Should specialization affect the amount of damage you do, or damage on others that you heal? Say, if you are an Alteration specialized Druid and your NI does base 1750 should it heal more and perhaps even cast quicker because of your specialization? I know you can influence your character by using focus items but I’m talking about something more here.

I’m looking for a way to renew the Evocation Druid.
pub149.ezboard.com/fthedr...=511.topic (http://pub149.ezboard.com/fthedruidsgrovefrm30.showMessage?topicID=511.topic )

Might not be a good idea but I can’t help but think about such things.

I was a straggler, I finally moved from evocation to alteration 3 weeks or so ago. It's sorta pointless in my level of the game to have cheaper casting nukes sometimes. However, it is the opposite with heals, if specialization allows me to cast even as little as 2 more NI's with my mana pool, I'm happy.

It's sad, but for the most part the days of an evocation druid are gone, unless they aren't raiders.

I raid, and still cast a lot of evocation spells.

A lot depends on the druid and the guild and whether you get plugged into a healing role. If I were stuck using all my mana for NI for each and every raid, I'd shoot my computer and go play golf....:)

*shrugs*

evo based druid here in an elemental guild. I rarely am responsible for true spot heals. More buffing, Sotw, debuffing and nukes/heal.


I do not regret going to evo one bit.

In Elemental guild here and im basicly CH chain or spot healing on all raids, sometimes can nuke, but generally i prefer the healer role anyway to being a nuker.

Yep, about half of us still prefer to nuke, and half still prefer to heal. Nothing new here.

<em>Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.</em>

I was evo for a long time (Dec 99 - a week ago), but now that 90% of my soloing is using charm and 90% of my role in a group is healing and now that we actually have significant heals, I finally made the switch.

Snares, roots, ports, heals, strength buffs, charm... the vast majority of our spells are alt based. Back when I quadded and back when our nukes were close to wizzies and our healing was a joke, it made sense to specialize in evo, but now unless you solo alot and quad when you do it, I just don't see evo as worth it.

I went over to alteration by personal choice just because I thought the application of a specialization was more important to healing than nuking and the fact that I had been more of a nuker before that(I wanted a change). Lo and behold I use it a lot now for patch healing during raids and primary healer in groups.

ccLothar says: Should specialization affect the amount of damage you do, or damage on others that you heal?

How would this new ability to apply to skills that don't apply or remove damage (basically everything other than nuke/DoT and heal)?

And why would SoE want to give us new abilities for free, when they can add them as AAs and force us to grind through more tedious XP?

I think we're more likely to see further enhancements to the HA/SCF line of AAs.

I dunno, Tudamorf. It was a wandering thought. A way to separate healer druids from nuker druids. The more I think about it, the more I dislike the idea now.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Should specialization affect the amount of damage you do, or damage on others that you heal?[/quote]

Such a change would have to apply to all classes, so in one quick change you do the following :

Every Wizard now nukes for more - all their nukes are Evoke, and I can't imagine a Wiz having any other spec even without this bonus.

Every Mage gets a boost to one of their two nuke lines... One line is Evoke, the other Conjuration and every mage specs in one of the two.

Every Cleric gets to heal for more...

Etc...

If the bonus is enough to be more than just a token gift (+1%), it <em>will</em> have serious effects on game balance.

BTW, to be fair, DoTs will have to either get extended durations or higher damage. Buffs will need to be either longer lasting or more effective. Every spell (except things like Gate, Bind Affinity, True North, Identify, etc) will need to have some sort of alteration.

I feel it's still your choice. My Time guild has about 5 active druids and only 2 of them are Alteration Specialists. I fully expect the other Evoc druids to be nuking more than myself and I'm sure they expect me to heal more.

I've always enjoyed my role as a druid because I have the luxury of filling whatever role is necessary. I just prefer to heal over nuking but that is just my preference. To each, their own.

Yeah, I'm needed to fill the spot healer/chain healer role most of the time, but that's not the reason I switched.

I switched because I never run OOM nuking, aggro limitations. I do however run OOM healing on an intensive raid.