I won't surrender!

[Slack83er]

Good. I'll remember that. Now, on to playing. Hehe

[Ben No.3]

As soon as she gets sacred immolation, you don't need to focus on DD to deal lots of damage. So I always have her as a tank that does an awful lot of damage on the side.

[AeonsLegend]

As soon as she gets sacred immolation, you don't need to focus on DD to deal lots of damage. So I always have her as a tank that does an awful lot of damage on the side.

 

Yeah, I never pick that, because something about the whole "I'm going to set myself on fire" doesn't sit right with me. But to each his own.

[Boeroer]

But teleporting a fighter across the battlefield in a blink while leaving behind a trail of invisible destruction is totally cool?

[AeonsLegend]

But teleporting a fighter across the battlefield in a blink while leaving behind a trail of invisible destruction is totally cool?

Yes, totally lore friendly. Setting yourself on fire disturbs me somehow. I don't care how strong it is. It doesn't do it for me.

[Slack83er]

Ok, began playing, quite always easy to destroy things, and bear is HUGE. 

A doubt has come to mind: What am I using equipment for, if when I'm shifted I lose EVERY effect? Rings of deflection, of cure, belts of resistance to slash and crush...all useless??

Most fights end way before i shift back... so... am I going to give every good piece of equipment only to companions? This thing is really meh...

[AeonsLegend]

Ok, began playing, quite always easy to destroy things, and bear is HUGE. 

A doubt has come to mind: What am I using equipment for, if when I'm shifted I lose EVERY effect? Rings of deflection, of cure, belts of resistance to slash and crush...all useless??

Most fights end way before i shift back... so... am I going to give every good piece of equipment only to companions? This thing is really meh...

Thing to note. Early game fights are easier than later game fights (unless you are on PotD). And the higher the difficulty the more enemies. So if you play on easy mode you'll have an easier time. Later you'll have fights with more and more durable enemies so spirit shift will run out before the fight ends and then you'll be happy you aren't naked

[Slack83er]

Ok, so.. is the shifted form only good for dishing out damage? Because I always open the fight with the transformation... but maybe I should do something before? 

Magics are targeted on the ground, so if I open with a magic, the enemy will move next to me and I will end up catching my friends as well in the fire.

 

I'm still unsure of my role in party... I don't seem to be a leader...more of a damage dealing beast which lasts for some time, and then it turns much much weaker...

[Ben No.3]

The Druid as a caster is the opposite of weak

 

Druids have the role of a jack of all trades casters... You name it, they have it. Summons, damage, buffs, heals, debuffs, CC... They have everything

[Slack83er]

The Druid as a caster is the opposite of weak

 

Druids have the role of a jack of all trades casters... You name it, they have it. Summons, damage, buffs, heals, debuffs, CC... They have everything

Yes, I understand that, but it takes long time to cast, while abilities are quite always fast.. furthermore, if I'm in the fray, it's hard to exit and not be followed, I'll be dead already... And most magics I have damage my own party too...

[Ben No.3]

 

 

The Druid as a caster is the opposite of weak

 

Druids have the role of a jack of all trades casters... You name it, they have it. Summons, damage, buffs, heals, debuffs, CC... They have everything

Yes, I understand that, but it takes long time to cast, while abilities are quite always fast.. furthermore, if I'm in the fray, it's hard to exit and not be followed, I'll be dead already... And most magics I have damage my own party too...

positioning is the key. Have the Druid not standing alone, have him fighting alongside your tank. That way, when spiritshift ends, you can easily get him out of trouble. Damage spells only the red part hits your party, not the yellow. Yellow gets bigger the more int you have. But you probably already know that. Just making sure

 

Since your Druid has some Res, you could try make him a more frontliner-character.... With a spear and a small shield (no acc penalty) as well as some decent armour, so you can stay where you are even when spiritshift ends. Also, you can make use of all those beautiful cone spells. If you do that, you could maybe go with nature's vigour for level one spell mastery, as well as choosing veterans recovery. So, when your Druid hits level 9, he can hold his ground.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Ben No.3

[JerekKruger]

Ok, so.. is the shifted form only good for dishing out damage? Because I always open the fight with the transformation... but maybe I should do something before? 

Magics are targeted on the ground, so if I open with a magic, the enemy will move next to me and I will end up catching my friends as well in the fire...

 

Early game in most fights you'll simply spiritshift straight away as you don't have that many spells per rest yet and fights are mostly easy and quick to beat. In harder fights, you might want to cast a few spells first, before shifting and going into combat. In the later game fights tend to be longer, and you have a lot more spells per rest (and after level 9 you get spells per encounter too) so you'll probably start most battles with some spells before shifting.

 

Don't target AoE spells on an enemy. By this I mean when casting an AoE spell, don't click directly on an enemy when targetting. As you've discovered, if you do the enemy will move and hence so will your AoE template. Instead you should target the ground where the enemy will be when the spell fires. This might sound hard since the enemy is moving, but remember that the enemy is moving towards you so if you keep your party standing still then you know, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, where the enemy will stop moving - just in front of your lines. With this knowledge, you cast your AoE spell so that it hits just in front of your line and the enemy will obligingly walk into it. Alternatively, you can always wait until all melee combatants are engaged before casting AoE spells, but once again don't target an enemy, target the ground.

 

Also remember that a fair number of Druid spells are FoeAoE, so you don't have to worry about friendly fire with these.

 

As for taking damage when disengaging: you don't necessarily have to disengage. Unless you're taking massive damage you can stay in melee and use your spells from there. The druid actually has a fair number of spells which are best used in this range (cone spells, point blank AoE spells etc.). As Ben No.3 says, it might be sensible to use a shield to make yourself tankier for this role. If you do find yourself taking lots of damage whilst in melee, if you have a Priest you can cast Withdraw on your Druid to allow you to escape.

[Slack83er]

Ahhhh all this is far too complicated!! Shift in, give a beating, shift out. From that point on, it's ME the one that takes a beating. on easy mode, 1 sec and I was lying dead to 3 bandits.....and Eder was aside.

 

Also... I'd like to give him a slight feeling of "leader".... but since I also had this problem with a paladin, I'm afraid I'm stuck.

 

I don't have a lot of CON, I know..but damn... IT'S EASY MODE!!!

I think I'm hopeless. (and I'm wasting your time, which isn't fare at all)

[Ben No.3]

Hey, we would ignore you if we wouldn't want to answer

[Slack83er]

Yeah I know, you're very gentle, and you especially BEN, who always come up with something good!

[AeonsLegend]

Ahhhh all this is far too complicated!! Shift in, give a beating, shift out. From that point on, it's ME the one that takes a beating. on easy mode, 1 sec and I was lying dead to 3 bandits.....and Eder was aside.

 

Also... I'd like to give him a slight feeling of "leader".... but since I also had this problem with a paladin, I'm afraid I'm stuck.

 

I don't have a lot of CON, I know..but damn... IT'S EASY MODE!!!

I think I'm hopeless. (and I'm wasting your time, which isn't fare at all)

Well you took the min max advice from a person who has played this game multiple times and knows how to work around low constitution. If you don't have a whole lot of experience I would advise against doing that. Low con hurts front liners unless they have some sort of other defenses like a fighter or a paladin.

[Ben No.3]

I'm flattered

 

Lets see what we can do... What level are you? Talents so far? Which companions? Equipment? 

 

If you feel like you annoy people just pm me... I'm no expert as others are (by no means) but maybe we can come up with something anyway

[JerekKruger]

It's not surprising that your druid will be a bit fragile in the early game, but this should improve as you increase in level. I'm a bit surprised that you died so quickly after spiritshift ran out, was your endurance already low?

 

One thing to remember is that if you're in melee, and you move out of melee, the enemy gets a free disengagement attack which gets a bonus to accuracy and damage and, if it hits, will likely allow the enemy to re-engage, meaning they'll get another if you keep trying to move away from melee. This might be why you went down so quickly and is why I recommend not trying to move away from melee. In the early game even tough classes like Fighters can get punished pretty harshly by these attacks.

 

If you need to flee melee, and you don't have a Priest to Withdraw you, another option would be to have Eder use knockdown on the enemy which is currently engaging your Druid (you can see Engagement by little lines connecting your character to an enemy) which allows you to flee without worrying about disengagment.

 

What attributes did you take? What armour and weapons are you currently using.

 

EDIT: also don't beat yourself up if you're finding the game hard on easy. First, the early game is the hardest part of the game (barring certain boss fights). Two, easy is not actually much easier than normal or hard: the only significant difficultly steps are story mode and PotD; easy, normal and hard are all very similar. Third, there are a lot of intricacies to the combat in PoE which take quite some time to learn, it'll take a while before you have a good understanding of them all.

Edited November 1, 2016 by JerekKruger

[Slack83er]

I'm level 3 starting game. Plain armor, quarterstaff in hand.

Stats are:

 

MIG 16

CON 7 ( not so min maxed after all...)

DEX 10

PER 14

INT 16

RES 15

 

Cross class fighter reg. talent.

Also, while shifted, I miss a lot.. dunno why.

[Ben No.3]

I'd like to add to what Jerek is saying... this game has a learning curve, you will come from nothing to something. There is no sudden moment of realistation, learning is continous... don't expect to much from yourself at this early stage, and don't be afraid to ask questions. I wish I would have done that earlier

[JerekKruger]

Okay, your Con is a little low, but it shouldn't be having too much of an affect on your survivability. Are you moving around after you reach melee range?

[Slack83er]

Learning curve or not... I'm still not satisfied. Why is this happening? Why can't I be the party leader I'm trying to be? There's something I'm missing...

[Slack83er]

Okay, your Con is a little low, but it shouldn't be having too much of an affect on your survivability. Are you moving around after you reach melee range?

Not at all. But once shift expires I'm a ham in a corridor of blades.... 

[Ben No.3]

I'm level 3 starting game. Plain armor, quarterstaff in hand.

Stats are:

 

MIG 16

CON 7 ( not so min maxed after all...)

DEX 10

PER 14

INT 16

RES 15

 

Cross class fighter reg. talent.

Also, while shifted, I miss a lot.. dunno why.

Okay.... If you get hit to much drop the quaterstaff for now and pick up a small shield and spear. Instead of veterans recovery pick weapon and shield style. You will have a nice boost to deflection and a valuable boost to accuracy from the spear. 

 

By plain armour do you mean clothes? If you have our guy in frontline, give him something heavy... Plate, Brigandine, Chain... at least  Breatsplate I'd say. Don't open with spiritshift. Let eder engage, then shift and attack while everyone focuses on eder. As soon as you turn back, you will be able to hold your ground with all the protection.

 

Also, if you respec anyway, consider boosting athletics. Second wind is, especially for an beginner and ealry on, an excellent panic button, so you should maybe boost that.

[Slack83er]

I have second wind and athletics. used it. Died anyway. And I regen also! So you suggest going sword & board for a time and then change to 2handed weapon?