Gamescom 2023 is now behind us, but Path of Exile fans haven’t been left out despite the fact that ExileCon took place not that long ago. Jonathan Rogers, one of the game directors on PoE 2, has visited Cologne, Germany, to show more of what’s in store in the upcoming sequel for the best and fiercest Diablo competitor. Of course, the highlight of the content brought by Jonathan to Gamescom was the first-ever Druid class gameplay demo, which is exactly what we will talk about in this article.
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What Kind of Class PoE 2 Druid is?
As we’ve mentioned in our ExileCon 23 coverage, the developers are adding more playable classes to the sequel, increasing the total number from 7 to 12. Druid is a new class with the primary stats being Strength and Intelligence, just like the Templar. In other words, the archetype for Druid is a tanky caster class that will excel both in melee combat and casting magic spells. Seeing how Diablo 4 – a direct competitor (no matter what anybody says) has the same class, it was thrilling to learn how PoE 2’s implementation differs from the one we saw made by Blizzard.
As you may have guessed, Druids are shapeshifters who can transform into an animal shape. Right now, we know for a fact that there will be at least two forms available to Druids:
- Bear
- Wolf
In human form, Druids are akin to Sorcerers – they can use magic weapons such as staves and wands to cast spells with a strong focus on elemental magic. However, once Druid’s enemies get up close and personal, it’s time to let the inner animal come out. So, let’s talk about the Druid gameplay in his wild beast form.
The Power of The Bear
The first thing to know about shapeshifting is that it happens automatically as players use any of the bear’s abilities or attacks, so there’s no need to dedicate time and a quick-access slot for transformation, allowing you to switch between forms on the fly.
- Bear Maul – is an attack that transforms you into a bear and does a heavy swing with its paw.
- Using any spell transforms you back into human form.
Rage is Druid’s unique mechanic – the more you attack in bear form, the more Rage you accumulate and the more damage the next attack will deal. The amount of Rage you have is very easily determined – the bear form has runes all over its back that glow stronger the more Rage you have.
- Rampage – another bear attack ability that makes the bear roar and start stampeding enemies, hitting the ground with paws. The roar generates Rage that is used on the subsequent attacks as your bear charges toward enemies.
A huge standout and general theme of PoE 2 is how abilities affect each other when used together. As such, if you use the Bear Maul first to build up Rage, you will stampede longer during Rampage.
Unlike another melee-based class Warrior, Druids don’t rely on armor when it comes to defending themselves in melee combat. Instead, they have other tools that they can use, such as:
- Furious Slam – a skill useful to protect yourself from large packs of monsters by stunning them. This ability is faster to use when your bear is standing up. If you’re on all fours, your bear needs to stand up first in order to do the Slam. This is an amazing detail that even has an impact on combat.
- Dodge – is a new universal mechanic available to all classes. For Druids, it’s another useful instrument to get out of danger. Using dodge while in bear form, your character immediately turns into a human to perform the dodge without delay.
- Even when you transform into bear form (which is not always instant), you can cancel this action with a dodge.
To summarise your potential bear form combo:
- Use the Maul to have your bear stand up during the swing.
- Follow up with the Furious Slam for more efficiency.
- Add Rampage to use built-up Rage and deal massive damage while staying mobile.
Meta Gems to Look Out For as a Bear
Ferocious Roar – is a meta-skill gem (a gem that has slots for regular gems) that triggers Warcry skills, something Warriors can use when you shapeshift into a bear. During the demo, we saw how Jonathan socketed the Seismic Cry gem into the Ferocious Roar along with the Enraged Warcry Support to create a push-back effect and a chance to stun enemies.
In fact, the entire thing is done to use a mechanic called Exerted Attacks – as per the Seismic Cry description, if you stun a heavy enemy with a slam, the next slam skill you’ll use will do the double of slams. It all sounds rather complicated, but as shown in the demo, it leads to explosive results. At the end of the day, players will have to master mechanics such as Exerted Attacks to make the most effective builds.
For maximum effectiveness of the Warcry gems, the following combo was demonstrated:
- Accumulating some Rage using Bear Maul
- Do Furious Slam to stun enemies
- Use Seismic Cry to get the Exert.
- Rampage around to do insane amounts of damage
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Seismic Cry – Performs a Warcry, taunting and knocking back nearby enemies. If a Heavy Stunned enemy is hit, your next Slam does an additional aftershock.
Enraged Warcry Support – Supported Warcries consume up to 10 Rage, causing Attacks exerted by them to deal 30% more damage.
Druid The Spell Caster
The design concept of the Druid class wants players to stay in the animal form for as long as possible. At the same time, the Bear form is the slowest of all. You can hit hard, but you can get swarmed pretty easily. Therefore, most spells available to Druids last long or provide tactical support during battles.
- Lightning Storm – creates an area on the ground where monsters are continuously struck by lightning bolts that apply the Shock debuff. Shocked enemies receive increased damage.
- Tornado – sucks monsters in, helping you split up packs of enemies and deal with larger groups granting you time to set up your combos.
- This skill will also come in handy when fighting bosses. You can use Tornado to separate bosses from smaller enemies.
- Summon Animal Companions – summon a couple of wolves that can draw aggro from you. Wolf’s howl puts additional debuff, making enemies more vulnerable to taking critical strikes.
- Volcano – create a small erupting volcano that spits out fiery projectiles. The ability can be charged to spawn more projectiles the longer you cast it. The volcano stays active for some time, making it another good skill to cast before changing into bear form.
- Another example of how different skills interact with each other is when slamming the ground while in bear form makes the Volcano eject more fireballs. Rampage is the best ability for that.
Using the Seismic Cry gem to ensure the double amount of slams and then using Rampage near the place where you cast Volcano will make it continuously spew crazy amounts of fiery projectiles. And if you remembered to cast the Lightning Storm before that, the result would be even deadlier.
Automate Your Combos!
Here’s a problem – you have so many abilities that you need to set up and use in the right order for the maximum amount of damage while keeping in mind the duration of each skill simultaneously. All of this combined can be hard to pull off while surrounded by enemies. This is why meta gems are being added to the game – to automate some combat elements. In other words, when you combine passive effects with active skills to turn them into combos, socketing gems into the meta gem ensures that the right gems activate in the right order by themselves, hence, taking the need to keep track of all of that off your shoulders.
For instance, using the Cast While Channeling gem can do the trick for you.
If you add the Lightning Storm to it, the Storm will trigger automatically as you channel (or charger, or better yet, hold down the button) the Volcano. That way, you will cast both of these spells at the same time.
Having Cast While Channeling active costs Spirit – a new resource that we mentioned earlier created as a replacement for the Mana reserve mechanic in the original Path of Exile. So, this gem can stay active in both human and bear forms, meaning that any channeling skill you use as a bear will technically also cast the Lightning Storm. It might not necessarily be the best way to use the Lightning Storm. Plus, you might want to have spare Spirit while in bear form for something else.
That is easy to fix, thanks to Skill Options implemented in the Skill Gems UI. During ExileCon, we were shown how to determine what weapons can cast specific spells. But the same system can be used to determine which Druid form can or cannot use certain buffs since the shapeshifting counts as a weapon set. Therefore, you can make it so that the Cast While
Channeling is active only when you’re in human form.
Since you’ve freed up some Spirit for your Bear form, you can use another meta gem to automate more attacks and effects. Take the Cast on Melee Stun – which works similarly to the Cast While Channeling gem.
You can put the Summon Wolf skill gem to make it cast whenever you stun a sufficient amount of enemies. When wolves spawn, they howl, applying crit strike debuff, making your enemies ready for your Exerted Attack combo.
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Cast While Channeling – gains energy while you channel. On reaching maximum energy, trigger all socketed spells.
Cast on Melee Stun – gains energy when you stun enemies with melee attacks. On breaching maximum energy, trigger all socketed spells.
Dual-speccing Your Druid
The animal form of a Druid is considered a weapon set, which means that you can allocate different passive skills to human and animal forms separately. This immense gameplay feature implemented into the trademark Passive Skill Tree in PoE 2 will allow you to focus on both spell damage and melee damage depending on what form you’re using at a current moment.
With such depth in customization, you can combine lots of active skills and interesting effects. As the Skill tree reconfigures automatically based on the form you’re using, your buffs and certain skills would change based on that. Besides, with how much interaction is going on between different skills and buffs, you can adjust your Druid build to face certain enemies and situations and do so as you go. In the original Path of Exile, with all of its immense depth and hundreds of gems, you would still need to use Orbs of Regret and refund points to respec your Passive Skill Tree.
Bring Out Your Inner Animal with LFCarry
GGG’s approach to designing the Druid class is definitely focused on combining ranged magic combat and melee attacks. The possibilities for builds just with one Bear form seem endless. This is far more engaging than Diablo 4’s combat system of building up your class resource and then spending it on interesting abilities.
If you’re a fan of action RPGs such as Diablo 4 and Path of Exile, you absolutely must visit LFCarry.com and check out our services!
There’ll be more news regarding Path of Exile 2 as it closes to release in the summer of next year. Stay tuned for more crazy details and news coverage!
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