Something seems wrong with lesser elemental shapes

[Rufio]

I was playing today and was finally able to level my most current toon to a level 16 druid (although I was cross classing, so it was later than level 16), and I finally got the lesser elemental shapes. Since I mostly fight in shifted form, I was excited about being able to do more than the pitiful damage I was doing in animal form. I expected the added damage to come from merging weapons into elemental shapes like it did with the greater elementals on my pure druid, but when I shifted into the air elemental shape and started fighting, I was only doing 3 or 4 damage per hit.

I looked at the character sheet and it gave my damage as 1-3+5, fully buffed, which wasn't even enough to bypass damage reduction on anything I was fighting. The only damage I was getting was a small amount electrical damage that wasn't showing up on my character sheet. I decided I should check out the other elementals, and discovered more of the same. 1-3 damage + strength, which was somewhere between 3 and 12 unbuffed with +5 gauntles on depending on the shape, which is terrible. The one exception was the water elemental, which for some reason was doing 2-16 + 10 instead of the 1-3 like all the others, but it had no elemental damage. On further testing it appeared the air and fire elementals did what looked like 2-16 elemental damage, while the lucky earth elemental did 1-3+12 with no elemental damage at all.

Assuming the 1-3+3 and 1-3+5 physical damage my air and fire elementals do is completely soaked up by damage reduction (what monsters don't have DR of at least 10 by level 20?) and what I fight has no elemental resistances, I do an average of 9 damage per hit. The earth elemental would probably be lucky to do even 5 damage (it would do either 3, 4 or 5 damage against a DR of 10. God forbid the reduction be higher), and the water elemental isn't any better off than the air and fire elementals, doing an average of 19 damage before resistances, which against DR 10 is an impressive 9 damage. All this is without buffs and +5 gauntlets, but even with buffs, you would only really add extra strength damage from bull's

All this seems incredibly weak to me, and I'm sure is going to make my life miserable for the next 7 levels of my build untill I get greater elemental forms. It would be nice to see weapons merge with these shapes like their stronger versions so they can at least be playable.

[Korr]

What you are seeing is the fact that non-elder shapes dont have a weapon. . . therefore your weapon doesnt transfer any damage to shifter form. The air and fire forms have added elemental damage Im assuming because they are dex based forms. The earth and water forms are strength based and therefore get a bonus to physical damage. It is a slump to have to fight through the non-elder forms, I too noticed that it seemed panther form was more viable because it did more damage and got a speed boost. Glove AB and damage does not transfer over to forms that do not use a weapon, so whatever gloves youre wearing go for highest strength/ac. When I built my multi-class druid, I found it more effective to be a caster/summoner with shapechanging as a backup vs making my shifted forms my primary focus (before I got the elder forms).

[Rufio]

yeah, i do realize that, but the damage is so low that it isn't even viable. I think it would be nice to see them given a weapon, and then lessening the elemental damage. This way damage would at least scale with your level a little better and act as an intermediate step between the animal shapes and elder elementals, because i agree that the panther is really a more viable option than any of the elementals, which doesn't make sense.

I'm not too worried about it, since it doesn't alter the final product, but I do have to live with it for now. I do realize shifted forms are a pain for the devs and this may not be worth their time to look at, but i thought it was worth bringing up.

(on a side note, the physical damage on the air elemental when I tested it was 3 every single time. No variation at all, even tough it should have been 1-3+3. I think the fire elemental was the same way.)

[DM_Kim]

They are what they are and Devs worked very hard on shifted forms. You have to wait until you get the elder/epic forms for them to do the dance of death. They are set up that way intentionally.

[Lokey]

With weaps they were skating through Sunken at level 16. Not that druids can't do that with spells, but you can't keep that up all day

[Korr]

Yeah im 100% with Kim and Lokey here . . . you give the weaker elemental forms weapons and there are AMAZING builds you can pull by only taking the 17-18 druid. Also you have to consider if you ARE going for the 20+ druid form you can stave off taking that 20th level longer because you can throw on a +4 +5 +6 +7 weapon to keep your toon able to beat down up to the planar areas with a level 16 druid ability.

Looks like you missed it before Rufio (if u didnt no offense). . . when I built my air elemental toon for my levels before 20 druid I was a caster . . . not a shifter.

[Rufio]

alright, alright, you all win. After using them, I realized some things besides damage output that makes them rather strong. In fact, I'm rather confident I could solo a good bit of sunken, but that is a different matter.