Druidry: my insanity is now

[Sandshark]

Introduction

Right now Druidry has a strong class identity but I think that hampers its ability for build diversity, since it really boils down to playing around a single skill (which is, right now, not very good though the buffs have helped it). To the end of offering a potential solution in a distant, ideal future here is how I would reorganize and expand the trees to make them offer a more diverse set of tools for someone entering them.

The basic setup involves expanding Druidry to four trees with two roots, instead of two trees with one root. This is to keep class mechanics separate and unique. Even though it is cool to use both trees at once, it's clunky to have so many spells modifying a single spell (grasping vines) and not particularly useful to build with.

Below is the chart of skills, refer to it as I go into more detail below.

Grove and Bramble Druidry

Grove Druidry has the strongest class identity and needs the least changes to shine. This is where Grasping Vines usage belongs. It can be easily divided into two subtrees focusing on Party Support and Area Denial with a more sustainy/DR focus than straight damage. This will look the most like current Druidry and will have mostly old spells, though some are changed.

1 - Vine Seed: Vine Seed is the opening spell for the Grove side of Druidry. It shoots a seed projectile that hits the enemy for a moderate amount of damage and afflicts them with a debuff that spawns crawling vines below them, once every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. These behave just like any crawling vine tile, and spread like them too.

2 - Grasping Vines: Same as current.

Healing Tree (Grove)

3 - Lunar Howl [OGCD]: Grants a scaling dex buff to all allies based on a percentage of control alongside movement speed. The change is intended to make it a strong party support option instead of an unused hybrid buff.

4 - Natural Locus: Same as current.

5 - Mend Bone: Same as current, but probably needs numbers tweaks. Having a sole self-heal for a healing spec is good, especially if it's an off-branch spell that doesn't need to be taken. Healers WILL be targeted in fights and need a way to sustain themselves.

6 - Life Burst: Same as current, except the effect applies to your whole party.

7 - Sprout Herb [Fluff Spell]: Grow an herb using your Focus. Basically Conjure Ore but for herbs.

Control Tree (Bramble)

8 - Ferocious Energy: Same as current. (I made this before stoneskin because I think it benefits the healing side a lot as a dip to keep their uptimes better.

9 - Stoneskin: Same as current.

10 - Bramble Maze: Basically Living Embers except fluffed for grove. It turns your tiles brown and makes them deal big bonus damage for stepping on them, they spread to adjacent crawling vines but way slower than normal spread.

11 - Grow Thorns: Same as current, but possibly gets dex scaling added to control scaling. Incentive to play a hybrid bow/druid?

12 - Wealdstep: Same as current.

Aura: Something that makes vines grow faster or last longer.

Ash and Ember Druidry

Ash is the purest form of suffering in this game atm. It is thematically and mechanically the worst tree to play by a mile, because it relies on being a Grove Druid to work. We will change this by making it the simpler of the two trees, with its own unique mechanic (ash clouds like the tree has now) being divorced from crawling vines.

The basic gist here is that the whole tree focuses on damage, but is split between PBAoE and Damage Over Time components. The important resources are twofold: One half relies on Ash Clouds, and the other half relies on Burning, which is reworked into a third point in the DoT triangle of bleed/poison/burning.

BURNING could be a DoT that is affected by Control scaling and can only be applied to 5 stacks per caster (basically so it only stacks really high in group fights, to avoid people having no DPS in EC fights because someone else has burns too).

1 - Ash Bolt: Opener for the Ash side. Same as current, but higher base damage on the projectile.

2 - Embercall: Set yourself alight, applying BURNING to enemies that enter a small radius of you and spawning ash clouds as you move.

PBAoE Tree (Ash)

3 - Ashwalk: Dash towards your enemy, leaving a flurry of ash clouds in your wake. Deals damage on collision. Possibility for hybrid scaling here, STR or DEX.

4 - Ashen Shield: Same as current.

5 - Ash Blast: Explodes out ash clouds around you in a PBAoE. Similar pattern to Iron Eruption.

6 - Reduce to Ashes [Fluff Spell]: Destroy a piece of meat or fish, producing a pile of White Ash (you get more for each tier of rarity). White Ash can be consumed to grant a buff to crop growth speed (it's fertilizer!). Either nearby crops when used, or to be used before planting whichever is simpler to code.

[A] - Dust Cloak [OGCD]: Came to this thought late as an alternative spell and not sure if it'd be OP or fine but it adds to the possible hybrid nature of a PBAoE tree. Hybrid spell. Causes Physical Damage to produce Ash Clouds for the duration and increases STR based on CTRL.

DoT Tree (Ember)

7 - Kindle Embers: A small AoE of fire forms around each Ash Cloud, applying burning and dealing bonus damage.

8 - Rushing Embers: Send forth a wave of embers, dealing moderate damage and applying burning.

9 - Swirling Embers: Conjure swirling patches of embers that set alight those who enter. Randomly placed AoE patches that apply Burning.

10 - Heart-Fire [OGCD]: You are warmed by the flames kindled on your enemies. You heal over time for every enemy who is currently burning.

11 - Scorch Herb: Same as current. This spell kinda sucks but it's nice thematically.

Aura: Something that increases the radius of ash clouds or makes them spawn more often.

Conclusion

Druidry desperately needs to be separated into 2 parts or it'll keep sucking. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. My brain is smooth after making this.

[Sandshark]

Coming back to my thoughts after several months, and having talked it over with Roomy on discord, I think there are ways to improve the tree without a drastic renovation and the addition of 10+ abilities. Instead, here are a few ideas for making Ash more usable in its current place and form, with room to grow.

Before we begin let me outline my goals:

1. Interrupt the existing skill tree as little as possible. The overall shape won't change, though enough abilities will be added to make Ash and Grove the same size.
2. Use no new assets. Everything involved will already be ingame and in use, though minor hue changes will be used. This means 0 dollars of sprite investment and minimal extra work. As an addition, no systems not currently in the game will be needed. This will become important later.
3. Involve some level of internal synergy. Ash currently suffers from a reliance on Grove, while also stepping on its toes (e.g. by burning vines and making them unusable for Life Burst). I intend for this not to be the case going forward. It should stand on its own without hurting Grove using allies.

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Versatile Opening

One issue with Ash right now is the level of ability investment to gain access to your class mechanic (ash clouds/charred vines). While your two introductory abilities are good, they aren't very thematic and Grasping Vines has become outdated and somewhat bad for a bar slot now that Sow Sapling exists.

One way to solve this is by altering what the openers for Druidry are. Another way is to make Grasping Vines more versatile. I think both might enhance the thematics of the tree in certain ways.

Altering the opener is something I like because I'm not fond of Noxious Bolt thematically or mechanically. It's a good homing but in a poison build it messes with your stacking because it sets all your stacks to 5 seconds, meaning you can't stack poison at all with it in your rotation. This is bad because poison, while ok, is actually not a very good status effect anymore. The fact that its effectiveness goes down the lower the enemy's health is means that you'll always be doing worse DPS the better you do in a given portion of the fight, and closing the deal with a DoT build is thus more difficult.

I would rather see it become a 10 point ability in Poison (or Poison's opener, replacing Toxic Bite) with the full 10s poison duration so DoT builds can have their fun. Then have Druidry get something more in-line with it if maybe not as individually strong.

Thorn Barrage

Thorn Barrage 6s CD: 3 thorns fire out towards an enemy sequentially, dealing [4.2x Control] damage and applying a stack of Bleed per hit. They have a minor turnrate and emerge in the direction of the enemy. The appearance is Frigid Shards with a brown recolor.

Do I like Noxious Bolt? Well, kind of. It's strong as heck and basically a free hit. But it doesn't feel right in a Druid's kit. There's no other poison in the entire tree. Getting a thorns ability feels cooler to me.

However, this isn't important to balancing Ash. It's just a suggestion for Druidry as a whole.

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Skill Specializations

Grasping Vines is not a good spell because it eats up three spell options (Grasping Vines itself, Ferocious Energy, and Living Embers) for Ash, and for Grove it's only a marginal choice in comparison with the higher-uptime and faster-growing Sow Sapling.


Test this ingame. You get 25 seconds worth of usable vines per cast of Sow Sapling, on a 10 second cooldown. You get barely the same amount of usable vines from Grasping on a 30 second cooldown.

What can be done to change this? Well, ideally I'd just say "divorce the trees from the beginning and move on" but that's not useful. What we can do is split the ability into two mutually exclusive choices, letting Ash specialists make use of Grasping Vines in its entirety, and letting Grove specialists get a little extra bang for their buck.

Your New Choices

After buying the Druidry opener, you must choose to pick one and only one of these spells. Both will allow buying into either side of the tree, but you'll effectively be choosing which of the 2 sides you're a specialist in and your version of Grasping Vines will reflect that.

Grasping Vines 20s CD: The spell you know and love, but with 10 seconds chopped off its cooldown. Because 30 seconds for this is not a value pickup. Now it might be.

Charred Vines 30s CD: Send burning mana through roots beneath the earth, dredging them up to assault your enemies. Grows Charred Vines (which now can expand like Crawling Vines, and live just as long) in the standard Grasping Vines pattern. When an enemy runs over a Charred Vine it explodes for [Charred Vine damage] and spawns an Ash Cloud.

I made this change to Charred Vines because the way they work now isn't very interesting. They die fast already, and it's difficult to get people to walk into them while they're still alive if they know what they actually do. If they expand and have a longer lifetime but don't spawn clouds immediately, you'll need to convince people to get hit before you get your resources but also it's easier to kite them or pull them into the clouds since the area covered is fairly large.

This is also good for another reason: Ferocious Energy has just become an insanely good spell for Ash. We've added value to an existing spell that no longer needs replacement, just alteration.

Ferocious Energy 30s CD [Off GCD]: Mana surges into your Charred Vines, refreshing their duration and causing them to spread again for 15 seconds. Additionally you gain 15 Move Speed for the duration.

The only changes are it doesn't double damage (no longer needs to) and it lasts longer, meaning that if you trigger it in the middle of the CD for Grasping you can juggle the CDs for perfect vine uptime. I think this alone would make it a great pickup, though it's possible it could be altered in the future to make it do something more interesting, e.g. giving allies the MS steroid also, or nerfed if it's too good with the new system.

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Extensions

The tree needs a little filling out, but not with anything complex. It needs a replacement for the now-useless Living Embers and a dust creator spell. I've chosen to theme them with a Fire + Wind elemental focus that the magic seems to have in contrast to Grove's Earth + Water.

Living Embers 20s CD: Life energy still burns in the embers of the ash you channel. Consume all Ash Clouds on the battlefield to instantly gain health equal to [Ash Cloud tick damage] multiplied by the number of clouds consumed.

This is a strong self-heal. A VERY strong one. But it will also dramatically deplete your available resources, and using it when you have few of them means not getting much at all. If it ends up too strong in practice it could easily get numbers nerfs and be fine for the risk and variability it presents.

Dust Devil 10s CD: Dash forward in a swirling tornado that kicks up Ash Clouds in your wake. Deals [3.1x Control] damage to enemies hit by you.

Ashen Shield: IDK how I feel about this. It's by far Ash's most interesting spell, but it feels bad to use since the expanding circle makes it deal less damage as time goes on. I would say that it should have a smaller maximum expansion to keep the group of clouds tighter and higher damage.

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The Tree

Opener (5 points) -> Grasping Vines OR Charred Vines (12 points)

Vines Choice -> Ferocious Energy (8 points) -> Ash Bolt (10 points)

Ash Bolt -> Living Embers (10 points) OR Dust Devil (8 points)

Dust Devil -> Ashen Shield (12 points)

Scorch Herb branches off of Living Embers in the side-tree.

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Anyway this was a long ramble. I can't guarantee any of these ideas are going to make the tree more fun for me personally to play, but they sounded interesting in my head. Honestly I'd love to have a Fire based healing subtree and I have ideas for that too. Expect that soon™. Healing is my favorite game role, but since I play the only active Ashwalker it's my duty to maybe make Ash a little good. My ideal build would be Fire/Ash with a Witchery dip with Ash Relic Magic, having healing and group support built into Fire and/or Ash eventually.

Hopefully this sparks some thought and maybe you find some of the ideas interesting enough to implement.

[Sandshark]

Consider this my monthly checkup on Druid balance, because I was asked for my opinion on it again recently.

I'd say that after significant thought on how to improve or make a relic magic for Ash, I'm pretty pessimistic about Druidry getting balanced in general at least without a rework. I also think the reason for the problem is over-reliance on the vines mechanic.

Vines sap efficiency from even a Grove Druidry build, requiring both the purchase of a bad spell (Grasping Vines) and the use of a filler spell (Sow Sapling) to activate various other abilities that require vines to be down to work. While you can use Natural Locus and Grow Thorns without vines or a sapling, you really shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be using Grow Thorns at all, but that's its own problem. Your aura gives you about 80-100 hp/s more than the water aura does, but again only on vines. Off of them you get nothing. Not even the activated ability works.

So I think there's a need for a rework to the tree. Not one that splits it up, or even adds a lot of new stuff. Just one that makes it more "normal." The bones of a good tree are already there, just spread out into too many abilities. Hopefully somewhere in all these posts are enough good ideas to make Druidry a fully useful tree.

Vine mechanics don't need to disappear entirely. In fact I think they could be great as long as the tree doesn't depend on them. Consider Grasping Vines and the aura for example. What if Grasping Vines was a spell that grew vines out from a central point until they filled the entire range of their AoE (roughly the size of summon pool afaik), and the vines slowed people caught in them? It would counterbalance the low damage with a valuable crowd control effect.

With the aura, the activation or a passive effect could summon slowing vines beneath your feet in much the same way as Oozing Wounds summons poison pools or the water aura summons water pools.

Ash also is gonna be trouble however you swing it. I think it kinda sucks to rely on resources that disappear to get any damage, where every other tree doesn't. But now I think I know how to make it cool enough people will try to cheese it (and probably not succeed) instead of just ignoring the tree except for their IC.

So, here's my Great New Druidry Tree This Time I Swear I Got It Right 9000.™ The biggest code changes will need to be on the Ash side, but mechanically it will basically be a total rework.

Basics
Spammable Opener -> Overgrowth -> Lunar Howl (this spell is lit, probably the best druidry spell and I'll never buy it)

Grove split
Overgrowth -> Grow Thorns -> Stoneskin -> Natural Locus
Natural Locus -> Life Burst OR Mend Bone
Life Burst -> Grasping Vines
Mend Bone -> Bonus Skill

Ash split
Overgrowth -> Ash Bolt -> Dust Cloak -> Searing Embers
Searing Embers -> Ashen Shield OR Living Embers
Ashen Shield -> Bonus Skill

Spammable Opener - What is it? Who knows! Well, actually, it really could be anything. I like the idea of it being either the one I mentioned last time with little thorn darts or a quick line blast with the thorny line projectile from the current Grow Thorns spell. Bleed is still my DoT of choice there. The poison on noxious bolt messes with poison users' stacks, and it isn't great for druids mechanically. If it helped stack poison properly it'd be great (and I don't mean to be bad to my poison/nature brothers here) but the theming felt off to me too. I'm not that miffed if it stays as it is but see below for more Bleed theming. Does phys damage.

Overgrowth - Ye olde wave spell. It's a wave with 3 lines of the Grow Thorns spell that shoots out and puts bleed on people. Sort of like a Druidry version of Tremor. Leaves behind Grasping Vines that damage and slow the enemy. How many waves you send depends on Capacity. Does phys damage.

Grow Thorns - Reflects & prevents 20% of damage for the duration. When you're struck by physical damage the enemy additionally takes a stack of bleeding.

Stoneskin - OGCD Gain 5 stacks of Stoneskin (or maybe Barkskin? could be renamed for a more natur-y flavor). Each stack grants 20% DR, so at 5 stacks you take no damage. Each hit you take causes one stack to fall off, so the protection goes down over time. Bread and butter anti-burst skill, but can be stripped by rapid fire hits. Each stack reduces MS by 10, so you're more slow when you're more protected.

Natural Locus - Sow a sapling at your current location. In X seconds it becomes a tree, giving the current Natural Locus tree effect. This is good because playing around objectives is good, but having it on 2 skills is bad.

Life Burst - Tap directly into the life of the land, sending out a blast of healing energies that does instant healing and places a HoT over allies it passes through and causes damage and Lifeleak to enemies. Not sure if it's better as a PBAoE or wave type spell, but this makes healing a little more dynamic in events. You can get healing into moving battle areas and twitchy allies by briefly grouping up, or blast it in a dangerous melee scenario and run to maybe make a clutch save.

Another thought on this spell is to make it a PBAoE healing field for allies centered on the enemy (so they heal when nearby them) and make them also leak life for the duration to heal you from damaging them. Turns it into a chance to engage or a reason for the enemy to back off to deny you the bonus (and give you room to breathe).

Grasping Vines - Plant Crawling Vines that grow rapidly to fill a mid-large AoE before beginning to despawn. These vines slow enemies lightly and deal current vine damage.

Ash Bolt - The same as now except please fix it so there's an ash cloud in the center of the circle (basically make the bolt travel 1 step further after hitting an enemy before despawning). You can't hurt npcs with the spell if they decide to stand still, since the ring that forms won't hit them when they're at the center of it because the projectile stops at the edge of their hitbox and cloud spawning ceases.

Dust Cloak - A spooky new addition that will probably take the most work. This is a passive ability that makes it so that when you step over an ash cloud you pick it up and it circles around you for 10 seconds. Stepping on another one adds an extra and refreshes the duration. Though there would be a maximum size for the cloud surrounding you. You'll be spending these to get better effects from later spells, but if it's just an ash dip you could stop here at ~35 points spent and only use this for its AoE damage potential.

This is my solution to ash clouds being fleeting as a resource and ashen shield being sucky with too high of a CD. Just give it to people all the time but make them manage resources for it.

Searing Embers - Low CD. Re-ignite the embers inside the ash you carry, expending X ash clouds immediately to cast X searing embers out towards the enemy, dealing damage and causing burning. Can't be cast if your ash cloud count is lower than X.

Living Embers - Toggle. Drain 1 ash cloud per second to conjure motes of swirling embers (same particle as the ash storm visual?), healing nearby allies for [Ash Cloud damage] twice per second and yourself for half. This amounts to basically the same self-healing as old natural locus, but bigger allied healing. But it also eats into your burst damage.

Ashen Shield - OGCD. Gain DR and a damage shield for the duration (think old Stoneskin crossed with Witch's Heart). When the shield is broken a large cloud of ash explodes out from you.

Druidry Aura - IDK how to feel about this in a rework if I'm honest. I think Druidry needs two auras because both halves are philosophically very different, and I also think the wiggling vines art is weird. That being said, I'll give some perspectives on it that account for keeping it identical or changing the art but having a sole aura or changing everything.

Option 1 - Change nothing, keep 1 aura: Where you walk the land comes to your aid, whether for healing or harm. You heal every second. Activate to summon Brambles beneath your feet, which slow enemies, deal moderate damage, and cause bleeding at a rate of one stack per second.

Option 2 - Change the visual, keep 1 aura: The aura visual looks like leaves swirling around you leisurely, and has 2 colorations: Spring and Autumn. The aura doesn't activate, but switches every 10 seconds or so. Spring spawns Flowering Vines beneath you which heal yourself and allies. Autumn spawns (brown, energized-vine-colored) Brambles beneath you which damage and slow enemies and cause bleeding at a rate of one stack per second.

Option 3 - New visuals, new auras:
Eternal Spring - A leaf swirling aura. Flowering Vines grow beneath your feet, healing yourself and allies who walk over them. Activate to gain 20% Heal Bonus and cause Flowering Vines to surge in growth, rapidly expanding to cover a wider area.

Ash Communion - A haze of ash, or swirling small embers. Moving passively generates Ash Clouds which circle around you based on the distance you travel with a modifier based on Capacity or Movespeed (Think Rupture, but a boon). Activate to collect all Ash Clouds on the battlefield without needing to touch them.

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If anyone actually reads through all 3 posts and wants to add their two cents please do. I'm not the only Druid player by a long shot even though it feels like I'm the only one with any points in Ash. I'd like to know what other people want out of the class fantasy of Druid, and I'm sure Roomy wants to hear it too.