I will probably never give up my 100 druid. It has been my main for ~13 years now. But that's mainly stubbornness on my part. My advice to a new player would be to not make one. Every other class can bring more to the table, and most of it better than we can; even if you factor in healer merc stupidity. That still puts you as last choice among the priest classes. So the real question you need to ask yourself is how attached you are to your druid?
I am not sure of the connection between " takes 4 months to level to 100 " and " Druids are still a viable class "...esp with a class that can solo. Being complacent when their are glaring issues is the best way to make sure they never get fixed...then again I am sure most druids have just given up on being fixed.
There are way fewer "issues" in EQ than the complainers would have us believe. Ask any older EQer how long it took to get to 65 when it was the cap...much longer than 4 months. If you want instant gratification, I would suggest WOW. I think that EQ is balanced. It is playable AND fun. I love EQ just as it is. I don't think that all classes need all abilities. This is what will ruin a game. The fact that wizzys have the best nuke, clerics the best heal and shamans and druids the best utility is what keeps me coming back. All classes can do all things? Why not just have one class? Oh, and I for one don't think that druids are broken. They don't need to be "fixed".
You are clearly missing the point. The ability for a class that can solo, to level up fast in today's EQ has ~nothing~ to do with a class being viable. Heck, I would be tempted to say 4 months is slow for a person to reach 100. I am not asking for instant gratification. I do not think that was even brought up. I dunno where that came from. What "best utility" do druids bring? Ports? (lolguild hall) Tracking? ( other classes do this better ) Buffs? ( other classes do this better ) Attk debuffs? ( Druids have had to carry a spread sheet around for years to show other people they actually do something ) Root? ( other classes do it better ) Snare? ( ok, I think you got me on this one ) Damage shield? ( other classes do it better ) Fire resist debuff ( got me here, too ) Being "playable AND fun" does not equal balanced. No one is asking for all classes to have all abilities. Long story short, you made a big post about stuff no one really brought up..unless I missed something. I will stand by my orginal point of druids are extremely broken in certain areas ( can't recover after a rez, unlike a shaman/cleric/necro/enchanter/wiz/magician )..and that there isn't any reason on a raid for multiple druids unless: a) you dont have enough clerics b) your raid isn't full But go ahead and say the weather is fine, when its storming out. That is the best way to make sure that druids remain severely broken in certain regards. Don't get me wrong, I loved playing my druid and the options it gave me. I never thought I'd reroll after a decade or so of the same toon with exactly zero alts ever over the level of 50. Unfortunately, I liked trying to high end raid too much. If you aren't already established or willing to server transfer, you can be completely out of luck as a druid. This should not be the case.
You forgot.... We can dive into the bushes (aka... fade) while running We can make it stop raining (without batteries!) I disagree on buffs. Skin+Symbol/AC is more hp/ac than the equivalent cleric only buff. We may not buff the best, we just make other buffs better. To me a druid is the non-melee version of a bard, the jill-of-all-trades. We can nuke when we need to, dot when we need to, heal when we need to, charm when we need to (hello Grelleth rats!) or buff/debuff when we need to. We can AE mez (ok, as long as mobs can be snare/rooted), go places the guild hall portal can only dream about, and be the last one standing when the rest of the raid wipes (a;though the leader will yell at you to click off DA so the event resets.) Most other classes are limited to doing "something" while we can do "anything". Oh, and we never, ever, ever will see "You are low on food..." Fun.
If you want to be the best at ONE of the following areas: Buffing, Debuffing, Burst Damage, Damage Over Time, Healing, or Utility, do not play a Druid. If you want to be very good (but not the best) at ALL of them, Druid FTW! If your raids consist of 54 players who all show up for every single raid, and are all similarly well played, then yes, you could get by pretty easily with just one Druid (or just one of ANY class other than Cleric or maybe Warrior). If not, the flexibility of Druids is fantastic for filling in holes and switching roles.
Yeah, do not play a druid if you want never to have to switch your role/playstyle situationally. It will drive you crazy. If you like being very strong at adapting, definitely do consider a druid. The mana issues after being rezed are a rather obscure part of the class, and not one that I really feel entitled to speak all that much about. (If my druid dies in group content it pretty much means the party is already wiped and done or I did something REALLY dumb with overnuking.) On a raid I would think it just means your clerics need to have plans set up in advance to help out druids who go down during fights, or that you'd gravitate toward sticking your druids in groups with a bard so that Crescendo and Reflexive Retort mana restores (on top of a mod rod click) can be applied to get a downed druid functioning again in a hurry. (That's what I've gathered from my experiences playing a bard and a druid and from reading others' posts on the forums.) The class having a weakness at recovering from death without outside help may be a weakness by design. It's certainly very good at preventing death in a variety of contexts (heals, Preincarnation, etc.) and has good overall mana efficiency when healthy thanks to the white wolf/black wolf AA lines.
If only we were to casters what bards were to melee, or casters... I think a better comparison would be we are the caster version of shaman, with worse buffs and no haste or slow and no armour or pet... Enchanters are the caster version of bards, although also weaker than they should be... I have to agree with Tarrin here... Druids are overly weak compared to all other classes... Being the Jack/Jill of all trades doesn't really mean anything when you are 20 to 90pct of all the trades(90pct being the buffless armourless healer)... Our restrictions and situational problems are overwhelming, especially to a new or returning player... Just to "get by" as a druid you need to be sensational... The only way to overcome your class limitations is to know more and play better than everyone else! A new or returning player is in for an enourmous amount of grief if they can't adapt to what they need to do to "get by" as a druid. It is so disheartening to see my raid-geared druid take more(max!) damage from all mobs than my HoT group geared chanter or shaman. Part of any progressive MMO is to make your character better by upgrading it, but you can throw AC and half of the other parts of EQ out when you play a druid. We take more damage than anyone else. Thus my advice still stands, if you are a returning player, my question to you is "How attached are you to your druid?" If you are a new player, my advice to you is to play a melee character or a mage/necro. The ups and downs of the different melee classes are minute compared to the disparity among casters/priests.
So your post should have been titled "Why has EQ turned into a simple slugfest?" since that is your issue? What is the question here? Hybrid melee don't appear to have much of a function these days? Is that referring to your druid? They are hybrid melee? Thought druids were a caster class...priest to be specific. Is this another "I can't find groups" thread hidden under a poor title? As for killing mobs slowly...welcome to solo mode. Try molo mode or even the rarely seen group mode. Might help speed up your grind. Get in a group...your a healer...you can heal your group while they kill things...and if you can toss a few nukes or dots on things while you do it great... Back in the 65-70 range druids were pullers and healers in the group in WoS. Yep...pullers...and healers. Learn how to heal...max your healing AAs...then max your "dps" AAs...and get in groups. Or max your "dps" AAs, solo, and complain in the forums that killing is so slow compared to class "x"...
A druid (forget gear) takes more damage from all mobs than a chanter or shaman? Wow...what a meaningless statement. Do all toons have max resists? Are all toons the same level? Do all toons have the defensive AAs finished? Go park that druid and chanter out in a field next to each other and let us lob shells at both of them and test this theory out...to see which one dies first from damage. Make sure the toons have no gear or buffs at all to make it 'fair'....ok? What a joke...
(This was written in reply to porky's post.) I developed a druid as my second main when I was a returning player during SoF/SoD. I flatly disagree with the above depiction of the class as some horrible mishmash that you can't do anything with unless you're an exceptional player. The only "core competency" type of thing that I would suggest for playing a druid is that the player be creative and adaptable enough to create a battle strategy using a variety of (at first glance) seemingly unrelated tools. Druids don't come packaged as a coherent kit of abilities that you can consistently use in every situation and have it work well (let alone optimally). That isn't their game. Their game is a necessarily creative one. That style of play isn't for everyone. It's for people whose personalities mesh well with it (and for people within a certain spectrum or "range" from that sort of ideal point, to where they can still enjoy it and grow in the direction of liking it better). I'm guessing that a lot of creative "feeler" types (in the Meyers-Briggs / Jungian typology sense of the word) made up a lot of the druid class population back when EQ was young, and I'm quite sure of this because of the rather large number of druids I would see run around newbie areas gleefully buffing and assisting newbies and sharing their knowledge, loot, and nostalgia with them. They were also the kinds of people who probably took the initial steps toward figuring out effective quad kiting / root rotting strategies and other such things that were (once upon a time) nifty and creative tricks, rather than the by-the-book industry for exp grinding they went on to become. I don't think creative feelers make up most of the people who still play the druid class now though (most of those people moved on to other games after EQ got stale to them -- that's just the nature of how things go). I fall more within its target audience than most people do, and as a result I find it easy to fall in love with the class as it is. If you want a healer that is coherent from the get-go and can be played in a straightforward fashion to great success while still having enough brute force to get through emergencies, a cleric is definitely for you. If you want something that's somewhere in between the cleric and the druid's extremes, play a shaman -- you can never go wrong with playing a shaman, as they always have SOMETHING they can do in a difficult situation, even if it's just cannibalizing for more mana while they think of what to do next. Regarding new players... I'd actually say a druid is one of the better classes in the game for a brand new player to learn the game with - because it introduces them to a variety of EQ's offensive, defensive, and utility mechanics, as well as making transportation much faster (which is something that a lot of new players have a very low tolerance for, due to being accustomed to Fast Travel and other travel-quickening features from games that they already play). Even if they don't settle on druid as a main, trying the class to level 10 or 20 or so is apt to give them a clue what aspects of the gameplay they'd actually prefer to focus on. (Btw, I'm not just blowing smoke with that claim. In the last few years I've taught the game to a total of four brand new players, all of whom I know offline, so I've had some time to reflect on matters like this, and to see what EQ looks like to someone who hasn't been with it for years and years -- it's been an interesting lesson in understanding how people think about games and why they think in the ways they do.)
I'm with Darzag. I have three accounts and two druids so far. I play a 100 Druid, 100 Bard, 100 Mage set up when I'm in the mood for newer zones and I play a 78 Druid, 79 Necromancer and 78 Enchanter when I'm in the mood for older content. Any trio I put together would most definitely have a druid in it. I can't stand not having the port spells (yes I know there are other ways to get around, but the port spells combined with all the other options a druid brings to the group are what imho make it the perfect support to any combination). I don't raid any more though, haven't for years. I'm only talking about what a druid brings to my experience. I wouldn't want to be without one in a group.
