I am disappointed that Sony seems to be wagging the dog on us with this class re-envision. Even more so that it seems to be working. Instead of latching onto OMG +25%!!! I wish people would seriously consider thinking critically about it.

Ultimately, I see this as some Sony devs going "Hmmm... those WoW guys have this shapeshift thing. We should try that!" and using our EQ druid class as an experiment.

A lot of people seem to be making a lot of assumptions, mainly that we think we can affect the percentages or get some new spell lines to bring us up to 80% effectiveness of a cleric. Sony has stated some changes are going live April 6th and if this is implemented then, there isn't much time to affect anything.

The fact is, without more information, no real feedback can be given. Without having a complete (or at least *more* complete than this current 1st step) roadmap of the druid plan, there is no way to tell if this change is good (or, to be fair, bad.) There has been no response in the Sony druid forum from any developer as there has been in other classes forums with further info (at least that I have seen watching Dev Tracker). I tend to wonder if they are mostly staying hushed hoping we will fall for the gimmick and they can experiment with us.

Focusing on the healing side, all Sony has said is that in this stance we will gain 25% in the strength of our heals and we will be 80% as strong as a cleric. That is it. I do interpret this literally as them believing that a 25% increase somehow makes us 80% of a cleric. After all, our current KR is "75% of a CH". Depending on how you look at this, the 25% does that. Based on the calcs I posted in another thread, the cleric CH translates into 612.24 hit points healed per second. Druid KR with a 25% boost translates to 477.55 hit points healed per second. Do the math, .78, call it 80%.

Please, really think about what this does to a druid. Think about whether there are better options. I know stance-shifting sounds so cool. I initally thought so, too, comparing it immediately to how much fun it is in WoW. But after really thinking about it, looking at some numbers, considering how I enjoy playing EQ, I do not think it is an appropriate solution or step for the druid class in EQ. Yes, I know they have said "this is only the first step." They keep pointing that out. Others keep point that out. Paint me cycnical, but I remember something similar being said to melees about the new melee system. I have heard them repeat "currently under review" for the last year.

I am also tired of hearing "just stay in the normal stance." I really think this is going to be what happens in most grouping situations. And then we revert back to the position we are in today. If you go by the info they are giving us, being 80% cleric based on a 25% heal increase is not going to help that much, and at this time there is no further info.

Beyond the sheer gimmickry of it, the change will add code complexity with accompanying bugs. You just can't get around that. There is no telling when said bugs will be fixed and our class will operate as intended. I don't want to be the guinea pig for the designers to test some ideas out on.

If this is done and, as I suspect, most druids don't like it, I think we will be SOL. The deisgners, devs, and other classes will point to us and say how much they changed for us allready. Getting other items on our top ten list or bugs fixed will be near impossible any time soon.

I do think there are other solutions that will allow us to MH for those druids that want to take on that role. Further, and I know this upsets some people but it has to be said, if you really want the MH role so bad that you want to have the abilities of a cleric, please consider rolling a cleric. This is not to say that the druid does not need some new tricks, I just don't think we need the full repetoire, and we don't need to sacrifice the core of the druid (heal AND nuke) to accomplish it. Seriously, answer this: if your KR healed for 6000, cost 500 mana, and could crit, if your patch heal was 3 second cast and could become faster with focus items and if you had a HoT that did 400-750hp (based on level) for 4 ticks, do you not think you could handle the majority of healing roles? Is it *so* overpowering that you should have your nukes cut in half (for the same mana cost)? That's a change to 2 spells and one new spell. NOT a whole new system (that has to be balanced, bug checked and regression tested.) Do you really think our nukes are out of whack? We haven't listed them on our top ten since that list started. We may be a little off since OoW, but I'd rather see a 5%-ish increase on our OoW nukes than this. I'd rather be a balanced, flexible druid ALL the time (with very few bugs!).

At a minimum, please insist on a full(er) roadmap of the planned druid changes before deciding this is a good thing.

I'm sure the game has changed a ton since I last played, but one of the strengths of a cleric is the number of decent fast heals and healing tools they have. To say that a 25% percent increase in healing (what's that mean anyway? Hit points? Or does it involve speed and mana as well?) makes a druid 80% of a cleric seems like they're glossing over a lot of what makes a cleric such a good healer.

Some of my favorite cleric healing spells weren't even spells, they were AA's.

There is no mention that if the 25% will include the speed we cast our heals (gonna asume they wont change the heal on the pseudo ch though). If the 25% to heal stance effects mana cost and cast time, then druids would be close to 80% effectivness of clerics. But it would have to be 25% to time and amount, with a similar amount of mana reduction to what focus effects give.

Not bothering to do math but this seems more logical, so Sony probably wont do it.

Kalest.

Half empty or half full......comes down to perspective in the end....