character is level 12, just basic equipment, tried using a staff but cant attack with them still? stats are focus 40 or so str 70 from a good gem setup and nothing in vitality, here goes, the shock sentry is just so weak right now, super strong once you max all related skills but just about useless as a stand alone and with other skills it contributes about maybe 2-3% total damage, it takes about 30+ seconds to kill single trash mobs, but i LOVE it regardless! traps and sentries for the win! maybe make it about 1.5x faster attac/cast rate might help? just for instance the poison arrows skill takes down a mob alone in maybe 3 or 4 seconds and the shock sentry in about 20-30 if its a white mob. the snare trap also if you could reduce that 6 second cooldown, there is no way you can get more than one out in a battle the way it is currently and I've taken it off my skill bar for this. compared to say the rangers lightning tree at lvl 1 its very little damage for that 6 second cooldown just to put another down, perhaps you dont want it to be damaging although and want it as single target lock skill? either way i think 2-3 seconds cooldown would suffice but i like to spam my traps and think something minimal would give it the buff it needs, seems to do enough damage and triggers just fine, have not had one miss like it says it can haha! oh by the way, im still using the shock sentries, i think as i level it it will become my secondary skill to hopefully the turret when i unlock it with this character, dont really want to instant lvl 100 again just like to enjoy my playing and testing, and im also glad you reduced the dps on poison arrow, holy wow dps if you have all those poison skills, it would actually bug out and stop going into the target but out away from you when the passive would proc! 25k initial dps with up to im not even sure, but its way less now I think you balanced it quite well but i will do further testing.

Thanks for the feedback. Not sure what you mean by the staff not working. I have done nothing with this class that would affect any weapons being equipped or used. So swords, staves, guns, etc. all should work the same in this class as other classes.

That is good feedback on the shock sentry. I'll have a look. It is basically a clone of the shock towers you find in Act II. I agree on the fact that they seldom fire. Perhaps I'll change it. I could do this in multiple ways:

1. Slow firing rate, higher damage
   
2. Slow firing rate, target multiple enemies with tiers (like the Embermage Thunder Locus skill)
   
3. Fast firing rate, current damage

Since you seem to like that trap, what do you think would make it more fun for you?

For the snare, I put in a high cooldown due to the 100% immobilize effect. I did not want you to be able to lock a hero/boss/etc. by just continously putting down snare traps. I'm open for ideas on how to improve its usage without opening it up to abuse and making it too OP. I could:

1. Reduce the chance of immobilization
   
2. Reduce the duration of immobilization
   
3. Decrease the duration that it lasts before it is triggered
   
4. Some other option I have not considered?

well for the shock sentry, definately faster skill rate, slower more dps would make it useless for normal trash mobs and or fast cleaning, i would suggest try about 1.5-2 x faster and i will give you some feedback on it, but yes i thought as much for the snare trap, its mostly a 4 second lock skill, i was just thinking max down being 6 is tactical if you can get them down before the fight happens only, i just love traps and sentries and like to spam so dont mind me haha.

for the snare to make it viable dps i would lower the chance of to maybe 25% and reduce the time by as much IF you want to make it that type of skill, i have used it a bit further and its decent for something like stopping a raging troll for 4 seconds and that is its limit currently.

lastly i dont know, maybe its that im using unique staffs i grabbed while using other class mods that im not currently using and they are broken, i will test it further but it just wont do the normal melee hits, kind of stumped on the matter but also there are no staff skills for this class so its not even really an issue.

on second thought, if the duration of immobilization WAS reduced and the trap was more frequently used it would take away from some of the nicer skills, best to leave it alone currently until a really good solution is made as its not really meant to be a main dps skill the way it is currently, I will get back to you on that one later, thnx for everything so far, such speedy responses from you and its nice to theory craft with someone, have a good day

Changes were just uploaded before I saw your response :)

mind if i ask what you changed? i tested out a few things, but im not sure what mechanics are different

I'm trying to put things in the change log. Look there for what has changed. I'm trying to get the shock sentries to fire more often. I found the cause is the animations are 2.667 seconds long. Both idle and attack. Therefore it can only attack that often. If I can get it to work I'll be decreasing the number to only 1, increasing the range to 12 meters and attacking every 0.75 seconds or so. If I get it to work, I'll need to play around with it to figure out a good balance.

First off, I just want to say that I *love* this mod. The new classes are really well done, and incredibly fleshed out. My favorite class is the druid, but I feel like a few tweaks could make the class really spectacular.

Mainly, I want to talk about the Nature Skills tree. It feels more like a support/supplement to the Shapeshifting tree than a standalone dps spec. On top of that, more than half of the skills do "x% of weapon damage as Physical", which benefits from Strength, whereas a couple do "x% of weapon damage as (element)" which benefits from focus. It seems like, within one tree, the skill should be mostly consistent as to what stat they benefit from. (By the way, if i'm interpreting this incorrectly please let me know.)

To add to this, the one passive in the Nature Skills tree (which I can't think of the name of at the moment) that increases your attack speed based on carrying a wand, staff, or polearm seems odd. Wand and Staff work perfectly fine for a focus-based build, but throwing Polearm (a strength weapon) in there really makes it bizarre. Perhaps you could have the skill do different things based on the type of weapon you're using. i.e., Wand/Staff will increase cast speed and Str weapon will increase attack speed.

I also feel like the Summoning tree could use a bit of work. It feels even more "supporty" than the Nature tree does. Most of the summon skills have short durations and longish cooldowns. I feel like at least one of the skills, once it reaches maybe tier 1-2 could become a permanent pet. Leader of the Pack or Summon Bear would be my candidates, that way they're not available right away and you have to deal with your own monsters for a while.

I also think the passive "Bark Skin" should be moved into Shapeshifting, as the melee-heavy class is going to need the defense bonus the most. The "Infect" passive feels like it would belong in the Summoning tree, but at the same time that wouldn't make sense because of the "infection" coming from a werewolf bite. I am glad the summons benefit from the Summoner's passives though (like thorns aura, etc).

I don't mean to come off overly critical, as I said, I really do love the mod and enjoy the hell out of these classes. These are just some suggestions that I think would help shore up a few of the Druid's (few) shortcomings. Keep up the good work!

Originally posted by achloryn:

First off, I just want to say that I *love* this mod. The new classes are really well done, and incredibly fleshed out. My favorite class is the druid, but I feel like a few tweaks could make the class really spectacular.

Mainly, I want to talk about the Nature Skills tree. It feels more like a support/supplement to the Shapeshifting tree than a standalone dps spec. On top of that, more than half of the skills do "x% of weapon damage as Physical", which benefits from Strength, whereas a couple do "x% of weapon damage as (element)" which benefits from focus. It seems like, within one tree, the skill should be mostly consistent as to what stat they benefit from. (By the way, if i'm interpreting this incorrectly please let me know.)

To add to this, the one passive in the Nature Skills tree (which I can't think of the name of at the moment) that increases your attack speed based on carrying a wand, staff, or polearm seems odd. Wand and Staff work perfectly fine for a focus-based build, but throwing Polearm (a strength weapon) in there really makes it bizarre. Perhaps you could have the skill do different things based on the type of weapon you're using. i.e., Wand/Staff will increase cast speed and Str weapon will increase attack speed.

I also feel like the Summoning tree could use a bit of work. It feels even more "supporty" than the Nature tree does. Most of the summon skills have short durations and longish cooldowns. I feel like at least one of the skills, once it reaches maybe tier 1-2 could become a permanent pet. Leader of the Pack or Summon Bear would be my candidates, that way they're not available right away and you have to deal with your own monsters for a while.

I also think the passive "Bark Skin" should be moved into Shapeshifting, as the melee-heavy class is going to need the defense bonus the most. The "Infect" passive feels like it would belong in the Summoning tree, but at the same time that wouldn't make sense because of the "infection" coming from a werewolf bite. I am glad the summons benefit from the Summoner's passives though (like thorns aura, etc).

I don't mean to come off overly critical, as I said, I really do love the mod and enjoy the hell out of these classes. These are just some suggestions that I think would help shore up a few of the Druid's (few) shortcomings. Keep up the good work!

I've thought about the things you've mentioned already. The druid has the most "silo-ed" skill trees of my 3 classes. The leap skill really does help in any build due to the health steal (it is almost required in darkness falls to stay alive), but other than that I do find it hard to have a mixed-build druid.

In terms of damage, I didn't think that it really mattered what the damage type is in terms of strength vs. focus due to the way TL2 computes damage, but I was wrong. Even though Strength always increases damage (it will increase the damage of blizzard and cyclone), focus will only increase the damage of elemental skills (damage as ice, fire, poison and electric). I just tested this in GUTS to confirm. So it really doesn't matter if you wield a wand or a sword, but rather what damage type the skill is. The reason I made the nature skills do physical damage, is that it just made sense for what the skill was doing. I made Cyclone do flat weapon DPS (not "as ..." damage) since I thought it really could do either ice or physical damage. The roots and twisters really make sense to me to be physical though. When it comes down to it though, the Druid does not need focus ever for mana. As such, it is pretty much always beneficial to have a strength build since strength increases all damage (magic and physical). So really, I think the best damage will come from a strength build an never use a focus build for a druid (regardless of skill tree). I have to admit that I'm not a TL2 damage expert, so feel free to correct me if I'm missing something.

I originally had the "Specialization" skill as an "Arcane Tools" passive, but I wanted to help out the Wolf tree. I actually had a skill to replace the "Infect" with a "Claw Mastery" so that a shapeshifting build would have a benefit to dual wielding claw weapons. I still didn't like it and decided to just add the polearms to the arcane tools skill and rename it. The whole reason I did that skill really is to be more like the D&D druid where they refuse to wield anything but non-metal weapons. I thought that polearms are mostly wood (not the blade obviously) as would be wands and staves. I'm open to going to a "Claw Mastery" skill. I've never used the Infect skill in my own builds while testing as I'd assume that they would be a bit underwhelming with a melee build. So I'm open to thoughts on this. I could go back to an Arcane Tools and replace the Infect. I thought it'd be also fun to throw in polearms as so few classes make polearms useful. I'm trying to build a T1 druid item set (wand+shield) at the moment that would be useful to any druid but could be used by any class, so that would be affected if I made a change to this. More thoughts on the damage, do others have input on this subject?

I like the bark skin as a nature passive due to what it is (bark). It is useful to a ranged build too as frankly in darkness falls the bosses will be hitting you regardless of melee vs ranged due to insane movement speed and weapon range.

My least favorite nature skill is "disease" and I've contemplated getting rid of it during development. I enjoy the synergies of passive skills in builds and that has been my biggest disappointment with my druid, the passives are not so "cool" and build off of the other skills (like the embermage proc skills that feed off of monster effect stats like burning). So I'm not opposed to adding in more "synergies" feel to the skills. The difficulty is coding passives that only benefit the nature skills but not the shapeshifting ones or balancing it.

I agree with the shapeshifting skills and I've debating lowering the cooldowns. I did decrease some as the skill levels increase, but that doesn't help a level 1-10 druid starting out that wants to be a summoner. I can lower the cooldowns if people agree so that you can re-cast the monsters. I'm even willing to make some of the summons have no summon duration (so they stick around until they die). Perhaps the bear at least. What do others think?

I'm also interested if anyone thinks I've made anything too powerful. After testing, I'm a bit worried that the Wolf Strike may be over powered. It does some sick damage when used with "Specialization" and a polearm.

Glad to see your very detailed reply drewrobi. I should add here that my druid is only level 40, and only playing on Normal (but I feel like I could at least bump it up to Veteran without much issue. I may try a solo LAN game and move it up to Veteran to see how it handles), so I am far from an expert at the class by any means.

I get what you mean about Disease. It is pretty underwhelming in terms of damage and barely feels worth the point investment. Dealing a moderate amount of damage stretched over a long 30 seconds feels a bit weak.

Wolf strike does feel ridiculously strong, but again, I may not be the best person to comment on that in terms of overall balance. I will play some in Veteran and see how it feels.

I guess I was wrong about strength only helping physical damage and focus helping only magic damage. The way the stats are worded is... murky at best, but the wiki is clearly incorrect in how it tries to clarify this matter. I trust your testing in GUTS over the wiki at any rate, but the entry for Focus reads as follows:

"Increases all elemental damage (For example, It includes elemental weapon damage and "Inflicts x% of Weapon DPS as Electric Damage" on Ember Hammer of Engineer skill because the skills of this kind convert all physical weapon damage and elemental weapon damage into specified elemental type weapon damage. In the same manner, you can't get any focus bonus from "Inflicts x% of Weapon DPS as Physical Damage" because it convert all weapon damage into physical type weapon damage, though you equip elemental weapon like Staff)
Increases damage for all skills that do not inflict a percentage of weapon damage(For example, "+x-y Physical Damage*" on Sandstorm of Outlander skill is affected by focus even if tooltip doesn't explain)"

I guess I just assumed that if Focus didn't increase the physical damage of a skill that does "%wpn dmg as phys", then the reverse would also be true and that Str wouldn't affect "%wpn dmg as (element)". But like I said, I trust your testing in GUTS over the wiki, so thanks for clearing that up for me.

I will respec my druid to a heavy Nature build and give it some work, as well as giving the Shapeshifter tree a good workout in veteran and let you know my findings. Thanks for all the excellent work on this build, it's a fantastic addition to this game.

Interesting that you are using Normal. Synergies is really meant for Elite and that is where I do all my testing.

Okay here is the input I'd like from everyone:

1. do you like "Infect" or would you rather it be replaced by something else? (Note that I may not be able to boost stats while in a wolf form unless I do it for 1 second on hurl boulder, but I'd have to test)
   
2. do you like that "Specialization" has polearms or would you rather it not? Do you have any other feedback for this passive? Do you like that the druid avoids metal weapons, or do you think that is a lame restriction in D&D that should not be part of this class?
   
3. if I replaced "Disease" with a new passive skill what skill would you like to see instead? I'm open to new ideas for a new nature passive and if it sounds really fun to play it I'll consider using it over Disease.

MY INPUT:

I haven't found time to play the druid yet I can offer some insight based on my time spent with other custom classes.

[1] Infect: has viable usage however some users may prefer a non-summon area effect instead of a passive that occasionally rewards summons for some kills- correct me but I believe the summon tree (already) does provide summon support that is not dependant on kills (some mob instances offer few chances to gather allies on kills).

Not saying that infect should be on strike however it's just very dependant on kills and summons and may not always be in use compared to a defensive aura or an active attack's stats converted into a passive if struck.

Infect seems to be based on providing extra (support) damage or possibly distracting enemy attacks (away from user) and a replacement passive could provide those same qualities via different methods.

[2] Specialization: should this reward faster skill cast and attack speed for using certain weapons yet exclude others? This depends on how flexible the class is meant to be, or in other words will this reward users for any possible weapon package (claw and mace, shield and pistol, 2-handed) or restrict this in order to be a uniquely 'non-metal' class?

I'm just happy to know that bows can activate this bonus.

[3] Disease: damage over (shorter) time 'can' be incredibly powerful when stacked so this may simply be an issue of how quickly the damage can unload it's full package.

If you really want a replacement that adds extra fun nature-inspired damage then converting the lightning strike active skill into a 'disease-strike' passive that can chain between foes could be an option and the damage could be balanced accordingly.

Perhaps make a 'low % chance for disease-meteors to fall if struck' that surrounds the user for a visually impressive passive rain of terror.

Could also have disease planetoids surround user by spinning at different speeds, sizes, and distance dependent on tier and low % chance to proc if struck.

MY THOUGHTS:

Now it's time for me to address some points in the previous conversation before this one.

[1] "Nature Tree is a support tree": I actually feel this is exactly why it exists since the only other way to deal damage and give or receive status effects is by using close-ranged shapeshifting or by relying on the support-heavy Summon Tree so this 'Nature Tree' allows the user to provide damage and support to itself or it's minions.

[2] "Strength is the best stat option for any build": I agree but why not have optional focus support by including a secondary alternative elemental damage factor within the same skills that use the usual ''strength to weapon dps"? Any gear, socketable, or enchant that has a method to boost elemental damage gets wasted if it can't support elemental damage within a skill.

[3] "Infect was going to be a Dual-Claw passive and Specialization got Polearms 'cause few classes use that weapon": Why... limit... this class when it could support any weapon package?

For example: Claw and Hammer would benefit from attack speed (hammer needs it) and hammer gives 90% interrupt chance supported by the defense-negating claw-

-also why not merge Specialization with Claw-Mastery and have any weapon bypass armor (with optional dual-wield bonus when available) so any weapon type could essentially assist the shapeshifting tree? This would also leave room for a different kind of passive.

If Wolf Strike deals noticably high damage with Specialization and a Polearm compared to other similar skills under similar circumstances then it probably needs a nerf.

Another build worth mentioning is Shield-Pistol as this wouldn't be able to benefit from a passive that excludes bonus cast and attack speed from this defensive fast-shooting option.

[4] "Bark is useful to both melee and ranged": all the more reason why another defensive type passive is not a bad idea under the 'Shapeshifting Tree' even if it's just a max of '15% chance to full heal if struck' or something like that.

[5] "Disease is a disappointment and an alternative replacement is considerable": This was just a different kind of 'burn over time damage passive' and (I agree) could be replaced by something that even visually looks more epic and as far as damage interfering with the Shapeshifter Tree; make sure to start with low enough damage to support other attack options so (if it's an AOE replacement) it will be a supporting kind of damage rather than an OP sweeper.

[6] "Some skills need reduced cooldowns": Long cooldowns (especially melee skills) lead to severe vulnerabilities; there's a reason why 'fast escape' and 'constant damage' classes are so viable.

[7] "Some summons may be allowed to be permanent or recastable": Depends on whether or not the 'summons' in question are OP if they were permanent or recastable; if it means rebalancing power in order to have a reliable distraction against mobs then it would be extremely appreciated not having to remember to press a certain button over and over again.