Bear boring?

So I am at maps now and my level is 66. But I don't really feel motivated to continue. I am following this build.
And basically the gameplay didn't change since I got rampage. You basically use stomp to clear easy enemies and use rampage for large groups or bosses, including walking calamity if necessary. Thats it. I facetank most stuff, which is a bit sad, because I didn't get to enjoy the Act 4 enemies, because I just facerolled all of it.

But what I am looking at now is just improving my general tankyness (chaos res) and just increase my already ridicolous damage even more. But there will be now shift in gameplay for me anymore.

I also wonder if its really the case that the druid forms get forced to use their respective skills therefore not leaving a lot of freedom to play them in a very varied way. Also not a fan of them being tied to an element, but thats a minor nitpick.

Maybe somebody has suggestions or shares my sentiment? I am not sure if there is any uniques which really would change my playstyle or soley druid focused and therefore open up more "build paths".

Thanks for reading.

I think your issue is true to PoE2 in general it's just that the Druid has it more obvious because you are litterally changing your body to be a beast to do it.

The huntress in my opinion had it way worse where they are trying to push you hardcore into the parry playstyle and some clunky melee/range hybrid playstyle that nobody could make work because the game doesn't support it well at all.

If you look into it every class is built like that. The only one that was less like that was the Sorcerress and since last patch she's become that way as well with her infusion gimmick.

Each class has a few "packages" that are hyper focused in a theme/direction/element and everything in that package tends to have strong synergy and/or combo gameplay.

Now it's true that the Druid and especially the Bear and Wolf forms have it particularly strong where it almost feel like you are playing a pre-built template character (especially the wolf) where everything synergizes with the rest of the kit and theres a clear "correct" way to play the character.

But it's been like that since 0.1 and I fear it won't change anytime soon.

It seems the majority of players don't like that approach and would prefer if they went back to something more streamlined and traditional that was less heavy on combos, setups and obnoxious ressources like spell totem using charges but I fear it won't happen for a while. I'm expecting 1.0 to be like that across the board for every class and only then they will slowly rework existing skills to be less combo heavy overtime.

Thank you for your reply, I am not sure I agree with the perspective, because I didn't feel the same way in previous seasons where I played a warrior (shield charge) or a witch (lich).

I just wished or would hope for uniques to look forward to which change the bear in a drastic matter. Because right now all it is able to do is very good looking version of the Werbear of Diablo 2, which is nice. I am just not sure where my motivation should come from to push into endgame now.

Let me change the lements on my bear, I know there are gloves which turn my fire damage into ice, but I am not sure/aware what exact benefit this would bring and also is it worth it to wear those subpar gloves for that?

Allow the bear roars maybe to buff minions and make it more of a summoner playstyle were the summons do the damage and the bear is mostly the tank/caster.

Give me non fire-related combos, where is my thorns buff through the control of vines? Why is there no real usage for the charges or rage? I know most of those are on the passives tree, but there is very limited interaction with the bear itself.