I hope to god Underfoot gives druids a healthy dps boost. It is sick to see the damage necros/mages/wizards and most meele do. I understand druids are a priest class therefore we arn't suppose to do the amount of damage casters can do, but would it kill a tree if we at least did enough so people would group with us?

I hope to god Underfoot gives druids a healthy dps boost. It is sick to see the damage necros/mages/wizards and most meele do. I understand druids are a priest class therefore we arn't suppose to do the amount of damage casters can do, but would it kill a tree if we at least did enough so people would group with us?

Apparently it does, see the nerf to the winter's flame line.

There is some small hope though that the developers see reason when they look at the figures Aeneras publishes about which classes are popular or not on the Mayong server and which retain their popularity toward higher levels. Druids score very very bad on the first and abysmal on the second (less than a third of the Druids that have at least been played some (gained one or more level) is still active by level 65, and that for a class that already started as third least popular.
Maybe the developers look at those numbers and realise they have 'balanced' the class right in the middle of the area where nobody sees any point of having them around.

My personal guess is that they only look at the last 5 levels, where indeed Druid healing has pretty much caught up with Clerics for bursts of healing activity at least and forget that the 80 levels before Druid healing is awful compared to Clerics, Shamen and mercenaries. And of course they seem to scale Druid dps to that of Clerics and forget that for a Cleric it is a means to solo while for Druids it is supposed to be part of their appeal to groups and raids. At the current level (and for the past many expansions) it is about as appealing as a Paladin's dps.
The current situation is that any situation where a mercenary is not sufficient you will need a Cleric as a Druid also will be unable to keep up. If you can make do with a merenary there are at least 10 classes that provide better dps than a Druid. Even with the pre-nerf 25-30 pct boost to our dps we barely topped a warrior in dps but even that apparently was totally unbalancing to the game and had to be adjusted immediately (never mind that the developers had been made aware of the effect of the spell damage modifiers in the SoD beta and at that time apparently were fine with it).

The irony of it all is that Druids have been changed gradually over the past 5 or so expansions to take over from the dwindling numbers of Clerics, only to see that their numbers plummet even faster thanks to being forced into a role and playstyle they did not chose.


Eri

Apparently it does, see the nerf to the winter's flame line.

There is some small hope though that the developers see reason when they look at the figures Aeneras publishes about which classes are popular or not on the Mayong server and which retain their popularity toward higher levels. Druids score very very bad on the first and abysmal on the second (less than a third of the Druids that have at least been played some (gained one or more level) is still active by level 65, and that for a class that already started as third least popular.
Maybe the developers look at those numbers and realise they have 'balanced' the class right in the middle of the area where nobody sees any point of having them around.

Mabye with a new lead producer you may get someone to listen. But wouldn't hold my breath, been told the new guy is even worse than Prathun. And his comments at Fan Fair and Hotzones leaves me to believe they (the communtity) are correct.

My personal guess is that they only look at the last 5 levels, where indeed Druid healing has pretty much caught up with Clerics for bursts of healing activity at least and forget that the 80 levels before Druid healing is awful compared to Clerics, Shamen and mercenaries. And of course they seem to scale Druid dps to that of Clerics and forget that for a Cleric it is a means to solo while for Druids it is supposed to be part of their appeal to groups and raids. At the current level (and for the past many expansions) it is about as appealing as a Paladin's dps.

Druid Rain - Cascading Hail Rk. II : Decrease Hitpoints by 2374 (Cold)

Mages - Rain of Molten Scoria Rk. II : Decrease Hitpoints by 2232 (Fire)
Shock of Discordant Steel Rk. II : Decrease Hitpoints by 4121 (Magic)

Are Rain spell is linked to Mages Rain (Fire) while their magic based nukes have increased considerably. Look at Mage spell linkage 61 - 65 for their AoE spells on Allah. Are spell DPS has been cripled while Mages have been able to unlink their magic based AoE spells. This allows them to weave their spells and so, even though are damage is linked, their spell DPS is no longer linked.

Druid -
Glaciating Crystals Rk. II - Decrease Hitpoints by 3842 (Ice)
Summer Solstice Rk. II - Decrease Hitpoints by 4471 (Fire)

Mage -
Shock of Discordant Steel Rk. II - Decrease Hitpoints by 4121 (Magic)
Torrid Sands Rk. II - Decrease Hitpoints by 2738 (Fire)

Again to show how are DD's are linked. It actually looks like we gained some in are Ice DD while Mages Fire has stagnated (interesting) but casting times are completely different allowing more weaving.

Shawmen can still out heal us at 85 if their are no adds in camp.

The current situation is that any situation where a mercenary is not sufficient you will need a Cleric as a Druid also will be unable to keep up. If you can make do with a merenary there are at least 10 classes that provide better dps than a Druid. Even with the pre-nerf 25-30 pct boost to our dps we barely topped a warrior in dps but even that apparently was totally unbalancing to the game and had to be adjusted immediately (never mind that the developers had been made aware of the effect of the spell damage modifiers in the SoD beta and at that time apparently were fine with it).

Are DPS has stunk sense PoP. We had the option when solo'ing to burn a mob down (inefficeint) or Root/Rot (efficient) and although took longer than the other solo'ing classes, was acceptable with the trade-off that we could heal. The gap widened in OoW as mages saw inproved pets (Finally) and HP inflation on NPC's. Again we accepted this cause are healing was efficient to get us in groups. Unfortunately are healing in raids began suffering so they gave us Group Heal (PoR) after Reptile (DoDh) became a bust and we abused it. Currently we still stink at healing except in Raids as T5 Merc's heal better than us (but not as smart or provide the utility) and can't be brought into raids.

The irony of it all is that Druids have been changed gradually over the past 5 or so expansions to take over from the dwindling numbers of Clerics, only to see that their numbers plummet even faster thanks to being forced into a role and playstyle they did not chose.

There is no Irony. We've taken the role of healers 'cause the community (Druid and "every other class") wanted an additional class who could heal so that a specific role wasn't being horded (i.e. There was only 1 reliable healing class at the time for high end content) and group make up could be more diverse. The problem is we lost diversity when our spell DPS remained linked to Mages, are healing linked to Cleric's, DoT's linked to Necro's, and Utility went down the crapper with NPC HP inflation (We did retain our Atk Debuff but becomes worthless in "fire zones")

No, our downfall is are own doing. The community (Driuds) didn't want to get pegged into "one hole" but instead of fighting to become unlinked from the other classes we continued squabbling about if we wanted "healing", "DPS" or "Utility" and what was most important. Most druids agreed we wanted "Utility" but the squabbling continued on how to achieve that.

So 85 levels later and the only Druids left are those who Raid 'cause their is no spot in groups for the casual PU druid (i.e. If its between a Druid and Class "x", your going to lose out if no one knows you and they have a healer)

Eri

Response in Red, was faster than cut paste.

Eri, some of the many issues I was whining about over the course of my eq career that was ignored. Issues like the hot at level 19, too close to celestial healing, clerics were issued. No idea what they changed the greater healing cap to on cleric from level 24. Issues like at level 29 druid/shaman greater healing capped out until level 51 with Superior healing, while clerics had there heals dropped in levels. I think they put Superior healing at 30 from 34 as well as the all time favorite cheal to 34 from 39. Meanwhile, druids and shamans at low level suffered until they got that quest heal in LOY.

No offense healing water just did not stack up well. The mini torpor with unmitigated slow might have been good for shaman though. Also, with temperance completely annihilating druid skin lines and stackability with symbols in the 1-60 game. Sadly, all the cleric utility clerics used to whine about, were fine pre level 60. Maybe, with the exception of the proc hammer should have had a scaling series in leveling.

Druid/ shaman regens from pop on did not stack as well as they did prior to pop. Damage shields, mage and druid failed to scale well. Druid attack debuffs took to long to stack on while attempting to main heal. Usually the mob was dead by the 3rd one on, or was going into flee mode, turned into raid mob bosses only kinda stuff. Things like how they nerfed the breath of karana(outdoor only) line of spells, and fury of air(I liked the 4 second stun it had on it), to bring it more in line with storm's fury, an indoor/outdoor spell with low damage, useful for gaters. I also liked the 4 second cast on scoriae. It was useful to chain with breath and rains for some nice burst damage as opposed to mashing moonfire or wildfire over and over approach. Making Harmony line completely useless post 65, plus, the wtf hit ranges on mobs nerfing pulling abilities.

After 58, the healing kind of adds up better, although, I am still miffed about nature's recovery, it was useful for 6 months or so. But, they could drop the requirements off tunare renewal/karana renewal for more of a straight critable heal. The healing was fine until 65 though. After that, well Gates was just embarrassing period. At 65-70 the heals start to suck again, I know I was still using slyvan infusion over the chlorobon or I would have. Not sure after that point cause I skipped out on my druid after that, lost way to much utility at that point.

But, I know one thing, in Seeds, I would feel very sorry for the level 70 druid, and the group, who tries to main heal that stuff in ocean green, you know the level 70-75 zone with the dain speed hitting 1900 hitters with 160k hit points. For more fun the 3k hitting named with 10k nukes were fun, while I did solo it in beta with a merc, I feel very sorry for the players trying to level up in that stuff.

But hell, Elidroth refused to let my slightly overgeared level 75 ranger tank that stuff in beta with a level 70 druid healer, opting for a bunch of 80's, for a level 70-75 zone, then, wonder why there is not a bunch of subs anymore, because they failed to maintain the low end game as well. That would be where I disagree with Abyssal, the devs spent way to much time forcing the game a simple tank and spank process, that they failed to take into consideration that the funnest parts of everquest was the random stuff you could do with your toolsets with random classes in random places.

quote"My personal guess is that they only look at the last 5 levels"

that is generally what they do, remember good old LDON? remember the level 20s that would not get a point for a successful completion? Remember they would outlevel the gear that would be upgrades for them because the points were out of whack?

quote"My personal guess is that they only look at the last 5 levels"

that is generally what they do, remember good old LDON? remember the level 20s that would not get a point for a successful completion? Remember they would outlevel the gear that would be upgrades for them because the points were out of whack?

Yup I rember that. (And its still that way today cause they refuse to tune older content. Heck, they could probally give the gear away but no one would take it cause they would want defiant instead.)

But hell, Elidroth refused to let my slightly overgeared level 75 ranger tank that stuff in beta with a level 70 druid healer, opting for a bunch of 80's, for a level 70-75 zone, then, wonder why there is not a bunch of subs anymore, because they failed to maintain the low end game as well. That would be where I disagree with Abyssal, the devs spent way to much time forcing the game a simple tank and spank process, that they failed to take into consideration that the funnest parts of everquest was the random stuff you could do with your toolsets with random classes in random places.

Amen :beerchug:

If soe doesn't fix our dmg in underfoot, through revamping current spells or giving us some dps spells druids will be done. It's so hard to get anything done as a druid unless you have a kind guild or a bunch of friends to help. DRUIDS ARE NOT WANTED IN ANY GROUPS! why cant sony figure this out?

I am a bit of a jaded gamer when it came to everquest. I played for awhile, quit before TSS, came back for legacy and gave it 4 months to show me it had something to offer me, before I left again. Sony are doing par for the course that they always have done. Remember these guys stuck players like me with the same gear for several years, take a look at stuff like golden leaf armor, look at the pop ornate armor. Same thing with focus effects and mods 2.keep in mind I define mods 2 as hitpoint/mana regen, attack, mods 3 would be shielding, spell damage, avoidance and the like. Stuff like coldain prayer shawls, oracle tunics, spirit wracked cords, 10th ring, would take forever to upgrade. Later, on they did the same with Omens tier one armor(a big screw Sony for putting Bps and legs on raid mobs that drop as good or better). I forget where the drop off would have been at, but, omens tier one group armor was as good if, not better than your average group armor well past TSS. Plus, things I am skipping.

They also hated buy/selling/trading aspects of the game, while not really, but, eventually the recommended and required levels on gear came into play way to much. They went nuts with attunables and no drops. They went with generic cultural toolsets to encourage tradeskilling, rather than to get creative with existing useless items and combos like velium ores. A newbie starting out had the same gear progression as your long term players did with little change in progression. They get their silver chitin wrists, blade of carnage, runebranded gridle, Tormax tradeables, vindi tradeable, they are good to go, that gear lasts a long time.


Also, keep in mind druids could solo very well in a variety of ways, porcupine tanking, quading, root/rot, root bomb, dot kiting, snare bombs, charm, plus some. They hated soloing, it didn't matter that players played off peak hours with no one to group with at 3 am in the morning US time.

They took alternate abilities and made them required abilities, never mind the fact that alternate abilities is really where Eq went wrong. Plus the subs/new player rate began to slow up during Luclin. You might say, it killed the replay aspects of eq, the leveling, goofing around in fun zones, alts lack of players for low end players to play with, and stuff in favor of the "main character". Flagging mechanics that make you want to rip out a dev's throat for trying to get you to replay flagging events over and over on your alts, backflagging applicants, backflagging guildies, cockblocking other guilds, for access to decent exp zones, loot zones.

Crap like gates of discord, where you try and try and try to find something about that expansion to make it redeemable. A high end grouper only had 100 to all resists tops. Stuff like chaos claws just tore through people. Nothing says we hate you than sticking 2 clerics(to assist the main healer and backup ress) in a group with 2 warriors(because your tank will drop, pallies and sks were not required. although some groups would go warrior, pally, druid cleric) because it was that bad. Plus, nothing quite like losing 50% of the player base at the time. Making whatever random named summon later and stuff to discourage anyone from trying to have any kind of fun in that expansion.

There is just to much to mention. And that is before class balancing, nerfed abilities, and random things. Last I knew, eq had around 72k subs left. With the layoffs Sony had, means it dropped below 50k. When it gets to 30k subs, you won't get anymore expansions to worry about.

Ok well untill they stop pushing expansions i would still like some sort of a adjustment to the class in the dps area

Ya, sorry Lolly, everquest is a game I wouldn't mind playing again, provided the devs can make some decent fun content, at least what I would call fun content. Beta for underfoot is coming up soon. But, I would rather the devs put the utility back into druids instead of them locking them into you are healer, or you are crap dps. I would rather have you with a good mixture of both, as well as stuff to do on the side, pulling, crowd control, buffing more than 1 useful buff, evacs and stuff.

I am a bit of a jaded gamer when it came to everquest. I played for awhile, quit before TSS, came back for legacy and gave it 4 months to show me it had something to offer me, before I left again. Sony are doing par for the course that they always have done. Remember these guys stuck players like me with the same gear for several years, take a look at stuff like golden leaf armor, look at the pop ornate armor. Same thing with focus effects and mods 2.keep in mind I define mods 2 as hitpoint/mana regen, attack, mods 3 would be shielding, spell damage, avoidance and the like. Stuff like coldain prayer shawls, oracle tunics, spirit wracked cords, 10th ring, would take forever to upgrade. Later, on they did the same with Omens tier one armor(a big screw Sony for putting Bps and legs on raid mobs that drop as good or better). I forget where the drop off would have been at, but, omens tier one group armor was as good if, not better than your average group armor well past TSS. Plus, things I am skipping.

They also hated buy/selling/trading aspects of the game, while not really, but, eventually the recommended and required levels on gear came into play way to much. They went nuts with attunables and no drops. They went with generic cultural toolsets to encourage tradeskilling, rather than to get creative with existing useless items and combos like velium ores. A newbie starting out had the same gear progression as your long term players did with little change in progression. They get their silver chitin wrists, blade of carnage, runebranded gridle, Tormax tradeables, vindi tradeable, they are good to go, that gear lasts a long time.


Also, keep in mind druids could solo very well in a variety of ways, porcupine tanking, quading, root/rot, root bomb, dot kiting, snare bombs, charm, plus some. They hated soloing, it didn't matter that players played off peak hours with no one to group with at 3 am in the morning US time.

They took alternate abilities and made them required abilities, never mind the fact that alternate abilities is really where Eq went wrong. Plus the subs/new player rate began to slow up during Luclin. You might say, it killed the replay aspects of eq, the leveling, goofing around in fun zones, alts lack of players for low end players to play with, and stuff in favor of the "main character". Flagging mechanics that make you want to rip out a dev's throat for trying to get you to replay flagging events over and over on your alts, backflagging applicants, backflagging guildies, cockblocking other guilds, for access to decent exp zones, loot zones.

Crap like gates of discord, where you try and try and try to find something about that expansion to make it redeemable. A high end grouper only had 100 to all resists tops. Stuff like chaos claws just tore through people. Nothing says we hate you than sticking 2 clerics(to assist the main healer and backup ress) in a group with 2 warriors(because your tank will drop, pallies and sks were not required. although some groups would go warrior, pally, druid cleric) because it was that bad. Plus, nothing quite like losing 50% of the player base at the time. Making whatever random named summon later and stuff to discourage anyone from trying to have any kind of fun in that expansion.

There is just to much to mention. And that is before class balancing, nerfed abilities, and random things. Last I knew, eq had around 72k subs left. With the layoffs Sony had, means it dropped below 50k. When it gets to 30k subs, you won't get anymore expansions to worry about.

Wow, didn't think anyone actually payed attention to the state of the game like that. I do but am called a :cry: cause I remember what we used to be able to do and asking for it back gets me called names.

Problem is I was a team player. Sure I soloed, and soloed alot. The things I liked to do in Everquest were team oriented. I could care less about my dps or whatever so long as I was fullfilling my role as a team player. What the devs in Eq did was to forego all the team oriented activities I enjoyed doing as a druid or a ranger. My druid, I outlined above, minus quite a few things, which would take up alot of space. My ranger on the other hand, would take up the above amount of posting space, plus some of all the techniques I used as a ranger.

Unfortunately, the devs favored the mob inflation tank and spank with one tank method, leaving little room for error. Effectively killing many fun techniques in the game, like the warrior/ranger duo, bouncing aggro off each other using the ranger regen to fight for several hours. They also favored dreadlands 2.0, dreadlands 3.0, dreadlands 4.0 and so on styles of zone design. They killed the misfit groups, where a bunch of non ideal random classes get together and fight things in various ways, in favor of the tank and spank method. Just so much toolsets of various classes, just out the window, to limit the gameplay exprience, complete waste in my opinion.

Here it is awhile later, poor Lolly, amongst other druids, is wanting a dps increase, for the nerf earlier. Deservedly so, along with all the druid abilities neglected over the years. Don't take that as a slight Lolly as I want you to have fun and get what you wanted. And yes Abyssal, it does suck to be called that, particularly the direction the early game of Eq was to where it is now.

I hope to god Underfoot gives druids a healthy dps boost. It is sick to see the damage necros/mages/wizards and most meele do. I understand druids are a priest class therefore we arn't suppose to do the amount of damage casters can do, but would it kill a tree if we at least did enough so people would group with us?
Most people would not group with us in higher group content cause our DPS is too low and our heals are not good enough. We only could benefit as 2nd patch healer (that's the last spot in a group).

Make your own group :)

Do any of you regret making a Druid and taking it to high levels? I do not have time to reinvest and reroll and new main. Too many years were invested in my Druid.
Looking back to the beginning, I was so proud to be able to solo and do my thing, yet when a group needed me I was there to assist with buffs, heals and nukes.
Remember when our ports were soooooooo much needed in the game?
Then came higher end content and I realize I should have been a Wizard.
I could have solo'd, yet I would be helpful in groups.
Well............I am sure others out there regret it.
But i had such a dislike for Monks and Rogues, just hated the game play of those classes. Clerics to me was just heal/heal/heal/ And Warriors were boring.
SK's and Necro's too evil for my liking................so deep down, I may not regret it as much as I think I do.
I still love the class deep down.

I enjoy my dru, although nowadays he is only lvl 77.
I can still solo, help group members, or participate in raids.

Now admittedly, I am no end game player...but I have been playing since 2003.

I have 6 toons that are between level 75 and 80 and maybe that changes my attitude, but I can never understand all the naysaying that goes on about the druids, or the classes, or the game.

I play my toons, do quests, help others do quests, gather stuff, sell stuff and really enjoy what my $15/month buys me.

When I don't enjoy it anymore maybe I will become jaded.

Anyways...

Do any of you regret making a Druid and taking it to high levels? I do not have time to reinvest and reroll and new main. Too many years were invested in my Druid.
Looking back to the beginning, I was so proud to be able to solo and do my thing, yet when a group needed me I was there to assist with buffs, heals and nukes.
Remember when our ports were soooooooo much needed in the game?
Then came higher end content and I realize I should have been a Wizard.
I could have solo'd, yet I would be helpful in groups.
Well............I am sure others out there regret it.
But i had such a dislike for Monks and Rogues, just hated the game play of those classes. Clerics to me was just heal/heal/heal/ And Warriors were boring.
SK's and Necro's too evil for my liking................so deep down, I may not regret it as much as I think I do.
I still love the class deep down.

I'll never "regret" my Druid. I still hope some day Sony will wake up and bring the power back to the class that inflation has ruined. Am I frustrated that Root/Rotting and Root/Nuke are so ineffective that you could just puke.....YUP but I'll keep my druid until they delete her off the server. But I have found I like the Beastlord class and been experimenting with a few other classes including a Wizzard and Necromancer. All 3 have abilities we used to be able to adequately preform before inflation.

I enjoy my dru, although nowadays he is only lvl 77.
I can still solo, help group members, or participate in raids.

Now admittedly, I am no end game player...but I have been playing since 2003.

I have 6 toons that are between level 75 and 80 and maybe that changes my attitude, but I can never understand all the naysaying that goes on about the druids, or the classes, or the game.

I play my toons, do quests, help others do quests, gather stuff, sell stuff and really enjoy what my $15/month buys me.

When I don't enjoy it anymore maybe I will become jaded.

Anyways...
Many players have become jaded even though we enjoy the game. We have been lied to so often that the developers aren't even able to keep their own lies striaght. When the player base has to do the job of the developers 'cause they spend more time spending our money on CEO's than on fixing the game. And when they do "fix" the game, it's often requires more fixing to correct the "fix." There are a few good developers left in EQ, but most have jumped ship, leaving for greener pastures.

I'm sure their our individuals out there who want to improve the game and probally would be quite succesful but as long as Sony developers have this "idea" that class balance is imperative, items require no drop, recomended levels, and required levels, and an ability is "too powerful" with out giving support for that descion, you end up with a poor product.

Yes, by being over reactive they avoid some problems, but they cause far greater harm by limiting classes and their interaction with others. The test server and Beta is supposed to weed out many of these problems, not the developers. If a problem slips through all of that, then yes, they have the right to remove it from the live servers. But by being the Gustapo police force, they have limited any creativity that the developers they hire can preform.

What Abyssal said. Rather than list every issue I had with Everquest and the developers, that would take a couple pages. Many of us became jaded during Luclin. When you consider that Luclin was largely unitemized, unfinished, bugged and broken all to hell for a good six months, plus they gave us aa points. Now aa points were not a completely bad thing, but, the continued inflation of aa's was an issue. One of the bad things with aa's was the fact the low end game became non existent with the focus of the one main character.

Which of course was made worse with the flags of Planes of Power. Also, with the shift to planes of power style of combat where as before, low hit point, low hitting mobs swarming the crap out of you style of gameplay as opposed to the one mob with a high hit table with more hit points approach that gives up alot of exprience. As well as the centralized locations, ease of use, PoP zones. Where as before you had tons of content to use from vanilla, kunark, velious, luclin. In short from the swarms of mobs to interact with various class toolsets, I actually as a druid, used to use my area of effect spells on occasion in group play, not to be confused with ae groups nor soloing, to the shift of one boring mob, just don't die, tank and spank.

Many casuals were pissed about being locked out of 2/3rds of the planes of power expansion intially. Where as before you might have a few key quests for stuff like howling stones and sebilis. While the keys were not that difficult in nature, I can speak from exprience on this one, keying up a 40+ person guild as a tracker, royally sucked. Plus, if they had gotten the 7th hammer to work right, you as a casual, were going to have to raid, just for a couple of exprience zones. That isn't even going into the high end raiding issues at that time. That was a process years in the making before the Gates of Discord fiasco.

quote"I'll never "regret" my Druid. I still hope some day Sony will wake up and bring the power back to the class that inflation has ruined. Am I frustrated that Root/Rotting and Root/Nuke are so ineffective that you could just puke"

Stuff like this as well. Charm soloing before the resist changes during luclin were virtually non existent. Sure it was fun to charm a griffon and pwn a hill giant on occasion, but, as a exp path, well, you died, alot. With mobs in sod having 160k+ hit points effectively kills those tactics. As well as quad kiting. Even kiting. The early days of Eq had a variety of tactics to employ such as my favorite playstyle for a druid, the battle druid. I would fire up a damage shield, use my regens, break out the stick and board, or scimmy and board, hell even a 2 hander, alternate between nukes, dots, heal myself and rock out on mobs in melee. That really ticked off warriors when I did it in front of them. Many people didn't understand what Nature Walkers Behest was for, even most druids. Cubby the gimp bear was there to improve your melee that trailed off from melee classes after level 30 or so, with savage spirit.

Much like how shammies got by with their slow, their haste, dots, and spank with their pet. As well as clerics with their gimp hammer pet, stuns, reverse damage shields, later with the proc hammer. The fun parts of a druid was the 101 ways to kill a mob you had going for you.

Hello everyone. I used to be an advanced non raiding druid... and I agree with all you say above.
In the past I used to have heated discussions on this site, with the raiding druid elite .. I think they did not see what the gameplay at casual level was ..

The core of the druid experience was for me the amazing sense of freedom that the class gave me .. charm kiting in east karana, duoing with a bard in the commons, selling in EC, porting, making friends everywere, offering help to the local campers and being welcome most of the time. I was playing usually to have an hour fun, sometimes just to kill a couple rockhoppers. The entire server was my guild ..

POP was a shock, it was the first expansion I preordered.. and such a disappointment to be unable to solo .. not even group meaningful content that I quit playing for a couple years.

Came back for OOW, stayed for another 4 expansions playing intensely and doing a hard worked catchup... doing all the missions cycles to gain +30% focii, tradeskilled focii, getting a 110 ac shield with ac implants. Took 2 years of group contents, many attempts, 1000 aas,countless hours to feel that my druid was viable again. At 70 I could be a gimp tank for a group in MPG again, I could root rot, charm kite again, heal decently and duo. I was a druid again!. Then the raise to level 75 and 80 came after.. and being again unable to be accepted in groups has been a killing blow for my beloved drood..

No I would not choose any other class. My druid has given me emotions and memories I still hold in my hearth .. fearful runs through nektulus forest.. solo camps for my epic leafblower..and they will be lost, in time, like memory contents in dynamic RAM chips.

I wouldn't choose another class either. I started right after Planes of Power, and stopped around The Buried Sea. I left for two years, but have recently returned with renewed interest. Yes, there are some changes I'd like to see in our class, but overall, I love being a druid!!