Druid, a new class introduced in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0, boasts one of the most flexible and sustainable combat cycles in the game, encouraging players to be creative and experiment with new build layouts. However, as a new class, many players are not yet fully familiar with Druid, and blindly starting a league journey with an unfamiliar build carries considerable risk.

If you want to know if Druid is advantageous in the late game and worth trying, this guide might provide the answers. We're sharing some unique Druid build playstyles here, hoping to bring you more exciting new inspiration in POE 2!

Tornado Shaman Druid Build

First, we'll mention Tornado Shaman build. This Shaman utilizes Advancing Storm Support and Ground Surfaces debuffs to transform tornadoes into devastating whirlwinds.

Notably, tornadoes absorb any elemental Ground effects they encounter, enhancing the tornado's power and dealing extra damage. Since Druid's Wolf form can easily freeze enemies, this means we can use this support skill to create Chilled Ground, freezing enemies standing in it, reducing their movement speed for a default duration of 6 seconds.

Furthermore, we've also set up a curse skill to create Burning Ground, and equipped a unique pair of boots that generate Shocked Ground, fully utilizing these Ground debuffs.

For Shaman Ascendancy passive, we chose Wisdom of the Maji node, which unlocks new affixes for runes and idols, gaining additional bound affix bonuses. Additionally, it synergizes well with the new Idol item: Idol of Maxarius, increasing our storm cap for maximum damage.

Flame Breath Wyvern Druid Build

If you don't like the tornado playstyle, Wyvern's Flame Breath might offer you ideal damage and the most spectacular visual effects.

Flame Breath, as the ultimate skill of Wyvern form, is incredibly powerful, especially for ignite builds. This is because it has a unique mechanism: each attack stacks the ignite effect, and the ignite damage increases rapidly over time. 

Flame Breath boasts a base attack speed of 800% and a Magnitude of Ignite of 750%, making it a devastating DoT (Damage over Time) skill. Once Ignite is fully stacked, it can deal hundreds of times your attack damage per second.

However, Flame Breath is a Rage-dependent skill, so we need sufficient Rage to sustain flight and unleash our fury.

To accelerate Rage generation, we utilize the new Persistent Buff Skill Support Gem, Eternal Rage. When linked to a skill, it significantly increases Rage regeneration, allowing Druid players to continuously cast devastating skills such as shapeshifting and channeling.

We also use Primal Hunger Passive, which restores one Rage per second for every four Rage consumed in the past 4 seconds, while also increasing our maximum Rage by 100%.

Additionally, don't forget to unlock all Ignite and Rage nodes in the skill tree's Jewel area. With all of this, we can simply take to the skies, ready to unleash flames and destroy all enemies.

Plants Spellcaster Druid Build

The next build setup revolves around Oracle Ascendancy, utilizing plant power as the primary means of output, and using spell totems to generate automated plant explosion effects.

The core of this build is Wildsurge Incantation keystone, which allows all storm and plant spells to deal higher damage and consume fewer resources, but at the cost of significantly shorter spell duration. However, since we are automating the process, duration isn't a major issue.

In addition, the new unique item Voll's Protector is an indispensable key element in this plant-based build, ensuring we always have enough energy charges to summon totems. Once we generate the initial charges, the totems can sustain themselves.

If we place Entangle skill on a spell totem, we can also create roots to trap enemies in place. Combined with Accelerated Growth and Thrashing Vines, this can create a true plant-based catastrophe, allowing you to escape even the toughest monsters and bosses.

Wolf Druid Build

If you're not interested in plant power and prefer to destroy enemies with a pack of minion friends, then this Wolf Druid build is a good starting point. To support a large army of wolf minions, you can choose Lord of the Wilds keystone, allowing you to equip a scepter while using Animal Talismans. This will empower your minions and provide you with a powerful pack of eight wolves. As they leap across the map, they deal enough damage to shred enemies and attract even more wolves to join the pack.

Additionally, Lunar Assault helps clear and freeze enemies, and empowers your wolves, resulting in higher damage.

This build also utilizes rage in several ways. It uses Commanding Rage to allow your rage stacks to affect your wolf pack's damage. Rage also extends the duration of Lunar Blessing, a skill that provides more frost damage to the entire party and creates devastating moonlight beams with each attack.

In short, these are all Druid endgame builds worth trying right now, with even more details waiting for you to explore. As you can see, Druid class in PoE 2 0.4.0 offers many options, whether you're sweeping across the map with storms, raining down deadly fire from the heavens, unleashing the destructive power of plants, or rampaging across the continent of Wraeclast with your loyal wolf companions, there's a build to suit your primal combat style.

You can seamlessly switch between various playstyles such as tanking, burst damage, or ranged attacks, complemented by powerful elemental skills, allowing for deep customization and creating builds that could potentially disrupt the game balance, making it a highly anticipated and exciting build!

Grow A Garden has released the second part of its Christmas event, but the update time has been slightly delayed, from the usual 8 AM to 11 AM on Saturday (December 13th).

However, this update has not revitalized the game, and instead, it has led to a significant player churn. You may have noticed some friends are not logging in as scheduled. This is because recent changes to the game have caused them to lose faith in its future. So why is this happening?

Admin Abuse Events

Admin abuse events typically occur on the day of a major game update, which is Saturday. Game developers use admin privileges to generate special weather and give players various items, including seeds and Grow A Garden pets, and each event lasts about an hour.

However, the December 13th admin abuse event was the worst Grow A Garden event to date. There were almost no restocked shop items, and admin packs awarded yielded very poor-quality seeds. Only common seeds like grapes were available, and the best reward was a rare egg.

The first half of the event was the worst. In the first 30 minutes, the administrator only performed about 10 events, with limited content, even worse than the first Admin Abuse event at Grow A Garden.

The situation improved in the second half when another administrator took over. With another developer in charge, the event quality improved. Some new content appeared, such as a mini-game. The developer also leaked some information, and a Santa Claus event eventually occurred. However, according to a poll, only 11% of players liked Admin Abuse event.

Christmas Event Part 2 Updates

However, Admin Abuse event was merely the trigger for player attrition. Recent updates haven't been very good. Let's take a look at the recently updated Christmas Event Part 2.

This update mainly added a time-limited gift submission system. Players can submit Christmas mutated plants to receive gifts, but can only submit once every 10 minutes. This has caused considerable dissatisfaction among many players, as it turns the game into an AFK simulator, completely deviating from the original spirit of Grow Garden.

Reward System Issues

On the other hand, this also makes obtaining rewards extremely difficult. Christmas egg reward requires a 10-minute wait before it can be obtained, and the probability of hatching the desired pet is very low, with a 51% chance of hatching a non-bird pet. The best rainbow gift has a drop rate of only 2%, meaning that many updates are inaccessible to most players due to the extremely low probability.

Additionally, there is a problem with insufficient inventory space. Developers should prioritize addressing these fundamental experience issues rather than simply adding more difficult-to-obtain content.

New Items And Pets

• Sleigh: A new item introduced in this update, directly tradable from the shop. Used for a ritual.
• Red-Nosed Reindeer: Obtained through Sleigh Ritual. Requires players to collect 8 Reindeer pets at level 100 to craft it with a Sleigh.

Red-Nosed Reindeer, which used to be very powerful, providing 2,000 XP to a random non-deer pet every few minutes and causing plants to mutate every 10 minutes, has been nerfed in this update; it now mutates every 15 minutes.

Missing Content

A certain currency shown in the update preview video has disappeared from the official update. It may have been used to obtain free Christmas Gifts.

Similarly, a promised global milestone reward, North Pole weather mutation machine, did not appear in this update and may be delayed until next week.

Current Game Status

Currently, the peak number of concurrent players has dropped significantly. Grow A Garden's online player count is likely about half of what it was before last week's update. This is not solely due to Admin Abuse event; the recent update direction is the main factor contributing to player attrition. While the game is not dead, it is in a decline phase, with daily active players only around 200,000.

The current updates and game mechanics are too time-consuming but the rewards are disproportionately small, making the game feel more like a chore and preventing players from relaxing.

Furthermore, the pay-to-win aspect of Grow A Garden is becoming increasingly problematic. Many features that could previously be obtained infinitely through in-game Shekels or by exploiting bugs now require Robux. Features like updating shop items, skipping quests, and repeating gifts all consume Robux.

This is particularly evident in acquiring gingerbread blossoms. If a player's consecutive login streak is interrupted, they must consume Robux or tokens to resume. The developers previously seemed to have planned to add a free resumption method, but it was ultimately not implemented.

While the developers continue to strive to improve the game's content and quality, the updates, while good, are difficult for ordinary players to experience. Overly focusing on adding monetization features instead of improving the basic gameplay experience will only accelerate player churn.

Judging from recent updates, the developers are increasingly neglecting the game. If they want to save it, they need to seriously listen to the player community's complaints and make changes in the right direction.