I played a spiritshift Druid on hard for my first playthrough, using one of the builds from this forum.
Druids allow you versatility and variety; you can change up your playstyle from encounter to encounter. Eg: Let the melee guys engage, drop a couple of offensive spells, spiritshift, start chunking mobs. Or stand in the back with other casters and relentlessly pound the enemy back line. It's fun to have a toon that's good at both AoE and single target. I never got tired of shifting to cat form and just killing everything with my claws.
There's a lot of great spells, too, at low levels. (Charm Beasts, Tanglefoot, and Winter Wind are a little underrated, I think, from veteran players. Whenever I screwed up and got into trouble, they helped save my behind. They also made tough early encounters waaaaaay easier.)
The only thing I'd think carefully about is the rest of your party composition, especially by the time you can get all the original NPCs (so around levels 4-6). You may not need multiple controllers/disablers/buffers because in a pinch Druids are pretty good at everything.
Personally, there were many times I found the combo of Aloth / Mother / Durance + Druid main to be a little redundant and wished I'd brought along one or two pure DPS / melee heavy hitters instead.
I played a spiritshift Druid on hard for my first playthrough, using one of the builds from this forum. Druids allow you versatility and variety; you can change up your playstyle from encounter to encounter. Eg: Let the melee guys engage, drop a couple of offensive spells, spiritshift, start chunking mobs. Or stand in the back with other casters and relentlessly pound the enemy back line. It's fun to have a toon that's good at both AoE and single target. I never got tired of shifting to cat form and just killing everything with my claws. There's a lot of great spells, too, at low levels. (Charm Beasts, Tanglefoot, and Winter Wind are a little underrated, I think, from veteran players. Whenever I screwed up and got into trouble, they helped save my behind. They also made tough early encounters waaaaaay easier.) The only thing I'd think carefully about is the rest of your party composition, especially by the time you can get all the original NPCs (so around levels 4-6). You may not need multiple controllers/disablers/buffers because in a pinch Druids are pretty good at everything. Personally, there were many times I found the combo of Aloth / Mother / Durance + Druid main to be a little redundant and wished I'd brought along one or two pure DPS / melee heavy hitters instead.
