Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Druid improvement suggestions

1- "Druids shouldn't be very good melee". Druids should be good at what they invest in, otherwise you end up with a range of mediocre options and the class becomes useless as a result. Mediocre hybrids have never worked in this game, the obvious example being how much worse an Eldritch Knight is next to Battlemaster or why clerics are just Bless bots in the light domain using nothing besides Inflict Wounds, because hybrid design cripples them.


Besides, your opposition to bringing Shillelagh up to speed to enchanted weapons only hurts non-elf druids and further cements racial imbalance.

A wood elf won't care you leave Shillelagh weak because they can just use a shortsword+1 or the Flaming Axe.

Meanwhile my Tiefling, Human druids are absolutely crippled by your opposition.

2- Utterly absurd. If Land druids can't use shapeshifts in combat, what would they be used for? Misty Step virtually negates any benefit any form will have in traversing terrain. Sneak by for scouting in cat? Invis cantrip by Shadowheart already does that, assuming blessing of the trickster is not enough and you're too lazy to get invis pots.

The out of combat form utility argument is a complete gimmick.

3- This same tired argument over and over. Forms being good and survivable don't make a druid OP. They make the form actually useful for something besides a useless damage sponge.

Sometimes I ask myself why people insist on playing a game so glaringly suboptimally that they state bear form gives druid 60 HP.

Bear form CC's the druid into a useless low damage form that dies in a turn or two without access to healing others or repositioning moonbeam.

In humanoid form, I have 19-21 AC, with mirror images that's 28-30AC, and it's far better to avoid 17+damage hits consistently in humanoid than to facetank them in bear stalling out a battle pointlessly, doing no damage, offering no utility besides being a useless damage sponge.

There's a reason all the top druid solo vids are Land druids playing Martial or Moonbeam builds, not the useless form.

There's a reason battlemasters are playing with great weapons and not 1h+shield.

The best defense has always been and will always be a good offense. There is no mitigation equivalent to negating an enemy a turn of damage or CC by removing them entirely.

All you do by going polar bear form is to extend the fight beyond Lazael's Frightening Strike CC chain, ruin your opening burst, and open yourself up to further boss phases and barrages of 2-3 attack sequence boss turns like Bulette, Githyanki patrol, Kua Toa, Redcaps, or Ethel.

Let this silly meme about forms being useful in combat die. They're weak meatbags, and if you restrict them to mere meatbags, no other forms besides bear will be used anyways.

4- On the topic of melee enemy control by difficult terrain, the most dangerous melee enemies such as Bulette, Minotaurs, Githyanki patrol, and even the Spectator literally teleport/jump their way out of it assuming they don't easily make the saving throw, wasting your spell slots.

Even the regular melee enemies who get stuck in simply tend to throw a fire or poison bomb anyways that does more damage than their own melee strike.


Probably from the same people that strongly resist optimizing gameplay performance. They make the unproductive claim of "balance is impossible, so leave things be", except even when balance is impossible, the very least any developer should attempt is to narrow the gaps in performance as close to marginal as they can be in order so gameplay variety is an option that feels good to partake in instead of knowingly playing something you know is gimping you (like playing a non-elf/dwarf race at the moment due to the awful racials balancing).

If forms are basically a more cumbersome Arcane Ward, let us just have Arcane Ward instead if that's what you're going to reduce forms to, an HP shield with a visual representation. What terrible gameplay design.