One of the five playable classes in Diablo IV is slightly different from the others, but not in a good way: the Druid has the dubious honor of becoming the only character archetype to have united the community in a shared sense of disappointment and apathy. Why, you ask? The first time fans got a chance to try it out, in the open beta of the highly anticipated action RPG, the streamers The most popular showed live the more than obvious combative deficiencies of our poor man in the caves; to the point of coining the “17 damage” meme to represent his state of absolute pugilistic flaccidity. And now, during the review period, I’ve been able to play as one.
That is: during about 40 hours of campaign, my only character -I have also been able to tinker with those of other companions- has been a druid affectionately nicknamed PacoPuños. I played with it so you don’t have to, and also because I wanted to. I can tell you that the experience has not been pleasant at all… during the first hours. It is a mixture of factors that contribute to making it much worse than all its peers, as we will see a little below; although with the same honesty I will tell you that things improve exponentially as you unlock certain key abilities and passives.
The druid’s worst hours are the first
the druid need time, both literally and figuratively. You need a lot of patience to assemble it properly, and he asks you to wait a bit. Because his abilities have a long cooldown to maddening levels, wow. I can’t describe to you how unpleasant it is to face an elite skeleton (the only ones that appear during your first steps in Kyovashad) with pure basic attack, because «Rend» which is my main ability needs a whopping 35 points of spirit as launch cost. You often find that by the time you’ve charged up the ability, it does more damage than you need to kill the opponent.
Is about a very expensive mainyes, but it is also one that practically forces to invest points in companion talents to be viable: the idea is that, for the same price of mana, you can hit up to three times, stacking additional effects with each hit; but the most important of them is the “improved shred” talent that heals you every time you deal damage. And it is also your most important resource when it comes to tanking any boss or elite unit, so you better take advantage of it. But worst of all is, without a doubt, the lack of damage pure: you cannot acquire “wolves” until level 12; to start thinking about doing DPS.
Every one of those wolves I’m talking about has a separate life bar, in fact, and although they can fortify if you buy a certain aspect, they never really last very long: they choose their prey independently as part of their passive effect, and the only way to command them is to use them as an active ability (they launch for a specific objective that you mark with the mouse). In other words, you can’t defend them and some bosses kill them without you being able to do anything about it. They respawn every few seconds because they are companions for gameplay purposes, but you want to have as many as possible to take down elites or bosses.
You need the “aspect of the stampede” to squeeze the damage out of wolves as an active ability, by the way; and we are talking about one of the effects that is obtained from legendary items that drop by pure RNG. All of this is part of a build of poison (I’ve gone beyond leveling builds, I admit that it’s not the best either) which right now is one of the two most promising for this class, the other being the “storm wolf” that carries some doubts but has the potential to do about 3 billion damage throughout 14 seconds as speculated from Diablo’s semi-official Discord. And it is that the good thing about the druid is just that: his absurd potential.
In Túl Dúlra, you can make pacts with spirit animals and benefit from their favors.
While it’s horrendous at first and some of his abilities are off to a rocky start, as you acquire certain key pieces of gear things improve exponentially. Zaven Haroutunian himself, associate director of the game, acknowledges in a press conference in which Esports Extras participated that the beta limited the players before they could go to túl dúlrawhich is the area where spirit animal blessings can be purchased for the druid – an additional progression table from which you can choose up to five buffs parameters such as critical damage. It’s available from level 15, although realistically it takes a bit longer to gather the currency you need to purchase each upgrade.
Strangely, the class that no one trusted is also the one with the most potential to become the best for endgame.
The community currently suspects that the druid is the most “meta” class from all of Diablo IV, along with the barbarian. Will it end up like this? Time and the collective experience of tens of thousands of players will tell. In my experience, the druid has grown much larger than the classes he had tested in past betas; But I suspect we’re not ready for the delta difficulty that the bosses present in the contents endgame. Lacking all the pieces he needed to complete the build from the “poisonous zoo”, the resistance has been tight and some extraordinary opponents have sent me to the coffin without the possibility of tanking them properly. We’ll see how things progress.
What does the press think of Diablo 4?
I was able to play the final version of Diablo IV in the company of our comrade Alberto Pastor, who has analyzed the new Blizzard RPG in Esports Extras. I can tell you that his opinion of the game is super positive: “Exterminating demons in Diablo 4 has been an incredible experience […] an unforgettable journey filled with memorable battles and exciting surprises.” I agree with him, it’s a beastly starting point and developed with a zero gaffes policy. If you tolerate the idea of having battle passes in a classic like the one that concerns us and it fits you to repeat dungeons as part of the content plan endgamethen you are in luck.
As a reminder, D4 officially arrives in stores June 6; although if you reserve it, you will be able to access the servers a few days in advance to start destroying Sanctuary and have your characters safe.
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