Now that SoF has been out a few weeks, and people have been getting this spell - what do people think about it?

You are going under the assumption that druid spells actually drop in this game? Now if you asked about Talisman of the Puma or Wheels of Fist, then we could help you answer this (got plenty of those!)

I never saw a dropped one either, but did faction work to get rank 2.

I rather enjoy this spell. It has saved my groups in just normal xp fashion and on raids. With max AA, the recast still seems a bit slow for me. It would definetly be nice to see it be faster.

It was quite fun when a shaman and I both had our spells all new and shiny about the same time and tested them out on the tank...who would drop to about 10% before we hit the spell... But hey, this spell works great and he never died!

Currently, I like it. I think it's useful in very specific situations.

I'd prefer it greatly if HP % for the first heal was removed, so it would always heal the whole group, just for varying amounts. I feel somewhat unsatisfied when 2 people are at 80%, and don't get topped off.

That could just be me, however.

That was requested, and I believed shot down several times during beta.

Yea, they are not adding a base heal to it.

I'd also be a fan of changing the first % to 80 or 75 then, and leave the rest alone.

i just got this spell th other niet and still playign with ti i have nto decided if i liek it yet looks liek ti would own on raids but in th guild i am in iam the wizzy healer and 1 bard in group so it works good for healign the bard whenhe is damaged on pulls but i still like my group heals.

and i fell i dont have ause for it as a dsp group healer becouse 90% of the time its just the bard thats needs healed and a good blast heal will do that and if others need healign my group heal covers them.

have not played with it enuff to see if i like it for grouping yet.

have just started raiding again and have had SoTF for a week or so using it in groups and in an ashengate north raid.
Grouping
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In groups I found it great. Its definately the quick save that we need in line with div arb for clerics. It works well because there usually aren't lots of people in the group getting slammed with AEs or tons of mobs, but if there is adds in camp then it will help all getting hit till CC has locked down the mobs. I think this is common scenarios in grouping.

As far as the MT in groups after a quick save from SoTF you can patch heal with single direct heals again.

Raiding
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I was looking forward to testing it on Lethar 2.0 as I am nearly always found wanting in taking care of my group in that encounter with the healing and curing required with that fight. Lots of AEs and some DT dots.

Using it on this fight combined with our group heal did help but it still wasn't enough and I had to use lots of single heals again or rely on a pally group healing. It only worked well when I was lucky enough to get a crit heal on it.

Thinking it through the reason I think is because of this.

Nearly everyone in a higher end raiding guild has a minumum of 20k HPs these days with raid buffs and the HP banner. I'm sitting over 21k myself as an example and thats before any solteris or SoF gear. I'm going to use 22k as the average in the raid here.

If someone in group was at 12.5% (Average mark between 0 and 25%) of this they would need 19k to top them to full. at 25% or lower with a 50% average base adjustment the heal would be at around 10k (rk2) requiring a 9.6k heal to top them off. Our group heal doesn't do that much even with a crit. However a person this low probably should require a direct heal.

If someone in group was at 30% they need 15.4k to take them to 100% SoTF rk 2 with 50% av mod gives 8k, again requires 7.7k heal to top them off.

The rest of the mid way points in the SoTF hp% charts would also require around 7kish heals to top them off for 22k group members. Our group heal will average around 3k at rk 2 with a 50% average mod and no crits, so it would require 2-3 casts to bring them up to full.

Of course you can only use SoTf every 1.5 mins if you used all your AAs on it so if nasty AEs are more frequent than that then you have no options bu to use a lot of single heals.

I actually think SoTF is a good addition obviously, I really like it, but it still doesn't solve our problem on tough raids with big AEs we still have to revert back to either:
1) single heals
2) having another group healer in group. Reliance on pallies and clerics in every group is bad.
3) hoping that the group doesn't die before our group refreshes once or twice more

To me the problem is not with Survival of the fittest but with our group heal. It either needs the reuse timer removed completely or lowered dramtically or it needs to be ramped up considerably to cover the amount required to heal.

I haven't even mentioned mana costs in this as thats another topic for discussion.

y experince on Lethar might not have been ideal but it was indicative of what its like on some raid encounters.

The spell isn't mean to fully heal people, although it can clearly do that in in certain situations.

The spell is intended to take people out of the range where they are assured death by providing a fast casting strong heal.

I've used it several times to save the tank, puller, chanter, or even myself in group content.

I've used it on raids to save people in my group who found themselves offtanking all of a sudden.

If you use it and think of it as a tool similar to Divine Arb, you'll be pretty close to the intended effect of the spell in groups / raids.

-Fenier

Yes it does the quick save well, but the other thing I was trying to assess its use for was to see if it plus a group heal would be sufficient in raids where heavy group healing is required for 1 druid to effectively keep a group up alone.

Survival of the fittest is great and helps us to save people a lot more, just if it was intended to also put us in a position to handle a group on large AEs then I think it helps a lot but we still fall short in that category because the group heal is weak still and its not enough to top up the group with.

Ive also been getting agro using the spell on the puller in group content, thought its not ment to generate agro ?

Ive also been getting agro using the spell on the puller in group content, thought its not ment to generate agro ?

Are you within aggro range?

Aye we where all in agro range, but only spell i cast was that and bam started smacking me, will test it again could be just unlucky

I personally enjoy this spell and so does the "death" group I usually am in raids with (nickname for I am with 3 wizards, 1 mage, and 1 necro/bard, enough aggro no??)

This spell heals extremely well when it lands on someone with 1% health (so far with max healing AAs, I have had 11-13k heals, and even a 22k heal). It's not a group heal, it's a rescue from near death. The AA's make it a very fast cast, and lower the recast timer.

If I ever manage to get this spell, I'll let you know.

Right now it seems to be another 500 missions to get faction to get the spells. Believe it or not, I'm still not Ally with Buried Sea, which is quite funny since most of the spells there are now useless because we have better ones.

There is something wrong when someone who plays a reasonable amount of time is unable to get a spell before it becomes obsolete. I guess if you don't grind out playing this game for 6 hours a day, every day for nine months, you don't deserve spells, at least that seems to be what SOE thinks.

I can only hope the SoF faction is much easier to get than the TBS faction because otherwise I will get Survival of the Fittest just two days before it is replaced with the upgraded version with the next expansion.

took me about 6 hours is all to get the new survival of the fittest rk 2. its pretty easy if you follow this thread :

http://www.thedruidsgrove.org/eq/forums/showthread.php?t=16428

if you are on the bertoxx server by chance send me a tell..i'd be glad to help.

Yeah Fangbreakers faction is definitely one of the easier factions to raise. I teamed up with a paladin and made it to kindly within a few days. I recently got this spell and am enjoying it very much. It has already come in handy numerous times for me. I have long envied clerics "Oh ****!" group heal, and I think this helps fill that role well for us in a group setting.

It can be frustrating when grouped with a shaman though, and the shaman uses his version (Ancestral Guard?) the same time you use Survival which essentially ends up wasting one. I'm trying to decide if it would be worth making a hotkey message for it, but the casting time is so fast there wouldn't be time to interrupt I don't think.

On the survival of the fittist spell, what makes it cast at the different values, isn't it dependant on the targets health and the lower the health the bigger the heal? I could not find anything on this.

According to Fenier in the NDA Lifted post

Now, how the health triggers work:

The spell will not heal anyone over 65% health - this is by design and to prevent the tool from developing uses other then the intended one.

So, using rank 1 values:

Between 55 and 65% = 1285
Between 45 and 55% = 2570
Between 35 and 45% = 3854
Between 25 and 35% = 5139
Below 25% = 6424

Each of these can be modified by Focii and AA per cast.

And according to Allah's
Rk 1
1: Increase Hitpoints by 1285
2: Increase Hitpoints by 2570
3: Increase Hitpoints by 3854
4: Increase Hitpoints by 5139
5: Increase Hitpoints by 6424

Rk 2
1: Increase Hitpoints by 1393
2: Increase Hitpoints by 2787
3: Increase Hitpoints by 4180
4: Increase Hitpoints by 5574
5: Increase Hitpoints by 6967

Rk 3
1: Increase Hitpoints by 1454
2: Increase Hitpoints by 2908
3: Increase Hitpoints by 4361
4: Increase Hitpoints by 5815
5: Increase Hitpoints by 7269

Also the extra ranks of aa reduce the cast time and lowers the recast delay:


Rank 1 Drops the Cast time to .9 seconds and 2.5 minutes recast
Rank 2 Drops the Cast time to .7 seconds and 2.0 minutes recast
Rank 3 Drops the Cast time to .5 seconds and 1.5 minutes for recast timer.

Any druids on AB had this drop yet? I've killed many, many mulches and no luck yet

Do the faction instead mate. Much faster then farming it :P I think i did my faction in something like 12 hours put together.

I love this spell although some don't appreciate you letting them get so low in health and appearing to do nothing. If I am ever grouped with clerics I am sad inside because either never let anyone get low enough to make it worthwhile or they piss on my parade with arb :cry:

Solution
Step 1: Kill the cleric
Step 2: No need for more steps

honestly, i'd really prefer a single target version of this. i normally use it to save 1 person, not the whole group. it's a lot of mana for one person.

Not me. I don't always have the person targetted that needs emergency healing, and helps to not have to worry about targetting when a heal is needed fast.

Now, if we could get the cast time on Adrenaline Surge/Swell reduced so that it would actually function as an emergency heal, that would be great...

I was under the impression that they run on different recast timers, making it easy to cycle them. I'm only 79 atm so I haven't gotten it but this is just what I've heard. But that aside, I would still go for a single target Survival of the Fittest!

For me, I use this spell most of the time as an emergency heal on one person, and prefer it to remain a group spell becuase I do use it sometimes as a group heal when all members of the group are lowish on hp.

I would'nt like a single target version for the same reasons as palarran, no need to target the person so shaves that little extra time off to get the heal in.

The mana expended is actually in line with this working on a single target, and I think that's what it was designed for. Your chanter suddenly starts taking a massive beating while you have the MT targetted. Targetting the chanter then healing takes too long, but you have SoTF, so you just hit your SoTF and half a second later your chanter gets a fat heal. Or...your a druid and just can't catch a break with crits and can't keep up with a named mob's dps in Crys. Heal hits, tank gets 4k healed, then immediately that's gone and he's down to 20% again. Spells refresh, SotF is your only shot, and bam, 12k heal or a true complete heal if it crits and you are back on top of things for normal heals. I use it all the time, but have only had it hit more than 1 person once or twice when some retard touches a trapped chest or something.

Since the spell right now is intended to be used mostly as a single target spell without the requirement to target, I doubt that a new single target spell would change in mana expended substantially.

The only benefit I see a single target version having is that you'd be able to use it on someone outside of your group (like the mt on a raid).

This spell is pretty amazing if you get into situations where you whole group takes a huge amount of damage to put them under 20-30%, iv had this happen about 3-4 times on raids and iv had 2x where iv had this spell crit for HUGE amounts of healing, i think that the first time was for 85k worth of healing total on the group, and the second time being 105k worth of healing on the group, with the high crits being about 25-26k. I think it is a great spell.

I also did get the rank 1 of this spell then upgraded to rank 2 when it droped.