Because of this, if you had a level 30 character casting Magic Missile, they would be firing off 15 missiles every time they cast the spell which would be a Shiradi's dream but too powerful.

Also here I know of course that the spells scale differently but there is no spell so far that caps beyond 20 (Storm of vengeance at 25 would be an exception after this druid pass)
And of course, you can not blindly make such spells uncapped, you must look into each spell then, this is why I say you must give them matching dices (or the number of projectiles or other things depending on the spells).
The point is all abilities including spells should scale with the character level, so all of them are not too strong in low level and also not too weak at level 30.
Of course, I don't want spells overpowered at level 30 but I want all of them useful if any possible.

[Hipparan]

Of course, I know there are such feats but:
1. they do what the spells should have anyway
2. they add only 10 maximum caster level so some spells lifted from ridiculous 5 caps to sill, not sufficient 15
3. they apply only on a few spells.
This feat is a good idea but they should apply to all spells of one kind. e.g. mastery of light spells should enhance all spells that do light damage and because spells should be uncapped those feats could increase the character level when you cast the spell by 3 e.g.



Also here I know of course that the spells scale differently but there is no spell so far that caps beyond 20 (Storm of vengeance at 25 would be an exception after this druid pass)
And of course, you can not blindly make such spells uncapped, you must look into each spell then, this is why I say you must give them matching dices (or the number of projectiles or other things depending on the spells).
The point is all abilities including spells should scale with the character level, so all of them are not too strong in low level and also not too weak at level 30.
Of course, I don't want spells overpowered at level 30 but I want all of them useful if any possible.

The idea of the Master feats applying to all spells of one kind is an idea I could get behind. I only wonder about Master of the Wilds because there are multiple types of spells so it would have to extend to all Druid spells.

There are a number of spells that cap beyond 20 or have no cap at all. Polar Ray caps at 25, and I don't think Necrotic Ray or Sunbeam cap at all. I know there are more examples but I can't think of them off the top of my head. Some spells I thinks really should have no cap such as Splinterbolt. It's a cool spell but once you get into Epic levels it's pretty useless. Spike Growth is another that could use a damage boost and I think it should extend to 30 seconds to match Blade Barrier and other AOE spells instead of being 15 seconds.

[Silverleafeon]

... After years of waiting, after two false starts where I just deleted the character at about L7-8 in frustration because...

VIP get an UNDELETE feature for free of charge.
Make out a special ticket.
Usually within a few days.

If you aren't VIP, you could sub for a month.

[HuneyMunster]

Neat.

Sorcerer Capstone needs to have spell casting penalty removed for starters.
Looking forward to seeing your (or others) ideas on the subject.

Not sure what you mean here as I don't find the spell casting penalty to opposing element a problem. You shouldn't be really taking any/many spells from those that oppose your main. My main issue is the extra 10% extra spell point cost while in Savant form that negates the spell point cost reduction you get from the 10 epic levels.

Though as it stand i tend to skip putting points into a secondary Savant and spend them in Eldrtich, Harper and racial. This mean i can still use 2 other schools that don't oppose my main.

Sorcerers could do with a real 3rd prestige as Eldridtch Knight just offers some defensive bonuses such as Shield spell, HP, Wand and Scroll Mastery and Arcane Barrier for most casters.

[Starla70]

Scales of Avarice are great for a druid! I got it my last druid life and am using it for my cleric life now.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Not sure what you mean here as I don't find the spell casting penalty to opposing element a problem. You shouldn't be really taking any/many spells from those that oppose your main. My main issue is the extra 10% extra spell point cost while in Savant form that negates the spell point cost reduction you get from the 10 epic levels.

Though as it stand i tend to skip putting points into a secondary Savant and spend them in Eldrtich, Harper and racial. This mean i can still use 2 other schools that don't oppose my main.

Sorcerers could do with a real 3rd prestige as Eldridtch Knight just offers some defensive bonuses such as Shield spell, HP, Wand and Scroll Mastery and Arcane Barrier for most casters.

think air sorcs with stoneskin, or fire sorcs with reduced duration on fireshield cold, reduced duration on resist elements or reduced protection from protect elements etc

[Silverleafeon]

Not sure what you mean here...

When Sorcerers take the capstone, they sometimes don't turn into elemental form, because when you do all your spells cost +10% more spell points. Capstones should not have penalties like that.

{And also warforged can no longer use repair on self since they are now an elemental.}

[Armedwithpencils]

To be honest most of my problem with druids is they never felt druid enough even after reading that still seems the same. The lack of forms is one thing I have an issue with but I understand with coding may make it hard to give more. Why a wolf and a bear? Why not a lion? There are far less types of cats in ddo then there are of wolfs or dogs. They feel to forced to be fighter or caster and don't do either well enough from what I read its the same. These are all just opinions and I can't say much more till I play it.

[elvesunited]

Well I took my wolf out and walked around in stealth because I've never used stealth with him before. And he's no rogue. His sneak attack damage (meager compared to a rogue ) doesn't make up for the much slower attack rate. For that one stealth hit I could of had 2-3 normal hits. And the movement speed was atrocious. Wolves like mine utilize their sneak attack damage through bluff effects and deception items.

Evasion would be meaningless for me since I like my heavy armor. ( scales of avarice, epic Black dragon scale, white dragonscale ) But even then its an ability that druids being strength maxed or wisdom maxed with druid class being a low reflex class aren't designed to use.

Unless wolves get wisdom for damage they are going to be split smong two choices. The strength based melee attacker and the wisdom based caster. It's a valid choice if they don't get it, but it also means that those animal form druids who go with strength are going to end up ignoring all these wisdom DC save enhancements. ( particularly the bear stun )

In a previous life my wolf tried to pull off trip. Combat expertise, improved trip, trip bonus items, the works and I still was just terrible at it. Even as epic went to heroic quests and still almost never managed the trip.

Still curious how my Dethek Runestone ( it took a lot of runs to get that ) and cloak of the fallen will be effected.

Probably the biggest blow to my wolf will be what happens with shield mastery and improved shield mastery. Survivability is a big concern and I use those, a splash into stalwart defender, and a twist into shield mastery in Unyielding Sentinel to keep myself alive and biting.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

its nice to see druid updated however. i dont know if i can aggre with the two handed weapons working normaly in shapeshifted form, if no other combat bonuses will work then two handed will be forced upon anyone who intends to build a shapeshift melee druid due to the best benefits.

Oh, I dunno. A second weapon with caster stuff on it; a second weapon with passive DPS (doublestrike, seeker, sneak attack, deadly, all that fun stuff that's not direct damage); a shield with caster stuff or passive DPS... there are lots of reasons to not go THF as a druid...

[Elfishski]

Generally these look like pretty fun and thematic changes, thanks! Some specific comments below (ignoring the caster tree)



1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.

I'm quite disappointed as having animal forms use only some stats means that different and unusual weapons might be optimal for animal forms rather than the same optimal DPS weapon for all builds, but I guess it's understandable and will make animal forms less confusing too.




We are reducing the Basic Wolf Form attack speed bonus to 15%. Winter wolf remains about the same speed at 30%. We are also fixing some flaky behavior in the attack chain.
The Bear attack animation chain will be improved to make its attack rate match other weapon styles.


Good change for wolves to make winter wolf notably better than basic wolf. Much as with great crossbows, rather than making the painfully slow bear attack speed faster function just like other attacks I'd rather make bears hit much harder with +[W]s on every attack or something instead?



Reincarnate's casting time and cool down will be put on par with Raise Dead.


Very glad to see some reduction in the time for casting reincarnate, but I'd rather see it still take a bit longer than raise dead (say 33-50% longer not long enough to read War and Peace), then double the racial bonuses from whatever you're reincarnated as. Just for some flavour so you know you're a druid and not a cleric.



NATURE'S WARRIOR
TIER 2

[/B]
Flight: Gain an uncapped dodge bonus of 20% for 10/20/30 seconds, costs 1 wild empathy to activate, 30 second cooldown. AP COST: 1

Ghost Wolf: Requires wolf form. Activate, gain 50% incorpreal defense for 30 seconds, cooldown 5 minutes. Passive: Gain ghost touch while in wolf form to your melee attacks AP COST: 2

Prey on the Weak: 8/15% Damage Bonus against helpless targets AP COST: 1


Flight is functionally +20% dodge and dodge cap bonus all the time that matters. It's too much for 3ap! I'd probably recommend making this not ignore dodge cap. That way it's a super useful ability at lower levels where you don't have great dodge items, and something that maybe at cap you don't bother with but you're happy to have to unlock the subsequent abilities it unlocks.

Prey on the weak is cheaper than other helpless target boosts at a lower level tier of tree than generally available. Should be either 2AP per rank or 5%/10% maybe.

Otherwise looks generally fun. Need to make sure DCs scale in line with other DCs in the game.



NATURE'S PROTECTOR - new bear tree!


General thoughts:
I *LOVE* that this tree supports and welcomes that thematically fun and awesome barbarian/bear druid multiclass which was all kinds of broken before. One thing to note is that I hope that the special animal attacks which are typed as spells will work while raging otherwise it's still going to be all frustrating wrong.
I do *not* love that a barbarian splashing a few levels of druid will be much more barbariany (and clearly more powerful) than a pure barbarian.

I love the theme of building up charges of killer instinct then making that into an effective roar attack.

Healing from shape shifting... eh, if I want to be a particular form I kind of want to stay in that form and not be hitting the panic button of a glitchy animation for healing.

Ursa protector: just like in stalwart/sacred defender, this line is very badly frontloaded in that everyone who can maths obviously takes the HUGE HP boost at T3 leaving meh leftovers at T5. There's no choice here, it's 25% at T3, 6con at T4, a bit of MRR at T5. Make it the other way around in a fixed order, or something mixed up like: +1mrr/+1con x3 at T3, +1mrr/+4%hp x3 at T4, +1mrr/+1con/+4%hp x3 at T5.

Again, make sure DCs scale in line with other DCs in the game.

[Xanthrawl]

Aaaah!!!!! Good to know. We'll get this fixed.

-T

Don't take this the wrong way, but this is a prime example of why many folks, myself included, don't submit bug reports anymore. This is a pretty well-known, easily replicatable, and documented bug. It's been around for ages, and many people have submitted reports on the subject. I'm 99% certain there were even a couple of posts about this ages ago though searching from a smart phone is not very easy.

I'm glad it will finally be resolved, and thank you for acknowledging the issue. It's pretty easy to work around, but annoying in raids.

[Arkitektonik]

Hello.

A lot of work here, good job!

15% speed, for 2 lvls splash, depending on build, is OP.
10% in wolf and 20% dire wolf. It's enough.


It is not OP at all as you lose SWF or TWF or THF. Wolf even with 30% speed boost is inherently inferior to TWF with 100% double strike (which does not need natural fighting feats!!).

I think the animal forms would be much more interesting if there were more forms available (ie developers were less lazy), like a Snow Leopard (reskinned panther), Owlbear etc.

2nd rate wolfs and bears, no thanks.

[dunklezhan]

good news is that you have months before this sees the light of day, to cap and tr back into a bear and play it from lvl 1.

I average about a life a year, probably barely even that often. I have alts and about 6 hours playtime a week if I'm lucky. There's plenty of good news in the proposed changes - I just wish they'd announced they were doing it a week ago as it might well have changed my plans.

/meh

[EllisDee37]

Aaaah!!!!! Good to know. We'll get this fixed. Great to hear.

Just as an FYI, that niac's/creeping cold bug has always existed, from the very first day druids went live until this upcoming druid pass (hopefully) fixes it. Specifically, creeping cold suppresses niac's, but doesn't remove it. If the druid dies, or gets bored, as soon as creeping cold wears off, niac's kicks back in at whatever strength the arcane has been futilely keeping it applied at.

(This was a super annoying bug back in the day when MotU first came out and everyone was still running Shroud. One druid in the group meant that all the arcanes were nerfed against Harry.)

NOTE: If I remember correctly, the weapon effect Crushing Wave also suppresses niac's.

[btolson]

General changes: good. Tree changes: kinda meh.

This isn't going to solve the major issues facing caster druids (lack of cheap AoE, lack of non-reflex-targeting spells, tons of damage types to gear for), and is painting Furryform druids into a corner where a Pure 20 is not very distinct from a Stalwart Stance MC (with the mechanical edge looking very much in favor of the MC).

I'd suggest 3 broad things, which actually shouldn't involve that much work:

1) Round out Season's Herald with more AoE and shoring up inherent weaknesses
- Add more SLAs, and make some a package deal based on your fire/water form.
-- T1 becomes Produce Flame AND Creeping Cold (due to limited space).
-- T5 might become either Wall of Fire (only usable in fire elemental form) AND Ice Storm (only usable in water elemental form) or maybe Firestorm AND Ice Flowers (again, with fire/water restrictions).
- Add a way to raise weaker spellpowers. E.g., a clickie that causes all of your Winter Elements to be set equal to your highest Winter Spellpower/crit values for 30? seconds on a 3? minute CD. This makes gearing more forgiving without totally dropping the need to care about other elements.

2) Merge the offensive/rage-oriented stuff from the Bear tree into the Wolf tree, creating a general Furry Tree.
- Many of these enhancements can basically read: "When you're in wolf form, A happens. When you're in bear form, B happens." Won't require a ton of extra space. Some things can be collapsed into more ranks to save vertical space.
- Drop some stuff, like Evasion (druid reflex is terrible and no pure druid can afford to pump dex for it; I guarantee any druid with a working reflex/evasion in tough content is going to be MC'd with a class that gets evasion for free anyway). And Stalking Prey (the reality of viable melee stealth in DDO means you can't add this meaningfully into 1 enhancement, leave this for the MC's too).

3) Third tree becomes Swarm Tree, where the druid leverages swarms of bugs/bats/whatever to do various things, serving as a hybrid tree.
- This is where defensive stuff can go/stay, since Swarm Druids are all about the mitigations. Some passive (as exist currently in Bear Tree), some active (things like Ghost Wolf can move here and be renamed). Drop the +%max hitpoints, leave that as the Defender trees' identity.
- This should also get a line of offensive bursts/blasts that target FORT or WILL. Caster druids need this. Piercing or sonic damage probably, depending on the swarms involved.
-- Conjuration DC's in the tree somewhere too.
- This should also get a line of touch-ranged Control options (to give Furries a way to CC based on WIS vs Balance or Concentrate). The ideas for Great Maul and Improved Roar can be re-themed to swarms, to not use wilderness/STR, and be allowed in wolf form.
- Ideally this would even involve a highly mobile Swarm Form, like in PnP, but that is probably too ambitious. Conjuring swarms for damage/buffs/debuffs/control is all that's really required mechanically.

I won't make this super long with specific ability suggestions. You guys are smart enough to look up Swarm Druid abilities from PnP or come up with your own.

This isn't as dramatic as it may initially sound. A lot of the current plan will still work, it just needs reorganizing/renaming. The main changes come in the form of the added Swarm Attacks, and perhaps some party-wide Swarm Mitigation Buffs. I don't consider it optional though, it seems sorely needed to round out both casters and furries in a unique and viable (non-5-primary-stats) way. Pure druids really should feel a lot different than a Stalwart MC.

[Pilgrim1]

General changes: good. Tree changes: kinda meh.

This isn't going to solve the major issues facing caster druids (lack of cheap AoE, lack of non-reflex-targeting spells, tons of damage types to gear for), and is painting Furryform druids into a corner where a Pure 20 is not very distinct from a Stalwart Stance MC (with the mechanical edge looking very much in favor of the MC).

I'd suggest 3 broad things, which actually shouldn't involve that much work:

1) Round out Season's Herald with more AoE and shoring up inherent weaknesses
- Add more SLAs, and make some a package deal based on your fire/water form.
-- T1 becomes Produce Flame AND Creeping Cold (due to limited space).
-- T5 might become either Wall of Fire (only usable in fire elemental form) AND Ice Storm (only usable in water elemental form) or maybe Firestorm AND Ice Flowers (again, with fire/water restrictions).
- Add a way to raise weaker spellpowers. E.g., a clickie that causes all of your Winter Elements to be set equal to your highest Winter Spellpower/crit values for 30? seconds on a 3? minute CD. This makes gearing more forgiving without totally dropping the need to care about other elements.

2) Merge the offensive/rage-oriented stuff from the Bear tree into the Wolf tree, creating a general Furry Tree.
- Many of these enhancements can basically read: "When you're in wolf form, A happens. When you're in bear form, B happens." Won't require a ton of extra space. Some things can be collapsed into more ranks to save vertical space.
- Drop some stuff, like Evasion (druid reflex is terrible and no pure druid can afford to pump dex for it; I guarantee any druid with a working reflex/evasion in tough content is going to be MC'd with a class that gets evasion for free anyway). And Stalking Prey (the reality of viable melee stealth in DDO means you can't add this meaningfully into 1 enhancement, leave this for the MC's too).

Quoted and reposted for emphisis. These 2 issues are really what hampers druids. Lack of AoE options, and lack of flexible shapeshifting abilities.

If you devide the trees into bear and wolf form then you divide the druid class into bear and wolf builds. There is no reason why a druid should not be able to be viable at bear and wolf!

Again, AoE damage and multiple spell power issues really hamper the class.

I’m not sure about the swarm idea but i think it could work. Also we nead some more pet buffs in there.

[Pilgrim1]

SEASONS HERALD

[/B][INDENT]1. Child of Summer: You gain the ability Child of Summer: Activate to grant +5 Spellpower when casting fire, force, light, sonic and positive spells. This seasonal Spellpower is multiplied by one for every Core enhancement possessed in Season's Herald (starting with this one), up to +30 when you have all six Enhancements. Lasts until death or change of season. Fire Elemental form changes you into this season automatically.

Passive: +1 Universal Spellpower per AP spent in this tree.

2. Child of Winter: You gain Child of Winter: Activate to gain +5 Spellpower when casting water, acid, earth and electric spells per core in this tree. Lasts until death or season change. Water elemental form changes you into this season automatically.

Wax and Wane: +2% critical chance with spells associated with your current season.
Winter: Acid, Cold, Electric, Earth, and Water
Summer: Fire, Force, Light, Positive, Force and Sonic
-AP COST: 2

Master of the Elements: Gain 5/10/15 spell power in your season. Passive rank 3: If the character has 17 druid levels they gain anger of the noonday sun or mantle of icy when changing in the appropriate elemental form. This effect costs 8 spells points when it occurs.



So for a caster druid they get 45 spell power and +8 critical chance from enhancments to there assoiated season. They get 0 bonuses to the off season. Currently you retain the critical chance from the other season.

Sounds good? Well think about this senerio which hapens most quests:

BOSS FIGHT! Time to DPS the boss!
Stack arcain pulse (impulse - summer)
Cast the cold dots (cold - winter)
Mix in word of balance (impulse - summer)
Throw in call lighting (lighting - winter)
+ whatever else is relivent for the mob or situation

Due to the fact that our spells are so deverse in energy type, and we have so few of them, any druid will be often casting spells from there off season.

Can we please change the crit line to be:
+1 critical chance to all spells
+2 Critical chance to all seasonal spells
For a total of +3.

This is similar to how the archamge treats imulse spell power. If you think its to powerful then make it +1 crit chance to season spells. But give something to all spells.

[Archaos]

...when it's adjusted as will how it compares to other builds. ...We're running the numbers on a variety of builds, some for considerations outside of this pass. Once we figure out an approach we'll post it.

-T

Primal Avatar is NOT a build, it is an epic destiny. Comparing a destiny with build is nonsense, without looking at the synergies.

Stop using your variety of sub-optimal builds for comparison purposes. People play sub-optimal builds because a) they enjoy the flavor and b) they don't care about other builds being more powerful c) they are reincarnating

Stop running numbers, and start playing the game - or ask people who are actually good at this game for advice. Trees (and to a lesser extent wolves) are very difficult to play, even with macros - this factor wont appear on your number crunching.

Stop balancing the builds for difficulty levels that aren't challenging. No-one cares if wolves are OP on epic elite, because anyone running easy quests just wants to zerg or pike some xp.

I enjoyed playing DDO for the varieties of builds that work together to successfully complete high reaper challenging quests. By crunching numbers so all builds end up with the same numbers, and not actually considering play style and party dynamics, is precisely why you end up with an imbalance in build variations. Its not all about the numbers.

Right now, there is only one build powergamers should be playing, and that is the Duality, Prowess, Legendary Dreadnought, Silent Avenger, 20 Monk. You will have higher dps numbers than any of these other builds being mentioned in this thread. And more significantly you don't need teamwork, complicated hotbars/macros, or another other builds in your party, and still succeed in higher difficulty quests than you're running now.

And apparently this is a result of number crunching. Why play a wolf or a tree, when you still need your friend to be a healer, another to play cc? Right now, this game is about everyone becoming a monk. Who cares about wolves and trees?

[silinteresting]

To be honest most of my problem with druids is they never felt druid enough even after reading that still seems the same. The lack of forms is one thing I have an issue with but I understand with coding may make it hard to give more. Why a wolf and a bear? Why not a lion? There are far less types of cats in ddo then there are of wolfs or dogs. They feel to forced to be fighter or caster and don't do either well enough from what I read its the same. These are all just opinions and I can't say much more till I play it.

you turn round and say that they dont feel druid enough and then ask why a wolf and a bear, you do know these are iconic druid
animals?. the only other two iconic animals i can think of are the raven, i doubt ddo will do this as we dont fly in this game but it
would be really cool to see and a deer, i cant see how a deer would be good for ddo but hey you never no. as for cats these are
not very druidic really well at least to celtic tradition unless your talking scotish totem. i do have to admit now i think of this that
the goddess brighid did have a cat compainion but even she was known as the daughter of the bear. there maybe others and other
examples but while im having my first coffee of the morning i dont recall any.

your friend sil :)

oh i forgot the salmon but again i dont see how ddo could fit a fish into the game, besides if my memory is correct this was only used
in a kinda meditation ritual to gain wisdom, geez i need more coffee....

[Maelodic]

Are you going to bring the wolf spell abilities in line that they can actually be used? Snowslide and cold breath would be amazing with proper dcs, baiting bite and takedown too.

[thedip]

When you have a look at druids can you also have a look at weapon effects. I was using my Morninglord Scimitar in Multitudes of Menace (EN) on the Cultists, according to the weapon blurb I should have been doing 9d6 fire damage. I noticed that the maximum amount of damage that I was actually doing in wolf form was 1d6; I then switched to human form and was indeed started doing 9d6 fire damage. This was tested on multiple mobs of cultists.

(I just tested it again in Lords of Dust (EH) on the cultists and attack dogs and saw the same effect 1d6 fire and 1d6 good damage when in animal form and 9d6 fire and 9d6 good damage in human form).

My understanding was that you received the benefits of the weapon (not weapon die) when in animal form - am I wrong?

While you are at it - could you see why the Elder Dryad only comes sometimes when I summon her - is there something wrong with my wolf breath? I only ever summon her out of combat.

[unbongwah]

I do *not* love that a barbarian splashing a few levels of druid will be much more barbariany (and clearly more powerful) than a pure barbarian.
How so? Losing Storm's Eye is a pretty big deal; losing Death Frenzy by splashing more than 2 druid for Nature's Defense is significant too. [I'm inferring it works exactly like Stalwart defensive stance except you're allowed to Rage.] I'm not seeing anything in the first couple of tiers of Nature's Protector which makes druid-splashed barbs "clearly more powerful." What do you have in mind?

[Lonnbeimnech]

It is not OP at all as you lose SWF or TWF or THF. Wolf even with 30% speed boost is inherently inferior to TWF with 100% double strike (which does not need natural fighting feats!!).

I think the animal forms would be much more interesting if there were more forms available (ie developers were less lazy), like a Snow Leopard (reskinned panther), Owlbear etc.

2nd rate wolfs and bears, no thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t0Bd6jpCzI

[ThrakThor]

Can it be considered so when in either elemental form (Fire or Water) that one is immune to physical hold spells and abilities like web (http://ddowiki.com/page/Web), entangle (http://ddowiki.com/page/Entangle) (oozes get a pass but not water?), and earth grab (http://ddowiki.com/page/Earth_grab), etc. In some of the descriptions it does specify that it does not affect fire elementals but I still can't figure out how webs, vines, or rocks would grab fire or water. I suppose it is "jazz hands" MAGIC, but it just feels wrong. I'm also fine for this change to affect monster elementals too.

Cheers

[Silverleafeon]

No these enhancements are like all the other meta-magic cost reducers in all of the other trees. I was just being lazy typing them up. They work exactly the same and the only real change is Season's Herald now gets to pick an extra meta magic to reduce than they did before.

The Devs should probably have a big sit down to consider dropping the cost of these from 2 to 1 for all spellcasters, whether the answer is yes or no...

[kain741]

There'll definitely be more Druid-friendly heavy armor options in the future, but in the meantime I'll point you at the one from Update 35: Scales of Avarice, which drop in the quest Black and Blue.

Even with this armor they are excluded from both armors from RL which are needed for tank build sets. Will you be including these new armors in the Knights of Shadows set so that bears don't start so far behind off the bat?

[Silverleafeon]

We actually hope to get to a Sorcerer's pass next (arcanes as a whole, but we feel that Sorcerors needs the most help). Those forms will get re-worked soon if they don't get an adjustment in this pass as a pre-cursor.

Most interesting and a lot of thought going behind the scenes here:


So, possibilities:


Graphic Designers and Coders create for Sorcerers:

Wild Shape Earth Form
Wild Shape Air Form

Ability to become an Elemental drops down from Sorcerer Capstone to Core 4 or 5.
I'm gonna say drop to core 4, because that is cool.

+10% sp spell casting penalty is reversed into -10% sp spell casting bonus while in elemental form

Sorcerers gain one or two higher level SLA for each associated tree likely in Core 5 & 6

Earth gains Acid Rain SLA at core 5 & Black Dragon Bolt at core 6
Air gains Eladar's Electric Surge core 5 & Chain Lightning at core 6
Fire gains Firewall SLA at core 5 & Delayed Blast Fireball at core 6
Cold Gains Icestorm SLA at core 5 & Polar Ray at core 6



When the whole form + code elemental form is now available, it becomes added to the Druid core class, not necessary while this tree is being recoded.
{I am told that Sorcerers already have air and earth form shapes?}

As such, we now have four elemental forms to choose from.

So, at levels 13, 15, 17 and 19, Druids get:

Wild Shape: Choose one of Air Elemental, Earth Elemental, Fire Elemental or Water Elemental

Air, Earth, and Water are associated with Child of Winter and automatically convert into Child of Winter when the form is taken.

Each Elemental Form has a self buff associated with it that can automatically toggle in while assuming that form via enhancement tree:

Water Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of the Icy Soul stays as is.

Earth Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of Earthen Soul = your Earthquakes now do scaling damage of +1d2 per Druid level.

Air Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of the Cloudy Soul = your Autumn Leaves bonuses are tripled.

Fire Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of the Fiery Soul = your fire spells have a % chance to apply a burning effect that does 1 damage per caster level at 2, 4, 6, & 8 seconds.

These would be level 9 spells.



Also each elemental form has two spells that can only be cast while in that Elemental Form:

Water & Fire already have these:

Water = Freezing Spray (7) & Ice Flowers (8)
Fire = Body of Sun (7) & Fires of Purity (8)
Air = Haste (7) & Chain Lightning (8)
Earth = Acid Cloud (7) & Black Dragon Bolt (8)


The spell elemental toughness would not longer provide DR 5 __, instead it will provide untyped +6 PPR + 6 MMR, thereby allowing it to scale into epics.





The melees are compenstated by having two trees dedicated to wolf and bear form.

Also, the following changes could be made to Primal: while in wild shape form you gain +1 spirit every three seconds in addition to any other spirits gained.



Epic Destiny Feat

Epic Wild Shape Feat: Nature's Defense now provides +(Character Level/x) PPR & MMR instead of 8 Minimun level 26 {where X is a balance modifier}

Epic Wild Shape Feat: Elemental Storm: Nature's now provides +5% spell critical damage to which ever Season you are currently in. Minimum level 26

Or maybe that should be

Epic Wild Shape Feat: Elemental Storm: provides +5% spell critical damage to elemental spells. Minimum level 26



If there is a balance issue with Sorcerers, you could limit SLAs able to be used only to the current form?

Also, you could have a semi-form along with a pure elemental form, allowing warforged to stay in the semi-form?




If you have no plans for adding Earth and Air forms, then could you add an acid spell or two to the druid spell list to suppliment the various elements?

[red_kain]

Niac's Biting Cold: Could use some clarification here, what bug?


Aaaah!!!!! Good to know. We'll get this fixed.


You might want to check arcane pulse as well when you make changes, same icon so I'm worried there might be some curflumbles if care isn't taken.
On a mildly related note, dispelling shot from arcane archer also kills damage over time effects in my experience. Feels WAI but I wouldn't know.

From what I remember, this was a bug on release, or around that time. I can guarantee it was bug reported at the time, and discussed on forums. These days its just "this is how it works" because... years passed.
That a forum post is how this is getting attention, is why I don't do bug reports.




We actually hope to get to a Sorcerer's pass next (arcanes as a whole, but we feel that Sorcerors needs the most help). Those forms will get re-worked soon if they don't get an adjustment in this pass as a pre-cursor.

On subject of sorcs, I would personally LOVE to see a major change to capstone: bypass elemental immunity of your element while in elemental form (or just passive idc). I want to be able to pick the element I like, without worrying about what types of monsters are going to be put in updates or what the current enemies aren't immune to. Wizards can swap spells and don't spec into specific elements as heavy so I feel its less important (not to mention force SLAs).

Balance wise, I could see reducing immunity to 50% absorption, or whatever numbers fit, I just want to be able to play a fire sorc without feeling useless because the party wants to run devil heavy content (looking at you shroud).

Lore wise, "You've learned to draw from a purer source of elemental energy and can now hurt enemies that were previously immune to *element* damage."
Also, the "masters of" epic feats, maybe don't limit them to so few spells? Max caster level 30 delayed blast fireball please O.ob Do it for science!

[Archetype]

There'll definitely be more Druid-friendly heavy armor options in the future, but in the meantime I'll point you at the one from Update 35: Scales of Avarice, which drop in the quest Black and Blue.

https://i.imgur.com/FqyYnb2.jpg


You meant, "Is potentially available after large donations of Astral Shards for a small RNG chance to obtain" ??? :/

[Silverleafeon]

On subject of sorcs, I would personally LOVE to see a major change to capstone: bypass elemental immunity of your element while in elemental form (or just passive idc). I want to be able to pick the element I like, without worrying about what types of monsters are going to put in updates or what the current enemies aren't immune to. Wizards can swap spells and don't spec into specific elements as heavy so I feel its less important (not to mention force SLAs).

Balance wise, I could see reducing immunity to 50% absorption, or whatever numbers fit, I just want to be able to play a fire sorc without feeling useless because the party wants to run devil heavy content (looking at you shroud).

Lore wise, "You've learned to draw from a purer source of elemental energy and can now hurt enemies that were previously immune to *element* damage."

+1

and Quote of the Week
Well Said!!!!!

[edrein]

How so? Losing Storm's Eye is a pretty big deal; losing Death Frenzy by splashing more than 2 druid for Nature's Defense is significant too. [I'm inferring it works exactly like Stalwart defensive stance except you're allowed to Rage.] I'm not seeing anything in the first couple of tiers of Nature's Protector which makes druid-splashed barbs "clearly more powerful." What do you have in mind?

Not to mention you have to be in animal form while raging. I believe that person completely overlooked that portion. Barbs won't benefit in dropping core for druid. However, druids will benefit dropping core for 1-2 barb levels in an ironic twist. There's just not enough oomph to the barbarian rage portion in my eyes to really give a reason to stay raged, let alone the rage time doesn't have an innate extension. There needs to be a damage effect built into the rage, as well as actual melee power in the bear tree to make good on the scaling effects in the cores.

[unbongwah]

However, druids will benefit dropping core for 1-2 barb levels in an ironic twist.
How so? Assuming we're talking melee builds: NW capstone is +10% doublestrike while NP's is +10% bear attack speed. Those seem more important than what e.g. druid 18 / barb 2 can get, IMO.

There's just not enough oomph to the barbarian rage portion in my eyes to really give a reason to stay raged, let alone the rage time doesn't have an innate extension. There needs to be a damage effect built into the rage, as well as actual melee power in the bear tree to make good on the scaling effects in the cores.
I think Rage of the Beast should still allow druidic spellcasting but with an extra cooldown penalty. It's somewhat absurd that a barb / Destruction cleric combo can cast spells while Raged but a bear druid using an inherent class ability can't, IMO. Particularly when most of the Rage effects in NP are underwhelming; seems like Beast Unleased is the only good one.

[edrein]

How so? Assuming we're talking melee builds: NW capstone is +10% doublestrike while NP's is +10% bear attack speed. Those seem more important than what e.g. druid 18 / barb 2 can get, IMO.

I think Rage of the Beast should still allow druidic spellcasting but with an extra cooldown penalty. It's somewhat absurd that a barb / Destruction cleric combo can cast spells while Raged but a bear druid using an inherent class ability can't, IMO. Particularly when most of the Rage effects in NP are underwhelming; seems like Beast Unleased is the only good one.

For 1 barb level you pick up +3's, so -1 compared to capstone. You do lose the attack speed, I'll admit that. If you also go 1 bard, you get rage that can be used while spellcasting. As well as having the benefits of a long lasting rage. It's nit-picking for sure, but overall I don't like the fact you practically gain more than you lose for splashing with this rage idea.

[unbongwah]

If you also go 1 bard, you get rage that can be used while spellcasting.
FYI, Skaldic Rage doesn't stack with barb Rage; it did for a while, but they nerfed that bug a long time ago.

[ripsloths]

So I saw that the elemental forms will be getting a 65% elemental absorption and 15% vulnerability. Will this stack with other forms of absorption like insightful and regular item enhancements?
I also think that this should be applied to the sorcerer elemental apotheosis' too.

[edrein]

FYI, Skaldic Rage doesn't stack with barb Rage; it did for a while, but they nerfed that bug a long time ago.

It doesn't stack, but it does apply the benefits from the barb rage enhancements. In that vein it should also apply while wildshaped.

[Silverleafeon]

If you also go 1 bard, you get rage that can be used while spellcasting...

If you watch the video interview, Torc mentions the "real rage" that prevents spellcasting not other rages is the one the bear tree is refering too?

[edrein]

If you watch the video interview, Torc mentions the "real rage" that prevents spellcasting not other rages is the one the bear tree is refering too?

I'm refering to Skaldic Rage, which is supposed to count as a real rage. But has been bugged? or works with bardic spellcasting.

[Silverleafeon]

I'm refering to Skaldic Rage, which is supposed to count as a real rage. But has been bugged? or works with bardic spellcasting.

I guess if you take the right cleric domain, you also get true rage spellcasting?

Probably he was refering to the rage spell.

[Aselrik]

1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well.

Somewhat hand-wavy Lore Explanation: The weapon is used as the magical source to enchant and create the properties of the claw or tooth of the druid. It's magic....so it works that way....yeah...


In D&D 3.5 "Complete Adventurer" the Daggerspell Shaper has that exact ability. Here's a link:

http://dnd.arkalseif.info/classes/daggerspell-shaper/index.html

Dagger Claws (Su): When a daggerspell shaper of 2nd level or higher uses wild shape, she adds any magical properties of daggers that she is holding in each hand into the natural attacks of her new form. The magic of a single dagger affects only the natural attacks made with the corresponding limb in the shaper's animal form, not all her attacks. For example, a 2nd-level daggerspell shaper holding a +1 flaming dagger in one hand and a +2 keen dagger in the other hand transforms into a leopard. The daggers affect the claw attacks of her new form as follows: One gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls and also gains the flaming special ability, and the other gains a +2 bonus on attack and damage rolls and also gains the keen special ability. If the assumed form does not have a claw or slam attack with a limb that corresponds to the druid's natural limbs, this ability has no effect. The bonuses from this ability last for the duration of the wild shape effect. When a shaper uses this ability, her natural weapons in animal form overcome damage reduction exactly as do the daggers that she was holding when she transformed.


Primal Avatar will be given some kind of damage boost to maintain its hard-hitting style with this change. It will also get Cleave animations to fix a bug with Cleave attacks caused by lack of animations.

It's good to fix this but... Primal Avatar is super lame. Druid's epic transformation is a derpy tree? In D&D 3.5, all of the prestige & high level shapes were really neat, and I don't recall any of them being a tree. If the art department is stretched thin, how about changing the model to a legendary (as in the 3.5 template) bear or wolf (player gets both spells). Effectively, they're the same thing as the current tree, complete with growing larger. Then you wouldn't have to worry about making animations for the tree, as it's just the current bear/wolf models made to look even more epic.

Also, really, the cool final ability is a derpy tree? Please.


We are reducing the Basic Wolf Form attack speed bonus to 15%. Winter wolf remains about the same speed at 30%. We are also fixing some flaky behavior in the attack chain.

Can you also please consider changing the wolf's MOVE speed to "Action Boost" (like Sacred Defender enhancement), or something like "Primal" (along with monk's and barbarians)? I don't know all the interactions, but it should let a Wolf keep up with a monk, bard or rogue acrobat. Wolves should be as fast as those classes, or it feels weird that they're slower than humans...


We’re going to be cutting the death penalty for pets and are discussing give a few more pet rez charges at certain levels. The arty enhancement that touches this will be reworked to something else.

In the game Torchlight and it's sequel, the pets "run away" when they are at 5% health (effectively 0). They then heal slowly up to like 25% health and return after a minute or two. Considering pets, even without any penalty and unlimited ressing, are such a hassle to spend time ressing and rebuffing... can we seriously consider a solution like this, please?




1. Nature's Warrior: every point spent in tree gives 1 hp, and every CORE; gives 1 sneak attack die in wolf form, and +1 base melee damage while in all animal forms

So wolf gets both bonuses, and bear only gets one? This just feels wrong to me, but maybe you have your reasons. Is it an oversight?



4. Nature's Hunter: In wolf or bear form you gain a +1 competency bonus to crit damage multiplier on your weapon. Requires a weapon to be equipped.

Just for fun, how about Wolf gets +vorpal range (like 1-handed style) or +1 crit range and bear gets +1 crit damage multiplier? In other words, have them be different and thematic.



5. Howling Frost: Casting Howl of Terror now grants you "Winter Hunt" for 10 seconds which grants +10 double strike and, 25% bonus to spell crit and 50% to spell crit damage to all cold damage spells. This will only occur once every 30 seconds.

Again, for fun, make it effect the nearby party members? It's a damage boost if the double strike stacks and/or you have a frost mage in your party, but it's nothing ridiculous. Cold is the weakest damage type for most classes.


Ghost Wolf: Requires wolf form. Activate, gain 50% incorpreal defense for 30 seconds, cooldown 5 minutes. Passive: Gain ghost touch while in wolf form to your melee attacks AP COST: 2

This is total Garbage. Ghost Touch is super common on items and any druid worth their salt is going to have Ring of the Stalker. 2 AP for a 5 minute CD displacement is pretty lame, as well. Just grab a greensteel clickie. Since you're a ghost and can ignore some armor, how about some fortification bypass? Or make it a SLA displacement (named something else) that shares a cooldown with other displacement SLAs, and is based off druid levels?


Brother Wolf: While your wolf pet is alive and within 40 meters it gains 5/10/15 hps every 12/9/6 seconds and 10/15/20 mrr & prr and you gain 1/2/3 to hit and damage AP COST: 1

I like it, but I wonder about the HP healing. It's nice to have something topping off the wolf, but I doubt it'll make it survive at epic elite/reaper levels even with max PLs, Augment Summoning and all that jazz. How about making the druid cast "Brilliance" on the wolf like the Warlock enhancement, every 2 seconds (based off of Wisdom score).


Stalking Prey: Staying in stealth gains you a damage bonus to critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers) every 3 seconds. Effect lasts for 10 seconds and can stack up to 3 times. or a total of +[3/6/9]. AP COST: 1

So wait, I need to 1) Be in stealth 2) Try and hit them between 9 and 10 seconds after the buff is cast, in melee 3) also randomly crit... in order to get +9 damage? Why not just make it so that, when you crit while in stealth, you get +3/6/9 damage, which can only happen once every X seconds.

This is all I have time to post atm.

[Chacka_DDO]

2. Existing combat style bugs are being fixed.



[*=1]No combat style specific bonuses will function while in animal forms aside from Natural Fighting, and any bonuses native to the form (no dual wielding, glancing blows or single weapon attack speed).

[*=1]Using a two-handed weapon still grants the 1.5 damage from your modifying stat, and Power Attack feat adjustments in animal form as well, for its additional bonus.

[*=1]Attacks that require a specific weapon to be held in your hand will still not work in animal form (cause you don't have hands!)



1. only one weapon style, is something I totally agree with, this is just logically and overdue.

2. The weapon "magically" changes to the claws and fangs if the druid shapeshifts.
So the druid actually doesn't use a two-handed weapon anymore.
The same way as Single Weapon Fighting while shapeshifted makes no sense this is not logically in my opinion.
Please don't do this.

3. This is, of course, logical because the weapons are the claws and fangs but I hope they get special attacks too then who requires natural fighting.



And in general, to the fighting styles, I would have the idea that you could make this somehow consistent with monks because a monk uses also his "natural weapons" if he fights unarmed.
In that matter, I want also to remind on the Kung Fu animal fighting styles.
For unarmed monks, you made once the Two-Weapon Fighting feats working, which is basically a good idea.
But in my opinion, it would be even better if monks and animals have the same feats for the fighting style when they use there fists/feet/heads/claws/fangs etc...
You should not get any benefit from an equipped shield when you are shapeshifted (this means AC and not bashing e.g.).
Only the weapon in your main hand should work as if this weapon would be hand wraps.
And the weapon damage should scale similar as if the druid would be a monk when shape shifted.
This scaling of the natural weapon damage should scale in both cases with the character level and not stacking of course.
This means if the monk equips hand wraps the natural weapon style activates and if the druid shapeshifts the same weapon style feats activate.

Just the question remains what makes natural fighting unique?
One idea would be that you have a different kind of double attack that works quite similar to the old 10 thousand stars.
You have a certain chance to do two attacks and if you do two attacks you have a certain chance to do a third attack and if you do three attacks there is a chance that you do the maximum of four attacks.
But his is basically not much different to Two-Weapon Fighting.
But maybe there better ideas to separate the natural fighting style from the other fighting styles.

[Arch-Necromancer]

9. Cosmetic Changes: (new)


[*=1]These may come AFTER the pass, time permitting. This is stretch goal stuff.
[*=1]Either or some combination of new Wolf & Bear forms Appearances or dyes.

[INDENT]


Since we have Winter wolf and Dire bear, maybe we could get Dire wolf and Polar bear too.

It wouldn't take much work to include these two on the list.

Dire wolf would not have access to cold based spells that winter wolf can cast, but it could cast some spells that require a dire bear form.

Polar bear would get access to some cold based spells that winter wolf can cast, but would not be able to cast all dire bear spells.

And there you go, we get some small diversity in forms without too much work on implementing new stuff.



Ok I’m lumping these together to emphisize my most importaint point:

Combine wolf and bear tree into one tree with multiple abilities

You did this in the vistani tree by giving people a melee boost and a ranged boost with the idea that they could only use one of them. This is the same thing, you can only be in wolf or bear form, not both at the same time. So much of these two trees could be combined into one tree with both abilities given. Doing this will allow people flexability to move between animal forms rather then creating builds around specific forms. Combining does not give more power, it gives more flexability.

I agree with this. Bear tree should be tied together with wolf into one wild fighting tree with multiple selectors, like Divine Disciple Cleric tree functions.

Third Druid tree should be left for some poison damage type druid (some other update in the future) because Druids really should one day get earth spellcasting option, and maybe even earth and air elemental forms.



Would love to see added as a thematic level nine Druid spell:


http://ddowiki.com/page/Black_Dragon_Bolt



Name:
Black Dragon Bolt
School:
Conjuration (Acid)
Level:
Sor/Wiz 8
Spell Point Cost:
15
Components:
Verbal, Somatic, Focus
Metamagic:
Empower, Maximize, Quicken
Range:
Double
Target:
Foe, Directional, Breakable
Duration:
6 seconds
Saving Throw:
None
Spell Resistance:
No
Cooldown:
5.5 seconds (Wiz), 3.25 seconds (Sor)

Description:
A powerful green bolt of corrosive acid springs from your hand. The bolt deals 1d3 acid damage per caster level, (Maximum 25d3 at caster level 25) every 2 seconds for 6 seconds.
Features fast casting animation and free double range like most ray spells.





but I would settle for a level five druid spell:


http://ddowiki.com/page/Acid_Rain


Name:
Acid Rain
School:
Conjuration (Creation) (Acid)
Level:
Sor/Wiz 4
Spell Point Cost:
15
Components:
Verbal, Somatic, Material (Heart of a Hen)
Metamagic:
Empower, Enlarge, Eschew, Maximize, Quicken
Range:
Standard AOE
Target:
Foe, Positional, Breakable
Duration:
8 seconds
Saving Throw:
Reflex half on initial tic only
Spell Resistance:
No
Cooldown:
5 seconds (Wiz), 4 seconds (Sor)

Description:
You create a storm that sends down a single torrent of caustic rain. Any creatures that are hit with the rain take 1d4 per caster level (max 15d4) in acid damage every 2 seconds for a duration of 8 seconds. Targets first entering the rain may make a reflex save for half, but remaining in the rain they will take damage with no saving throw.

or honestly, even this level seven druid spell would work:


http://ddowiki.com/page/Acid_Fog


Name:
Acid Fog
School:
Conjuration (Creation) (Acid)
Level:
Sor/Wiz 6
Spell Point Cost:
35
Components:
Focus, Material, Somatic, Verbal
Metamagic:
Empower, Enlarge, Eschew, Maximize, Quicken
Range:
Standard AOE
Target:
Foe, Positional
Duration:
40 seconds +2 seconds per caster level
Saving Throw:
None
Spell Resistance:
No
Cooldown:
10 seconds (Wiz), 6 seconds (Sor)

Description:
A billowing mass of misty vapors causes several effects:
Slows movement (~-5%).
Obscures sight, giving all creatures in the fog concealment (Attackers have 20% miss chance).
Deals 2d6 acid damage every 2 seconds to targets within the cloud.
Enemies within this cloud also suffer a -4 penalty to their armor class.


Just one more acid spell would be kind of nice, although its a luxury...

Yeah, we should get some acid/poison spells included in Druid spellbook, and then earth and air elemental form with it. But since this update is about animal forms, this should be left for some future update.



Poison Spellpower does exist! The only place in the game where it exists though is on Vol from the Mark of Death raid. It would be nice if Druids could have Poison Spellpower added to Summer considering Summer is when all of the venomous insects/spiders/snakes and things come back out into nature. Also, could you consider adding Negative spellpower to Winter? It will help a little for Druids who use Finger of Death and the enemy makes the save.

Poison spellpower should be added, but I think that it should be added to corrosion (acid) spellpower for item enhancement purpose in a similar way alignment spellpower is tied to radiance (light) spellpower.

But I would also bundle that up into a later future update that would include new poison and/or acid spells and earth elemental form.



Add earth elemental Forms?
Add Air Elemental forms?

Yeah, we want it! So it would be nice to see that in the future.



Most interesting and a lot of thought going behind the scenes here:

So, possibilities:

Graphic Designers and Coders create for Sorcerers:

Wild Shape Earth Form
Wild Shape Air Form

Ability to become an Elemental drops down from Sorcerer Capstone to Core 4 or 5.
I'm gonna say drop to core 4, because that is cool.

+10% sp spell casting penalty is reversed into -10% sp spell casting bonus while in elemental form

Sorcerers gain one or two higher level SLA for each associated tree likely in Core 5 & 6

Earth gains Acid Rain SLA at core 5 & Black Dragon Bolt at core 6
Air gains Eladar's Electric Surge core 5 & Chain Lightning at core 6
Fire gains Firewall SLA at core 5 & Delayed Blast Fireball at core 6
Cold Gains Icestorm SLA at core 5 & Polar Ray at core 6

When the whole form + code elemental form is now available, it becomes added to the Druid core class, not necessary while this tree is being recoded.
{I am told that Sorcerers already have air and earth form shapes?}

As such, we now have four elemental forms to choose from.

So, at levels 13, 15, 17 and 19, Druids get:

Wild Shape: Choose one of Air Elemental, Earth Elemental, Fire Elemental or Water Elemental

Air, Earth, and Water are associated with Child of Winter and automatically convert into Child of Winter when the form is taken.

Each Elemental Form has a self buff associated with it that can automatically toggle in while assuming that form via enhancement tree:

Water Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of the Icy Soul stays as is.

Earth Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of Earthen Soul = your Earthquakes now do scaling damage of +1d2 per Druid level.

Air Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of the Cloudy Soul = your Autumn Leaves bonuses are tripled.

Fire Elemental Form ~ level 9 druid spell Mantle of the Fiery Soul = your fire spells have a % chance to apply a burning effect that does 1 damage per caster level at 2, 4, 6, & 8 seconds.

These would be level 9 spells.

Also each elemental form has two spells that can only be cast while in that Elemental Form:

Water & Fire already have these:

Water = Freezing Spray (7) & Ice Flowers (8)
Fire = Body of Sun (7) & Fires of Purity (8)
Air = Haste (7) & Chain Lightning (8)
Earth = Acid Cloud (7) & Black Dragon Bolt (8)


The spell elemental toughness would not longer provide DR 5 __, instead it will provide untyped +6 PPR + 6 MMR, thereby allowing it to scale into epics.

The melees are compenstated by having two trees dedicated to wolf and bear form.

Also, the following changes could be made to Primal: while in wild shape form you gain +1 spirit every three seconds in addition to any other spirits gained.



Epic Destiny Feat

Epic Wild Shape Feat: Nature's Defense now provides +(Character Level/x) PPR & MMR instead of 8 Minimun level 26 {where X is a balance modifier}

Epic Wild Shape Feat: Elemental Storm: Nature's now provides +5% spell critical damage to which ever Season you are currently in. Minimum level 26

Or maybe that should be

Epic Wild Shape Feat: Elemental Storm: provides +5% spell critical damage to elemental spells. Minimum level 26



If there is a balance issue with Sorcerers, you could limit SLAs able to be used only to the current form?

Also, you could have a semi-form along with a pure elemental form, allowing warforged to stay in the semi-form?

If you have no plans for adding Earth and Air forms, then could you add an acid spell or two to the druid spell list to suppliment the various elements?

I also see a possible collision with sorcerers if air and earth elemental forms were to be added. But that could be fixed by making different spells and SLAs for Druids.

And maybe instead of acid spells we could get poison damage spells and a third tree based on poison damage spellcasting. And a poisonous earth elemental form.

That way we would get a special feel for Druid and have no collisions with Sorcerer.

[Eddexp]

Why change it from :
Killing an enemy grants you a 5% enhancement bonus to attack speed for 20 seconds. This can stack up to [1/3/5] times.
to:
Killing an opponent grants a +3 moral bonus to double strike bonus for 12 seconds. Can stack up to 1/2/3 times.

i kinda underestand the nerf...but that bonus are kinda killing build diversity(dshot too plx).

[Tom116]

Why change it from :
Killing an enemy grants you a 5% enhancement bonus to attack speed for 20 seconds. This can stack up to [1/3/5] times.
to:
Killing an opponent grants a +3 moral bonus to double strike bonus for 12 seconds. Can stack up to 1/2/3 times.[/FONT]

i kinda underestand the nerf...but that bonus are kinda killing build diversity(dshot too plx).

Not sure either would be great, tbh. +5% enhancement bonus to attack speed is useless up to 15% at least (winter wolves get a passive 15% enh bonus to attack speed already, not to mention speed items or haste/haste like effects), and as it stands druids have a TON of doublestrike available already. Even non-wolf form/natural fighting using characters can hit 100% doublestrike, so with no wraparound (bonuses beyond 100%, like doubleshot has) the 27% from Natural Fighting is already pretty much a waste, and this is even more of a waste if doublestrike were to be added to it.

I would recommend something more like:

You gain +1/2/3 damage for six seconds after damaging an opponent beneath 50% health.
Note: This buff is also applied on attacks that would bring the target below 50% health, and on killing blows.

This way it still is the same "type" of enhancement (being a buff on hitting a heavily wounded enemy, killing blows shouldn't be something players have to compete for anyways), while not being invalidated by passive bonuses or capped out bonuses. You could also have it scale with more damage to the opponent, like +1/2/3 damage when damaging an enemy below 50/25/10% hp, having it stack up to 3 times if they preferred to do it that way. That would mean +9 damage per hit on enemies under 10% though, so it would help dps vs raid bosses quite a bit.

[fmalfeas]

This is total Garbage. Ghost Touch is super common on items and any druid worth their salt is going to have Ring of the Stalker. 2 AP for a 5 minute CD displacement is pretty lame, as well. Just grab a greensteel clickie. Since you're a ghost and can ignore some armor, how about some fortification bypass? Or make it a SLA displacement (named something else) that shares a cooldown with other displacement SLAs, and is based off druid levels?


Displacement is Concealment, not Incorporeal. Incorporeal is defeated by Ghost Touch, and...being incorporeal. Concealment is defeated by Blind-Fighting, Tremorsense, and True Seeing. They're very different things, and right now, there is no 50% incorporeal available for players. Which means that this is the most powerful incorporeal coming, and can be used /with/ displacement and dodge, driving the odds of being hit down into the dirt.

[HastyPudding]

So will there be any benefit whatsoever to using a shield as a wolf or bear druid? There's a couple shields made specifically for druids, so this seems rather odd. This would also put tank bear druids at a rather large disadvantage in terms of AC and PRR. I can understand not gaining the doublestrike and such from the shield feats, but to miss out on the PRR is just silly.

[Morroiel]

A lot of the druid's spell list suffers from bugs or bad damage caps.

E.g.

Salt Ray has a cap of 5d6 force damage. For reference:

5d6 = 5*3.5 = 15 + 2.5 = 17.5 base avg damage

17.5 * (1300+100)/100 {Note: 1300 spell power with max/emp is generous} = 17.5*14 = 245 avg damage before crits

245 * ((2+2)*.95 + 1*.05) {Note: crit multi of 200 and % of 95 is extremely generous} = 943.25 avg damage including crit chance

Yes salt ray has a stun included with it. However, stuns aren't special anymore. We have dire charge, stunning blast, monk cc, etc. for on demand essentially free stuns with significantly higher DCs.

Things you've failed to solve:


Druids still have spell power issues, where it isn't possible to gear for all the different spell powers they need to use to be efficient. No other build or class has as many gear restrictions. This artificially deflates their power.
Druids don't have a niche due to the inability to sustain their strengths. They lack aoe, single target, healing, and cc, which is sustainable and relevant. The majority of their SLAs focus on single target, which is great for sustain but even neglecting the cost of Ruin / GRuin they fail to even dish out a paltry 6k dps for any realistic length of time. Sunburst is great for cc but you proxy nerfed it; still decent but lost a lot of its use cases; it does little damage. Storm of Vengeance is cool but the cooldown is long and it uses a spellpower that literally no other spell on the druids list uses; additionally even if you spec for acid spellpower it falls behind the newer aoe options of other classes significantly. If you really want to fix druids or spell casters in general, you need to figure out a way to solve the incomprehensible gap introduced in scaling skulls of reaper for non-instakillers. Druids niche back when they were played were aoe dps and heals; atm they look like significantly worse clerics.
There are still a lot of bugs that haven't been mentioned or talked about in your post involving the druid spell list.
Druids are still missing 2 elemental forms - this is unacceptable. You have the graphical assets for earth and air ele forms. Introduce the forms please; this is a key feature of druids in 3.5 - one that has been significantly lacking. You can't have druids without the versatility that their wild shape brings without completely rebalancing the whole class.


As always, you won't listen. But as this is one of my favorite classes figured I'd pipe in. At least I can say that I tried.

~Cheers

[Grace_ana]

Lot of good stuff, lot of troubling stuff. I do appreciate that a real effort is being taken to fix up druids, and I especially appreciate the efforts Torc has made to frequently communicate with us in this thread in a constructive and open way. Thanks, Torc :)

On to the commentary!

Nature's warrior:

1. Current NW tree has a lot of damage bonuses, such as sneak attack dice (6d6 at capstone), for wolves. While allowing forms to make full use of weapon stats is welcome and needed, removing so much damage from the tree still puts wolves behind where they are now, and right now they are a touch behind the curve on a multiclass and significantly behind on a pure build. The new tree needs a lot more in the way of damage buffs, such as sneak attack dice and melee power.

2. Flight - this is a monster dodge benefit at tier 1. I feel like it's too low hanging. Perhaps swap it with Fight?

3. Stalking prey - cool idea, but in practice it won't really be used by anyone. The benefit of a wolf is speed, and sneaking is anything but fast. It might be useful on a theoretical flavor build with rogue levels for the added speed, but it's so niche that it's not useful. I would prefer other stuff here.

4. What is "attack power" in the Ferocity enhancement?

5. Great White Wolf is written vaguely. Is the cold spellpower passive for all forms, or just in wolf form like the absorption?

6. Why the huge nerf to alpha strike on a class/build that needs a damage boost?

7. Why did Celerity disappear? Again, it provided some damage boosts, and it should have been kept and improved.

Overall, the lost DPS will probably put wolves behind where they are now, which I'm certain is not the direction you were trying to go. Perhaps the cores can offer more in the way of DPS. It would also be nice to see this tree give enhancements to flame blade. I would love to see something like in the AA tree, where you pick either flame blade or ice blade and then either choose the other or improve the one you have. Then a T5 enhancement for that could be to obtain both blades at equal max damage (and also let it scale with either spellpower or melee power, whichever seems best for the tree).

Nature's Protector:

1. I very much dislike having cores in NW and NP that will not stack. Taking cores is not optional to get to the next one, so you're forcing people to waste an AP point. I would prefer to see that enhancement only in one tree to avoid that issue.

2. Maul and Great Maul should not share a cooldown. It makes it so one spell invalidates the other, and that seems unfair as well. I would rather see Great Maul add some sort of improvements onto the Maul spell, or have Great Maul have a longer cooldown.

3. Bloody Claws - Will this also work with Great Maul?

4. Spirit Refreshed is really broken. I get the idea behind it, having played pnp, but in the context of DDO, it's basically a full heal/lesser resto for 1 SP. Every 3 min. In a tank tree. So you can flip shapes, then flip back for 2 AP total. Maybe for a 10 min cooldown. Maybe.

5. Rage of the Beast - Will this preclude shapeshifting, since that costs SP?

Overall, my biggest beef with this tree is the MRR. The tree offers a total of 113 MRR, including boosts. That is INSANE. Even half that much would be too much. Scale that WAAAAAY back. There are surely other things they can be given that will balance. Perhaps a way to use/boost shields in form?

Season's Herald:

1. Hierophant - the new proposal lowers the DCs granted from the current tree. Was that intentional? It seems to go in the opposite direction from what is actually needed.

2. Wand and Scroll Mastery - Where did it go???? It's very much needed for a class that is trying to be both caster and healer. Otherwise, spell points become an issue. I would much rather have W&S than druidic skills.

3. Spell pen - Don't take this away either, unless you are taking the spell pen requirement out of all of the druidic spells. We should at least have the option to take it if needed.

4. Improved shillelagh for a caster druid seems...odd. That belongs more in a melee tree.

Overall, I would like to see more spellpower in the caster tree. Some people commented that AOE spells are lacking on caster druids, which I agree with. The issue I usually see with AOE spells, besides the slow damage, is the slow casting. By the time you get it up, the melee have either killed everything or died. Maybe an interesting enhancement for caster druids would be quick casting or free quicken of druidic AOE spells. It would have to be either T5 or higher cores, but it would be unique and match the idea that druids are so in tune with nature they can perhaps access natural magic faster. Spell suggestions for that: sleet storm, ice storm, call lightning storm, fire storm, earthquake, and storm of vengeance.

Additional question:

I want to be sure I completely understand - so THF, TWF, SWF, and the shield mastery line will not work at all in form in the proposed plan?

[elvesunited]

Not sure either would be great, tbh. +5% enhancement bonus to attack speed is useless up to 15% at least (winter wolves get a passive 15% enh bonus to attack speed already, not to mention speed items or haste/haste like effects), and as it stands druids have a TON of doublestrike available already. Even non-wolf form/natural fighting using characters can hit 100% doublestrike, so with no wraparound (bonuses beyond 100%, like doubleshot has) the 27% from Natural Fighting is already pretty much a waste, and this is even more of a waste if doublestrike were to be added to it.
I think Winter wolf attack speed is enhanced with melee alacrity items so I think they stack. ( putting on my +15 melee alacrity googles seems to make a difference ) In any event the ability to stack speed enhancement bonuses over a normal melee alacrity item is very situational given that it requires constant kills.


Displacement is Concealment, not Incorporeal. Incorporeal is defeated by Ghost Touch, and...being incorporeal. Concealment is defeated by Blind-Fighting, Tremorsense, and True Seeing. They're very different things, and right now, there is no 50% incorporeal available for players. Which means that this is the most powerful incorporeal coming, and can be used /with/ displacement and dodge, driving the odds of being hit down into the dirt
Quite strong. However .... the cooldown is murderous. And I tend to shove such stuff into secondary hotbars and then forget to use them. A much better solution would be a constant stacking 10% corporeality.


Overall, my biggest beef with this tree is the MRR. The tree offers a total of 113 MRR, including boosts. That is INSANE. Even half that much would be too much. Scale that WAAAAAY back. There are surely other things they can be given that will balance. Perhaps a way to use/boost shields in form?
I get this. Or at least what is trying to be accomplished. In higher levels one of this biggest threats is one shot mega casters that can take down a character in one shot. Some characters counter it with high reflex and evasion. Others use tower or large shields. Druid animal forms have neither option which is why they're giving the bear so much MRR.


Stalking prey - cool idea, but in practice it won't really be used by anyone. The benefit of a wolf is speed, and sneaking is anything but fast. It might be useful on a theoretical flavor build with rogue levels for the added speed, but it's so niche that it's not useful. I would prefer other stuff here.
From my testing, the DPS loss from sneak mode ( much slower attack rate ) isn't close to being made up by the wolf's sneak attack damage. ( which is weak compared to a rogue ) Wolves get sneak attack damage via bluff and deception. Both this and throat strike are of questionable value.

[FuryFlash]

General changes: good. Tree changes: kinda meh.

This isn't going to solve the major issues facing caster druids (lack of cheap AoE, lack of non-reflex-targeting spells, tons of damage types to gear for), and is painting Furryform druids into a corner where a Pure 20 is not very distinct from a Stalwart Stance MC (with the mechanical edge looking very much in favor of the MC).

I'd suggest 3 broad things, which actually shouldn't involve that much work:

1) Round out Season's Herald with more AoE and shoring up inherent weaknesses
- Add more SLAs, and make some a package deal based on your fire/water form.
-- T1 becomes Produce Flame AND Creeping Cold (due to limited space).
-- T5 might become either Wall of Fire (only usable in fire elemental form) AND Ice Storm (only usable in water elemental form) or maybe Firestorm AND Ice Flowers (again, with fire/water restrictions).
- Add a way to raise weaker spellpowers. E.g., a clickie that causes all of your Winter Elements to be set equal to your highest Winter Spellpower/crit values for 30? seconds on a 3? minute CD. This makes gearing more forgiving without totally dropping the need to care about other elements.

2) Merge the offensive/rage-oriented stuff from the Bear tree into the Wolf tree, creating a general Furry Tree.
- Many of these enhancements can basically read: "When you're in wolf form, A happens. When you're in bear form, B happens." Won't require a ton of extra space. Some things can be collapsed into more ranks to save vertical space.
- Drop some stuff, like Evasion (druid reflex is terrible and no pure druid can afford to pump dex for it; I guarantee any druid with a working reflex/evasion in tough content is going to be MC'd with a class that gets evasion for free anyway). And Stalking Prey (the reality of viable melee stealth in DDO means you can't add this meaningfully into 1 enhancement, leave this for the MC's too).

3) Third tree becomes Swarm Tree, where the druid leverages swarms of bugs/bats/whatever to do various things, serving as a hybrid tree.
- This is where defensive stuff can go/stay, since Swarm Druids are all about the mitigations. Some passive (as exist currently in Bear Tree), some active (things like Ghost Wolf can move here and be renamed). Drop the +%max hitpoints, leave that as the Defender trees' identity.
- This should also get a line of offensive bursts/blasts that target FORT or WILL. Caster druids need this. Piercing or sonic damage probably, depending on the swarms involved.
-- Conjuration DC's in the tree somewhere too.
- This should also get a line of touch-ranged Control options (to give Furries a way to CC based on WIS vs Balance or Concentrate). The ideas for Great Maul and Improved Roar can be re-themed to swarms, to not use wilderness/STR, and be allowed in wolf form.
- Ideally this would even involve a highly mobile Swarm Form, like in PnP, but that is probably too ambitious. Conjuring swarms for damage/buffs/debuffs/control is all that's really required mechanically.

I won't make this super long with specific ability suggestions. You guys are smart enough to look up Swarm Druid abilities from PnP or come up with your own.

This isn't as dramatic as it may initially sound. A lot of the current plan will still work, it just needs reorganizing/renaming. The main changes come in the form of the added Swarm Attacks, and perhaps some party-wide Swarm Mitigation Buffs. I don't consider it optional though, it seems sorely needed to round out both casters and furries in a unique and viable (non-5-primary-stats) way. Pure druids really should feel a lot different than a Stalwart MC.

This is a great post, particularly the first 2 points. You touch on exactly what druid needs and why the current proposed changes feel weak. I agree that a third tree should not just be a copy of the current melee tree but for bears - instead, it should round out the druid and give more options like what you suggested here with some CC or spell attacks that don't target Reflex.

[Ulfo]

right now, there is no 50% incorporeal available for players.

Reborn in Light look at you bewildered. 8)

[fmalfeas]

Reborn in Light look at you bewildered. 8)

Ah. Yeah, I never compare ED stuff (especially epic moments) against heroic enhancements. :) And that's one I use so rarely that I'd forgotten it existed.

[Mask_of_Winter]

As a fan of melle im only inspecting that section of the druid but since a spellcaster build and a melle aren't really compatible (in stats and feats) SEASONS HERALD shouldn't influence this.
For a level 20 Druid

NATURE'S WARRIOR
Accumulated Average static bonus to Dps: +8dam, +1crit mult, +4str, +15DS, +6Mpower, 6d6 sneak, 10% precision
NATURE'S PROTECTOR
Accumulated Average static bonus to Dps: +12str, +3 dam, +15DS, 10%Aspeed

This is way far from other melee dps it doesn't even come close to kensai, monk, or Ranger
The wolf attack speed is negated by the fact that u dont have extra hits from TWF or the glancing hits form THF or extra prr from shields
This is very underwhelming, to even make this fun to play u would need at least 30MPower in NATURE'S WARRIOR and the same in NATURE'S PROTECTOR (it wouldn't even get near good dps)

Defence bonus are all over the place and are also unreliable. Ghost wolf with 5 min cooldown, evasion on a non dex class that can use full plate, 20 total extra prr.

Tactical bonus are also not there. spells and clickies use wis for dcs.

Self healing and temp hps are nice abilities but with no prr u just get pounded.

Either give more dps (around 50Mpower, something like 30 overall and +30 if in wolf)
or more tanking ( +5prr while in bear for each core after 3, and a tier 5 talent that gives +1prr per rank of wilderness lore)
or both :)

Also 5 and 6 cores should overall be more impressive.

On another note turn shillelagh into something like Holy Sword just for quarterstaffs. (maybe too OP)


Good Games And Have Fun.

[Silverleafeon]

So will there be any benefit whatsoever to using a shield as a wolf or bear druid?


GENERAL CHANGES

1. Animal forms will now use the stats of the player's main hand weapon for melee attack purposes, such as Base Damage, Critical Multiplier, Critical Range, all Enchantments, Material traits, procs, etc. The issue with the power level of certain effects not scaling will be resolved by this as well....

No mention of voiding off hand defensive advantages anywhere that I have seen in the post.
No mention of voiding off hand abilities other than those listed above.

Seems very likely that PPR, MMR & AC gained from an off hand shield will count per normal, otherwise most players will go two handed weapon for the extra damage?

If an off hand weapon had something that applied to generalities such as double strike, those generalities would seem to stay in play.


I highly doubt a Leg Greensteel in the off hand will procure unless via spellcasting, as one must actually hit with the weapon (or spellcast) to trigger the procure.

[Silverleafeon]

Since we have Winter wolf and Dire bear, maybe we could get Dire wolf and Polar bear too.

It wouldn't take much work to include these two on the list.

Dire wolf would not have access to cold based spells that winter wolf can cast, but it could cast some spells that require a dire bear form.

Polar bear would get access to some cold based spells that winter wolf can cast, but would not be able to cast all dire bear spells.

And there you go, we get some small diversity in forms without too much work on implementing new stuff.


+1 possibly interesting



I also see a possible collision with sorcerers if air and earth elemental forms were to be added. But that could be fixed by making different spells and SLAs for Druids.

And maybe instead of acid spells we could get poison damage spells and a third tree based on poison damage spellcasting. And a poisonous earth elemental form.

That way we would get a special feel for Druid and have no collisions with Sorcerer.

+1 definitely interesting.

Class distinguishing is very important.

We avoid collision with Druids and Clerics by restricting Earthquake to Domains.

There seems little possibility of Druid and Favored Soul collisions via the currents paths.
Favored Souls are moving towards Favored Weapon Bonuses, Wis/Cha to Damage, Wis or Cha casting stat, and sear % bonus to sp or hp.

There is also low possible collision with Wizards and Druids due to the Archmage/Palemaster approaches.

Sorcerers are a good class to tackle now along with Druids as the merging Elemental forms approach, and the possible demand for one or two arcane spells increases.

Bards single weapon swashbuckling steers clear of Wolf/Bear natural fighting.
It's highly likely that wolves will turn to two handed weapons to wild shape with for max dps, while bears move to sword and board for tanking qualities?