**75+ Hours on Druid Bear feedback — Fun, Powerful, but Far Too Squishy in Late Game**

Hello GGG,

I wanted to give some detailed feedback after putting **around 75 hours** into the **Druid Bear** in Path of Exile 2. I genuinely enjoy the class — the playstyle is fun, the fantasy is nailed, and the damage potential is there — but in its current state, the bear form feels **extremely punishing and fragile in late-game, high-juice mapping**.

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## What Feels Great

* Bear form feels **visceral and fun** to play
* Damage scaling is solid, even into endgame
* The fantasy of being a tanky, frontline bruiser is very appealing
* Clear and boss damage can be excellent with investment

The issue is not damage or enjoyment — it’s **survivability**.

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## Major Problems in Late Game

### 1. Extremely Low Life Ceiling

In high-end maps with juice, the Druid Bear realistically ends up around **2.5k–3k life**. This is simply not enough for a melee, face-tanking archetype.

Even with high damage reduction, you still get **one-shot constantly**, especially by bosses or empowered rares.

This makes the class feel backwards — you’re encouraged to walk up to enemies, but the game heavily punishes you for doing so.

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### 2. No Real Ailment Mitigation on the Left Side of the Tree

One of the biggest issues is that **there is effectively no way to deal with ailments** on the left side of the red skill tree.

* No accessible ailment immunity
* No meaningful ailment reduction
* No clear pathing options without massive point investment

As a result, freezes, shocks, ignites, and other ailments frequently lead directly to death, especially when combined with one-shots.

For a melee shapeshifter that must stay in close range, this feels extremely punishing.

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### 3. Stun Threshold Is Not a Solution

Even when investing into **stun threshold**, it does not solve the core problem. You still die in a single hit before any of those defenses matter.

It feels like stun threshold exists on paper, but in practice does nothing to help the Bear survive real endgame encounters.

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### 4. Armour Alone Is Not Enough

The Bear leans heavily into **armour-based mitigation**, but in the current league and endgame environment, **armour alone does not work**.

* Large hits still one-shot you
* Boss abilities completely bypass your defenses
* Damage reduction feels irrelevant against modern scaling

Even stacking armour and damage reduction, you simply cannot mitigate incoming damage in a meaningful way.

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### 5. No Life Nodes to Support the Playstyle

There are **very few meaningful life nodes** available that actually help the Bear survive encounters. For a class that is clearly designed to be in melee range at all times, this feels like a major oversight.

You’re forced into a glass-cannon melee playstyle, which is the worst of both worlds.

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## How This Feels in Practice

In late game:

* You walk up to a boss
* You get hit once
* You die

This happens **even with high damage reduction, armour, and investment**. There’s no room to react, no defensive layers to lean on, and no way to build around the problem within the current tree options.

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## Suggestions

* Increase access to **life nodes** for Druid Bear
* Add **ailment mitigation or immunity options** on the left/red side of the tree
* Introduce defensive mechanics tied specifically to **Bear form** (flat damage reduction, conditional immunity, or scaling defenses)
* Re-evaluate armour's effectiveness for frontline shapeshifters in late-game content

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## Closing Thoughts

The Druid Bear is **one of the most fun classes I’ve played in PoE 2**, but right now it feels like it cannot survive the content it’s meant to engage with.

A melee, tank-themed shapeshifter should not be capped at 3k life with no ailment answers and no meaningful way to avoid being one-shot.

I really hope survivability for the Bear gets another balance pass, because the class is incredibly close to being great — it just needs real defensive tools to match its fantasy.

Thanks for reading,
— A long-time PoE player