Druid Subclass Ranking Baldur's Gate 3 - bg3 Patch 6

[@SirCharles12357]

I'm in love with Moon Druids. Ritual spells at first level (Jump and Strider), Wild Shape with the Tavern Brawler feat is damage consistent with a melee class (reliable hits & decent, damage). Level 3-5 Moonbeam & Call Lightning spells. Level six Owlbear with multi-attacks! Level 10 Earth Myrmidon(!!!!) with Teleport, three Tavern Brawler fueled attacks per round, and nice control spell options!!! Water Myrmidon for spreading the wet condition. Level 11 Heroes Feast Spell! Food, +HPs, bonus to WSD Saves, and immunity to Fear! Plus, druid summons is always nice to muck up the enemies attacks. Spores druid is fun, but microing 6+ summons slows combat down to much for me. And finally, Land druid is just a solid pick, but boring IMO. Druids become "uniquely" powerful at level 7 when they gain access to woodland & elemental summons.

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

Nice overview of the subclasses! It's a shame that the land druid isn't more unique because the other options feel like they have a lot more flavour to them.

[@JMagG23]

I'm also a fan of the Moon druid, never really played a druid until BG3 but I agree with everything you said but with 1 level dip in War Domain cleric for 3 bonus action attacks per long rest in wild shape and heavy armor for when you dont have wild shape. I went 1 lvl druid for perception proficiency, then 1 lvl war cleric and the rest druid again, since both are Wisdom based it doesn't matter which is first unless you want the secondary proficiency of Cha over perception/Int. Also, since you do most of your fighting in wild shape you really only need to be concerned with Wis, Int and Cha,. so you can add a couple point into Cha and be the face of the party too without a negative hit.

[@MyKingdomforAdRevenue]

Land Druid aka the Wisard

[@Wolferys]

Main weakness of the land druid is that the best stuff you can get from it (like Misty Step, Haste) you can get from just 1 wizard level, and a lot of the spells are already Druid spell options. One use I can see for it though are the Lightning Bolt and Cone of Cold spells for a ice/lightning build that uses create water

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

The wizard multiclassing can work well for that, but the number of prepared wizard spells is limited, whereas a Land druid can have those spells always prepared.

[@padricburke8858]

I’m a big believer in the 1 lvl wiz dip, but if you have low int you’ll only get 1 wiz spell prepared at a time and it’ll cast w int (although many of the best spells don’t care abt that like haste shield MM)

[@awholemewworld4799]

My first playthrough was a circle of the moon druid, but spores has grown on me and going to try it in a future run. I've also made Jaheira a spores druid before and really enjoyed that. I think spores definitely has some fun multiclassing potential that makes it really enjoyable to play around with. I personally feel like I'm missing out on too much if I try to multiclass moon so I like to keep that one as pure druid. I also enjoy land druid, but I think the other two are just a little bit stronger. Though getting those extra always prepared spells is pretty nice!

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

Yeah, taking levels in another class on a moon druid seems like a bad idea because we really want to get to level 10, and once we're there having access to Hero's Feast is very tempting as well.

[@awholemewworld4799]

@@CasualVeteranGamer Very true! That spell is amazing.

[@karllong]

Good stuff, I have to say I really liked the land druid when I played it, the spells it gets are really useful. One great combo is casting haste then wildshaping into the owlbear and using the bonus action crushing flight. On my last run I had a spore druid/monk multiclass which was also super fun and there is a spore druid armour that allows you to spread haste spores, though it is easy to end up hasting enemies :)

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

I like the flexibility of land druids too. Nice tip about the combo you gave, it's not one that I use frequently, although dropping haste is always a worry of mine.

[@karllong]

@@CasualVeteranGamer Yeah, dropping haste is bad :) My fav land druid build so far was 5 storm sorc/7 land druid getting con saves from the sorc dip + twinned spells. All the druids are bangers TBH, larian did a great job with them. Also summon woodland beings is my fav summon in the game so I always have a druid in the party.

[@rajivkurian2285]

An overlooked multiclass option for land druids is with paladins. 6 paladin/6 land Druid lets a paladin cast spike growth, not be affected by it (land’s stride) and smite enemies caught in the spike growth. Spike growth and haste (also available to land Druid) have no spell dc, so we don’t need high wisdom. Concentrating on both is made easier due to paladin’s aura of protection. The full combo only comes online at level 12, but it makes for an interesting alternative to sorcadin thanks to the land’s stride and spike growth combo.

[@Fastwinstondoom]

I have to agree with you, spore druids get the most stuff... but apart from the temp hit points ability I don't value any of it very highly. Weaponized reaction is nice but I vastly prefer being able to use a bonus action to go back into wildshape and keep smashing faces. Agreed that it's the class for those who want to have an army instead of a party but I just find the babysitting of weak minions too clunky.

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

I've heard similar sentiments before about not wanting to look after so many summons during combat, and I can understand that point of view.

[@OakandIV]

I tend to strongly prefer moon druids. Land Druids get the extra spells, and there is a lot of potential power there. But what makes druids special for me is wild shape. Moon Druids are the best at the pattern of cast summons out of combat; cast one spell then wild shape in combat. Spores Druids sound good, but I never had much fun playing one. I think they are good for multi classing with monk. The zombies are slow, weak, and usually don’t even get to hit anything before every enemy is dead. This was a fun breakdown. Looking forward to see your take on sorcerers.

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

For the spores druid zombies, it's more about them soaking up hits rather than dealing a lot of damage in my experience. I get the feeling that moon druids are the most popular circle!

[@Avoncarstien]

Aid does *wonders* for for maximizing the usefulness of the zombies. Plus picking up Animate Dead pushes Spore Circle very much into a minion-oriented setup, which makes it incredibly strong if you're min-maxing the hell out of everything (recharging the temp hp via the boots, using your bonus action and reaction to proc cull the weak, that sort of thing), but also *incredibly* tedious. I like playing it in multiplayer campaigns, where I don't have to worry about the other 3 characters and can keep myself occupied with all the goofy minigames Spore Druid wants to live up to it's full potential. Moon Druids are substantially more straightforward to play, and if you're not putting all that micro effort in, are essentially every bit as strong. However the fact that the owlbear wild shape and the 2nd and 3rd attacks while wilds shaped are actually core druid and not Moon exclusive means that even Land and Spore druids can still be very effective melee combatants, and the fact the owlbear has a great bonus action for engaging makes the fact wild shaping takes an action not actually all that bad. That's generally why Spores is my favorite. You can play controlling caster, summoner, wildshaped tank, or even a melee bruiser. More than anything I guess it just goes to show how incredibly good Druid is even without it's subclasses. It gets full casting with a great list of spells, tons of extra HP to soak damage, one of only 2 classes to get 3 baseline attacks, *and* can make use of Tavern Brawler being busted. Edit: And I have to come back here because as I was watching another bit, I realized I'd forgotten to mention how Druids are also baseline great healers, since they get all the requisite spells automatically, and the fact that when wildshaping they have very limited gear requirements, they can easily run a bunch of the healing-triggered items without issue. And furthermore to the credit of Spore druids when micro'd specifically, you can use Halo of Spores as a reaction to break potions, which you can drop and move around as a 'free action', essentially without cost, to trigger healing, poison puddles, or other buffs as a reaction. Something that no other class can come close to doing, but again....can be quite a tedious pain to actually do.

[@jamesgaiser8509]

great video man!

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

Glad you liked it!

[@ProbeAway]

I love your rating system overall, but I feel like maybe it does land Druids a bit dirty! Their big drawcard is the extra circle spells and unfortunately that’s only contributing to one criteria. The other abilities are really just intended to be supplementary to those spells. Contrast that with moon Druids, who have their various wild shapes contributing to several criteria. Druid subclasses I think are really tough to rate because their features are geared towards different playstyles. It makes for a very subjective ranking! I would personally go moon>land>spores because I’m not as interested in a summoning class (and that knee slapping animation is so lame 😂) but that’s purely preference

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

I must admit that I find it difficult to find a good system, and in light of that I've tried to stick to the same system with each class rather than have it change each video! I also like the fact that land druids get those extra spells known. I would also admit that as much as I am trying to give numerical values to each subclass, at the end of the day all of these videos will include my own subjective opinions. I hadn't though too much about it before, but now that you've mentioned the knee slapping animation I do find it a bit funny!

[@seansmith1287]

spore druid like level 2 with a ranged build is very good giving an extra d8 on each arrow and versatility

[@liberalideas8224]

Huh, I could have sworn that that I got that bonus damage with hand crossbows too despite the text on the skill, but maybe that was either patched or I am really misremembering.

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

I think it used to work before.

[@davidwagner3710]

i feel that i would like Druid better if they got access to Aid. Shame they are the best summoners, but they still need a Cleric to buff their summons to keep them on the battlefield.

[@CasualVeteranGamer]

This is true, the lack of Aid is a bit of a let down. At least they get Hero's Feast at level 11 to partially make up for it.

[@davidwagner3710]

I love the driad, but 11 ac and 22 hp makes it so hard to keep it on the field.