Any tips for new Druid?

[Sillyturtle]

I have a rough plan of going semi tanky. Thinking maybe 1500 int fully maxed out and running resistance penetration.

never played this type of character before. It's not Ternion so I can't just staff stuff can I?

Any advice on how to level it in Normal and Epic and what gear to shoot for? Any advice is appreciated guys. Thanks. :)

EDIT: If you don't like Druid, I'm open to going Storm/Spirit. So if you want to talk about that, feel free!

[AH-1 Cobra]

If you're gonna go elemental damage, you might as well just make a ternion attacker.

Some of the skills like ice shard and thunderbolt are pretty good early on, but in legendary difficulty, they're both far outclassed by ternion attacking with a decent staff. You can use those as leveling skills in normal and epic, and switch to full ternion attacker in legendary.

Oracle, (Dream + Storm) would do the most DPS of any elemental damage class. Squall + deathchill aura would keep you alive, but you'd need to get some decent DA from gear, and dodge any big attacks.

Soothsayer would be tankier than oracle, but less DPS.

[Kain]

How about playing with pets? Wolfs can be pretty awesome, boost them with tons of elemental damage with items, add the wisp for more pet and elemental damages. Plus you have access to a good healing spell and the Plague tree for debuff.
If you want to use the pets as a Druid, I can only encourage you to read this excellent guide:
https://www.kirmiziperfect.com/titan-quest-wanderer-nature-mastery-guide-by-tyr/
Too bad the titanquest.net forum is down, it was an incredible source of information.

If you prefer to go for staff attacks/spells, I guess Druid is still ok, but probably crimsonedge is right about staff attacks getting only better as you progress in the game.

[Mivo]

The "semi-tanky" part is difficult to achieve without strength items, a good shield (STR again), and high-ish DA (1100-1200 in legendary). I feel it requires very specific gear to pull off hybrid classes successfully. The alternative to tanking is to kill stuff before it gets to you, and the above mentioned Oracle is best suited for that.

If you play with pets, the difficulty is that if you kite monsters, the wolves will do much less damage, so ideally you would want to tank for them, bringing us back to the STR items and the shield. One of my earlier characters was Nature/Earth based and I had a similar idea to what I think you have in mind, but it didn't work out well for me. I had the idea that Plague would debuff monsters so much that they would be toothless. However, in practice Plague is simply too slow in legendary, if you are not tanky, but it does get you all the aggro almost always. The wolves will not hold monsters against you.

For a successful pet-centric build, you really have to build around the needs of the pets. Crimson's Champion pet build is the best I have played (took me a lot of farming to get most of the items for it). I'm playing around with an elemental pet build (Storm/Nature), but it's definitely weaker. Battle Standard is just so good.

All of that said, don't let us discourage you from experimentation. Trying out builds is a good part of what makes this game so fun. :)

[speedo]

Soothsayer is pretty fun, just don't make the mistake of going 500 int and rest in hp as I did. It has been a rocky path...

[ninetales]

The wanderer guide pretty much explains how to be tanky - good DA (800-1k works for legendary since only special mobs like Onslaught users are going to be able to consistently penetrate that, and against those your best defense is a good offense), Plague and/or Damage Absorption/projectile dodge (Briar Ward, Scrolls of Elemental Shielding/Unbroken Fortitude/Arrow Dancer) and the “% slower attack” item mod which basically gimps enemy mob attack speed. You don't need a shield and a shield is actually redundant thanks to scroll effects and Briar Ward, it's really more useful for warrior builds since they'll be using different kinds of scrolls.

As mentioned in the guide, the druid takes things a step fuether by introducing the Squall + Plague combo, which has got to be the one of the most ridiculously powerful debuff combinations in the game. I've seen the legemdary hydra hit me for 100 melee damage thanks to that combo.

If you're playing a caster build you'll need to supplement your defenses with +DA mods or even mods that reduce incoming damage from specific mobs (like "ritual", a rare charm completion bonus that reduces incoming damage against demons and magical constructs ie. most of the mobs in Act 4). You can't juggle casting offensive/defensive spells at the same time so you'll need a bit more survivability to offset this. For caster druids the go-to combo is Ice Shards + Briar Ward and Refresh spam, but you can certainly play a lightning variant if you wish.

Summoner builds get to take the easy way out because they're not particularly INT-reliant. They can also multitask (pets deal damage while the character spams crowd control/defensive skills) and by using -item requirement mods (like Thoth's Glory) to equip the best gear they can invest their extra points into DEX or HP.

[SilentMeteor]

As druid (and any classes with Nature mastery), the best way to be tanky is to get more HP, and vitality resist (especially important in legendary since it works against % life reduction from varies heros and bosses). It's pretty easy to have more than 8K HP in Legendary, and if you wish you can have 10K-12K without really hurting other stats. If you go caster build, due to the shotgun nature of Ice Shards, most melee monsters won't survive long enough to get into melee range to attack you. Plus you have Plague to reduce the speed of those rare/hero monsters who do survive your Ice Shards, and Thunderball to stun them. If you go full pet build, your wolves will "block" and attract a lof of melee monsters, and for those that still chase you, you still have the said skills. Not to mention Heart of Frost and Storm Surge which are also useful agains melee mosnters.
So to conclude, as Druid, you don't actually need high DA to be tanky. Yes it's always good to have more DA, but it's inefficient.

[ninetales]

It's not inefficient. Wolves should NOT be used as blockers/tanks because they are terrible at holding aggro and their collision size is pretty meh (a centaur charger can easily bypass three wolves to get to you, for example). Plague also very easily out-aggros wolves and you'll be using Plague alot to soften up mobs so the wolves kill them in one or two hits - this is critical especially if you play xboss mods or mob groups will very easily overwhelm you.

Wolves excel at dealing damage - they're fast, they hit HARD with 4x pet gear and they even have their own %damage reduction ability. You can think of them as more like persistent-effect nukes that follow you around and which you can control by using the "select all pets" command. If you decide to play a summoner, you should a assign a hotkey to that (it starts out not bound to anything) so you can direct your wolves to attack an Onslaught-user, for example, in order to kill it quickly.
The nice thing about the Druid summoner build offense-wise is that wolves/Plague/Squall all have synergy with 4x +elemental pet damage gear and the Wisp's Eye of the Storm.

A caster druid needs decent DA (nothing godly, because you're mostly interested in avoiding crits and not in achieving melee evasion) because it's only in paper where you can cast so many defensive skills at once to protect your character. Luckily for casters, caster legendaries tend to spawn with a ton of +DA.
Anyway in actual practice, casting Squall/Plague/Briar Ward/Ice Shards/etc. takes time AND you can't do all of that at once. It's also only in paper that Ice Shards destroys mobs in legendary that they can't get to you - in practice, they do. That's what Briar Ward is for, among other last-line-of-defense passive skills (like Heart of Frost and Storm Surge) that you may have.
Finally, several mobs have the skill disruption ability that can turn off sustaineds like Heart of Oak. Suddenly your HP buff is gone, and unlike a summoner you're basically a sitting duck while you try to re-cast critical buffs. Instead of dying horribly you can simply invest in DA and resistances.

[SilentMeteor]

I'm going to say that again. DA is inefficient.
Let's just do an easy calculation. At 200 DA, you have around 75% chance to get crit by usual legendary monsters, and crit dmg is 150% of base damage. At 1200 DA, it makes you almost unlikely to get crit, though few monster still do. You think that is significant? Nah. 200 DA only reduce your EHP to around 73% (1/(0.75*1.5+0.25*1)) compared with 1200 DA. That said, if you have 10K hp and 200DA, you are as tanky as 7.3K hp and 1200 DA. The difference, 1700 hp, with max+4 HoA, require 1700/(1+0.85)=919 base hp. Do you really think it is harder to get 919 base hp than 1000 DA on items? HP can apprear on any magic/rare items, while such huge DA require several epic/legendary purples, which if you are unlucky, you won't get it forever. What's more important, DA only work against MELEE monsters, and crit only works on PHYSICAL and PIERCE damage, while hp works on ALL TYPES of damage. Plus, only few boss has huge melee damage. For most bosses, your DA is useless, you need to focus more on a variety of resists, fire, poision and the most important, vitality resist.
Oh spellbreakers. I admit that is a problem, but even if that is true, your HoA is down, you still have the base hp on your gear. And ... do you realize that the only base monster type that would use spellbreaker, is ... skeleton mage in A3 and they are ranged? Yes there is a few heros use spellbreaker, which I don't recall their names and skills, but they are rare, much more rare than other monsters that would threaten you with non-melee damage. So what's the point of having real high DA against very rare monster heros and sacrifice your tankiness against all other monsters?
Regarding the part which says you can't use attack and defense skills at the same time, I don't really get the point. I already mentioned the skill combos that can be used against melee monsters. Being a caster does not mean use Ice Shards as you only skill, you always have other options if needed.

[Mivo]

My pet champion with very low DA, like 400 or so, gets constantly crit for 1500-4000 in act4 of Legendary. He can stun very frequently (80% reducted CD) and has pets, and he also has 9k or so HP, so it's not a big deal. But these crits are nevertheless substantial and guaranteed at such low DA. I cannot imagine playing a character that will face-tank multiple fast hitting monsters and deal with crits of that magnitude.

The issue is that you can't drink potions fast enough, even if you forgo 1200 DA in favor of 900 or 1700 additional HP. Avoiding and preventing the extra damage seems a more feasible and sustainable approach to me. Yes, it's harder to get 1200 DA (1100 will do) than to have 1700 more HP, but if you want to play a more unusual class in Legendary without too much frustration, you'll need the gear to make it work.

[SilentMeteor]

I cannot imagine playing a character that will face-tank multiple fast hitting monsters and deal with crits of that magnitude.
This, is where I repeated twice already. You are not face tanking these monsters, you have all the skills to either kill them before they get into melee range, or cc them. If your playstyle is sit there do nothing watching your pets or spamming ice shard refusing to use other skills, then yes you do need 1000+DA, I agree on that. However that playstyle is what cause the frustration in the first place, not the fact that you need DA.
Plus, I don't recall any monster can crit 4000 with Squall+Plague on it. Could you tell me which one? Maybe some heros do, but as I already mentioned, you don't gear against several heros, you choose gear to deal with the majority of monsters.
Also, you didn't answer the part about DA is useless against non-melee monsters which hp is still useful.
And to clarify, my conclusion only works on Druid, and potentially all nature related classes.

[ninetales]

You forgot mana drain which can also turn off sustaineds, usually from the witches of Act 4. And there are indeed various other mobs with skill disruptions, and the chances of them spawning in xboss mods is obviously higher.

DA is NOT inefficient because it also happens to be one of the most COMMON item mods in the game. In Legendary relics/charms can spawn with +40 and higher DA and yellow items ("of Supremacy") can spawn with +80 and higher DA. You will have also have a default ~180 DA from DEX (which you need to equip the best caster items by Legendary). That means with 4 pieces of yellow gear each with relics/charms you could be sitting on 600+ DA just like that - in actual practice you can easily raise that with the appropriate item mods, relics/charms/artifacts or epics/legendaries.

Now, your EHP calculation lacks context. Those non-physical, non-melee skills you mentioned? You either avoid those (either manually or through mods like CtAP), stack resists against them or just kill whatever's using them quickly. Any of the three works fine since people regularly beat the game using characters with 5k-7k HP (deaths are usually due to lack of meta-knowledge or carelessness) - so I'm not sure what the point of EHP against special mobs is since I'm assuming you're just going going run away from Barmanu's/Typhon's Meteor attacks or stack poison resists against Cerberus like the rest of us - that leaves a scenario based on normal mobs.
Well in Legendary axe weapons do ~150 damage. The Legendary difficulty mod increases that damage by (this is based on pre-AE values, which are lower) +60% piercing and +200% physical. That's 300 damage per swing, which goes to 450 damage on a crit (this is a very conservative number since I've seen centaurs hit for 600+ crit on legendary). You are basically taking 50% more damage per hit, and the actual value of that damage increases the more mobs there are attacking you - 150 on a single mobs, 300 on two, 450 on three, etc..

Now on three mobs attacking someone with 7k HP and DA that lowers crit rate you are taking 900 damage or 12.9% damage of your HP worth of damage. Three mobs attacking someone with 10k HP and nonexistent DA is taking 1350 damage or 13.5% of your HP worth of damage.
This is the part where the fact that you can't juggle attacking/defending as a caster becomes relevant - obviously because the latter is taking too much damage you have to move away or use defensive skills, while the former can just keep spamming Ice Shards. That is extremely relevant to determining your actual DPS output (which is critical in legendary). Very easily when you need to keep running away/defending situations can quickly go downhill and your character dies - this is true for anything from Onslaught users to bosses. 1200 is DA is also an exaggerated number - if you're not aiming for evasion (and since I assume you don't plan on facetanking bosses, at least not without the necessary precautions like scrolls) 800-1000 is a more realistic DA target.

Finally, I HAVE played HP-only characters in the past and they simply struggle more than well-rounded characters. This finding has been corroborated by various players in the TQ boards - anecdotal evidence, yes, but when you've been hearing different people say the same thing for over 10 years then it's quite possible there's a grain of truth there somewhere.
In fact, one of the reasons why the old Onslaught was so powerful was because of how the old Hamstring worked - it actually reduced DA by a % instead of a flat amount - which made it possible for Onslaught-using mobs to be dangerous even to warrior characters.

Edit:
Based on your post above it seems the only reason your setup works is because of the combination of Squall and Plague which, as a already mentioned, is an extremely powerful debuff combination.