At the moment Druid is being reworked in Korea, which will eventually come to IToS, unfortunately Korea has failed to voice their opinions enough to stop it from getting into the actual game. This means C1 and C2 Druid get some grass based buffs, and Druid 3 gets completely destroyed, taking away the current identity of the class.
There is so much wrong with this, but here are the main things.
In ToS, when you gain MAX HP, you do not gain CURRENT HP, whether you are a newbie player who views Clerics as the ultimate class because of healing or a more serious player who understands how good potions, CON and utility skills can make other classes. Everyone accepts that Heal is one of the best skills in the game. When you gain HP, whether it be Hengestone, Ein Sof, Lycanthropy, or Large type monsters Transformation Attribute, no matter how you get it you still face this same issue. âIs it worth it for me to use my best skill to heal up this hpâ In the case of Ein Sof, it wasnât ever really worth it at least IMO. However 2-5 minutes of Lycanthropy or even 2+ mins of Transform was worth it. Itâs not about the amount of HP, itâs about the duration, as long as you can make greater use of the max hp than you can the 6, 12, or even 17 heal tiles that you give up to use this, it will end up being a decent skill. When you cannot make greater use of the max hp, the whole thing becomes worthless.
So reading this change, most might be reading gains 100% max hp. I donât see that, there is no 100% max hp on this change. Because I will never waste 11-12 heal tiles, risk giving the enemy 9 of them from Reversi just so I can have 30 seconds of 100k extra hp. Itâs also really bad that you must heal before hand so you might get reversiâd before you even have a chance to heal the max hp up. Not to mention there are a ton of bosses or player classes with the ability to destroy tile spells, so just another way to waste the extra tiles on a max hp buff, or all of them in general. This is a mess of a change and it shouldnât have made it to KToS, but I really hope IToS is a little louder than Korea so we can keep it from coming here.
There is another big issue with this change though, the main appeal of Druid, and the identity of the class, has always been the transformations, whether it be Sequioa, A large Insect, Lycan or some monster than can use some other classes cool skill like Haste. The greatest thing about Druid is transforming, this is not just in this game either, other games, Druid is the transforming class, itâs why people love the class, but now you get to be transformed 25% or 50% of the time as a Druid, and the 50% is just an ugly human with less clothes and no shoes on. You can call it a wolf if you want but I wear cat ears in hair slot 2, Iâm as much of a transformation as the Demi Wolf is and Iâm like this 100% of the time, if you canât play as something else as a Druid, then youâre not a Druid, youâre a grass summoner, youâre playing Poison Ivy. NOT DRUID.
Now luckily Druid still have the regular Transform, which is such a cool idea for a skill. but itâs also a skill that has a 2 minute CD. I have died in TW, come back and had to sit in the safe zone waiting to Transform again (Or use Lycan) with a CD that high, it means you cannot be swapping between it and Lycan s freely as you might want, that severely lowers the use of Lycanthropy because if youâre 1 minute into your transform and Lycan comes off CD, you canât use it, because if you do, once the transformation ends, youâre stuck as a human for like 30 seconds. I have a Sorc2Necro3, itâs a simular idea to Druid and even locks you out of other skills during riding (Unfortunately) but the thing that makes it still worth it, is that you can mount up, cast skills, dismount, cast skills and by time you are done youâre ready to mount up again. You can also stay mounted as long as you want (well 15 minutes because bots ruined the game but still)
So this is the issue weâve come to with the future of Lycanthropy. The lack of freedom to switch between forms and the lack of duration for those forms, on their own neither is a deal breaker but together they complete destroy this skill. I also spent about 5 mins reading Druid thread before making this, to find:
400 Block Pen is kind of needed for a physical class of only 4 skills to do PvP. Without it you canât really use Lycan in PvP. Still even so It would be better to remove that 400 block pen in exchange for duration, just so this useless ability becomes useful in at the very least PvE.
Itâs not like this 1 skill made Druid 3 either, I personally donât even use it much. I do use it, but Iâm more interested in Transform. Which is also being completely destroyed.
Every translation of the change I can find says the same thing
ADDING AN EFFECT Not changing, adding, yet in the videos of people testing Druid none of them have gained the 100% max hp you get for transforming, whether it be on Lycanthropy, Transform, or even the pretender Lycanthropy, none of them get the HP. It wasnât a documented change so Iâm gonna hope itâs just a mistake by some programming monkey, which will be resolved in a future patch and hopefully not repeated when it comes to IToS. Now someone did post this
I didnât watch the video but if what is stated is accurate, then it suggests more that this is a bug, someone thought, the hp from Hengestone was being moved to Lycan, and complete forgot Transform existed, So instead of adding an additional 100% to Lycan or even removing and compensating it for Transform, they unwittingly ninja nerfed it.
Well hereâs the feedback on that, or rather what I could find in my short time browsing of the Druid thread.
That brings up another important point! What if we drop Druid C3 from our builds because of how bad it has become? The issue with that is, YOU STOP BEING A DRUID!. Like I said before, what makes a Druid, a Druid, is the ability to transform, Iâve never played a game where Druids donât transform. Being a C2 Druid means that your transform loses 100% uptime. Now yes you can do Divine Might + Grey Jukopus Gem, and that will give you 120 second duration and 120 second CD, but even then you still must end the transformation every time. Druid C2 barely works, it doesnât work in PvP and it unfortunately gives up 5 points of Sterea Trofh, which just feels sad. Itâs better than taking the worst C3 in the game but it doesnât feel good. In fact thatâs what this entire changes comes down to. Druid doesnât feel good anymore. Oh sure it got buffed, CC, and more damages, DoT that stays on the target when they walk off the grass and even healing naturally on the grass. C1 and C2 are unquestionably buffed. They are amazing, Lycan does far more damage, but none of that matters! The class no longer feels good, it is a chore to play a class like this, it doesnât work in PvP and all the long hours youâll spend running Velcoffer or fighting World Bosses, or just doing ET, youâre not gonna be able to keep count of how many times you had to lose transform or how long you spent playing as just another boring human class with poison ivy abilities.
I wonât suggest nerfs for my own class, It could contain my own bias and nobody wants to help others make things worse for them, but I will say where not to nerf and make a few suggestions on positive changes.
Please IMC: Do not
- Nerf Durations or CDs on transformations, Transforming up time should be high.
- Take away the ability to make other monsters grass types. Allow us to Transform into what we want.
- Restrict our use of skills outside of Lycanthropy for long periods of time, whether we can use them in Lycanthropy or not, we should be able to switch back and forth at the very least from Lycan skills to Druid and other skills.
This is a list of changes I would make to make Druid 3 feel better to play from the KToS version.
- Extend Lycanthropy duration
- Lower Lycanthropy Cooldown
- Lower Transform CD
- Re-Add the HP on Hengestone or alternatively
- Give HP to Transform, whether it be a % per level or a flat amount on all levels.
- Rework Shapeshifting to be a skill used only to select a transformation, and give us a free skill point for it, like summoner command skills or alternatively
- Add a Transform menu like Grimoire/Necronomicon/Poison Pot, which allows us to save nearby monsters to use a Transformations.
- Potentially make Transform a C1 skill, and push another skill to C2 such as Seed or Carnivory or Telepath.
Any of these changes would be great, itâs not about buffing Druid to be the best, itâs about not losing the thing that made it great in the first place while improving the feeling of player a Druid. All that damage increasing crap means nothing if the class feels tedious and frustrating to play. PleaseâŚ
Make Druid Great Again!
