The druid community is too conservative. The outspoken members (ie people within the devs' radar - you know who you are) display too much happiness with our current state. They also provide no well structured suggestions* as what could be done to fufill our needs, with exception of Nimchip's push for more mana regen.

*Example: http://samanna.net/sham.issues/debuffs.jan06.shtml

I'm in no way directing this towards anyone paticular in a intetionally rude or offensive matter, nor do I feel that people who feel they 'within the devs' radar' should feel obligated to do anything they don't want. What I am saying is that we lack people with strong means to push class progression - which is potentially a problem since TSS is another example of class re-gression.

Edit: Posted it in this forum since I figure it'ld end up here anyways :D

Few of the issues brought up during Beta and never resolved:

Group Curse Curing (It was felt all current encounters are winnable with the current cure spells, so no new spells where going to be introduced).

Increase of the Degrade Level for Omens BPs (Zajeer said these are 2 years old, and he's content let them die to make room for upgrades).

Exclusion of new Mask spell (Several posters expressed support with numbers and other data, result, it remained cut for launch).

Large push for Group Poison / Disease curing (*lots* of examples and data provided, result- no spell).

Was decent sized pushes, with Data from TDG posters for:
-Cold Attack Debuffs
-Cold DoTs
-Several Revisions to, or a new spell of - Percentage Heals
-Few other misc items

I really think tho, looking at the thread, nearly all major issues I see people mention in multiple threads over the months between PoR and TSS was brought up, and a few what heavy support, but we simply didn't see anything come of it.

To be fair however, our AAs and certain TSS spells your now seeing had *alot* of work done to them, and did address some of the other issues the members of the class had in certain regards.

-Fenier

why complain about perfection? what more could anyone possibly want? slows?

oh and Fen, a lot is two words.

I'll stick to mah bad Mainer accent. Afterall, ya can't git Dhera from here.

why complain about perfection? what more could anyone possibly want? slows?

oh and Fen, a lot is two words.

yes .. animal slows to use when charming. Even better, a buff (charmpet only) that allows him to proc a 1tick slow

Fenier will not have to worry about me fighting with him anyomore on Druid usefulness. After all these years thinking someone might actually push for Druids to gain back some usefuless in what we have been loosing, ( I have tried, with much opposition ) I have tossed the towel in.

I pushed my endgame Druid to the max trying to see where the class lacked and what kind of changes could be made to improve the class as a whole. I posted my ideas in beta to have them ignored completely by devs and the rest of the casual Druid community. The Druid class is not just a casual class made for people that only can play a few hours here and there, but those are your representatives, and they do a piss poor job of listening to those of us that take this class to the extreme.

Dindail the Druid has been retired now for many months as I just knew this all would happen once again. After many years of the same crap, you just expect it.

Dindail the Rogue thou is having a blast.

Adios.

The main thing that I wanted was a fast heal. I have been posting and complaining and whining about wanting a fast heal for a couple of years now. This expansion, we got a fast heal. I still think it should be a level 40 spell and that our class has some major issues from about 40-60, but oh well we finally got it. Now Im gonna be happy for awhile. :)

But don't worry, I don't have any dev's ear, so my current state of satisfaction shouldn't cause any trouble hehe.

I agree with Kamion. I'm starting to feel like druids are just a forgotten class. I made the following statement:

"These are truly sad and difficult times for druids. I honestly believe that if not for the steeloak line of buffs there would be no reason to even bring a druid along on raids. (Rooting and debuffing are useful to a lesser degree, but I'm sure raids could survive without these.)"

on the beta boards and do you know what happened? Nothing. Not one person replied to dispute or even acknowledge that statement. Sad times indeed.

Again, this isn't directed towards anyone in paticular, but - a lot of the time when people talk about balance issues they compare druids and clerics. This makes zero sense, being that we're a secondary priest class and should be compared to shamans on balance issues.

In my own words, a secondary priest is a following: A 2nd rate healer with considerable dps (implicit or explicit) and utility.

For a long time, we had a slight edge over shaman in healing and dps, and they had a step up on us with utility. Currently, there isn't any category they don't have a step up on us on.

Healing: Druid healing is one of the lesser problems - we heal fine our role. The only adjustment I'ld like to see is a lowering of reptile's recast time. The problem with our healing is not a result of our heal spells, rather more so our lack of mana regen and AA-insurance policies -- shaman's got their version of oakenguard via instant AA, which makes a lot more sense being that a caster gets aggro immedantly after a spell is cast and that means spell gems are down - so what takes us 3-4 seconds can do a shaman can do in less than 1. The other shaman AA-insurance policy is spiritual channeling, they can die and get rezzed in mid fight and get right back into the action.

DPS: This is the biggest problem with druids. I find it mind boggling how much people ignore implicit DPS. With the combination of epic 2.0 (the crit componet of their epic heal is more powerful than our total epic click), group panthar, canni, and 0.5 sec cast 3k nukes a shaman can beat our max dps potentional while out mana regening us and having plenty of time left to cast heals and cures. If a druid and a shaman had a strict explicit DPS contest, the druid would win - but this doesn't show that druid dps is fine, it shows that druids gain more than shamans if they put 100% of their efforts into dps. A shaman can do 1/2 of their max explicit dps by casting 1/4 of the spells, while a druid doesn't have any paticually powerful DoT or long recast nuke. But ethierway, the key word with shamans is explicit dps (which rivals bards.) If you could parse explicit dps, shamans would be one of the highest dps classes on any raid.

Utility: Virtually all druid utility isn't unique to our class. The only utility we have that is of greater benefit than the same type of utility from other classes is Direwild and atk debuffs. The biggest problem with our utility is that it lacks true upgrades. In short, every 'upgrade' in utility we get has INCREASED stipulations (re: Spore Spiral / Serpent Vines vs. Ensnare / Savage roots, and icefall breath having no AC debuff), and upgrades to shaman utility ethier have no change or decreased stipulations.

---------

Bascially, druids are no longer a true secondary priest class. We don't have the mana regen or free`d up casting time to do any considerable dps (implicitly or explicitly.) Our utility isn't progressing as it should. To echo the quote in Pow's post, all a raid really needs from a druid is direwild skin and atk / resist debuffs - so there is little gained by having multiple druids on a raid compared to the benefit of having multiple shaman.

My suggestions for balance:

(Once again, this isn't in response to my first post, I don't think anyone should be inclined to push my ideas.)
A long recast time tool (like spiritual channeling) to help us be useful if we die mid-raid.
A druid version of "Sting of the Queen" that is considerably more potent. (since druids are 'supposed' to be the better nuking class.)
More mana regen, ethier directly or through short recast time tools.
An instant-AA version of oakenguard.
A potent 6 tick MR DoT (Since most our DoT are too long to be useful in groups.)
Put convergence line of AA on a seperate recast timer.
Lower recast time of reptile.
Change Spore Spirial and Serpent Vines into chromatic versions of ensnare and savage roots.
Any druid-unique implicit dps tool.
An atk debuff that will land on FR resistant mobs (low in the list since few mobs are FR resistant.)Footnote: Didn't include things like upgrading KR or dire charm because pushing for that is futile.

Not trying to beat the dead horse here...

But another thing is that shamans often request to gain druid abilties and justify it by something along the lines of "druids do basically the same job as us, we should get it too."

In PoP druids got spirit of the wood. Shamans requested to get a group heal, and they got it in OoW with Ancerstral Aid (as well as with their OoW epic.) AAid is usually of more raid benefit because of the str cap raise, wood is only of more benefit if cast on the tank cause of the DS and AC componet, but the DS can be a burden sometimes. Also, AAid was the same AA price as grove, and didn't require a prereq.

In OoW druids got oakenguard. Shamans requested to get the same spell, and they got their AA version of it. Since 99% of the time a caster gets aggro immedantly after casting a spell (ie when the gem is still down), having an instant casting melee guard is superior to having a 1.0 sec gem verison.

In DoDH druids got convergance of spirits. In TSS shamans got union of spirits. UoS's prereq is AAid, while Gathering of spirit's prereq is conv. UoS is 5 aa per level, GoS is 6. UNION OF SPIRITS IS ON A SEPARATE RECAST TIMER THAN ANCESTRAL AID.

The general theme here is that not only are shamans able to gain what was once unique abilities to us, they gain them in an easier fashion with less stipulations.

Outside of that, ~50% of the unique abilties shamans gained they gained along side with druids (group heal, second life, damage % mods, defensive proc buff etc.) The other 50% is exclusive to shaman (panthar, 0.5 massive nuke, champion, new forms of canni etc.)

Concerning TSS... Many druids went into this expansion hoping for mana regen, or alternivily a mana tool. We got one - spirit of the white wolf. At best this will give us about 500 mana, under non-extreme conditions it will be more like 200 or so. Ethierway, you'ld have to bend the truth to say it could match the power of 1 spell gem canni, and beyond that it's only of us if you 1) Have lots of mana BEFORE you click it 2) use a lot of mana while it's up.

And canni...

AA canni has gone from ~1050 to ~2250. (69 sec recast time.)

Non-raid spell canni has gone from 360 to ~590 (18 sec recast time.)

Raid spell canni has gone from ~490 to ~600.

And their verison of white wolf (pact of wolf) is generally more useful than ours, even though it's of different dynamics.

------------

Now, this may look like a rather bleak or bitter view on shamans, but it is not.

Shamans, like druids and bards, have a wide range of abilities - ie "jack of all trades." For such classes to be balanced, they need to their abilities be rather potent, even it may appear overpowering.

I'm not saying druids should inherit shaman abilities, but druids definally need to inherit the concepts behind their tools.

PS: Sorry for the ranting, but when big expansions come out I expect a lot - small expansions will give 1-3 spells. It will be about a year til we get more aa's, and will 2 years until another big expansion with levels come out, so the thought of playing a broken class for 2 more years doesn't exactly thrill me.

If you think druids are broken, why not /delete and reroll another class?

AA canni recast time is not 69 seconds. Yes, I know that's what the spell data says, but AA recast timers are set independently. Note the recast time of 0 on Call of the Wild, for example:
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=5880&source=Live

If you think druids are broken, why not /delete and reroll another class?

When people from other classes bring up problems with with their class they debate it and often agreee or not. Why is the refrain " why not re-roll if you don't like it" used so often by druids? Yes I have seen it on other classes boards but no where near the frequency it's said here.

I also visit the beastlord and necro sites often. Every board has that group of people that thinks their class is getting the shaft (humorous to hear necros whine about their dps, when every other class seems to think necros' dps is insanely too high).

That said, it's a matter of perspective. It's too easy for a raid druid to look at the druid class and say, "druids don't match up right," and ignore our utility outside of the raid. I'd like to see a cleric or shaman get the kind of xp we can by themselves. I'm not saying they can't solo, but consider that we can solo safely and take on higher con mobs, and have better contigency plans when things go wrong.

95% of the people I associate with in the game would rather have a druid than a cleric in their group. Clerics can heal... if you get a druid that has that down you also have the a huge variety of other benefits a druid can offer (dps, emergency escape, debuffs, levitation, etc).

So, as I said before, why mess with perfection? I wasn't being facetious, I meant it. I believe our class is well rounded and perfectly balanced.

If you think druids are broken, why not /delete and reroll another class?

I'm not saying that people 'should' agree with anything I said, but if you don't please take the time to correct me. This is not a mindless rant about shaman power, I hope nothing more than this to be something that can turn into something productive. If you want to make a Kamion flame feel free to make a new post and go at it, but please keep this thread regarding the druid community or logical arguments about shaman vs. druid progression.

After 3 years of raiding on a druid and 1 year grouping on a shaman, I have come to the conclussion that druids and shamans basically do the same job - heal, cure, buff*, determinal utility**, and do dps on the said (whether implicitly or explicitly.) It makes 0 sense how much more shamans have to support them with their job.

*Buff = A "buff" is a beneficial spell that doesn't need to be recast midfight. Beneficial spells (or short buffs) that do need to be recast midfight are implicit spells, ie, panthar = implicit DoT, sloth = implicit slow, reptile = implicit HoT, champion = implicit melee dps etc.

**Determinal utility = Any determinal spell with a componet that does something other than damage.

In my view, utility is defined buffs, determinal utility, and the ability to port. When Exodus / succor is used midfight so it's more aliked to an implicit fade / shadowstep.

If anyone feels that I didn't categorize utility and 'implicit' spells correct, feel free to correct me.

Ethierway, you could argue it back and forth all day - but druid and shaman utility is close to each other in power.

----------

And to respond to your original question, throwing away 18,000 dkp and a few years of work just because the devs balanced us incorrectly isn't worth it - though admittly I did think about it (if I did change mains it'ld be to warrior anyways.) Besides, prices for druids on PA are so slow it's not even worth selling a top end druid, ty for helping to prove that Nimmy (Perhaps this reflects the true value of druids...) And the second post I made after playing my shaman for the first time since TSS came out.

I still enjoy druid play greatly. I would enjoy driving a Subaru WRX STi around a Formula1 track, but that doesnt mean I'ld win a race.

I pretty much agree.

What I never understood is why everyone on these boards is just happy to get "something". Seriously and expansion comes out and everyone gets something, so why consider that rewarding?

You always have to compare yourselves to the environment around you, and a Druid has uses sure, but when you take one to the endgame you will more than likely find yourself as just a "filler" with no real use outside covering for a Cleric that decided they wanted a day off.

Its a sad state when a class gets excited when they get a nicely wrapped bag of poo, then justify it with "well atleast we got something".

I couldn't agree more with what Kamion is stating. I think it's time for a serious push to get some of these issues corrected.

Are there any endgame raiding druids out there that are satisfied with our current state?

In some aspects I can't blame SoE for crapping up the druid class as they have done. There are simply too many people to please. Warrios just wanna take a hit and hold some aggro. Like some druids wanna be kite whores. Some druids wanna be ROT tards. Some druids wanna sit there and nuke while their group dies. Some druids wanna heal like a cleric. Some just have extremely stupid ideas(lay off the grove weed.)

So we can't really unify as to what we want, because the other half is pushing for help in another department.

I my self tend to push for things that will make druids more usefull in raid situations.

Some improvements have been made to the class that i have found usefull in a raid setting.

1. Convergance of Spirits(I friggn love this AA)
2. Reptile Skin(More aggro for them, less for you!)
3. Spore Spiral (Nice for CC, al nice to use for positioning mobs)
4. Serpents Vines (Sticks when no one elses will)


Just about every thing else SoE has managed to either not improved enough as expansions are released, or just plain screw it up.

When people from other classes bring up problems with with their class they debate it and often agreee or not. Why is the refrain " why not re-roll if you don't like it" used so often by druids? Yes I have seen it on other classes boards but no where near the frequency it's said here.

i bet because its not a druid saying it lol .. there are lotsa non-druids coming to these boards i believe =)

i bet because its not a druid saying it lol .. there are lotsa non-druids coming to these boards i believe =)

LIES !!


ermm /hide

:shuffle:

Fenlayen is a druid. This one time when I snuck onto one of his Xegony raids, way back in the day, he cast protection of the nine on me!

true story!

.. snip..I my self tend to push for things that will make druids more usefull in raid situations.
1. Convergance of Spirits(I friggn love this AA)
2. Reptile Skin(More aggro for them, less for you!)
3. Spore Spiral (Nice for CC, al nice to use for positioning mobs)
4. Serpents Vines (Sticks when no one elses will)

myself .. group situations. Pretty much gave up. Funny how shamans, and all other classes push for everything that will make their class more useful/powerful in EVERY situation!

in group/solo:
1. Convergance of Spirits(I friggn love this AA.. u run with unsnared mob chasing u at 10% health and u can click this while running, then turn and fight another bit. Before a druid could only evac .. or die.)

2. Reptile Skin(More aggro for them, less for you! .. AND can tank with this .. tanked Direwind Current for my group today after MT died to death touch =)) Its just plain the best spell i saw since Luclin!

3. Spore Spiral (Nice for CC, al nice to use for positioning mobs) Root that holds, but the spell in itself is a HUGE downgrade from our old 3 minute-quick casting-long range root. As the old root doesnt hold, i see being forced to use this one a nerf.

4. Serpents Vines (Sticks when no one elses will) [/quote] 3 minute duration, same, its a nerf compared to ensnare 15mins ..(which doesnt stick if not after 7 casts, so useless). No upgrade to AOE snare /root since lev 58/60 btw.

I see that someone is able to start a thread like this and not be tagged immediatly as a whiner, quite surprised! And raiders are complaining?? Whats happening?

/agree with Kamion.

But myself, got used to be the state we are and not be too concerned about. TDG forums is where i learned that there is nothing to do (nor hope) to improve the druid class (actually to RESTORE the class to an underpowered shadow of what it was), nor any point in voicing any problem.

I still enjoy druid play greatly. I would enjoy driving a Subaru WRX STi around a Formula1 track, but that doesnt mean I'ld win a race.

AHAHAHA great one Kamion!!! Many times ive read that we druids should be content because in old content we are still uber ..
Anyways .. we got port utility back. We dont have a racing car, but we are back into being the trucks carring around the racing cars =)!! yey!

VVVV see signature VVVV

What I never understood is why everyone on these boards is just happy to get "something". Seriously and expansion comes out and everyone gets something, so why consider that rewarding?

I still enjoy druid play greatly. I would enjoy driving a Subaru WRX STi around a Formula1 track, but that doesnt mean I'ld win a race.

Our WRX of a class now has a chrome muffler tip and a bright red air filter.

Ya, it does seem like people get excited over minor upgrades (which produce little results) as much a teenager gets excited buying some useless aftermarket upgrade for their Honda Civic. Our 'huge' solution to mana is a 9AA abilitiy which -at best- is as useful as a mod rod.

In some aspects I can't blame SoE for crapping up the druid class as they have done. There are simply too many people to please. Warrios just wanna take a hit and hold some aggro. Like some druids wanna be kite whores. Some druids wanna be ROT tards. Some druids wanna sit there and nuke while their group dies. Some druids wanna heal like a cleric. Some just have extremely stupid ideas(lay off the grove weed.)

Yah, whats with the Druids that want Mage pets and Slows. Stop freaking trying to copy other classes you dorks. Come up with something unique that yields similar results to the other classes you seem to envy.

Our ATK debuffs have similar results to slows, they just dont show outside parses really (herein lies the problem). They really need to be much more potent, faster casting, and consolidated to a single spell.

Pets, give it up Druids are not a pet class, thou I can see a Druid somehow working with their environment around them to add to a fight. Maybe some kind of chant where a Druid is able to enter into a stasis with their enviroment and call to their aid. See how that unique thought process works?

Heals, ive said it before our heals cost more mana, take longer to cast, and heal for less. Leave it at just a few disadvantages, either make them heal for the same as a Clerics heals, but cost more mana, or make them cost the same mana and heal for less, no reason to kick the dog twice.

Damage spells, hey we dont need 10 ways to deal damage, we need some way to deal damage and retain our utility, which means dont force us to spam cast spells to actually get something done. Leave us open to deal damage if we need to, but also still be able to perform our other functions at the same time. (Dot's fail at this horribly)

Mana, we use more mana than most other classes to do less, and we pay for it twice by having (the lowest?) mana regen of all classes. Utility classes cannot perform our fuctions when our spells cost more and our overall mana regen is less. This forces our utility into a more specialized role, but to a lesser extent of the class we are pretending to be. (This is not utility)

Toooooo many spells, we only have so many spell gems use. We get some new spell every expansion that just adds to the mix of the excessive amount of spells we already have. This reduces the use of many spells that may not be to bad, but not good enough to keep them loaded, rendering them useless.

Lack of class defining abilities. We have only 2 lines of spells that are even remotely unique. ATK debuffs and our skin line of hpt buffs. A lack of unique class defining abilities leaves the Druid class as a "filler" class and a last pick in any situation.

A fix to all these issues will require a revamp to the entire class as a whole, and no expansion will ever fix these issues without some real work put into improving the Druid class from 1-75.

Concerning TSS... Many druids went into this expansion hoping for mana regen, or alternivily a mana tool. We got one - spirit of the white wolf. At best this will give us about 500 mana, under non-extreme conditions it will be more like 200 or so. Ethierway, you'ld have to bend the truth to say it could match the power of 1 spell gem canni, and beyond that it's only of us if you 1) Have lots of mana BEFORE you click it 2) use a lot of mana while it's up.


An idea (not sure if it's been mentioned before) for spirit of the white wolf.

Remove the beneficial mana pres component and instead make it a temporary mana regen similar in power to bst perfection AA line. If it could add something like 100 mana/tick (maybe less given the longer duration than perfection and self only of course) it would be far more useful than it is currently. This would be useful during an intense fight and also as a mid-raid recovery after a rez. If the devs are set on the "beneficial spell only" aspect that's fine, make it fade on casting of a detrimental spell (similar to fragile spells like scale of wolf.)

As far as a raiding druid goes.....group cures is a BIGGIE.
Better 10 second heal, 6k doesn't cut it with 16k unbuffed tanks, and mobs that are hitting for 10k. Possibly a HoT. Also all around our spells should be more mana efficent, or more effective. I prefer mana efficent as i like stability over power, right now we have neither.

Don't get me wrong now, I don't want to heal like a cleric and nuke like a wizzie. I would just like us to have some form of SOLIDNESS. Like a shammie, they may not have the best heals and such, but they have the best slows and it's nearly impossible to go OOM as a shammie.... that is a solid class built for a raid.

However my opinion is one of many on what a druid needs, and i don't think our class is going to get any sort of improvement in the near future because we can't agree on one thing.

It would be nice tho to be like a necro where they are kind of split like us between raid, solo and group, heal your self, best DPS in the game, insane mana regen, ability to give others mana, a half way cool pet, an exp rezz, FD.

we pay for it twice by having (the lowest?) mana regen of all classes
Well that's not exactly true, clerics are pretty much on par with us mana regen wise, we get 10 and mask, they get self buff and yalp. However clerics can heal for ever because of the cost of their spells and arbs.

Better 10 second heal, 6k doesn't cut it with 16k unbuffed tanks, and mobs that are hitting for 10k. Possibly a HoT. Also all around our spells should be more mana efficent, or more effective. I prefer mana efficent as i like stability over power, right now we have neither.

This is what im talking about when I mean something different that does basically the same thing. You say HoT, well you have reptile its a different spell, but its basically the same thing when used right.

The issue with ICH imo is, that makes a Druid into a heal bot and thats not something I would ever want to see. This would also just send the class further into the realm of no utility. The gap between Clerics and Druids on this front can be bridged with greater mana regen and more powerful/efficient heals ( not ICH ). See my suggestions with an Overheal ability, this ability is 100% utility as it allows a Druid to suppport the other healers without wasting their time by allowing our primary heals to exceed the maximum hitpoints of the target to a certain degree. This could be in the form of a rune or I would prefer it to be in the form of a temporary hitpoint buff with a possible bonus as a side effect until the extra hipoints are all used up.

The only downside I see to this is, a tank would appear to be at full health for a short period of time and then suddenly fall abruptly when the buff was used up creating a stall effect which could irritate Clerics.

You say HoT, well you have reptile its a different spell, but its basically the same thing when used right.

The issue with ICH imo is, that makes a Druid into a heal bot and thats not something I would ever want to see. This would also just send the class further into the realm of no utility.
No Reptile is not a HoT, reptile it something you cast on some one who's getting hit in hopes it's going to proc enough.... it's completely varied on how many times one is getting hit not how hard. Reptile does no good against any sort of AE or DoT.

I don't think a better 10 second heal would turn us in to another heal bot, it would just be a usefull utility on raids when needed.

Thanks for posting Kamion.

How is it that all our unique abilities only last for one expansion. Sony has been giving all our abilities to Shaman and we are left with two unique spells. We have inferior mana regen to all other priest classes, while using the same, if not more mana than anyone else. I was highly disappointed when I bought the white wolf AA. It isn't even worth the 9aa it cost to buy. Also we didn't get an upgrade to the mask line this expansion, when clerics and shaman got new yalps and cannis. This is our form of self mana regen, and we get it cut from the expansion while the other 2 priest classes get upgrades to theirs.


Has anyone heard anything from our class correspondent? Last I heard s/he hasn't been in game for a couple month. Not too sure about that. But anyways, perhaps that is a reason druids seem to get the shaft. No one to relay information to the devs?

Has anyone heard anything from our class correspondent? Last I heard s/he hasn't been in game for a couple month. Not too sure about that. But anyways, perhaps that is a reason druids seem to get the shaft. No one to relay information to the devs?

I did some checking into this a few days ago because I had no clue who he was. Our correspondent is Scirocco_ (that is his name on the eqlive boards.) He only posts in the druid class section of the eqlive boards. From what I can tell he did not participate in beta (if he did, then he didn't post anything on the beta boards.)

His latest post can be found in the "These boards are a JOKE" thread under druid definition. From there you can click on his name and find all posts by him.

While you are there I suggest checking out our top ten issues list (not updated since January btw.) I would like to see that updated if we can get some sort of agreement here. Personally I think Kamion's top ten on page one of this thread is a much better list than what is currently there.

Cleric doesn't get new Yaulp.

And druid sucks. Last night, I login my cleric and druid then LFG at the same time. Cleric got a nest group offer after 20 minutes, I turned it down. After 10 minutes got into a icefall group, which proceed to Frostcrypt. Whole group is 75 except me, at 72. Whole group is demi gear, except me with less than 10k mana. Got a lv 75 rank 2 spell, some exp, no death and only 2 OoC med break in 2 hours.

Meanwhile, after 3 whole hours my druid is still LFG in the Guild Hall with 0 tells. I can also assured you, this can happen almost every night. Only chance I (my druid) can get into group is if I make the group, or hop on those "looking for 1 more" guild group.

Druid sucks is not just my own opinion, it is shared by almost everyone who try to make group.

Whoops. Excuse my ignorance on the cleric spells.

I've got a lot to say about class balance, and I'm pretty well placed to comment on Druid vs. Shaman given that I regularly play a ToB level shaman who's just as good as my druid main.

I'm not a high end raider, so I don't feel the pain that Kamion and co refer to, but I do think that the druid's position on the "class blaance spectrum" is relatively low - and has been for some time.

Does this mean that druids suck? Only if you let them. Druids are viable and useful, and require effort, but can be a great addition to any group. The same is true of most classes, though. So the question is - is the druid unfairly low on the class balance spectrum?

I would really like to wait to answer this before I get a chance to see the new status quo in action. Once everyone hits 75, gets used to their new spells and settles down again after the new expansion frenzy, we can really look at what class balance is sitting like.

If I'm forced to answer without waiting?

I think druid healing is in a pretty decent place - a HoT would be sensationally useful, but this could be addressed in ways other than simply giving us a new spell (give us a 3/6/9 10% per level time reduction AA on the Convergence/Gathering line, and/or put the two on different timers as Kamion suggests). The new "fast" heal is a great addition to the toolbox, and although I am certian that SOE sees the 10-second heal as a dead duck, I can see the reason people are calling for it to be upgraded. Druid heals suffer from the reverse problem to druid nukes - the yield is pretty high, but so is the cost. An efficient (and slow) modern-day druid heal would counter this.

Druid DPS is hurting - I think this is exacerbated by the OOC changes. Classes with expensive but high-DPS spells are much more desirable than low yeild high efficiency druids now that you can dump your mana pool and be ready to do it again in a few minutes. Druid dots and nukes are in the same class - 3rd rate in each event. The fact that we can do both is nice, but some "high yield" DPS would be a massive and needed boon for those DPS druids out there.

Druid utility? As Fenier says, porting is back, and the utility this brings is nice. It's a bit like rezzing, I imaigne - very nice to have, but burdonsome in that you become a "hey, stop what you're doing and come <xxxx> me" class. We do bring some implicit DPS gains for other classes with our epic, our Skin Like Vines and our Icefall Breath, and even Mammoth lines, but these dont compare to the uberness of Panther.

As to the cut spells - I've posted on this elsewhere. I think it was stupid for spells that were effectively "finished" to be pulled from the game so close to release (especially given that the NDA had been lifted), and I've VERY much looking forward to the promised reintroduction of some of these spells. As ?Dorda? said, you can't take away spells from a utility class and expect them to retain their utility.

Another moan: I'm not convinced the Druid PoR BP effect is balanced - the nuke is weaker than other nuking classes effects, and the nuke is garbage compared to the Spiritual Serentiy effect that shammies get. A hit with that BP is like one good tick on a shammy dot - the 0.8 cast time is nice, it gives the tool a use (finishing a fight quickly is what I use mine for), but nothing even remotely approaching the usefulness of a regular, mana free, HoT.

The problem is I just can't answer my own question, do I think a druid is UNFAIRLY low on the class balance spectrum? I don't know. I can easily think of classes that are more desirable. I can't think of any that are less desirable. I'm quite prepared to play my druid well and carve a niche for ME because of the abilities that I personally bring to a group/raid, but from a CLASS perspective? I just can't think of any class that I'd take a druid over.

Yes, I think a druid is useful. No, I don't think we're as useful or as effective as some other classes. Very rarely, in putting together a group, is a druid going to be in a "must have" position - I think this is a reality that we as a class have to face. We're never going to be in demand as optimal healers like clerics, or optimal slowers like shamans. We don't have a space in the holy trinity of EQ. But we can solo, we bring unique (if limited and not particularly stackable) functionality to raids.

What would make us better? Plenty of stuff - but all at the expense of other classes. I genuinely feel that giving druids a high-yeild DPS tool, and an efficient (modern) healing tool would be fair and reasonable... but I can't see other classes swallowing that. I don't know how the devs would react, but past experience suggests it would likely be with an /ignore.

<xxxx>
Another moan: I'm not convinced the Druid PoR BP effect is balanced - the nuke is weaker than other nuking classes effects, and the nuke is garbage compared to the Spiritual Serentiy effect that shammies get. A hit with that BP is like one good tick on a shammy dot - the 0.8 cast time is nice, it gives the tool a use (finishing a fight quickly is what I use mine for), but nothing even remotely approaching the usefulness of a regular, mana free, HoT.

Zajeer is not changing the effect on ours if he's not even considering the effects on the Bard and SK's breastplate

That said, and this is my opinion only, I think we got that effect for two reasons.

1: Tacvi and Vish Clicks matched, Direct Heals in each case, The PoR BPs call on the secondary lines of healing for Clerics and Shaman, a trait which our class lacks.

2: The BPs also reflect traits of the Weapon they are named after, the Clerics and Shaman thus heal, while the Druid Epic, being offensive in nature, is reflected with Glitterfrost.

Either of these cases is possible, and I am betting it was a small combo of both of them which got us the effect we have.
</xxxx>

Druid is simply not desired in group.

You want a main healer? We already give up this role on everything but trivial content.
You want a dps? There are rog, ber, wiz, mag, nec, rng, bst, war (yes warrior can outparse druid in dps) avaialble.
You want a secondary healer? Shaman can provide less downtime (crazy mana regen), better DPS (with DoT, 3k nukes, panther), better utility (buff that stacks), better debuff (SLOW and MALOS) with comparable (or even better in some case) heal.
You want a kiter/CC? Almost every class can kite, I have seen a warrior kiting 10mobs while the group pick them up one by one. Shaman can root park better than us (the root has a betetr push back), not to mention bard/enc/nec mez.
You want someone to port? Hey that's what TL is for.

So when can a druid get a group?

1) When doing trivial content with a well equip tank and a cleric is not available.
2) When a secondary healer is desperately needed (which is rare) and shaman is not available.
3) When the group is dumb.
4) When your guild feel sorry to see you LFG for hours.

Oh yes, we can still MGB buff, cast our 5 debuff in raid and then go afk. Wait, our ae root is actually useful once in a while (redfang).

I think that is a tad harsh. It depends on who you hang out with. There are druids who are picked over clerics to heal difficult content due to skill on the part of the Druid. Sweeping generalizations of 'poor us' don't work so well.

If we want certain things addressed (Curing, Cold Attack Debuffs, etc) we need to be able to back up what we claim with a viewpoint other then one which is subjective to the mindset of other players.

I agree with most of what Al said.

But, I wouldn't say I nesecarly 'feel pain.' I don't feel nesecarly overpowered on any raids (pre-tss), but thats a mix between easy content and my abilitiy to overcome with my large mana pool. But that still doesn't change the fact I bring <200 dps to a non-trivial raid (1/3 of a chanter?) and am of little use if I happen to die.

I also a high end shaman as well, a friend of mine quit and I box him with my warrior (alone or in groups.) This is where I learned that shamans can bring more dps to a group than a "dps druid" while healing just as well as a "healing druid" and doing all this while cosiderably out medding "any druid" - and it simply did not make sense.

ie Shaman + Kamea (my gimp warrior) can kill 2 mobs (at the same time) in Sverag before a druid (or cleric) with a high end warrior can kill 1, and the shaman will be over 80m when the fight is over. The key thing is how much dps they can bring by casting a short buff before engage and how little time they need to cast during a fight to keep those abilities up, or to do considerable explicit damage via dots/SotQ.

I think the key thing "outsiders" look at when they look at druids and shamans, is that druids are good at the 'thankful' jobs, and more apparent jobs - on the other hand, shaman abilities are more discrete (yet more powerful.) On burn fights (ie tunat 1.0), they can see the druid high up in the parser. On any non-trivial fight, they can see the direct heals as they land. They can see when a huge heal lands when they're low. What they can't see is how much dps shaman is doing implicictly or through dots, and they don't get a real feeling of how powerful their HoTs are because it doesn't make their hp jump up immediantly. Most people are rather ignorant to curing as well.

In the end, I basically feel that as a druid, we need to work twice as hard to be equal to a shaman - while it usually works out in the end, it still makes zero sense.

I think that is a tad harsh. It depends on who you hang out with. There are druids who are picked over clerics to heal difficult content due to skill on the part of the Druid. Sweeping generalizations of 'poor us' don't work so well.

If we want certain things addressed (Curing, Cold Attack Debuffs, etc) we need to be able to back up what we claim with a viewpoint other then one which is subjective to the mindset of other players.

/agree

I NEVER log on and have nothing to do. Any druid that logs off because they can't find a group should have rolled a cleric.

Not to say that druids don't need a lot of work but I was farily desired in TSS content wehile lvling in direwind. The ability to hold down okay DPS and keep the group healed made lvls go by fast.

Hmm one thing i noticed on this boards is .. if someone proposes we should have an ability we dont have and
1-the ability if already of some other class (slow, mez, lull) someone immediatly posts we shouldnt have the idea to share any ability from other classes
2-the ability is new .. answer is we will never get it, good one but not likely, as it requires some coding from SOE.

I see both things as self-defeating. It is like saying .. well we should not look for any new ability while ours have been farmed out or nerfed for years ... I wonder if the approach is the same on shammie boards.. but for as many of our abilities they got they dont seem to fight among themselves that they should not receive druid abilities for any reason ...true?

An example of 2 was my idea that druids should be masters of terrain buffing .. able to change terrain characteristics to setup a favorable tactical situation for solo/the group/raiding. I proposed in OOW times, and the answer in these forums was good idea but not likely to be implemented. It came out for POR as traps/auras, many classes got traps except us (and we were supposed to get a sucky trap!). Was so angry i didnt play and canceled account for 2 months. (ok traps are bugged and suck .. but they have been given to a lot of classes that dont really need them!)

in the future when a good idea comes out we must agree among ourselves to support it, then lobby like mad flooding soe forums with a lively discussion, like most classes seem do (nerf reptile lol! =( .. wizzies did a good lobbying job lately and they have been compensated.

There are still so many druid haters around ... and even more people fear of having to share something with druids.. in each of our requests we start at a disadvantage. And as our raid usefulness is getting lower, we could simply disappear as class without many noticing .. well at least in TSS the raid will need to be TL'd .. and now we can do that!

Dpswise we suck more and more .. had to cast 25 DOTS to full duration to kill a mammoth in icefall =( What counts in dps is NOT the absolute number of damage we can do but Damage/mob hp .. mob hp seems to have almost doubled in TSS, thus halving our dps usefulness. Am i right?

/agree

I NEVER log on and have nothing to do. Any druid that logs off because they can't find a group should have rolled a cleric.

Oh, so you enjoy farming green for hours and praticing trade skills.

That's good, but then, a lot of us don't do trade skills. Are you suggesting doing random quest or praticing random skill is a solution to the class balancing? If a druid is not desired in group then it is a problem, not that I am too lazy to find some other things to do. These kind of "reroll another class" augment is getting old, we want the class fixed, not to spend countless hours to reinvest into another char, thank you.

Oh, so you enjoy farming green for hours and praticing trade skills.

Nearly all content in Both Icefall and Direwind is soloable as a Druid.

All 70+ Druid should be able to heal any of those camps.

TSS opened up a lot of places for "safe" exp for the level range of 70+ as far as soloing goes. The fact the mobs hit only margianally harder then RS mobs is another plus allowing for a great many group setups.

-Fenier

Many Druids are unhappy with the abilities of the class because they have been taught that the three priest classes are interchangable. We are not the healers that Clerics are, but supposedly our DPS makes up for it. Then we compare Druids to Shaman, who have slows, and everyone can see that when the mob hits the tank less, you don't have to heal as much, so we are feeling like we got the shaft again, because not only is the Shaman decreasing damage on the tank, but they can get their mana back faster than us. The added feeling that Shaman can out DPS us with their pet and Dots also makes Druids underpowered. Then compared to Wizards and Mages, we really aren't putting up great DPS numbers there anyway.

I got a buddy, he has a 46 druid, his main is a 70+ warrior, his second main is an 70+ Enchanter. He has been playing EQ since "Fippy was a Pup". His wife has a 70+ Shaman, a 70+ Cleric, and a 65 Druid. She is a healer in all three roles, and I am convinced that she does not play her Druid because she finds it easier to be a healer as a shammy or cleric. Rotting and kiting are alien to her, and she always has a group with her husband, so she never solos. I was talking to them recently and discovered that they did not know that Druids had a stun line of spells. I did know, but I had forgotten, because stunning was not anything that anyone desired from the Druid in the party. They wanted heals and nukes and snares and maybe a root and a regen and make sure you evac us and keep a DS on the tank if there is no mage in the group. (Got all that? Good.)

The problem with Druids is that we want to be on a par with Clerics or Shaman in healing and mana regen, and still have Ports and Evacs, Snares, Stuns (Wind Spells), AE (Earth spells), Targetable AE (Lightning spells), big nukes (Fire spells), Damage Shields and Debuffs, HP, Resist and Utility Buffs, big Fire Nukes, Dots, Regens, Damage mitigation. Or maybe we don't want all that utility: Ask any Druid and get a different answer.

The real problem with Druids is that because we have all of the abilities I mentioned, we all make our Druid what we want it to be, and ignore the things that we don't use, (like Stuns or Anti Summon Nukes) and then want to know why we don't have better (insert desired ability here). And because we all don't think that all of our abilities should be advanced as EQ grows (just the ones that we individually use), some of our abilities have been allowed to atrophy due to lack of interest.

In my opinion, being a healer is harder than being DPS class and harder than being a tank. Being a Druid is harder than being a Shaman or being a Cleric. Druids are underpowered because we have so much utility. We can fit any role in a group except tank, do it all, but not as well as our counterparts.

When you made your Druid, you knew you were giving up being really good at one thing to be a Jack of All Trades. We sacrificed power for flexiblity. Now we are complaining that we don't have power. And because over the years we didn't use all of the trades, we have shorted ourselves as EQ has grown and changed.

I am young in EQ, I don't have the cynicism of 6 years playing and getting 'screwed over by SOE" so maybe I am a little idealistic. I hope that we can find more in the class besides complaints that we aren't the equal of the other priests. There is so much more that we can do, but we don't promote ourselves well.

Oh, BTW, I have my brother's 69 Cleric that he gave up on a second account. I asked one of my friends and officers in the guild if I should switch over. They think that they are better off with me playing the Druid. Slacker Half Elf Druid that I am. :)

.. snip.. Oh, BTW, I have my brother's 69 Cleric that he gave up on a second account. I asked one of my friends and officers in the guild if I should switch over. They think that they are better off with me playing the Druid. Slacker Half Elf Druid that I am. :)

depends on the level of your druid .. until 50 we are the most fun class that EVER walked norrath .. at 60 it gets hairy .. at 70 in OOW you feel powerless until you have 500 aa's at least.. at 73 i am becoming a porting tank that debuffs and sometimes nukes ehehheh LOL =) at least this is my experience .. for sure i hold aggro well =)

Wellll..... was thinking about dps issues some are complaining about, and was wondering how off the wall of an idea of getting an ability that uses endurance instead of mana (like melee discs) that will give us an insanely ginormous nuke (like 30k damage) that is reusable like once every 1-2 hours or something. Can work w/ scaling some #'s up or down to make it more sustainable dps if that's what folks would rather have; ie has a countdown timer like melee discs... you have ## mins to to go nuts w/ nuking and not have to worry about running oom.

Would be cool to have that as a druid only ability, but who am I kidding...

Anyway, yeah just an idea....i'll have to brainstorm some more about using endurance for healing!

I know good people that play druids that have been known to sit around LFG for a couple hours and then log off because they couldn't get a group and it happens often enough. They aren't lying about it.

The fact that a indivdiual readily has things to do because of their playstyle or friends list doesn't speak to the general state of the class which is what this thread is trying to get to and address. Pretty audacious to imply that these people are doing something wrong and to roll a cleric instead.

I've played a druid close to 7 years now, it was my first character in EQ. When I started the game I knew very little about MMORPG and even less about about EQ. I started because a friend told me about this game he is playing where there is a chessboard and pieces come alive and it's all so cool. The druid was created because my Human Ranger (thought Army ranger - how clueless I was about the genre) couldn't get out of Surefall Glade due to the dark tunnels. Friend told me his druid can see in the dark and so was born my human druid that still couldn't see in the dark. After several deletions/recreations - was able to follow someone out luckily using the glow of their lightsource as a beacon.

That was Nduma, a female human druid (default was female and forgot to click male but, wasn't about to go back and recreate). Human druid with first 20 starting point spread out over things like str, wis, sta and even int. Having some 50-60 mana less

Still being a complete newbie and inferior stats to other druids, I loved being a druid, made some friends online and primarily grouped with them but, also don't recall really having trouble when I was LFG in zones finding groups. Levelled in places like the Blackburrow, Karanas, Split Paw, Rathe Mtns, did both soloing via root/dot or kiting and groups. When I entered Kunark, I was even able to get groups there, playing healer, was never as effecient as a cleric but, did okay and sometimes just nuker.

Starting in Velious though it started becoming harder to get groups, not really sure why. Maybe because I wasn't in a raiding guild or in any guild for a period of time. Things have progressively got harder for druids and the solo game just isn't for everybody. Which is why I created a monk, a melee class that was somewhat desired back then and fun to play as a diversion. Eventually that monk got split off onto a second account and has become my main. Still though I play my druid (and love the class) and makes for an excellent partner for my monk.

Several months back had a very surprising and disturbing conversation with an overal good guy/guildmate - he basically flatout said druids suck for harder content and in fast paced groups pretty much every other class is better for DPS. Not that I agree with him but, it just showed me if this guy has such a perception, that wouldn't even take a guild druid unless was last choice then how many people out there when they are building groups look at druids as a last resort.

Druids are a solid class in terms of overall utility but, because there is no situation where any of our skills would make us really a better choice, atleast in group situations, it makes for lots of nights where people end up groupless simply because they are a druid.

To make druids really desirable though there is going to have to be some sort of compromise. Someone said it earlier - problem is DPS vs Healing druids - because of the versatility of the class, most druids love one aspect. If you boost one aspect to make them desirable then the other side is going to be upset. Boost both aspects and other classes are going to get in a huff.

Maybe one thing to do is to make more druid like abilities that would up our DPS or healing when facing nature type content. Being able to land bigger nukes versus plant/animal types innately or make our being in tune with nature mean something more, in snow based zones, our fire nukes would be more deadly, in arrid zones our cold based rains and cold nukes are better than the base, in lush green areas our healing capability is enhanced.

So depending on where the group is forming up - could have some real benefits for choosing a druid to fill either a DPS or healing role. We wouldn't necessarily be better than any of the other classes but, we'd compare in that situation.

Yeah rather crazy ideas but, honestly I don't think SOE is going to outright boost us all of the time in DPS or Healing because of the ability to do all trades fairly well that whatever we do get needs to be situational.

i just think the game is becoming too simplified at high level to require more versatile classes.

Put encoounters with one big mobs and lotsa hard hitting adds that must be AOE nuked (and go down with 1 nuke)..

put charming adds that can be counteracted with the stun nuke ..

put camps/mission designed so that charm/root/snare is a must..

put camps that become easier with all of the above .. and u have invites for druids.

-add an overcap AGI and avoidance component to oak .. so that it nicely stacks with symbol, cleric ac buff, wunshi without requiring sense and wrulan, so sparing 1 buff slot.

list is LONG still.... *snip*

yet i think TSS is doing a lot for us. Zones feel like old EQ, few mobs summon so i had a HUGE amount of fun pulling direwind current camp for my group, mostly singles, adds rooted (DOD root). Many times i felt like old times were back for us. New spells plain suck, yet i am having fun.

Put encoounters with one big mobs and lotsa hard hitting adds that must be AOE nuked (and go down with 1 nuke)..

A Few DoD Raids I can think of qualify. They die in one or two nukes at most.

put camps/mission designed so that charm/root/snare is a must..

I can think of a few missions / quests where you need to charm something to win.

Shaman get AGI Buffs and Avoidance buffs, we have never had access to either. More in flavor would be adding a spell shielding effect to seasons which only works on Cold / Fire effects.

I wonder if we would be having this discussion if we had the dps / healing mode thing they “where” going to put in. To bad we as a whole couldn’t support such an idea.

The numbers on our new spells kinda makes me wonder if we being pre-balanced with a view to stances... dunno, maybe I should just dig the foil hat out now 8/.

how did I know this was going to turn into a stances thread?

I know good people that play druids that have been known to sit around LFG for a couple hours and then log off because they couldn't get a group and it happens often enough. They aren't lying about it.

The fact that a indivdiual readily has things to do because of their playstyle or friends list doesn't speak to the general state of the class which is what this thread is trying to get to and address. Pretty audacious to imply that these people are doing something wrong and to roll a cleric instead.

I think you're missing the point. Any druid that sits around looking for a group because they think they need one should have been a cleric.

And I have no idea what elty is talking about... greenies? Dude, if that's the only thing you can kill you need to find yourself a new hobby, cause EQ just ain't panning out for you.

I'm done following this thread. It's been commandeered by clerics and stance debaters.

Shaman get AGI Buffs and Avoidance buffs, we have never had access to either.

So? why not? they also had never acces to a lot of things and they got it. Why not us?
I think oak need something added to make it more desiderable.
the ONLY reason why any1 could prefer oak to conv/wunshi/sense/wrulan was manaregen, which is minor now.
I think symbol/oak/wunshi must be made a BETTER combination (less buff slots than the above, but 3 buffs from 3 different classes)

So? why not? they also had never acces to a lot of things and they got it. Why not us?
Because if you want to *be* a shaman, then make one.

Their AGI / Avoidance lines go back to their lowest levels.

Aside from Strength, Stat buffing is simply not something we do.

Aside from that, typically you have better luck getting extensions of current lines, then entire new ones.

Hence AS and Moonshadow as Direct Heals, and not HoTs (since they are out of flavor for us, and we have no AAs to support them.).

Oak/ Symbol/Focus has always been more HP then the equivlant Aego Spell.

-Fenier

Because if you want to *be* a shaman, then make one.

again .. oh man.. this is so old. So why shamans get all the druid stuff they got then? they wanted to be druid? LOL


Their AGI / Avoidance lines go back to their lowest levels.

Aside from Strength, Stat buffing is simply not something we do.


*EDITED*

why?
why?
why cant we think we COULD do that if it would work for us???

then dont use skin of reptile, its not something we did before DOD
dont use mammoth we never did that either
dont use skin to vines
nor our AOE rune/snare ... we never runed
nor group heals .. druids dont groupheal




Aside from that, typically you have better luck getting extensions of current lines, then entire new ones.

Hence AS and Moonshadow as Direct Heals, and not HoTs (since they are out of flavor for us, and we have no AAs to support them.).

Oak/ Symbol/Focus has always been more HP then the equivlant Aego Spell.



long term dru buffs:
wolf form is dead dead dead
strenght line is dead dead dead. (no overcap)
regen is dead dead dead
ds is dead dead dead
oak is dying
soe is clicked off often
mammoth is alive

of our buff lines, only mammoth is likely to be never clicked off. a LOT of people prefer conv+wunshi. In alternative to the above, wunshi should NOT stack with conviction and following spell which i dont remember name.

Again, cleric buff+druid buff+sham buff should be more than a combination of buffs of 2 classes.

long term dru buffs:
wolf form is dead dead dead
strenght line is dead dead dead. (no overcap)
regen is dead dead dead
ds is dead dead dead
oak is dying
soe is clicked off often
mammoth is alive

Lion and Mammoth are an extenison of the Strength line imo. They don't add strength, but they do stack with our Strengh Buffs, and provide a damage boost.

Regen is pointless now for the most part due to Buff Slot limits and OoC regen.

Wolf Form is currently still outdoors only with the exception of Feral Pack. That said there was a new wolf form in Beta, but it didn't make the cut. Same with Shaman Bear Form.

Our Damage Shields are still second best in the game.

Oak is still very viable

I myself click off Eagle if I am staying in one place for a long period of time, I dislike the bobbing effects of lev.

a LOT of people prefer conv+wunshi. In alternative to the above, wunshi should NOT stack with conviction and following spell which i dont remember name.

Typically Warriors favor Aego Line, due to Buff Slot Limits. Most (nearly all) casters I have ever met perfer Oak when available. Focus Stacks with Aego, And Skin/Symbol - but not with clerical Armor.

Again, cleric buff+druid buff+sham buff should be more than a combination of buffs of 2 classes.

Skin + Symbol + Focus + AC Buff > Aego + Focus in all ways except duration. You get More AC, and More Hitpoints at the cost of 2 Buff Slots.

hmm edited the above =) dont reply so fast Fenier plz im a slow thinker =)

then dont use skin of reptile, its not something we did before DOD
dont use mammoth we never did that either
dont use skin to vines
nor our AOE rune/snare ... we never runed
nor group heals .. druids dont groupheal

Reptile: Is basically a buff which procs Direct Heals. We'd end up casting said direct heals anyway, so its not outside of the realm of our spell lines

Lion's / Mammoth: An Extension of the Strengh Series, so yes, we've had that.

Skin to Vines and Feralize are new spells for their classes based on the new code ability to change bodytypes on the fly. Skin to Vines was then adjusted to increase fire and slashing damage, which works off Our Epic Effect, Sunder Debuffs and AC Debuffs as a logical extension, while limiting it to slashing to keep with the plant nature. Feralize, likewise, was kept to a blunt nature.

Hungry Vines is a combonation of several lines for us. It combines our snares (since level 1) in a short duration AE verison (think Bonds of Tunare with resist check) with our Damage Shields (since low level) and a new ability of Damage Mitiagation which we gained in the same expansion in the form of Oaken Guard.

The only new thing for us in the entire spell, was the vie portion, but it was added to our class as a short duration method of increasing suvival, and is now seen in Oaken Guard, Direwood Guard, Ranks 1-3 Hungry Vines, and Adren Surge Ranks 1-3. Shaman also gained Mitigation tools in the form of their Melee Mitigation AA line and a self mitigation effect on Vindicative Spirit.

Moonshadow - again, is the logical extenison of someone who uses direct healing to heal multiple targets at once. We have AA to support direct healing, which is why it is perfered over a HoT verison.

Keep in mind none of those effects, aside from the Vie portion is actually new to the class. While they may allow us to do some things we did not do before, they are all within our current spell lines to some degree and just upgrades/enchancements.

This is differant then say, Shaman getting Panther, or Clerics their DoN Defensive Proc, which where new lines entirely to both classes.

If you want to raise some sort of stat might I suggest buffs that raise the caps of Shielding, Spellshield, DoTShield, Avoidance, etc.

No other class has access to buffs that raise those stats and the Druid class could get out ahead of the pack by getting their foot in the door first. The impact of a buff like this would be most noticable in the endgame which just happens to be where the Druid needs some added roles.

I also suggested a caster based champion type of spell to help increase Druid usefulness on raids and add some flavor to the output of caster DPS.

how did I know this was going to turn into a stances thread?


Because hindsight is 20/20?

i want Nature Mirror .. lol the ability to summon for a short time a mirror copy of myself casting the same spells on the same target=)

BS prolly (although it would be nice imo) .. but i think more inventive and creativity could be put in our abilities.

Again, if clerics and shamans get entirely new things .. we could get something new too. Being bold and request big, important things instead of just class tweaking makes u have things. You know a good way of obtaining what u want (widely used in marketing) is first to propose/request something impossible, then tune it down to what you actually want as a second accomodating proposal. It has been demonstrated that this tactic works.

Think big, you will get something (see wizzies). Ask for minor tweaking and you will get nothing.

They did get new lines, but the differance was those lines did not overlap with exisiting lines from other classes.

You are more apt to get a new line which does not cause overlap, or an extentison of a current line, then a copy of an exisiting line from another class. AS and Moonshadow are extensions of our direct heals, and not new lines in and of themselves.

-Fenier

I'm reading a lot of "I think this is a good idea, we should get this..."

And no "Get out of town, that would make you overwpowered" (compared to Fenier's "Here's a reason that's not necessarily consistent with the class")

Does that mean we're in agreement that there's a problem with the class, or is that still up for debate?

If I had to list 7 issues I had, it would be these, they mostly deal with debuffs, and cast time of spells, which I feel our two of our biggest concerns.

I also do not feel Rangers should cure as well as we do, the precendant for Both Shaman and Cleric and their respective Hybrids is the Priest can outcure the Hybirds and that is no longer the case with us.

I am honestly pretty content with our healing atm, our dps issues imo are more based around the sheer amount of time we spend casting, then the actual damage amounts on the spells themselves. Even with QD3 and a Detrimental Haste Focus, Winter's Flame - as an example, is still 8 times the cast time of Sting of the Queen - a class we have *always* outpaced in burst damage.

So anyway, my list:
Upgrade our Sundar Line
Bring back our Disjunction line addressing the issue of no innate resist mod that we saw in Luclin
Addition of a lesser powered cold based attack reduction line which uses our current -200 Cold debuffs as an applicator for the cold verison of our Corana spell.
Bring curing of Disease and Posion back to a logical position. Rangers (a hybrid based on us) now have a more powerful single cure then we do, and it makes no logical sense to have that be the case.
Adjust Winter's Flame to a slightly lower cast time, and make the Fire Portion proc a debuff cold effect similar to our level 48 'Fire' spell to ensure the landing of the Frostbite portion of the spell. Currently having to debuff both lines to ensure decent damaeg from the spell makes it time intensive, and non-viable on exp groups when fighting mobs with moderate / high resists along both checks.
Development as the 'caster focused' verison of the Shaman 'melee focused' buffs. Mana Flare (the equivlent to Panther) is a Chanter Spell, but it could be possiable to extend this beyond our Skin-line by tying effects into debuffs (such as Skin to Vines and Icefall Breath) or giving us group buffs which only amplify Cold / Fire attacks without negating the need for Bard Song (they should stack).
A low Cast time high powered nuke would not be out of the question since historically shaman have *never* been able to get a higher max damage value on a single attack then we have, and it makes no sense to me to not only obtain that, but to do so with a half second cast time, a variance of over 5.5 seconds to the "equivlant" druid spell.

I always love reading Fenier's posts. Even if you disagree with him, you've got to admit, he always has his $#*! together.

On Rangers curing, I'm with Tenielle - I don't mind that they can cure at all. I also agree with Fen, though, it shouldn't be better than druid curing. Boost druid curing to exceed what a ranger can accomplish.

On debuffing - I see no reason why any potential coldbased atk debuff should be weaker than a fire based one. Have then debuff the same amount, and not stack.

On Sting of the Queen... awesome spell, totally inappropriate for the shaman class, but that's another story. Sure, it has a long recast time, but 2 casts of SotQ take about the same time as 2 druid nukes for ~ the same damage, with nice downtime in between for canni. Someone's having a good laugh about this one somewhere.



Dont' forget the druid/shaman HoT AA line issue from your list :)

Dont' forget the druid/shaman HoT AA line issue from your list :)

Given the choice between any of the 7 points I listed, and this, I'll take the seven points I listed.

The only thing I really dislike about current druids is our ability to port. Get rid of our GGing ability and things would be sweet.

i post it here too .. excellent post at soe forums Kamion and Fenier.. thats exactly the "big picture" high impact posts i was talking about. I fully underwrite it. I also totally agree with the 7-points list of Fenier.

If your a non raiding Druid , then your reduced to being a farming BoT.No one, and I mean no one has a use for Non Raiders.

There are just 3 types of Druids left in EQ now.Those in a raiding guild.Druid alts ( cringe )Finally , the very few who still hang on and try and survive on there own.

The sad part is , It's the guilded , raiding Druids who are content and scorn talks of change.It's always been that way.

I love my Druid , passionately.However , given my timezone population and the fact that soo many class's are now more preferable, who needs a Druid ?

So is there any news on the druid imbalance issue from SOE? I am still refusing to spend AA on convergence because we are paying twice compare to the shaman equivalent.

Convergence of Spirits is too useful not to get, whether we spend more AA than Shaman to get it or not. Maxed, it is a 3k instant heal, 1500 HP HoT, 85 DS and +84 AC. The instant heal and HoT alone is invaluable. It has saved people many times and I don't regret getting this AA.

I'm not going to argue whether or not it was justified for us to spend as much AA as we do to get CoS. Because, honestly, there's no point. If people are going to argue that point it should be with SOE-- but we know how useful that is.

Should SOE ever find it appropriate to refund any AA's that count towards getting CoS, then I will some day have some extra AA's coming my way. 'Til then, I am saving that many more people and being that much more efficient of a healer.

I dont see dev's lowering the cast times of our nukes. They seem to be content with the 6.3 second base time. I think the druid class really needs to push for more quick damage AA's.

More quick dmg while nice is probably not the best solution since we're only 7% away from the cap anyways when clr spell haste is available.

More quick dmg while nice is probably not the best solution since we're only 7% away from the cap anyways when clr spell haste is available.

Actually, lowering the casting time of our direct damage spells (and not just the new ones but across the board) by 3.5 seconds or so while at the same time increasing the recast time by the same amount would increase the -utility- of druids in groups by quite a bit while not having any effect on our cycle time.
It would allow druids to chain more nukes, at the expense of burning through mana real quickly and building immense amounts of hatred. (the exact cycle time can be somewhat affected by changing the time the spell gems stay grayed out)
More importantly though, it allows druids to toss in a quick nuke here and there when mana permits. Unlike now when the long casting time pretty much prevents that in situations where they are required to heal.


Eri

In agreement with Eri. Right now Druids that want to throw nukes in between heals (Group healers in Raid and Backup healers in Groups especially) do so at the expense of being available to patch heal, unless they are ready to interrupt the nuke. Even with spell haste, the cast time and refresh time of our staple nukes is damn close to a tick. The way mobs hit nowadays, six seconds is long enough to kill a caster/healer with not-so-uber defensive skills.

You misunderstood I think Eri... by quick dmg I'm pretty sure Bil (and in reply to him, me too) was referring to quick damage the aa, not quick damage the general concept heh. I'm all for faster nukes, I was just saying if we get it thru aa there won't be much bang b/c spell haste is capped at 50% and the current best you can achieve is not far from that already (43%).

The idea you mentioned is basically how hybrid nukes are. Offhand I don't think something like that would be anything we'll ever see b/c it's easy to work around. ie: hybrids mem several nukes and just run down the list using a lesser nuke while their choice one is refreshing. For us casting dots or other offensive spells between nukes while they're refreshing would probably make for a dps boost that the devs probably wouldn't want us to have (the reason of the recast in the first place).

Shamans probably have the best concurrent dmg model atm. Buffs with considerable maintenance but not constant maintenance (bard for example requires more constant maintenance, enchanters too atm) that do small but noticable proxy dmg, and sting (off hand I think this is like -3 or 4 seconds of their usual nuke cast time and +10sec to the normal recast).

"The problem with Druids is that we want to be on a par with Clerics or Shaman in healing and mana regen, and still have Ports and Evacs, Snares, Stuns (Wind Spells), AE (Earth spells), Targetable AE (Lightning spells), big nukes (Fire spells), Damage Shields and Debuffs, HP, Resist and Utility Buffs, big Fire Nukes, Dots, Regens, Damage mitigation. Or maybe we don't want all that utility: Ask any Druid and get a different answer."

I quoted that from someone who posted previously on this thread. I regularly bot a cleric as a second main to my druid. She has snare (DE neck item that casts snare), stuns, AE spells, a damn nice magic nuke with all of her AAs/focus item, DS with her marks (2 marks because both stack on the mobs, which turns out to be more of a DS than the druid can buff), etc. She also can do more dps with vow of valor and her cleric hammer than my druid can without using hardly any mana with yaulps and Promised Renewal. She can also tank better, with lesser gear, because she's a plate class.

But, I'm not going to post bitching about my cleric or comparing druids to clerics because I don't believe that's the intent to this thread.

When the regular group that I do exp with wants dps, I log off my druid and play my necro. My druid is raid-geared whereas my necro is single-group/Qvic geared but it's silly for me to play my druid thinking that I can use her to actually dps in a group.

My two biggest requests for druids which would, in my opinion, be "fair" to our class would be:
1) To get some sort of mana regen type AA or spell. We are behind clerics (yaulp), shaman (canni), enchanters (gather mana), wizards (harvest), mages (mod rods), necros (lich), hybrids (extra mana regen AAs - beasts get purity AA line too). It would be safe to say that, on raids and in exp groups, we're expected to keep up our "utility" - our heals and our nukes/dots/debuffs (the little dps that we can do), and still have as much mana as our counterparts.
2) To have convergence of spirits AA and spirit of the ancient grove AA placed on separate timers. It's defeating when they're on the same timer and shaman's have similar AAs that are on different timers.

Anyway, just my 2cp.
Pradera

The problem with Druids is that we want to be on a par with Clerics or Shaman in healing and mana regen, and still have Ports and Evacs, Snares, Stuns (Wind Spells), AE (Earth spells), Targetable AE (Lightning spells), big nukes (Fire spells), Damage Shields and Debuffs, HP, Resist and Utility Buffs, big Fire Nukes, Dots, Regens, Damage mitigation. Or maybe we don't want all that utility: Ask any Druid and get a different answer.
That's as amusing to me now as it was when I originally posted it.:cool:

/nod I was just too lazy to go back and see who posted it to list the poster. I don't think I understand your comment though to your own quote.

Pradera

There's tongue in cheek there, you quoted me, didn't you notice? :)

Ask a dozen average Druids what tools they need to make their life better and get a dozen different answers. Follow the threads: When we discuss Druid tools, we end up in eight different directions.

"Tastes great!" "Less Filling!" It's the same argument, the threads and names just change.

The biggest problem with the Druid Community is that the community will never agree with a direction for the class. Personally, I think that direction is: "If they give it to me, I will find a way to use it, and try not complain about how I got screwed over in the last X expansions."

But since that's not going to happen, so I will just sit here, amusing myself. Good thing I am easily amused. :)

You do have a good point about putting SoAG and CoS on seperate timers. My thoughts lean toward seperating much of the on demand AA upgrades, like Radiant and Respendant Cure, etc. If our healing and curing AA's were on seperate timers, we'd have a lot less to complain about.

Not that we'd stop complaining... we are Druids you know.

The thing that I don't get, is Shaman can be better at slows than anyone, good at DPS, and 2nd best healer, and noone complains. When a druid wants to get more group desireability by balancing us better, we get flamed and laughed off the boards.

I used to think Shaman were better Healers than Druids, until a Shaman and a Cleric set me straight. Slow and HoT's make Shaman more desirable than a Druid in a group, but not better Healers.

When a Shaman insists they can heal, it costs that group 1800pp to summon corpses. A nice fine for suckers.

:iamwithst

They are a distant third in healing and a burden on the raid when they decide to cani before a major AE DD or DoT. Shamen should stick to slowing and buffing and stop insisting they are great healers. THEY ARE NOT.

A good shaman can absolutely heal just fine, just as a good druid can.

Pure Life (DRU/72) heals 3176 for 742 mana.
Ahnkaul's Mending (SHM/73) heals 2788 for 742 mana.

Both spells have a 3.75 sec cast time and 2.25 sec recast time. Shamans make up the difference with heal over time spells which, while mana intensive, are made up for by the occasional use of canni AAs. The shaman epic--particularly 2.0--helps significantly as well: a free 500 hp/tick group heal for 10 (or 15?) ticks out of every 30 is very nice to have, on top of its other benefits.

I set up groups for most of our raids. I almost always put shamans as sole healers for melee groups, and druids as sole healers for caster groups. The clerics are then distributed among groups with tanks and/or (when appropriate) enchanters. While there are a few event-specific exceptions, this setup generally works well for us.

If your shamans are using canni right before a major AE, then they need to learn to stop doing that. :P

When a Shaman insists they can heal, it costs that group 1800pp to summon corpses. A nice fine for suckers.

:iamwithst

They are a distant third in healing and a burden on the raid when they decide to cani before a major AE DD or DoT. Shamen should stick to slowing and buffing and stop insisting they are great healers. THEY ARE NOT.

Uhm..

Shamen do not claim they are great healers.
Neither do many druids.

According to many raid leaders they heal approximately equally well, all things considered.

Druids have the advantage of having bigger heals than Shamen, making them better able to handle damage spikes (though the cast time kind of negates that).
Shamen have more group and heal over time abilities which gives them an advantage in longevity of their mana pool (depending on the fight though! A shaman who has to heal one target only will have more difficulties than a druid will unless the damage is low enough that there is time to cast a canni regularly).

That said, raid leaders typically use clerics for healing. If they can not find clerics druids get stuck in the role because of the bigger heals that work better on rotations, but typically more druids are needed to replace the clerics which cuts into the number of DPS that can be brought along.
Shamen are used to counter AoE damage primarily and have a role to slow plus debuff the monsters and to boost melee DPS.
If there is no shortage of Clerics then Shamen are still useful, but Druids are left in the plane of knowledge except for one or two who have the job to debuff the boss.


Eri

Closet Shamen


A good shaman can absolutely heal just fine, just as a good druid can.



A good shaman can absolutely heal SLOWLY just fine, just as a good druid can HEAL SLOWLY.

Shamen do not claim they are great healers.

The ones I know do.


Neither do many druids.


All the Druids I know do.

The rest of your post is stating the obv...

Take a Shamen to Ashengate to heal and the next group-wide question is "East side or West side?" Followed by "Can someone log on a pocket Cleric?"

Are you seriously claiming that a well-played shaman is insufficient for healing in (static) Ashengate, in its current state?

Are you seriously claiming that a well-played shaman is insufficient for healing in (static) Ashengate, in its current state?


A Necro can solo RS too. Are they going to get great exp? No. Is killing stuff at the zone in a well-played game? I guess that's opinion. What is not opinion is that a group with a Druid is going to kill many more mobs per hour than a group with a lone shammy healing. So I guess if the group is static and hard up for healing, you would be welcome as a Shammy.

OOPs almost didn't answer your question. YES

A Necro can solo RS too. Are they going to get great exp? No. Is killing stuff at the zone in a well-played game? I guess that's opinion. What is not opinion is that a group with a Druid is going to kill many more mobs per hour than a group with a lone shammy healing. So I guess if the group is static and hard up for healing, you would be welcome as a Shammy.

OOPs almost didn't answer your question. YES

Obviously you don't get out enough. Make the same comment on the Shaman forums and watch the reply you get.

I got a suspicion this is where the Shaman post. Their boards are in shambles.

What is not opinion is that a group with a Druid is going to kill many more mobs per hour than a group with a lone shammy healing.
Sorry, that's flat out incorrect. The difference in kill rate is negligible, assuming similar skill/AAs/gear. Either can do the job just fine.

Tell me, where is the supposed difference in healing ability between druids and shamans? Again I point to how similar our bread-and-butter spot heals are:

Pure Life (DRU/72): 3176 hp for 742 mana
Ahnkaul's Mending (SHM/73): 2788 hp for 742 mana.

My druid is my main character. I've played my druid for 6 1/2 years. I just happen to be guilded with some great shamans that have shown what their class is also capable of.
http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/character_profile.vm?characterId=597000458726

Reading this thread I knew there were some GD Shamen posing as Druids. POSERS! Long time listener, first time caller. Free your mind: UberD has some food for thought.

Palarran…not trying to stir up crap with you, but you neglect our differences in complete heal efficiency and out FASTER heals. A 4-second cast is not a spot heal. My issue is I see this thread as one big whine comparing ourselves to Shamen. /shiver.

Do I hate Shamen? Most of them. I have not met them all. Particularly disgusting are Vahlshir and Barbs that have matching armor and speak in sexual innuendo. All they give a damn about is the FASHION SHOW and growing their FRIENDS LIST. I didn’t know the friend’s list had a cap til a shammy told me. They could care less if the group lives or dies. When one of these joins your group you might as well grab your ankles because it’s shammy love time! Because of their extreme social nature, they are good at cybering. That’s about it. When I’m horny, nothing is worth my $14 bucks a month than the above stereotypical shammy. WHEW. Ikky Shamen are the only ones I can usually stomach, as long as they don’t wanna compare “electronic pink steel” on the subject of healing.

Any Druid playing a Shaman as an alt is an unadventurous dolt. Playing a Druid and a wanna be Druid with a slow ftw! Go make a DPS Alt and contribute that way. Just do something different vice kinda different. If you feel you want to continue to strut yourself about as an uber killer, delete your toon at level 60 every time and start a baby and quad kiting again. WOOT.

Here’s my thoughts on the “Druid Community.” We are healers and debuffers! Reptile and HoR define us! MAKE THEM BIGGER!! We have a fast heal that shammies don’t. Strip away all the DPS crap and make our CH crit. If they are going to boost our nukes, we should also get a rez. Anytime we are nuking for “DPS” (if you can call it that), the group is gonna ask “East side or West?” Might as well make us not have to log on a pocket CLR.

I can fix the Shammy community too. Give necros a slow and get rid of it. OH! OH! OH!; almost forgot to slam them uber HoTs. I never met a raid mob that slowed down it’s DPS to make the Shammy HoT effective. Til elimination, make me cheap pots and never quit “Trader Mode.”

My armor does not match and I’m a damn good healer.

Faster heals? You must be talking about Adrenaline Surge (with its fixed 1.8 sec cast time).

My response to that is that you need to pick up a decent spell haste item. The spot heal I primarily use is Ancient Chlorobon. It has a cast time of 2.3 sec (cleric buffed), 2.5 sec (self buffed), or 2.7 sec (unbuffed). When I need a burst of healing, I add other heals during the recast time of spells: Gathering of Spirits (AA), my clicky Chlorobon mask, and my clicky Nature's Infusion hammer. I also use Adrenaline Surge if mana permits, but that's primarily for the chance of a vie autocast; the benefit otherwise is pretty small.

Using Adrenaline Surge in place of one Ancient Chlorobon cast every 18 or so seconds has little to no impact on the amount that I heal, particularly since my focus effects degrade above levels 70 and 72.

In any case, shamans have similar tools: Union of Spirits (AA), a clicky Yoppa's Mending mask, and a clicky Tnarg's Mending spear.

Oh, and druid "complete" heal spells are irrelevant today. From my calculations (and based on my gear):

Ancient Chlorobon: 13.25 hp/mana, 1341 hp/sec
Tunare's Renewal: 12.46 hp/mana, 307 hp/sec
Karana's Renewal: 13.29 hp/mana, 491 hp/sec

Ancient Chlorobon is the obvious choice. There's simply no reason for me to use either Tunare's Renewal or Karana's Renewal today. People with weaker focus effects may gain some marginal situational benefit from those spells, but it won't be long before they're obsolete for everyone.

I will concede that I have met shamans that don't "like" to heal. That doesn't mean that they are incapable of it, though! Any good shaman will heal when necessary, and they'll do an adequate job of it, just as a druid would.

Oh, and druid "complete" heal spells are irrelevant today.

I little bit of a stretch, but I agree to the extent it's true. Druids should have a better set of healing spells. I also think we should have some on par with Clerics with the risk of higher aggro...but there if ya need to take the risk.

The penalty for a Druid taking agro is much higher that a Cleric or Shaman. We just don't take a beating as well, so our risk is already much worse in comparision.

Do you get aggro a lot? That's a problem if so. I'm talking significantly bigger heals, maybe even bigger than CLR heals. But at a huge price should we decide to cast them. Here's my logic.

Clerics have the best heals period. Slow heals, fast heals, and when GoM fires, nice AE HoTs. However, most of the clerics are using a staggered complete heal rotation that produces absolute minimum aggro. Where is the logic of having the best healers in game wearing the best armor (plate with enormous AC) if they never take aggro? I'm not suggesting changing a thing with Clerics. But I do think other priest classes should have some very powerful heal spells with added risk of aggro. Say, higher than snare aggro or dare I say slow aggro. High enough risk that if we pop a uber heal in the first 30 seconds of combat we go splat. High enough risk that we think long and hard before we cast one near the end of a fight. A spell that can be the difference of winning an encounter.

I got derailed. Shamen suck!

Oh - You mean a spell that no one would ever use?

A dead druid with UBER_HEALSPELL_05 aint doing jack **** now is he compared to the alive one with the slightly less amazing heal.

Oh - You mean a spell that no one would ever use?
Why? Becuase you are so selfish that you would not sacrifice yourself if it meant saving the raid?

A dead druid with UBER_HEALSPELL_05 aint doing jack **** now is he compared to the alive one with the slightly less amazing heal. First, there is nothing slightly amazing about our heals. What is important believe it or not Mr. IAlwaysLiveBecauseITakeNoRisks, is success of the raid. Right now we have no such raid-saving tools. Glad to see someone happy with mediocrity. Re-read what I had to say aside from the shammy bashing and say something somewhat intelligent.

Techinically, any spell can be raid saving if used in the right situation. It need not kill (or come close to) killing the caster in question.

Paladins have an AA which does as your suggesting. It's called Act of Valor, and it's an AA they never use.

Fenier,

I would not dare smart off to you out of immense respect. I'm not suggesting a single target spell or AA that guarantees my death if cast/activated. Pallies should be using their AA, but have lost sight of the pure nature of being a paladin. Whatever, they can be nerfbat warriors all they want. I'm looking to improve Druids.
I am suggesting two things:
a. We ARE healers in most raid situations and the same is true in most groups. Being healers in leather vice plate should carry some benifit. BETTER SPELLS imo.
b. Although a. is probably beyond the comprehension of SOE, why not give the healers in leather something with significant impact on raid success. Now that you have brought up AAs, maybe that is workable too. But in any case, I would accept an increased chance of getting summoned if I could pull off something GREAT. Simply living through an encounter is not great as sugested three posts ago. GREAT is GREAT.

The Leather armor is due to the increased direct damage over the other 2 priests, while this may not be true in all cases in todays game, I am pretty sure this was the orginal intent. This logic fits when you consider Mages and Wizards also wear weak armor in exchange for offensive power.

Granted in recent years we've shifted to a more defensive role within raids I am not exactly sure what spotlight role your looking for. What exactly would qualify as great to you?

What exactly would qualify as great to you?

I can't completely define greatness. But I will give it a shot. Take the Oscars. A Druid might get nominated as Best Supporting Actor, but a Druid is not getting Best Actor. At least not if the powerful healers and DPS are doing their jobs. In a group the only greatness I think we can acheive is a well-timmed evac. There is no greatness when evacing a raid. In fact, I would consider that complete failure. But not having to rez a group with a free do-over is awesome and well appreciated. Maybe not great.

Greatness in a raid might come in the form of an AE while killing Vish, a few adds get loose, and if not for an uber Druid AE heal, the chanters would be dead and the raid wiped. It might come in the form of a massive AE cure when a zone-wide poison dot lands on the raid. The possibilities are endless. I may come back to this after I give it some more thought. But wearing leather for the sake of minimal DPS in today's game is misguided.

I don't expect them to change our armor type ... ever. Alot of EQ is based on D&D and our offensive power pretty much ensures we are going to stay that way.

We are the only class to get
3 Resist Lines of Nukes (Shaman get 2, Cleric get 1 [Chromastrike is an exception]
2 Resist Lines of DoTs (which are far better then the shaman verions of nukes - Shaman get 3 Resist Lines, Clerics get 1)
PBAEs (Shared with Clerics)
Rains (Shaman with Shaman, but we get innate adjustments)

We get the entire package. Yea, it doesn't compete verus classes such as Wizards and Mages, But we by far have the most ways of directly dealing damage by spellcasting of the Priest classes. With that power comes the weaker armor tradeoff. I'd bet money on it.

What it seems like is your after a more spotlight role. We have a pretty wide number of supporting roles allowing us to adjust to the situation at hand, but nothing that screams hey look at me adjust from our debuff lines.

Enchancing caster support (even if only to Fire and Ice) seems like the best way to go about doing so, but even then it's not omg I just saved the raid. It's the common spells we have (Heals, Roots and so forth - Adren Surge is good for this) which would tend to make far more of a difference saving a raid for a wipe point then any new mechanic I could think of.

Actually I've always felt we do have a spot light role. We are the swiss army knife of EQ. We are the group saver. No other class is as well fitted to immediate situational changes as the druid. Granted in todays game during well a running tuned situation our effect may seem minimal but when something happens that the group is not prepared for the druid is the character that can shift the direction to accomodate the new situation.

We are the safety net.

We are the class that can add an additional burst of power in almost whatever aspect is suddenly found lacking. Even if not the MA we are the class that can step in and increase the heal power if a mob is doing more damage to the group then expected or immediately provide a burst in dps if needed. We can provide a measure or crowd control if suddenly needed.


Was this capability more obvious years ago? Probally, but I dont think its gone.

The question of raid effect ? I'm not quite so sure as Im not doing endgame stuff atm. Currently working our way to DPOB atm. So I must deffer to Fenier and the likes on that. Though I do beleive I have good grasp on the our tools atm and lets face it. This becomes one of the greatest problems of balancing in EQ. One does not want to overpower the end game content players however its dangerous to use the current end game as the benchmark because most arent raiding that content and probally wont. (though that percentage will probally continue to change drastically as EQ continues to age)

You guys are missing the point on class balancing vs game balancing.

Don't compare us to the uber DPS offered by mages. Their DPS sucks these days. They can still solo a lot of content and turn into social intraverts. Even that is limited and I'll hit that in a moment. I happen to raid with a guild that parses all major fights.

Back to greatness: Berzerkers consistently posting 2200+ DPS IS GREATNESS.

Mages have to fight to get mentioned ever, and on a good day might break 800. Druids and mages competing for the same offensive focus effects has been a long-time issue for me as well. All casters, minus necros, have a hard time breaking 1000 dps. OMFG! What? Yep, caster DPS is not keeping up with Melee DPS for the only reason that makes sense: Limit solo power as not to upset the classes dependent on healers. I'll still venture to say Necros are not coming very close to the 2k DPS benchmark that Zerkers and Rogues are surpassing witrh ease.

I never suggested we get armor made out of something other than bunny leather.

Please try and convince me that the best healers should wear plate and never take aggro by design. Good luck with that. I eagerly await something other than "That's the way is has always been in role-playing games throughout history."

I agree that damage enhancing debuffs/buffs could restore Druid greatness. Even what little we offer now is not understood and very temporary. A Bard can boost DPS very significantly all day long. We have DPS groups centered around this. EVERYONE WANTS to be in that bard's group.

So if second fiddle is cool and we are all happy with it, gaining only respect in our own minds for doing a good job as backup healers and pathetic nukers, we can dump this thread. This comunity has no real issues.

Something else hit me.


We are the only class to get
3 Resist Lines of Nukes (Shaman get 2, Cleric get 1 [Chromastrike is an exception]
2 Resist Lines of DoTs (which are far better then the shaman verions of nukes - Shaman get 3 Resist Lines, Clerics get 1)
PBAEs (Shared with Clerics)
Rains (Shaman with Shaman, but we get innate adjustments)



All the lack of focus is compounded into nerfing Druids when SOE finds it only fair that each class get 5 spells this expansion, three spells that expansion, and soforth. We have an enormous number of spell lines I agree,, but they are not maintained by those we pay hard earned cash to do so.

I'm talking significantly bigger heals, maybe even bigger than CLR heals. But at a huge price should we decide to cast them. Here's my logic.

But I do think other priest classes should have some very powerful heal spells with added risk of aggro. Say, higher than snare aggro or dare I say slow aggro. High enough risk that if we pop a uber heal in the first 30 seconds of combat we go splat. High enough risk that we think long and hard before we cast one near the end of a fight. A spell that can be the difference of winning an encounter.


Hmm.

I do not agree with your reasoning.
Druid abilities have traditionally not been limited by aggro but by other factors, mana efficiency being the most obvious one, and lately casting time becoming an increasing concern. (somebody explained it as having a certain 'damage or health per mana and seconds' factor being constant. As the need for bigger and bigger nukes and heals rose so per force did the casting time as otherwise the spell had to become impossibly expensive).

With AC and ATK debuffs Druids have the same risk of snapping up aggro as slowers do, and on top of that come the big direct heals and nukes. Adding more aggro to that is not going to do anything else other than making the spell not viable at all.

Druids are already forced to pace themselves or run out of mana too quickly. The lack of active mana regen obviously is a trade off to our supposed nuking and healing power. Starting to chain cast and we will more quickly start to run out forcing the group to rest more often than it would have to with a cleric or shaman healing. In CH rotations running out of mana is deadly obviously (but the developers want to get rid of CH rotations so that is not an argument).

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that the long casting time (and that apparently is a requirement for new spells), is starting to interfere seriously with our supposedly dual role of nuker and backup healer. With 6 second heals and nukes there is no time to alternate. We either do the one or the other, though we do have the option of switching from DPS to healing -if- we have the necessary spells loaded memorised, but once commited to a role we are stuck with it. (I am aware of the new fast cast heals that do help with keeping groups alive through spikes but the efficiency is horrendous and a good way to drain your mana pool if chained out of necessity, same as would happen to a cleric using the equivalent spells constantly).

The biggest problem is that in either role the druid is not quite measuring up. This is not so much a problem in groups where the choice is limited and groups will have to adjust and where druids can manage reasonably well still (the new healing spells help a lot too of course, but only with healing not with nukes), but in raids it is beginning to impact the desirability of druids (i.e. they are still considere useful so it is not quite so bad as some other classes, but druids are increasingly only added for lack of other more useful classes, not on their own merit).

Druids bring three relevant abilities to todays game (that require them to be in the group or raid):

AC/ATK debuff. While the exact magnitude of this is still under some debate, it is obvious that in group content it is significant and in raids less easily measured.
Healing.
DPS.

The problem with the debuff is that you need only one (or two in case the first cast resists and you do not want to risk the druid stealing aggro by casting these spells twice in quick succession).

In healing druids are capable of healing significant amounts of hitpoints directly, though not as much as a cleric and for significantly more mana. I.e. they can heal but not as long as clerics or shamen without being forced to take a minute off to meditate. The previous expansion added two new healing abilities previously sorely lacking. The last expansion gave an upgrade most would rather have traded for something more useful (the limited number of spells per expansion is hitting druids harder than most other classes it seems). Right now Druids are mostly limited, it seems, in longevity not in capability. This is sufficient for groups but for raids makes them less desirable compared to clerics (better healers and can keep up longer) and to shamen (can not deal as well with spikes but are better at smoothing out occasional damage to individuals and groups).

In nuking druids have fallen behind significantly. Today a summary of a parse (of a single short fight) was posted on the sony veteran board (in the infamous discussion started off by Dalnoth's desirability ranking). There clerics did around 250 DPS during the fight (on top of healing). Druids did around 600 DPS (doing nothing but nuking). Mages did around the 800 DPS and factoring in their various pets added up to a total of around 1600 DPS. Wizards did around 2000.
There is obviously something very wrong, if these numbers are typical, for a class that is supposed to provide DPS when healing is not required. (note that there was no indication how much indirect damage was done through damage shields and fire debuffs aiding the mages and wizards who would otherwise have reached lower numbers).

But nothing of the above suggests that adding a spell that can be used only once, at the very end of a raid, in any way aids the kind of problems druids are facing in raids and in the most challenging zones.
A big heal is needed most on incoming, when the monster is not yet slowed and debuffed. A big aggro spell at that point simply gets the druid targeted and killed. Later on when the monster is under control that particular spell is no longer needed. Worse, it is essentially an upgrade to a complete heal and makes it viable to create CH rotations with druids, unless the efficiency of the spell is so bad it can not possibly be used anyway.

What druids do need is a way to boost their DPS and seamlessly switch to healing as the situation required. I.e. when doing nothing but DPS they should be around the 1400 mark (compared to the 1600 of the mages in the above parse, they can use a little boost too compared to wizards!). And doing nothing but healing they should be pretty much where they are now. And depending on how much healing is needed they should be able to hit a balance between those extremes instead of the all or nothing it has become.

There have been several proposals how this can be achieved without destroying the class and spell balance that the developers are apparently working towards. My personal vote would be an across the board slashing of casting times of heals and direct damage spells while simultaneously increasing the recast time by the same amount, or slightly more.
Other viable solutions include more spells with a recourse effect of the other druid role (i.e. nukes proc a heal and heals proc a nuke), and a variety of AA proposals.


Eri

Ooopsie removed
(somehow the previous post got added twice)


Eri

Eri,

You didn't have to say it twice. Can you point out to me where exactly we don't agree?

I will speak to this however.


In nuking druids have fallen behind significantly. Today a summary of a parse (of a single short fight) was posted on the sony veteran board (in the infamous discussion started off by Dalnoth's desirability ranking). There clerics did around 250 DPS during the fight (on top of healing). Druids did around 600 DPS (doing nothing but nuking). Mages did around the 800 DPS and factoring in their various pets added up to a total of around 1600 DPS. Wizards did around 2000.
There is obviously something very wrong, if these numbers are typical, for a class that is supposed to provide DPS when healing is not required. (note that there was no indication how much indirect damage was done through damage shields and fire debuffs aiding the mages and wizards who would otherwise have reached lower numbers).



This fight was very short. Mages cannot come close to this sustained DPS on a raid mob. Their RS pet costs a lot of mana. Parse a raid encounter yourself vice using that infamously questionable post as your holy grail benchmark standard of half-truths. You are about right on target with Druids doing 600 DPS, but it's easier to say 1/4 Berzerker DPS isn't it?

Oh, you have two paragraphs starting with "The biggest problem is..." You can't even agree with yourself. (I took out the roflmao part. I only smiled)


The biggest problem, as I see it, is that the long casting time

The biggest problem is that in either role the druid is not quite measuring up.


Since you cannot agree with yourself or even see that we agree on 99% of everything to begin with, execept say the biggest problem which is mathematically impossible to agree upon since you have two biggest problems, abandon your reliance on self thought and just go with what I say.

All casters, minus necros, have a hard time breaking 1000 dps.
Umm, Wizards? If your wizards (in your 'supposedly uber' guild) aren't breaking 1kdps, tell them to stop sucking.

Also, why don't you post using your chars name, guy...or are you just a lame board troll trying to cause drama by insulting various community members, who have been here for more than 5 days?

You have a member on this thread with 4 years registered without a char name. I think the actual wiz DPS is around 1400, but I don't envy nor pay much attention to them. Sorry if I'm off a little bit.

Yeah, I will keep my character names to myself. Sorry that my intrepretation of the thread warning of "Thick Skinned Only" is off the mark.

I did however post some damn good advice and analysis for making this class better only to find you guys actually like it just the way it is and this thread only serves to continue to give Druids the reputation of Whiners.

Always Afflicted. See.

Do you realize there is an active post titled "I finally figured out how to get a group"? That speaks volumes about this class. I'm sorry that my delivery is not as polished as some others. I find that to be read you have to first be INTERESTING. If nobody knows what I will say next on a forum for "Thick-Skinned" readers, but are at least interested enough to argue with me, then the community wins. Boring droning sucks but unfortuantely that's what this think-tank is good at.

Hey, when ya start a post with Umm. or Hmm. why not just come out and say "**** You." It's the same thing. Your version is no less crass than mine. It's intended to be insulting. Right? Wait, don't answer. You'll just say wrong because I said right. If you are gonna say "**** me" (my words), or Hmm (your version) why not go ahead and post an opposing opinion? I have seen my little paragraphs of masterful loonacy with hints of brilliance turned into just a boring way of saying what I or someone else has already said.

I'll stick to lurking the other threads and posting solely here where the tuff guys with the really really thick skins are supposed to hang.


Adios

With AC and ATK debuffs Druids have the same risk of snapping up aggro as slowers do, and on top of that come the big direct heals and nukes.
Eri, this is the second time I have seen you say this and I have to disagee. In groups, I debuff all mobs with HoR, and I use HoR and SC on all named. I never take agro from a Slower. I debuff on incoming and my HoTT shows me as the target only if I debuff before the mob gets slowed. With enchanters, if an add gets mezzed and slowed... I debuff with HoR and Snare them so they can't get on the enchanter like greased lightning, but they never come after me. I just never take agro with debuffs or heals for that matter, unless I do somethhing stupid. I'm starting to think my Spell Casting Subtlety works better that everyone elses.
A Bard can boost DPS very significantly all day long. We have DPS groups centered around this. EVERYONE WANTS to be in that bard's group.
I don't agree with UberD's delivery, but his message is pretty clear on that one. Big Numbers is what everyone wants, and the Bard role (force multiplier) is a similar one that Shaman in DPS groups are filling, but better, because they don't have time limits on their magnification. Just stay in range. Increasing the power of Druid Debuffs, making SoTV be more damage enhancing, making our epic recast timer shorter, increasing the duration of our debuffs are all methods of making Druids help the rest of the group or raid achieve big numbers.

As far as DPS, I make no claims of being an Uber DPS Druid; you all know I think that we all should be Healers that Nuke. Druids topping out at 1500 DPS is a pipe dream. Druids are fourth in caster DPS (and shouldn't be second) and you can't be serious if you think that Druids should come near to the DPS output of Rangers, Rogues, Monks, and or Karana forbid, Berzerkers. 2200DPS! Damn! With a number like that, I don't even think we should put DPS and Druid in the same sentence.

As an aside, how many casters debuffed the mob and buffed that Zerker to post that Big Number?

Don't get me wrong, we probably could do a little better DPS, but rivaling mages? Sides from their pets, who can mages heal or buff?

All the lack of focus is compounded into nerfing Druids when SOE finds it only fair that each class get 5 spells this expansion, three spells that expansion, and soforth. We have an enormous number of spell lines I agree,, but they are not maintained by those we pay hard earned cash to do so.

Aside from poor decision making during TSS, all of our primary damage lines (even the ones we don't want) are upgraded every level raise. The 3 expansions between level raises tend to be where our "extra" spell lines are upgraded, if at all.

Also, DoN was a joke, basically 1 spell per class? I mean seriously =/

Increasing the power of Druid Debuffs, making SoTV be more damage enhancing, making our epic recast timer shorter, increasing the duration of our debuffs are all methods of making Druids help the rest of the group or raid achieve big numbers.

I doubt Skin to Vines is going to get an upgrade without being an entirely new spell, which wouldn't make a difference really since the original version still isn't working properly to begin with. The fact it now focuses DoT damage is nice however, since it's the main form of damage for Necromancers (fire dots).

Our ATK/Debuff lines last 10 minutes, which is enough I *may* have to refresh them once per encounter. The issue is with Debuff upgrades the spell duration tend to get cut (think DoN Snares, -MR Check 90 second Duration slows). I wouldn't want to see our debuffs go below 3 Minutes.

I honestly don't see them adjusting our epic.

An unique, but likely overpowered ability we could gain would require a code change, but would let our nukes pick the lowest resist of Fire / Cold and apply the damage versus that resist (Think Chromatic, but just two resists).

I debuff with HoR and Snare them so they can't get on the enchanter like greased lightning, but they never come after me. I just never take agro with debuffs or heals for that matter, unless I do somethhing stupid. I'm starting to think my Spell Casting Subtlety works better that everyone elses.


Its not just you, I hardly if ever take aggro with debuffs or heals either. I normally cast HoR on mobs before the tanks even start swinging and never get on HoTT. Maybe others don't have there Spell casting sublety aa's done or are lacking 2.0/2.5 to help them out.

Too lazy to go back and quote, but, the main reason i would never use a "big heal with big agro" is because my guild lacks druids. We have usually 2-3, sometimes all 4 online. What this means is that in addition to any DPS or healing i'm doing, i'm also running up to 5 debuffs, which is insane agro in itself and i really wouldn't risk more.

The question of whether i would "sacrifice" myself to save a raid is moot. If the raid was wiping, i'd probably be dead already cus i run fairly close to the top of agro list (after tanks). Usually from pushing DPS boundaries. I think sitting on 80m for 90% of the fight is a waste of resources and we "usually" have enough clerics around to cover most of the healing. I think clerics (possibly Pallies 0.3 sec heal anyone..) are more suited to needing the sort of spell you mentioned, because they have better ways of mitigation the agro (as you also mentioned).

IMO we don't need bigger nukes or bigger heals. Personally, i think the dmg/heal numbers on our spells are fine. It's the cast time i have a problem with. In a group without a cleric (or cleric buffs) my heals cast in i think 2.4 and my nuke casts in 4.5. So if i wanted to throw a nuke between heals, the tank would have to wait 2.25 refresh + 4.5 sec cast time + 2.25 sec refresH + 1.8 sec AS - That's 10.8secs between 1 heal landing and the next landing. That's just ridiculous. If the situation allows, i usually throw a cold rain, since it's much shorter cast time (3.5sec base, hasted down to almost 2seconds).. That's a viable solution to our duality problem imo. Reduce the cast time on nukes (not to 0.5 :p i'm not advocating a SotQ spell here), so that it would be possible to throw one in between heals, without the tank dying.
The only way i can see people whingeing about this, is that we would be able to chain them faster when we're "just dpsing". So, adjust the mana cost, or agro modifier or make it longer refresh (maybe to 6secs so the total cast time remains relatively similar.)

I dunno - Just get the impression that a lot of people want to completely change the way a druid works, or want to try and push for unreasonable or unrealistic changes.

Fair enough.


The question of whether i would "sacrifice" myself to save a raid is moot. If the raid was wiping, i'd probably be dead already cus i run fairly close to the top of agro list (after tanks).

I don't see how, but not knowing your guild makeup or targets it makes no difference and not a point I would argue.

Several people talk of cast times. Shorter cast time equals more power, healing or DPS. SOE leaves what's done as done. Rarely if ever have they ever fixed something as drastic as the cast times for a line of spells let alone an entire classes' spells.

The focus should be going forward, leaving what's done as done. I think healers in leather deserve equal if not greater healing power than pansies in plate. EQ has killed the demand of DPS druids. Fine. Regroup and take it down another path without making devs cringe at the mere spoken word 'Druid".

Ok. So, in gaining more healing - What are you expectations of the damage side of a druid. Should damaged be raised, left as is, or decreased to compensate for added healing?

I ask that, because the damage side of a druid is one that appeals to me more than healing. I didn't start a Druid all those years ago to be a healer and i resent being pushed further and further into that role by SoE.I make do with what i have for the most part, but i def. wouldn't want to see a drop in Druid offensive power from where we are now.

Regardless of if you like it or not, the more dps you do typically (not always) the weaker armor you wear. It goes across all archtypes like this. We deal the most damage directly of any Priest, so we get the lighter armor.

It doesn't matter what raids use for demand. Even if we spend *all* of our time healing we still have the strongest nukes / ratios of any of the Priests, along more resists and types of damage (DD, DOT, Pillar, PBAE, Rain, etc).

We actually have more "types" of damage available to use then I am pretty sure most other classes, its just they're specialized in one or two of them, and we're not but we have access to all of them (excluding combat procs).

I ask that, because the damage side of a druid is one that appeals to me more than healing. I didn't start a Druid all those years ago to be a healer and i resent being pushed further and further into that role by SoE.I make do with what i have for the most part, but i def. wouldn't want to see a drop in Druid offensive power from where we are now.

Winter's Flame (for all it's issues) was a step in the right direction for us I think in terms of Damage and Ratio. The downside is it's not usuable everywhere.

Ok. So, in gaining more healing - What are you expectations of the damage side of a druid. Should damaged be raised, left as is, or decreased to compensate for added healing?


My expectations are that it will remain the same. When you look at the math RW did, it looks very suspiciously calculated to remain the same. Now, Druid DPS has never been fantastic. The roles are what they are depending on the person. My issue as other's is the inability to do a great job in any role. In my case healing. I don't want to comment on what should be done with healing with respect to DPS because I don't see any relation. I think Fen is right on DPS based on armor type. It's off for casters with all the nice 2HB/S weapons with massive DMG augs from Tacvi and higher that some leather wearers are getting their hands on. Perhaps that could be offset with focus items, but that's off topic.

Ok. So, in gaining more healing - What are you expectations of the damage side of a druid. Should damaged be raised, left as is, or decreased to compensate for added healing?


I'm going to throw something else back into the mix too. You overlook our power as debuffers of mobs and buffers of players. Right now we have some great tools in both areas that are little understood by many Druids and most non-druids. Have you ever had a caster give up our mana regen buff for tenacity? I see it all the time. I would like to see that choice become so obvious that we are in demand if not just for our mana regen. And to push that demand for folks having trouble getting groups, how about making it very powerful, close to mana-free for us to cast, but it lasts 15 minutes LOL. GET THAT DRUID LFG! THAT'S 30 MANA A TICK!!! IF WE DON'T GET THAT DRUID, I'M FINDING A DIFFERENT GROUP!!! I think it's a great idea. Probably even better than my idea of eliminating shammies.

Eri,

You didn't have to say it twice. Can you point out to me where exactly we don't agree?


I tried to explain it in my post, but in summary. You seemed to be promoting even bigger heals AND more aggro to balance them out, while I personally believe that the healing is fairly decent at this point but that that DPS has fallen behind enough so as no longer to make up for the lesser healing abilities (compared to clerics). Also traditionally druids have been limited by mana usage and not by aggro management. Adding a spell that creates huge amount of aggro is atypical.


This fight was very short. Mages cannot come close to this sustained DPS on a raid mob. Their RS pet costs a lot of mana. Parse a raid encounter yourself vice using that infamously questionable post as your holy grail benchmark standard of half-truths. You are about right on target with Druids doing 600 DPS, but it's easier to say 1/4 Berzerker DPS isn't it?


It is true that the fight that was parsed was a short one, but that is what favours most DPS casters. All classes that had their DPS posted are better at burst DPS than at sustained so the playing field in that respect at least was equal.
The numbers do show that even a mage that uses only half his or her tools still can outdamage a druid doing nothing but nukes. In the follow up it was explained that adding the pet damage almost -doubled- mage DPS.
Now this would have been reasonable if the druids in question -had been healing mainly and added DPS as time and mana permitted, but that was not the case. I am fairly confident that should the druids have been healing their DPS would have been pretty much zero (and even the cleric managed to squeeze out 300 DPS during their healing duty).

Any way you look at the numbers, it does show that druids are not measuring up at all in the DPS department.
The 600 DPS number would have been reasonable, in my opinion, for a druid who concentrates on healing. After all we keep getting told we do not heal as well as a cleric because we can DPS which the cleric can not (outside of pretty specific circumstances anyway). My opinion, for what it is worth, is that in burst DPS druids should be close to what mages can manage. After all it is still only half of a decent wizard.



Oh, you have two paragraphs starting with "The biggest problem is..." You can't even agree with yourself. (I took out the roflmao part. I only smiled)

Since you cannot agree with yourself or even see that we agree on 99% of everything to begin with, execept say the biggest problem which is mathematically impossible to agree upon since you have two biggest problems, abandon your reliance on self thought and just go with what I say.

No need to be condescending about it, but those two statements are not mutually exclusive as they both apply to different circumstances. I just forgot to spell it out, assuming it was fairly obvious.

The casting times are what makes it difficult to impossible for druids to combine both (by the spell lines anyway) main roles of healing and nuking.

The not measuring up remark was specifically about the desirability of druids in raids.


Eri

As far as DPS, I make no claims of being an Uber DPS Druid; you all know I think that we all should be Healers that Nuke. Druids topping out at 1500 DPS is a pipe dream. Druids are fourth in caster DPS (and shouldn't be second) and you can't be serious if you think that Druids should come near to the DPS output of Rangers, Rogues, Monks, and or Karana forbid, Berzerkers. 2200DPS! Damn! With a number like that, I don't even think we should put DPS and Druid in the same sentence.


Can you understand how this rankles for druids who have been around since pre-Kunark, when (relatively speaking) we were a hell of a lot closer to "top DPS" than 1/4 power?

We don't have to be fantastic DPS, but I'd rather not be pathetic DPS... please?

Eri, this is the second time I have seen you say this and I have to disagee. In groups, I debuff all mobs with HoR, and I use HoR and SC on all named. I never take agro from a Slower. I debuff on incoming and my HoTT shows me as the target only if I debuff before the mob gets slowed.

I can not remember having said this before, but anyway, my experience is that if I cast a big debuff immediately after having the first resisted I am almost garantueed to snap up aggro. But I admit to start casting the debuff early, that may factor into my experiences.
I do agree that slow is generating way more aggro than our debuffs do (and given the impact our debuffs have we probably generate too little aggro with it. Not that I am complaining about that)


As far as DPS, I make no claims of being an Uber DPS Druid; you all know I think that we all should be Healers that Nuke. Druids topping out at 1500 DPS is a pipe dream. Druids are fourth in caster DPS (and shouldn't be second) and you can't be serious if you think that Druids should come near to the DPS output of Rangers, Rogues, Monks, and or Karana forbid, Berzerkers. 2200DPS! Damn! With a number like that, I don't even think we should put DPS and Druid in the same sentence.

But there you and I differ in our opinion. I am looking at the total spell line up and the historical development of druids and see that we traditionally were a DPS caster class capable of healing. More of our spells still have to do with dealing damage in a variety of situations and not with healing.

But yes, I do feel that druids who focus entirely on DPS should be able to approach that kind of DPS in burst mode. I.e. when throwing our entire mana pool at the monster in very short order. That is after all (in my opinion) the point of having a druid around: somebody who can DPS but can in emergency switch to healing. A group has to accept lower DPS for that ability, but no group can be expected to accept our current anemic DPS. They are far better off to take another DPS or even most support classes.

And if, as you say, druid DPS is so meaningless it should not even be mentioned why in the name of all that is sacred do we keep getting upgrades to our DPS spells when we really should be given the same tools that a cleric has?

Now I admit that I do not understand nearly enough of this game and the undoubtedly complex relations between spells and between classes, but it does seem evident to me that the developers at least consider our DPS important enough to give us upgrades every expansion. If that is so then our DPS should be meaningful in group and raid context. I understand, and am perfectly happy with, the fact that we will not catch up with mages. (80pct seems a fair target to me. I miscalculated when I said 1400 DPS when it should have been about 1300). I am also saying this in the understanding that to peak that kind of DPS I really have to burn through my mana. But I strongly beleive that that kind of DPS -must- be in reach of a druid -if- we are to retain our dual nature.


Don't get me wrong, we probably could do a little better DPS, but rivaling mages? Sides from their pets, who can mages heal or buff?

Actually, the right question to ask is: why do mages only do 1600 DPS through their nukes and pets when wizards do 2200 or so? Both are DPS casters and should be capable of filling the same group and raid slots.


Eri

Actually, the right question to ask is: why do mages only do 1600 DPS through their nukes and pets when wizards do 2200 or so? Both are DPS casters and should be capable of filling the same group and raid slots.

Because Wizards can nuke every 2.5 seconds with their instant nukes. For every one nuke a mage can cast, a Wizard can nearly cast two or more. That's a huge advantage.

For our highest DPS your likely looking at Winter's Flame and Cloudburst Hail. For burst damage we should rank 3rd? amongst casters. While I havn't parsed raids, if that's were we are, we're about the level we should be at.

Melee are ahead of us because melee dps is broken compared to Caster DPS and has been for ages. It should be pretty obvious that in an extended fight we'll lose out, because our class simply isn't designed for prolonged encounters.

-Fenier

just wanted to tell michale welcome to the bat wing club! (nice to see one piece of my gear on 13k druids magelo)

Because Wizards can nuke every 2.5 seconds with their instant nukes. For every one nuke a mage can cast, a Wizard can nearly cast two or more. That's a huge advantage.


*smiles*
I guess I should have asked not for the how, but why the developers saw fit to make mages, who have the same group and raid role as wizards (as far as I know), less capable. I do agree that shorter cast times give a huge performance boost (as evidenced by the jump in DPS the shamen made with SotQ, especially before it was slashed down again).


For our highest DPS your likely looking at Winter's Flame and Cloudburst Hail. For burst damage we should rank 3rd? amongst casters. While I havn't parsed raids, if that's were we are, we're about the level we should be at.


There is of course more to the equation than that. Being 3rd is a relative rank which says little about actual performance. I have no problem with being 3rd in rank, but the gap between 1 and 2 and between 2 and 3 is rather excessive at the moment.


Melee are ahead of us because melee dps is broken compared to Caster DPS and has been for ages. It should be pretty obvious that in an extended fight we'll lose out, because our class simply isn't designed for prolonged encounters.

-Fenier

Personally I have no problem with that. But I do feel we should measure up to other DPS casters if we take on that role. Even if it is only for burst damage and short fights, not for extended fighting (which we never excelled at anyway as far as I can tell)


Eri

Just for you Eri!

Did Skylance 1 today, parsed 1245.83 DPS on the second named over 30 seconds - then it died =(

I know I couldn't have matained that a long period of time, but I thought it may make you smile.

Icefall Bear 3, Cloudburst RK II, Winter's Flame RK II, Season's Fury, Glitterfrost Tunic were what I used. It could have been higher but the chanter didn't have mana flare ;/

I probly could have held around that out till 60 seconds, cause then the bear would have went buh bye =/

Okay... hate quoting people but this thread is getting complicated.

I am not up to date on the latest expansions but the problem used to be that as main healer in groups druids frequently were required to start healing even before the tank enganged to buffer the initial damage, making the aggro situation iffy. Many of our debuff spells are either high aggro or have a damage component, making them useless with enchanters as well.
I debuff, root and snare with enchanters and just don't see the agro issues that you are noting. I debuff on incoming also. As a side note, I RS my tanks so I have a few precious seconds before they need a heal.


But there you and I differ in our opinion. I am looking at the total spell line up and the historical development of druids and see that we traditionally were a DPS caster class capable of healing. More of our spells still have to do with dealing damage in a variety of situations and not with healing.

I don't agree with the DPS caster class that could heal bit; why are we priests, and not casters? We're healers that can DPS, if they wanted us to be casters that could heal, they could have put us in dresses and still called us Druids. But they based Druids off of the leather wearing Dungeon's and Dragons Druids and admittedly, those Druids were Priests with more Nukes and Swarm spells than heals.

So, back in the pre-Kunark days, we were overpowered on the DPS side, and hamstrung on the healer side. Druids in early EQ were like Necros today; they got more xp soloing than they did in groups. They've fixed the healer side for the most part, to fit game content, and admittedly, DPS took a hit compared to other classes. But there are pretty much three times the number of DPS classes in the game than healers. We are hurting in the utility side of our spells; we have a lot of utility spells that we don't use because they have been allowed to atrophy.


And if, as you say, druid DPS is so meaningless it should not even be mentioned why in the name of all that is sacred do we keep getting upgrades to our DPS spells when we really should be given the same tools that a cleric has?

We get the upgrades, because if we didn't, we'd complain even worse than we do now. :) But really, we get the upgrades because they want us to still fill the role of the DPS heavy healer, not Heal heavy Caster.

I never said that I think we should scrap DPS upgrades. I know it's a hard spot on those of you who learned the hard way back in Year One that Holly Windstalker did not like it if you attacked a wolf on her watch, and I sympathize. I just think that it's ill advised to try and get Druids baselined on a format based on content from ten expansions ago, because the game has evolved into something that the originators didn't have in mind at it's start.

Can you understand how this rankles for druids who have been around since pre-Kunark, when (relatively speaking) we were a hell of a lot closer to "top DPS" than 1/4 power?

We don't have to be fantastic DPS, but I'd rather not be pathetic DPS... please?I love you. No flames from me heading your way.

The 600 DPS number would have been reasonable, in my opinion, for a druid who concentrates on healing.
Eri,

This is insane. 600 DPS while focused on healing!!! That's a 50 DKP MINUS! But at least you quantify it as your opinion. I respect that. SOE will not.

No need to be condescending about it, but those two statements are not mutually exclusive as they both apply to different circumstances. I just forgot to spell it out, assuming it was fairly obvious.
That's just my personality flaws coming to light. They have ****ed me my whole life. Don't let them **** you up too.

they could have put us in dresses and still called us Druids.I find this offensive. Can you be more offensive?

Just for you Eri!

Did Skylance 1 today, parsed 1245.83 DPS on the second named over 30 seconds - then it died =(

I know I couldn't have matained that a long period of time, but I thought it may make you smile.

Icefall Bear 3, Cloudburst RK II, Winter's Flame RK II, Season's Fury, Glitterfrost Tunic were what I used. It could have been higher but the chanter didn't have mana flare ;/

I probly could have held around that out till 60 seconds, cause then the bear would have went buh bye =/


That is good to hear Fenier, and it means that we are at the high end close to where I think we should be with our DPS. As I said, I do not think it is unreasonable we can keep up a burn like this only a relatively short time. Our desirability should be from the ability to switch between DPS and healing at will and groups will have to accept slightly lesser performance for that additional security.

Thank you for pointing this out.


Eri

This is insane. 600 DPS while focused on healing!!! That's a 50 DKP MINUS! But at least you quantify it as your opinion. I respect that. SOE will not.




*shrugs*
I fail to see why it would be insane. If clerics can manage 300 DPS while doing their primary task of healing, it stands to reason that druids with their lesser heals should be able to do more DPS. You can argue justifiably that the 600 number is perhaps a bit on the high side, but I hold that groups should see some return for the higher risk of bringing a druid along instead of a cleric. Compared to other classes 600 DPS is still rather pathetic, so I do not see us putting any other class out of action on the strength of that. It just makes druids more viable for groups as a main healer choice (as opposed to a distant second or even third choice we are now).

Note however, that all this is on the basis of a single short duration parse.

I am open to suggestions based on more extensive DPS parses on 1, 2 and 5 minute fights. Unfortunately I do not have access to those so my ideas are necessarily inaccurate.

But the principle I am arguing for is that
1- Druids should be, when focussing on the task, be within the 80pct range of clerics for healing and mages for DPS. This is by absolute numbers and understanding a toolbox that is less filled compared to those specialist classes. In exchange for this lesser peak performance Druids have the flexibility to not only switch completely but also to hit any point between those extremes.

2- To improve group and raid desirability the complementing task (i.e. nuking while healing and healing while nuking) should be at 25 to 30pct (and not 20) to make up for the additional risk (when healing) and lesser performance (when nuking).

3- Druid abilities are limited first and foremost by the manapool and the speed at which it can be replenished. This means that druid heals and nukes should be less efficient and mana recharge should be balanced around this. However, this is a delicate balance as it will cut off druid usability in a large number of situations where being able to perform over extended periods of time (i.e. many experience groups and a large percentage of raids) when made too inefficient, but at the same time would quickly make druids overpowered when not sufficiently inefficient.


Lowering cast times while at the same time increasing recast times by the same or slightly more would maintain the efficiency ratio but allows for more flexibility to combine nukes and heals, at the expense of mana usage and thus the ability to keep up at long fights. Which is why I proposed this modification to our spell lines.


Eri

I fail to see why it would be insane. If clerics can manage 300 DPS while doing their primary task of healing, it stands to reason that druids with their lesser heals should be able to do more DPS.

I think I missed this, could you explain where the 300 DPS number comes from / what the clerics are doing to obtain that?

I am open to suggestions based on more extensive DPS parses on 1, 2 and 5 minute fights. Unfortunately I do not have access to those so my ideas are necessarily inaccurate.
I'll see what I can do. Btw I am using standard focii available to pretty much anyone. The Cold Focus is from Qvic, but degrades quite a bit. The Fire focus is from a Single Group named in Ashengate, and appears on at least 5 items I know off the top of my head.

Side note: Icefall Bear 3 is nearly (not quite, but close) 300 DPS on it's own for the first 60 seconds. After that it drops based on the duration of the fight

-Fenier

I think I missed this, could you explain where the 300 DPS number comes from / what the clerics are doing to obtain that?

It is from this post by Cristilla in the discussion of Dalnoth's raid desirability of all classes on the official forum veteran board:


Ok, I lied, but it's to put to rest a few things.

Raid we did last night (Tris in Demi); it's a raid our clerics can DPS some.

3 clerics DPS figures (214 me, 290, 221)

4 druids DPS figures (528, 616, 752, 672)

3 Mage DPS figures (689, 770, 824)

2 Wizzy DPS figures, one died before the halfway point of the fight (1297, 2444)




I'll see what I can do. Btw I am using standard focii available to pretty much anyone. The Cold Focus is from Qvic, but degrades quite a bit. The Fire focus is from a Single Group named in Ashengate, and appears on at least 5 items I know off the top of my head.

Side note: Icefall Bear 3 is nearly (not quite, but close) 300 DPS on it's own for the first 60 seconds. After that it drops based on the duration of the fight

-Fenier

I am curious (and a bit lazy or I would look it up for myself), but what is the recast of Icefall Bear 3? Can it be used semi regularly, or is it one of those once every evening spells?


Eri

Recycle is 25~ minutes.

Recycle is 25~ minutes.

hmm. that makes it more of a gimmick, albeit a powerful gimmick, than a regular DPS tool. Though a lot depends on how much the damage by the DPS casters is dealt through similar extremly long recast abilities.
If that too depends for 25pct on a once every half hour spell (i.e. once per raid end fight) then it is no problem. Otherwise we need the increased DPS more than I hoped after your 1300 DPS figure Fenier :(


Eri

I agree with Tenielle, the only thing that I would like to see is a new druid line CH. Besides that I think that we are a well balanced class. I can come into any group and be an asset whether its DPS or Healing, and I have the ability to kite. If shamans ever get snare or evac then the sh*t is gonna hit the fan. Same goes for if we ever got the Shaman Canni spells.

I got quoted! :wiggle:

Eri - one small note on that. One cleric got 290; us other two were 220 so a small cry from 300.

There's very few raids at my level that clerics DPS on (at least in my guild). Tris is a very low healing/high DPS type event, which is why we had 3 (of our 5-6 clerics) nuking. Also, it's one of the few raids where the entire raid is close together and parses can pick up everyone's info (the info that's parsable at least).

You won't find clerics DPS'ing on many other events (for my guild - no to GraniteClaw, Redfang, Sisters, Devlin, Performer, Roley, maybe on Hatchet, no clue on Mayong as we're just now working the event).

Or, if you want to look at it another way, a Cleric is about equal in DPS to our AA pet!

Seriously tho with decent focii and the correct AA a Druid should be able to hit 700+ minimum for 5~ minutes or so. Pretty sure there was a post somewhere around here were this was dicussed.

Or, if you want to look at it another way, a Cleric is about equal in DPS to our AA pet!

Seriously tho with decent focii and the correct AA a Druid should be able to hit 700+ minimum for 5~ minutes or so. Pretty sure there was a post somewhere around here were this was dicussed.

So my actual numbers are off. I already realised, and admitted, they were based on a very small and likely non-representational sample.

On the other hand I do stand by my opinion that as a class we should be able to peak, for short durations, as high as 80pct of a cleric raw healing power or 80pct of a mages's DPS while at the same time retaining about 30pct of the other role. The ability to balance healing and DPS at other points besides those extremes is important too. Mana pool and regeneration would have to be the limiting factor, as it is now, and this relatively greater theoretical power is restricted (severely) by the fact that it only applies to short duration fights, as that would not greatly increase druid desirability for raids.

I would like to know if you find fault with this reasoning, not so much as with the numbers (as they are to a large extend arbitray and based on whatever sample parse you obtain them from).


Eri

I'm really not sure how you would pull it off. The clerics in the parse weren't healing, I am assuming they where chaining reproval.

I am really not a fan of drastically increasing our recycle timers.

Personally I am ok only doing one or the other at a given time. If I am healing I can always use AA, Click Effects and so forth to add some dps. If healing is trial I may even nuke.

Likewise when I am dealing damage I use clickies and AA to heal unless someone is taking massive damage, I tend to find that to be enough.

The problem is there are not many AA like this, and the clicky heal items are not at all easy for us to come by.

While one could argue that focusing on one or the other is against the flexability of the class, I don't see it that way, when you want to do something well, you focus on it. You still have the ability to shift gears mid encounter and that's where one of our largest strengths lay.

-Fenier

Class - Total Damage - DPS

Wizard 382031 1682.96
Wizard 314381 1429.00
Wizard 294685 1212.70
Ranger 293732 1116.85
Rogue 250108 973.18
Berzerker 240052 1066.90
Monk 230603 973.01
Wizard 212762 868.42
Ranger 208697 790.52
Ranger 205498 758.30
Ranger 204543 786.70
Micahle 203254 800.21
(Micahle`s pet 5417 154.77)

This doesn't include Blistering Sunray Rk2 i kept on for the duration of the fight (5casts i think). Too slack to go sift thru my log. So i'm ranked 12th there, adding in Sunray+pet i'd likely get damn close to 8th.

This was on Valik the Cruel in ToB and i didn't have to heal, aside from clickies and keeping Reptile on.
I chained Cloudburst Rk2 and Winter's Storm - during refresh i'd either recast Reptile on MT, Reapply Sunray, or throw Winter's Flame/Annihilate the Unnatural. I also spent the first 40secs or so casting debuffs. I finished on 48m.

This is typical of a parse in our guild - we're quite light on the heavy dps classes. though i rarely get to just dps. This also factors in that i was able to cast AE Rains - sometimes u can't, i suspect that if i had to stick to single targets nukes, the figure would have been lower.


Just thought i'd post and share, since we don't parse stuff often and we're talking about it in this thread :P

While one could argue that focusing on one or the other is against the flexability of the class, I don't see it that way, when you want to do something well, you focus on it. You still have the ability to shift gears mid encounter and that's where one of our largest strengths lay.
When SOE asks me who my childhood hero is, I tell them "Fenier".

Have you ever had a caster give up our mana regen buff for tenacity? I see it all the time. I would like to see that choice become so obvious that we are in demand if not just for our mana regen. And to push that demand for folks having trouble getting groups, how about making it very powerful, close to mana-free for us to cast, but it lasts 15 minutes LOL. GET THAT DRUID LFG! THAT'S 30 MANA A TICK!!! IF WE DON'T GET THAT DRUID, I'M FINDING A DIFFERENT GROUP!!! I think it's a great idea. Probably even better than my idea of eliminating shammies.Okay, I admit that this blew me away. Possibly one of the best new ideas I've seen even though it does something we hate to see: asking for a new line of spells.

We've spoken before about having the ability for Druids to enhance caster power, but we always talk about making Druids enhance for more damage, but a short duration mana regen buff takes caster aid by Druids to a different level.

I took a look at the Beastlord Spiritual line. Most of the kitty crack spells are substantial casting costs for their level and 72 min duration. It would be easy enough to have the whole line added to Druid spells, but totally unfair to Beastlords. Instead I did a comparision of three of the Spiritual spells (group buffs all) and played the math game to figure out how this could work to see if I could develop a new line of spells.

Disclaimer: I don't think for a moment that the Devs would do this, but it's nice to dream.

Spiritual Radiance - Level 52 - 5 FT - 550 mana - 72 min

First we'll kill the duration to make it necessary to keep the Druid in group to make it effective, and double the FT to get the result we want.

Nature's Radiance - Level 54 - 10FT - 550 mana - 12 min

Since we've increased spell power by a factor of 2, but decreased it by a factor of 6, we decrease casting cost by a factor of 3, and balance out.

Nature's Radiance - Level 54 - 10 FT - 180 mana - 12 min

Let's say we only get three of these spells, one every 10 levels starting at level 54. Play the same game with Spiritual Dominion and Spiritual Enlightenment to make two more spells:

Tunare's Radiance - Level 64 - 18 FT - 270 mana - 12 min

Karana's Radiance Rk II - Level 74 - 24 FT - 360 mana - 12 min

We could put the spell in Slot Three and sacrifice our self buff from the Mask line. Alternatively, we could put the spell in Slot Eight and overwrite clicky mana regen. Otherwise, it's a winner.

This does not negatively detract from any other classes buffs, Druids get more mana regen, which should help the whole I don't have enough mana to nuke and heal bit (even though it's all about not having the time) and overall, Druids would become more desirable to groups. Putting a Druid in the group, with Direwild Skin Rk II and the level 74 mana buff places overall Druid based mana regen at +34; show me a caster that wouldn't whine when they got no Druid in their group.

I know it's never gonna happen, but you gotta admit, it's a sweet dream.

Alternatively, we could put the spell in Slot Eight and overwrite clicky mana regen.

Up your's Joe Boo. Clicky MR is too hard to get, relatively speaking. I don't think noobs should get the same benifit as people who worked their butts oiff or waited patiently for years for a clicky MR. Slot 3 is a great idea though.

I just would just hope whatever it would be would not stack with shammy buffs of any kind.

Micahle-

Did the 800 dps on Valik include the 154 from Icefall bear?

It looks like that fight lasted about 254 seconds, of which the bear was only alive for about 35. So while the bear did 154 DPS, his contribution to your total is more like 21 dps, over the entire fight.

Fryar

Nope - first figure is my damage only. Bear didn't last long due to AE, prolly could've timed it better but his timer didn't pop back up until near the end :)

He's on our target list to knock over anytime he's up, since we're headed for DK. I'll offload reptile/Sunray to someone else next time and see if it makes much difference.

Here's some Duration based Damage Parses

Stacking:

Sunscorch
Vengance of the Sun
Swarm of Fireants Rank II
Blistering Sunray Rank II
Swarming Death (Orb of Clinging Death)

Powered By:
Sothgar's Anger - 30% Fire to 75
Burning Magic - 40% Magic to 67 (Full Power for Swarming Death, 16% to Swarm of Fireants)
Skin to Vines Rank II

I have several ranks of DoT Criticals, but nothing yet in Blood Tithe.

Duration Damage on a Icefall Adult Cave Bear ended up at appox 275.

Our Burst DPS is easily 3 to 4 times that, Just something to keep in mind.

-Fenier

Micahle-

Did the 800 dps on Valik include the 154 from Icefall bear?

It looks like that fight lasted about 254 seconds, of which the bear was only alive for about 35. So while the bear did 154 DPS, his contribution to your total is more like 21 dps, over the entire fight.

Fryar

My bear did 207 dps for 1:01 (rounding?) on valik, for a total of 12,658 dmg. Cirlce of Power and/or bard aura were hitting it.

The trick to boo-boo`ing valik (and most other mobs) is to click the AA the second an AE lands, so you have the max. window between AEs.

Kinda curious to play with Valik and Annihilate. Of course I'll cheat and burn 7th also, maybe I can make a wizzie cry.

Micahle 225,071dmg 852.54dps
Micahle`s pet 11274dmg 191.08dps

Ranger, Zerker, Wiz, Ranger, Wiz, Ranger, Micahle, Wiz, Rog, Monk.

So i ranked 7th. With pet addedm i still ranked 7th :)