If your raid lacks healing, druid is not the class you are looking for. The most you need in raid is 2-3 druids, that's all. There is a much higher need for the other healer classes. You assume wrong. And how is this even related to the topic of druid vs wizard desirability in raid? The OP asked about the current situation. The current situation is that wizard is the top dps class and any good guild with intelligent officers would want more than 2 wizards in their raid. Hence WIZ is more desirable in raids than DRU. We aren't talking about any dps class. And good WIZ is not easy to find at all. Good druids aren't easy to come by either, but you only need a couple of them.
good DPS classes are definatly not that easy to find... but then, good player in general are not that easy to find ; EQ is supposed to be a relaxing game older people can enjoy while drinking a beer or watching 'the voice'... and some people struggle with that rythm. Since wizard are currently at the top of the DPS chain ( or, tied with necro), there's no reason to limit yourselve to 2 wiz ( then again, seem like a large amount of wizard picked the class because it's super-easy to play, yet cannot outdo a merc...). I'm not quite sure I agree with the whole cleric dominance on the healing part... a druid is perfectly able to MT heal and don't suffer from the mana problem they used to before-bear ( I also assume fight don't last forever because the DPS is decent). Considering druid can throw black wolf to other group, i'd rather run with 6 druid 5 cleric instead of 3 druid 8 cleric... their nuke-heal also helps with sparx worker on tds5!
The design of the TDS raids pretty much obsoletes melee dps classes. At best, they can dps alongside the casters (but can't hope to top the parse). At worst, they get shafted by all the crazy anti-melee mechanics, auras and short range AEs and are better off staying away from the boss. If you replace all dps in your raid with wizards - you will completely trivialize Arx Mentis. There was 1 event that required some melee dps, but even that got nerfed and can be done with just tanks meleeing now. So yeah, wizards are highly desirable in TDS raids. The more the better. Druid is still a very important class for buffing and debuffing. ADPS (black wolf) is good, but the ADPS scene is completely dominated by enchanters now. And healing is dominated by clerics - that didn't change. In fact, the gap got wider. If you think that a druid 'is perfectly able to MT heal' - good luck with that in AM5. Watching those ROI twitch streams can be very educational: count the number of tank deaths. For comparison: with 9 clerics in raid, we were able to 1-tank both Calix and Lanys the other week (as in: neither the Calix nor the Lanys tank died even once during the event). A raid that has more druids than clerics is an aberration. So, druids are needed for buffs and debuffs, but they lose to other classes in healing, dps and adps, and therefore are not highly desirable. Having more than 2-3 druids in the raid instead of clerics or shamans lowers its efficiency.
I did take a look at your website for your guild recruiting is closed except for a healing class , as I said be for healing class much harder too find .....In my own guild what are we recruiting you guessed it healers , I bet if I check out most raiding guild websites they will be wanting healers also , that was my point very simple to understand ... And for the OP , I still stand by what I said be for , Druid is wanted more by most guilds .......And do you really think there is only one way too beat an event in EQ ? just because the top guilds do it one way does not mean all guilds will be able too .... Yimin
Yimin, I can't tell if your trolling purposely or not at this point. For your sake, I hope purposely, in either case; you're giving some terrible advice. Just because a guild is looking for a cleric, does not mean in any shape or form they are looking for a druid. To the OP, wizard by far in groups, wizard by far in raids, wizard by far while moloing and wizard by far when soloing.
We are recruiting a cleric, 1 cleric. Not 'a healing class', but specifically a cleric. And it does not mean that we are short on healers, nor that they are harder to find than casters. We raid with 8-9 clerics, so the need for that one class is much higher than any other. It's the very last recruitment position that we close, and only when we have too many people sitting on the bench. DRU recruitment in our guild has been closed since 2010. I am not kidding. We got 1 new druid recently via the 'superstar clause' (exceptionally good players of most classes are welcome to apply even when the recruitment is closed, but the bar is set really high). A good druid can outheal a mediocre cleric. But when both classes are played well, it's not even a contest. Again: there is a very limited need for druids in TDS raids, while the raid can benefit from any realistically possible number of wizards.
Read OP , Is the person asking here even on a lvl 105 toon the answer is NO is he/her in a raiding guild the answer is NO will he/her be in a raidng guild any time soon depends , but id say more then likely NO , he/her also wants to group , will he/her find a group on a healing druid that can dps also ,you bet they will Yimin
Answering a question incorrectly and justifying it by saying the question is irrelevant isn't a basis for an argument. The OP wanted to know which class was more desirable in raids, and the consensus is Wizard.
Is there a right answer here it's like saying ,Coke is better then Pepsi , And I do not take comfort in the false sense of consensus , I mean here is an example , at one time a majority of people thought the Earth was flat , did that make them right ? Read the OP he/her ask more then one question I took that all into account and did not focus only on the raiding part of it I will say it again IMO, Druid is more sought after in Groups and Raids .....
I was going to stay out of this, but this is just not true. Anyone who builds a raid wants a certain number of every class that has a role that CANNOT be filled by another class. If it came down to having 6 druids and 1 wizard in a raid or 1 druid and 6 wizards in a raid, it's going to be 6 wizards every time unless the guild has serious shortages in clerics. Then it's going to be the combination that provides enough healing. Yes, if your guild is having problem fielding clerics you are going to use any healer you can find to fill in the gaps, but guilds with healthy rosters aren't going to use 4-5 druids and sit wizards to get them in, just not going to happen. Wizards require the least amount of ADPS of any dps class so they offer the biggest ban for the buck if you don't have good ADPS and are in a very good place even when your guild has the ADPS to support other dps classes. So yes, most of the time wizards are more desirable than druids in raids.
Can a Druid replace a merc cleric as a healer and add dps yes , can wizard no they can not ..can a druid replace a merc wiz yes you also get Druids heals if needed , can a wiz replace merc wiz yes of course , can wiz replace merc cleric no .. Druid wins for group IMO Can many class replace a Wiz on raid for dps IMO yes , Necro Mage Rog Bez ,How many classes can replace a Cleric on a raid ? Not all guild have a lot of Clerics , Druid often fill the role of not enough healers , IMO Druid wins here also , for what the OP is asking here ,Druid would be my choice If I was just starting out , so this is not a question of True or false .... IMO again I would roll a Druid not a wizard In all the time I have raided , I myself have never seen a raid canceled because lack of wizards I have seen them canceled because not enough healers though ... Yimin
The OP's original questions were: 1) Which solo's better to end game? You could argue either class can solo well to the end, which is true, the big difference here is skill. So the score is Wizard 0, Druid 0. 2) Which are more sought after in groups? I can't definitively say either because either one is easily replaced by a merc, however i believe (this is just my opinion) that an average wizard will do more dps than a J5 wizard merc. I can't see that an average druid is equally better than a J5 cleric merc. Yet again, this is incredibly subjective and the line between isn't geat, so i will even leave the score for this one as Wizard 0, Druid 0. 3) Which are more sought after in Raids? I have already explained this and everyone else who has posted in this thread agrees, wizards are more sought after in raids. Wizard 1, Druid 0. 4) Are wizards significantly higher DPS like in the old days? Druids even close? I know Druids used a few DoTs as well as nuking and Wizards were just simple DPS burst. Yes, wizards are higher DPS, both sustained and burst. A well played druid might be able to come close to an average or mediocre wizard, but i am not sure since our druids rarely dps. Score: Wizard 2, Druid 0. 5) Is one a lot harder to grasp then the other as far as a player returning after 15 years away? Well played druid is a lot harder to grasp than Wizard, wizard is stupid easy, especially once you multibind. AEing can make it a little harder, but the druid is still harder to grasp. I don't know how to score this one since the OP might be looking for the easier class or the harder class. Either way if the score is 3-0 wizard or 2-1 wizard, the wizard is still the main choice.
I have been boxing a druid or wizard on my alt account. As an enchanter the wizard is definitely the easier one to box, just set up a couple of macros, and hit them after you've debuffed. You get snare, and exodus, and we have the adps bonuses for wizard lines. But I found that the druid was a better choice for me. If the merc goes down, the druid can heal, or exodus. The druid can also buff, run decent adps aa and a couple of nice auras. I can snare with the druid, even charm with both the enchanter and the druid at the same time. If I were to main change it would be the druid. One of our raid druids regularly makes both the healing and dps parses..at the same time. You might want to think about that when it comes to healing.
