baby steps isnt enough , they need to grow some balls and fix us.

Its been said a million times over the last couple years that our problems all stem from loss of functional utility in our spell set. The devs seems to just outright refuse to correct this and everytime they supposedly try to they just make it worse by piling on more crap that is almost alwats so situational its downright silly.

For instance the healing situation:

Druids en masse complain we do not have sufficient healing capabilities. Members of other classes have even come here stating this and those that havent have been voting with their invite buttons.

We are told our debuffs are to be considered part of our healing package as a damage preventive and is/should be equal to slow.

Parses start filling these thread showing fully debuffed mobs still putting out significantly higher dps then those slowed. However with less spikes. ok at least it does make damage more easily manageable many of us are willing to agree with this however due to the effects subtleness its not something thats going to help us int he group world because we now need to convince everyone that despite a having a much less visual effect it does have an equal effect..., yeah right.

Even allowing that the above is true druids complain that this still lands them ina situation where due to mob dps output in general we do not have time to fully debuff mobs while healing and ask for debuff consildation.

Then we are told that we are not supposed to be able to use all our debuffs in a group situation in groups 1 should be enough. So basically here your spells ..dont use them. yeah right. Nevermind the fact that there is no one druid debuff that on its own is going to reduce incoming damage equal to that of slow.

Now the answer comes to give us promised reknit, a delayed heal. Theory being cast this on tank on incoming then debuff and hopefully the delay heal will keep tank up untill the druid can get to healing.

Now to compuind this we have constantly been told that our tradeoff for our poor healing is in utility. Much of which has been handed off to everyone like many utility classes but we wont go there. where we will go is what a druid is generally expected to be able to do at any moment in a group:

heal : our healing kit in general atm consists of 5 spells - 6 with reknit... Adrenaline, puravida , group heal, survival , reptile and of course now reknit. Thats more then half our spells slots. As such spells become situational even if not by design. For instance I know many many druids that do not mem the group heal at all, many consider its minor healing power not worth and just use survival for when the halfling hits the fan. Also I dont think theres many out there bothering to load reptile on a general basis.

Debuff (which we've been told is part of the healing kit) this is another 5 spell situation though many consider it 4 as core and you will see all different combos from druid to druid. I usually try to have 2 up. one from fire and one from cold.

So considering debuff as part of our heal kit we can use the entire bar. Though I know none of us do because on top of that we're expected to be able to ...

Root/Snare/CC - At least the ensare AA is a nice help here. For the root portion we have all kinds of roots available. However I can not remember the last time I memmed one other then good old Savage roots. I can only afford 1 spell slot for this and savage roots remains the best all around. Sure spore spiral is chromatic , however short duration and the one thing that would make it worthwhile , the knockback, is a joke. The only other truly viable option is vinelash but it is so situational that I will never have this spell memmed in general. Though I wll admit to using it for a couple interesting situations a few times. The rest of the root spells arent really worth mentioning.

Another gripe that fits here is Harmony...that spell has just been nerfed to uselessness. I can not remember the last time I even used harmony. I dont even try anymore because everytime one tries to use it either your indoors(despite a sky above you often), or the mobs to high lvl (this is just about any mob not in a tier one noob area), or finally the mobs are to close for it to work anyway. Basically Ive found that if harmony will work to split ..then I can do it without it.

Then theres everyones favorate...

DPS .. and I have to admit when it comes to dps we have all kinds of nifty toys. The only thing Id really complain about in dps is we are way to reliant on fire when comparing the spells available to us. Where the problem lays here is ...we're out of friggin spell slots!

And now if it works out the way everyones talking we're gonna need more then just 1 nuke up at a time.

Funny thing is people keep askign about stances for druids... guess what we already have them via spell memorization limitations. It is no longer feesible for a druid to pull out the best he or she can do in a situation on the fly.

Thread is here: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=141274&