Whats wrong with druid shapeshift?

[nemesis205bw]

Is it intended that shapeshifted druid deals 100dmg per hit with almost 0 recovery? There is no point in taking rogue if druid do the same but 10x better and can even carnage with stag for huge aoe damage.

[Elric Galad]

They can do this only for limited time (which is critical in PotD) and all the items they carry are cancelled in Werebearcat form.

 

It's powerful but not OP, also considering Druid spells are slightly less useful than Wizard's and priest's. 

[Boeroer]

Don't know what you did exactly to reach consistent hits with 100 dmg - but yes: Spiritshift is quite powerful if you put efford into it. Maybe that's why its duration is so supershort? I mean it's even shorter than my sexytime performance (which does zero damage and is 1/rest by the way).

Edited February 27, 2016 by Boeroer

[DreamWayfarer]

Well, for one, rogues can use gear. It may not sound like much, but it is a distinct advantage as you go trough the game.

 

Not only that, but Sneak Attack doens't have a time limit after which it stops working.

[nemesis205bw]

I have 2 shapeshifts per encounter and they last more then enough with 21 int. Its easy to reach 100 damage, you can either take all lightning talents and cast that level 8 lightning spell (you will be critting for 140+) or you can take fire talents and have your chanter cast fire weapon buff. At the start of every battle I also use 2x inspiring liberation (per encounter insta cast +20 accuracy buff for 30 sec) which allows me to get constant crits. its important to take that sneak attack talent too.

There are also equipment passives that boost your damage like that +10% wildfire etc.

 

But the real problem here is not damage, its the crazy attack speed. It attacks atleast 2x faster then geared dual wield rogue while also doing 4x more damage which equals 8x higher dps.

 

Not only that, but Sneak Attack doens't have a time limit after which it stops working.

Sneak attack DO have obvious limit. Your enemy need to be debuffed or flanked. Dont forget you can take sneak attack on druid too for even more dmg.

Edited February 27, 2016 by nemesis205bw

[Boeroer]

How do you get 2 uses per encounter? Is that new? I didn't try out Spiritshift since 2.03 when it was 1/encounter only.

 

You can't have lower recovery than 0. Since a rogue can use durgan enchanted gear he will be faster and deal more crits if he focuses onto attack speed while he can wear thicker armor.

 

That Lightning Spell is level 8 - it's ok if it does some serious stuff.

 

If you want to compare spritishift with other melee attacks we should exclude things that others also can benefit from - like burning lashes and Inspiring Exhortation. That's nothing that makes Spiritshift more powerful exclusively - it makes every attack more powerful.

So let's concentrate on what you can do with a druid and Spiritshift alone in order to be able to compare it to other classes.

 

- You said it's 2/encounter - that's way better and more powerful than before I have to admit

- It's superfast - yes, but besides Two Weapon Style and the high attack speed of claws (or the other unarmed variants that are a bit slower) you can't buff your speed further with gear. Potions ans Outlander's Frenzy should work though. So: is it possible to reach 0 recovery? If that's the case it's very powerful. Any other class can't do it better in terms of speed then - they can only try to achieve the same speed and wear thicker armor at the same time.

- If you crit a lot that's nice - but a druid will always have lower ACC than a rogue or monk or ranger (we don't want to factor external sources of ACC in because as I said everybody can profit from that). And other classes have abilities that even boost ACC further and/or have hit-to-crit conversion

 

So all in all the attacks of a spiritshifted druid might be really good - especially because you can also cast spells when spiritshifted (I would cancel that) - but I don't think that they can compete with a fully equipped rogue or even a fighter who focuses on dps. When I tried some builds with spiritshift, I found the damage to be great but the survivability to be bad and als othe duration to bee too short (that may be outdated if you can have 2/encounter now). I had much better experiences when I just let my druid cast spells all the time.

[AndreaColombo]

- It's superfast - yes, but besides Two Weapon Style and the high attack speed of claws (or the other unarmed variants that are a bit slower) you can't buff your speed further with gear. Potions ans Outlander's Frenzy should work though. So: is it possible to reach 0 recovery? If that's the case it's very powerful.

 

It isn't.

 

If you don't take Vulnerable Attack, you can sip a potion of DAOM and sum the talent for a total of -70% recovery. That's the best you can do with Spiritshift—30% recovery before DEX.

 

Sure, if you have a high DEX score you get pretty fast—and with high MIG and the wildstrike talents you can do some fairly high damage. It's very good but to the best of my knowledge, it is 1/encounter as you said (not playing a Druid at present though; if it got changed, I wouldn't notice.)

[nemesis205bw]

There is soulbound item that resets spiritshift per encounter and some item that gives additional use.

 

 

 

You can't have lower recovery than 0. Since a rogue can use durgan enchanted gear he will be faster and deal more crits if he focuses onto attack speed while he can wear thicker armor.

 

He will never be faster because claws have higher base attack speed then daggers.

 

 

So: is it possible to reach 0 recovery?

Yes its possible and very easy, you can actually get it right from the start if you picked that cat form and have enough dex. If you add to that frenzy its a bit overkill.

 

 

 

- If you crit a lot that's nice - but a druid will always have lower ACC than a rogue or monk or ranger (we don't want to factor external sources of ACC in because as I said everybody can profit from that). And other classes have abilities that even boost ACC further and/or have hit-to-crit conversion

Actually spiritshift have quite high base accuracy, its not far behind other classes that can passively increase their accuracy. The thing that makes spiritshift much more powerfull then rogue or other melee dps is its great scaling with free buffs like Inspiring Exhortation (adding 20 acc to someone who has 80 acc is better then adding 20 acc to someone who has 110).

 

 

o all in all the attacks of a spiritshifted druid might be really good - especially because you can also cast spells when spiritshifted (I would cancel that) - but I don't think that they can compete with a fully equipped rogue or even a fighter who focuses on dps. When I tried some builds with spiritshift, I found the damage to be great but the survivability to be bad and als othe duration to bee too short (that may be outdated if you can have 2/encounter now). I had much better experiences when I just let my druid cast spells all the time.

You should try high int druid and buff its defenses with mindweb. That solves his duration and survability problems. Also its important to take the right talents and items that boost these talent.

[nemesis205bw]

 

- It's superfast - yes, but besides Two Weapon Style and the high attack speed of claws (or the other unarmed variants that are a bit slower) you can't buff your speed further with gear. Potions ans Outlander's Frenzy should work though. So: is it possible to reach 0 recovery? If that's the case it's very powerful.

 

It isn't.

 

If you don't take Vulnerable Attack, you can sip a potion of DAOM and sum the talent for a total of -70% recovery. That's the best you can do with Spiritshift—30% recovery before DEX.

 

Sure, if you have a high DEX score you get pretty fast—and with high MIG and the wildstrike talents you can do some fairly high damage. It's very good but to the best of my knowledge, it is 1/encounter as you said (not playing a Druid at present though; if it got changed, I wouldn't notice.)

 

Yes it is. Its easy to reproduce - just make high dex cat druid and use frenzy + cat speed buff + druid level 7 spell potion + two weapons style. Even without buffs its base recovery is almost 0 (I dont know if its a bug), even with slowed combat and spamming pause the recovery is hard to notice. Anyways it wouldnt make much difference of reducing 0.1sec recovery to 0 (with 100% attack speed) right?

Edited February 27, 2016 by nemesis205bw

[Boeroer]

Ok, we don't want to offend you, we just want to discuss this. Let's take the heat out of this before it gets hot.

 

Frenzy + Cat speed buff + potion doesn't stack. The fastest one will suppress the others. Two weapon style does stack.

 

You're right that claws and stuff have a faster base speed than most weapons - but that doesn't help to reduce recovery to zero. Speed modifiers from abilities (including potions) and item like weapons and gauntlets work multiplicatively on your recovery time. Two Weapon Style gets added after that. As a spirit shifter you don't have items to reduce recovery. So you will only have abilities to reduce your recovery. It is true that your recovery is already short. But you can't reduce it to zero.

Any other character who wants to can achieve this. It doesn't matter how high his recovery was before: if he reduces it to zero it doesn't matter how long it took to recover before.

 

I think you don't know exactly how attack speed works. I mean no offense by saying this. I just think we should have the same basis before we begin to circle around each other fruitlessly. But when I look at this then I'm very sure that spirit shift attacks are fast. But any character who uses items can be faster. And rogues will then do more damage also. But they can't cast spell which makes spiritshift still awesome: dealing lots of damage while being able to cast is good. I just don't think it's OP.

 

These new items you mentioned sound nice. Can you tell me more about them?

I mean if they come late it's not so OP as if you could get them early.

 

At least we could built a decent spirit shift guy now. Before it was a bit UP, but this sounds rather cool

[nemesis205bw]

As I said in the beginning "Is it intended that shapeshifted druid deals 100dmg per hit with almost 0 recovery?". Spiritshift doesnt need any recovery reduction because its base recovery is so short that any other buff would make very little difference. I though potion and frenzy buff stack tho, wasnt sure about cat buff. I am using stag for the carnage which synegises so well with high int.

 

I dont know how hard it is to get 0 recovery speed on rogue because I barely use him, but there are pretty good chances spiritshift would still attack faster because of animation speed. It would need some testing. Even if you could passively achieve 0 recovery on rogue you cant ignore the fact, that spiritshift deals MUCH more damage and with carnage its AOE.

 

If you have geared rogue in your team go ahead and test this:

 

1. Create 16 level druid using console maxed dex and might rest points to per and int, give him all shock damage talents (including hearth of storm), 2 weapon style, all accuracy talents (paesant,+4 acc aura etc), frenzy and savage attack. (does unarmed damage talent work with druid?)

2. Give him all items you have that would boost his spiritshift damage like wildstrike belt

3. Cast level 8 druid lightning spell buff (sorry cant tell the name I am not playing in english language), cast frenzy and spiritshift

4. Attack your target

5. Now attack the same target with your rogue and compare the results

 

I cant test it because I sacraficed my rogue companion (cuz druid was much better) and it would be difficult to bring all the items required with console. My rogue didnt have 0 recovery but was very close to. Maybe you can explain how u achieved 0 recovery without using any expensive sources (expensive = per rest, potions etc).

 

 

Edit: the item I use to reset spiritshift is soulbound scepter. Most encounters require just 1 spiritshift anyways.

Edited February 27, 2016 by nemesis205bw

[Boeroer]

It's true that you will be very fast. I don't know if you will be faster than a guy with zero recovery. I can run a test so we can be sure.

 

Is the carnage 1/encounter now or is it still 1/rest?

 

It's not that hard to reach 0 recovery. What you need is dual wielding, Durgan Steel, Gloves of Swift Action and Outlander's Frenzy (or any other ability that boosts Attack Speed). If you have one (or even two) speed enchanted weapon like Strike Hard or Unforgiven or Rimecutter then you don't even need the Gloves. Two speed enchanted weapons let you reach 0 recovery while you can use Vulnerable Attack plus a plate armor without having any recovery. 

 

Let's see your points:

 

1) No, Novice's Suffering doesn't work with spiritshift. That is by design, no bug.

2) Since items do not work with Spiritshift it's only the Wildstrike Belt. I tried the Sandals of the Forgotten Friar once to see if the damage bonus gets applied but it doesn't.

 

I will run the test you mentioned - maybe this afternoon - and will report how it goes.

What was that soulbound sceptre? Gyrd Haewanes Stenes?

And you spoke of another item that gives one additional use of spiritshift. What was the name of  that? It's because I can't console it if I don't know the name (roughly).

 

By the way which difficulty are you playing on? This might be interesting because on PoTD fights last longer so the (somewhat short) duration of Spiritshift gets more important.

 

I'm really curious if the boostet Spiritshift that much as it sounds now. Because I alsway wanted to do a build with it but was disappointed every time because although it had powerful attacks the duration was so short that is was not worth to build something aroud it. 

Another reason why this is becoming better and better is that the unarmed damage scales with level. So at level 16 I can imagine that the damage is quite high. I'll find out if legendary enchantment can keep up with this.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Boeroer

[AndreaColombo]

Another reason why this is becoming better and better is that the unarmed damage scales with level. So at level 16 I can imagine that the damage is quite high. I'll find out if legendary enchantment can keep up with this.

 

I doubt it. Already at level 14 unarmed attacks like Monk fists and Spiritshift natural weapons got +16 Accuracy; Legendary is +15.

 

Will test Spiritshift too as I'm curious how it behaves now.

[Elric Galad]

At level 13 monks got +15 Acc, not +16

[Boeroer]

Well now that makes a huge difference.

 

Monks are UP!   

[Kaylon]

You can add also 15% attack speed from the gloves, which means you can reach something like 7% recovery only while shapeshifted. Zahua with his new ability can reach 0% recovery with his fists too.

[AndreaColombo]

^ do the gloves carry over to your spiritshifted form?

 

Also, new ability as in "unique to Zahua"?

[Kaylon]

^ do the gloves carry over to your spiritshifted form?

 

Also, new ability as in "unique to Zahua"

 

Sorry, forgot druid lose bonuses from armor too...

[Boeroer]

Also happens to me: tried to apply the damage buff from the Sandals of the Forgotten Friar two times.

 

And what's Zahua's new ability?

[Kaylon]

Also happens to me: tried to apply the damage buff from the Sandals of the Forgotten Friar two times.

 

And what's Zahua's new ability?

After finishing his quest he finally becomes "Anitlei" and he gets a passive 10% attack speed... Not sure however if it depends on the choices you made during his quest...

[Boeroer]

Oh, sweet!

[Boeroer]

So... did a test with twin pale elves. One rogue, one druid (spiritshift stag).

 

Both took the same non class specific talents for melee fight, including Outlander's Frenzy. The druid took all the wildstrike shock talents and Heart of the Storm while the rogue took Deathblows and all the other goodies that are good for dps and also Secrets of Rime because I used two durgan refined Rimecutters.

 

Items:

Rogue: superb Rimecutter + superb Rimecutter, White Crest armor plus helm + 2 CON, Ring of Thorns, Ryona's Vambraces, Glanfathan Stalking Boots, Girdle of Maegfolk Might, Lilith's Shawl, Ring of Deflection.

 

Druid: Wildstrike Belt

 

I went and attacked the ogres who stand around Elmshore when you want to do the Nalrend quest.

 

The Rogue, once he flanked, did mostly crits that were about 75 to 95 damage, he had no recovery. Ogre went down pretty fast.

 

The Druid, however, went into the fight with the Avenging Storm and dealt 120 damage with his first hit (not crit!). the next strike was a crit for over 160 damage. The third hit I can't remember because I was all "Holy Batsh!t?" and the Ogre exploded. Druid's attacks had a recovery bar and he was a bit slower than the rogue, but not too much. When the frenzy expired the diffenreces became more obvious - but still that damage per hit was just jawdropping - the rogue - although I had chosen the annihilating Rimecutters - could not deal that much damage even with crits.

 

The two then got surrounded and the druid went down pretty fast while the rouge could survive a few seconds longer due to his armor and stuff.

 

I then went into the log and saw why the druid is doing so much damage: Avenging Storm profits from Wildstrike Shock! Your normal unarmed damage is very high: 50 - 75 per hit with MIG 17 while the rogue only had 21 - 31. On top of that came Wildstrike Shock with 50%. And than came Avenging Storm which does up to 20 schock damage normally - but it also adds a wildstrike shock bonus. I don't know why - maybe Avenging Storm is considered a melee attack and Wildstrike Shock just applies to every melee attack (why shouldn't it). I think that's not intended but it's plausible.

This will work with the other wildstrike elements, too, I guess. But the synergy of Wildstrike Shock, Heart of the Storm and Avenging Storm is best this way.

 

Yeah well. What can I say? With this spell the druid spiritshifter is definetly a better damage dealer than a rogue - even one with very good equipment.

 

You might say that spiritshift only lasts 15 secondes and it's true - but that sceptre gives you two uses and that surely is enough because you murder the foes so quickly it's just hilarious.

 

Without Avenging Storm the druid's damge per hit was nearly the same as the rogue's. That's because the rogue did way more crits. The druid is a bit slower so I expect the dps to be a little bit lower than the rogue's (without Avenging Storm). And I also have to factor in the higher freeze DR of the ogres against Rimecutter's lash. Maybe as a cat their dps is even because a spiritshifted cat will hit faster.

 

Stag form's carnage is still 1/rest by the way - but imagine those numbers in an AoE.

 

Avenging Storm comes pretty late - but  nemesis205bw was absolutely right when he said that there's no reason to bring a rogue when you have this.

 

If you look at the game from the beginning to the end maybe the rogue will deal more melee damage overall because he starts with Sneak Attack and the druid will have to buy all those talents until he gets really powerful. But druids also have powerful spells!

 

If you are the MC it may be that the rogue will get more out of that: he can side with the doemenels and will get a +0.3 crit damage multiplier bonus. Since he crits more often than the druid that would make him stronger in comparison. Same with Dungeon Delver and Rabbit Fur Gloves and stuff.

 

p.s.: Did I mention that Avenging Storm also stuns on hit?

 

p.p.s.: I don't know how a fully pampered Lady of Pain compares to this (without food and resting bonuses - just abilities and items). Can anybody post some numbers (damage, recovery)?

Edited February 27, 2016 by Boeroer

[AndreaColombo]

wildstrike affecting spells is a bug; I saw it reported and avknowledged by QA last week, then forgot until I read Boeroer's post.

 

When I get to Elmshore in my current playthough I'll run a few tests with the LoP and post numbers.

Edited February 27, 2016 by AndreaColombo

[nemesis205bw]

Thx for testing it. I dont think awakening storm is bugged. Its supossed to add onhit damage to your attack and wildstrike increases all damage components. This spell is designed to be used while shapeshifted because its scales with fast attacks.

 

Also dont forget it deals damage to enemies who attack you too which is great aspect of this spell. Try starting battle with all storm spells (returning storm, relentless storm and awakening storm) and THEN spiritshift. Enemies will die around you while you are carnaging them with huge lightning aoe dps. Stuns from these spells will increase your acc even futher which means more crits. You can do this combo 4 times before having to rest which is nice.

Stormcaller ranger would synergyse with it well.

 

 

 

If you look at the game from the beginning to the end maybe the rogue will deal more melee damage overall because he starts with Sneak Attack and the druid will have to buy all those talents until he gets really powerful. But druids also have powerful spells!

Actually spiritshift damage is very high on all levels. It is capable of critting for 70 damage on level 7 without any buffs (it happened to me) and have huge attack speed for whole game not just at the end like rogue when u get all these items and durgan steel. In fact druid doesnt require durgan steel so you can spend it on other chars which is great advantage. You need only 3 talents to start dishing out tons of damage so I think spiritshift druid will deal more dmg then rogue on all game phases.

 

 

 

You might say that spiritshift only lasts 15 secondes and it's true - but that sceptre gives you two uses and that surely is enough because you murder the foes so quickly it's just hilarious.

High int will make it last long enough and increase range of your carnage so its usefull stat in this build. Dont use SP it at the start of battle, cast 1 or 2 spells (storm spells) and when enemies get engaged by tanks then spiritshift and anihilate them. When you fight bosses just get close and cc them then use spiritshift and before it ends the boss will be dead.

Edited February 28, 2016 by nemesis205bw

[Boeroer]

Wildstrike adding lash damage to spells is a confirmed bug: to bug report

 

But even without that Avenging Storm is very nice and does enough damage on it's own.