Dear Fellow Druids,

It never ceases to amaze me how much time we invest in wanting our heals upgraded. I do wonder why? Improving our healing abilities is NOT going to make us more wanted in raid situations. Clerics have and will always outshine us in healing. Speaking from a raidleader's perspective means he will always look for the optimum raid setup to kill Ubermob_001 and thus will always look for clerics to handle the healing side. What I'm saying is asking for better heals is NOT going to change the general MINDSET most other classes have about how heals should be handled. We are and will always be considered second/third place in that (even if we do get a substantial increase in heals.

Hence I wanted to ask all of you if we could not focus on abilities that would truly make us wanted again in raid situations. Of course the basic idea is we are the OVERLOOKED priest class so any ideas should follow the line of being a priest class (ie. no, we will not be dual wielding any time soon).

So the question revolves around what could a third priest class possible add to a raid and make us feel wanted?

- Damage Mitigation
New spell line where a druid links his health to the warrior/melee. For instance every 5% damage the mob does on tank gets taken by druid.
Possible name Tunare's Forgiveness

Would like to see other ideas about how we as a third class could contribute to a new way of healing...

"Speaking from a raidleader's perspective means he will always look for the optimum raid setup to kill Ubermob_001 and thus will always look for clerics to handle the healing side"

Exactly. And with the advent of AoE encounters, curse encounters, etc in EQ you need better healing proficiency from your secondary healers. With mobs quad hitting the MT for 1100+ a pop you need clerics in a CH rotation. At that point who heals the secondary melees and casters that are taking AE damage? Druids and shaman.

What is the other option? Instead of taking a min of 8 clerics to do a raid you'd suggest making it a minimum of 12+ just to have spare clerics to heal the non-MTs? How many raids are called off because there aren't enough clerics online to do reliable CH rotation?

We won't ever out nuke wizards (and IMO mages but that's just my opinion), we won't ever out buff clerics or shaman, we should NOT be doing better mana regen than enchanters.. so what function do we currently have that can be improved upon to make us useful immediately? IMHO healing is the easist and, in terms of game play most necessary, area that druids can and should be improved.

I don't believe we should get slow, that "belongs" to the shaman and the enchanter. What kind of buff could we conceivably do that wouldn't be coverable by one or two druids on a raid?

With your idea of damage mitagation if a mob flurries for 4x1100 or so (not unknown) the druid would end up taking 880 points of damage. That is a Nature's Touch to heal. Chances are by the time we get that cast off to heal the mob would be flurrying again. So instead of casting a heal on the warrior we're casting it on us. Same difference. And still leaves the other melee in the raids taking damage from ripostes, AE, etc.

I would love to find a new and unigue ability we could do on raids but I can't really find one. At least nothing that isn't unbalancing.

Hey Ehran!

I agree 100%. I would love a "real" raid skill that Druids can callt heir own but barring that Druids Nuke and Heal.

We Nuke pretty well. We suck at healing. End of story.

"New spell line where a druid links his health to the warrior/melee. For instance every 5% damage the mob does on tank gets taken by druid.
Possible name Tunare's Forgiveness"

why not just chain snare and mitigate 100% of 2 or 3 rounds? :p

"At that point who heals the secondary melees and casters that are taking AE damage?"

In order to heal AE damage or Rampage for that matter in a healing form you can do 2 things: a. have fast heals at your disposal, b. have large HoT's at your disposal (preferably both in group form)
I do NOT see us improving on a. since clerics got a huuge boost in that region with the Ethereal line. Hence, in an ideal raid situation no need to take a druid when a cleric can do the job better.
HoT are the specialty of shamans/clerics. In order for us to be even considered we would need massive upgrades in this field which is not even going to happen.
Thirdly, add to the equation that paladins actually themselves have a groupheal.

This all leads me to the conclusion that we should not focus ourselves on AE / Rampage healers because too many heals have already been spread out amongst other classes to cover these events.

"Instead of taking a min of 8 clerics to do a raid you'd suggest making it a minimum of 12+ just to have spare clerics to heal the non-MTs? "

In essence that what it is boiling down to at the moment. I started this post from the perspective of a high end encounter (ie. Aten Ha Ra / Emperor). If you were to face these mobs for the first time, you would try to get the best possible configuration before even attempting these mobs. A druid as we stand (NOT EVEN WITH THE PROPOSED 75%CH) will NEVER fit in the ideal situation since we do not bring extra value. Clerics outshine in keeping MT's up and now with the new heals outshine us faaar in patch heals. Paladins have groupheals that outshine any direct heal on an AE mob. Shamans outshine us with their lovely HoT.

I'm still trying to figure out how a 75% CH will put us in the spot of 'wanted' for a high end raid situation. And following my above logic following the healing route will definately not put us in that position

"In essence that what it is boiling down to at the moment. I started this post from the perspective of a high end encounter (ie. Aten Ha Ra / Emperor). "

I'm using the LIS fight as my main "high end" encounter. I have been on those raids and we've been successful. I've also seen my alliance have to cancel plans to go after him when he was up because we didn't have enough clerics online.

Yes, that's what it is boiling down to at the moment. And it sucks. Its the main reason I retired from the game. But just accepting it isn't going to change anything. ((Not saying that in a demeaning way in case it sounds as such))

I honestly think that Paladins should get CH. They've always had LoH, and they've gotten Resses. Next logical step in my mind, and I'm working on the assumption that SOME class needs Complete Heal to break the logjam of requiring a certain number of one specific class for high end raids. Make it level 60.

Although I've advocated improving our heals, and I still think they need improvement, I'd rather nuke away every day on every raid. But we are priest class and as such we are segmented into that role on raids.

Just my opinion.

You said it yourself on another thread

We are and always have been support healers and should demand to keep our place in that region. We shine on healing ranger/rogue/monk (ie non-plate classes) during high end raids (ie. Arch Lich type encouters).

Our role on a raid is support healing, that fact coupled with the fact that a gimp ch would be more often than not useless on a raid (it boils down to the ppl that can sustain dmg long enough for us to get this spell off need a real heal and this spell does jack in the ways of helping us keep our usual benefactors alive) is why the focus should be kept on healing.

We atm don't really have the tools (HoTs, grp heals, fast heals etc.) to do our job so that does pretty much makes us broken. So yeah, we should be more worried about getting fixed before talking about upgrades.

I agree totally but the 3k heal is all we've been offered if we even get that.

i think people should stop trying to make druids into one of the "needed" classes for raiding.

adding a unique ability to druids that was actually needed on raids would end up imbalancing raids even more so than they already are (due to ch, slow). because of this, i highly doubt you will see any more unique raid-affecting abilities added for ANY class.

i concentrate on our lack of healing powers because we ARE healers, and poor ones at best. that is one of our main roles, yet we do not have the tools to perform it. we lack the mana efficiency that is required for sustained healing when it comes to our spells.

a 3k heal, while it wont make us replacements for clerics on raids, does allow us to do our secondary healer role with a much greater efficiency than we currently have. that, along with the dot stacking, should hopefully move us from the "unwanted" category to at least the "acceptable" category. and that is what we should be shooting for. verant is obviously trying to move away from establishing "needed" classes for raiding.

i only wish we could get rid of the 75% factor on the current proposed heal. since most of our raid healing targets are not MTs, the 75% cap is going to be severely limiting. we are unlikely to get peak efficiency out of the spell (2925hp healed) due to lower hp totals on those we are responsible to heal.

To MellenFC

Indeed I did always found us to be the best patch healers around until VI decided to give clerics a complete new line of direct heals which completely surpasses anything we have at the moment. The only return I see thus far is a 3K heal at 10 secs cast.

Now if this goes through we end up being nothing more then a gimp healer. Our patch healing abilities have been surpassed by clerics and competing in a CH chain with clerics is too silly to even discuss.

An ideal world would be 3 priest classes with 3 distinct features ie. Direct heals, CH + Rez, HoT heals, would have been simple to give each of the priest classes a specialty in that and every class would have been a welcome addition to a raid. Of course with the current spells available ingame, there is not much left for us druids to excell in...hence my statement today

To Kalinn

I agree with you 100% the proposed heal is not going to help us a single bit in the high end content. Sure druid who are not expiriencing the high end Luclin content will most likely welcome this heal and it will sure raise their usefulness in certain occasions. But remember, the game follows a natural progression, those that applaude the heal at this point will become bogged down further down the route.

As to adding uniqueness to the game, I still feel this is warrented even though your argument is it will simplify current content. Simplification of the game is a fact. If they do upgrade our healing line as discussed, some encounters will trivialize more as we have become better equiped to handle certain situations. What I'm trying to point out is that we all know there are 3 priest classes and yet only 1 is able to keep a raid going. Giving us the power to break this stronghold will undoubtedly mean at a certain point some encounters where you have both an abundance of druids and clerics will be very trivial. Yet, look at it from the other side of the coin, if you don't give druids a serious viable raid factor, why even continue to play them? In the end the druid class will die out, clerics will take their place completely..