Druids are worthless?

please don't derail this thread and get back to posting about how druids are a trash class

If we're short on healers it's not the druids that I wish had rolled clerics, it's probably knights on recent servers or necros on past tlps, who turned up by the literal dozens. If we have too many healers, cleric is literally the second worst class to have in excess after paladin - we just get off the hook because too many clerics so rarely happens.

There are times that druids are the best - kunark leveling in chardok, velious or luclin leveling from 1-60, god aaxping, at a group level. On raids, a druid is perfect when you have exactly enough clerics for most of the fights but need just a bit more healing on a few more intense encounters, eg potime or ssra if you have just enough clerics for a rot and want classes who can help heal on zeks/inno or on emp and maybe hp, but dont need a cleric 24/7. They're perfect if you have exactly enough clerics but worry one may have to log off. In other words, they are AWESOME in practice, and only weak in either some hypothetical min max situation that rarely plays out, or a huge zerg that never runs short on anything and isn't split raiding.

Then there's the many people in this thread who apparently don't charm and/or are afraid of charming. My 1-60 was streamed by setver, only the mage made it the distance without a death... but who cares? We had a double charm break wipe outside the cave in grimling forest, 4 died, took almost 10 minutes to recover... so what? An enchanter hasted pet is only like 80% of a druid hasted pet under that same enchanter's control. Which means an enchanter solo charming is ~40% of the charm dps of 2 druid hasted pets. There's just no excuse for passing up so much kill potential because maybe once in a while you might die? If you never wipe you probably aren't trying hard enough.

Druids are fine. Their dots have already been buffed. This, in it's self, is enough of an upgrade.

If you never take risks and never die in Everquest, you are doing something wrong.

Sure, you can play it safe and always live through every situation. The players that are pushing the limits are way better than you, though, and will get much better overall success and return on their time invested.

This. Exactly.

Worthless? No. They just perform worse than other classes.

You pointed it out great. Druid DPS'ing? Better to get a pure DPS class. Druid Healing? Better to get a Cleric/Shaman.

Dead in the night and no one is on? Druids are good. Guildy? Well, sure I suppose we can use you? <Awkward friendly smile>

Either way healing wise Druids are great. Not much of a fan of DPS druids.

This is still funny, there was so much salt in Rath Mnt. over hill giants. If Druid DPS is so bad how did I win so many DPS races? Never had a problem farming Ancient Cyclops either...

The heals, utility, and DPS of a Druid is great in the right hands. I think the elephant in the room no one is talking about however is the fact in classic we don't really need any melee.

My groups were pure caster. Chanter with charm having snare so Chanter can pull without messy brakes very nice. Can even root the charm mob and then pull right on top of it.

I went through most of classic without grouping with melee. Chanter, Druid, Mage core grp. could do anything. Add any caster DPS to fill out the rest or even a Shm and call it good.

Melee classes are kind of worthless in EQ. When you got at least 1 if not 2 charmed pets and 2 or 3 more summoned why do we even bother playing anything else anymore?

It really comes down to who you group with, doesn't matter what class they are. I am glad that people have their drama but in Classic and Kunark getting around is very important, Luclin also but not as much with spires. After Luclin, well it's over as far as the easy krono are concerned so who cares?

Come Planes Druids get much better at group healing and with aa's they are very important on some raids. You could just have a Cleric in every group but they don't have Dot's and Druids do very good at making sure their groups don't die. Probably shows on the parsers a bit but as we progress into GoD and OOW it becomes much more important.

After Underfoot the ADPS is very important and as we come to Live Druids can heal with the best of them. Sure their cast times are slower and I have felt for a long time it should be adjusted but with black wolf on a full burn it's a huge difference for my wizard and mages. My wizard deletes mobs in one macro with black wolf, not happening without it.

Wait lets not, you guys don't play Live and you'll never even make it to Underfoot. Lol I don't think half of you guys will make it past WoW vanilla, your guilds are going to empty out. It's never really about the hardcore min/max this and that, in the end it's about the good times, the team, whether or not people like you. You can be the best played toon in the game, most sought after Chanter or flavor of the month but if people don't like you it doesn't matter.

If you just keep doing the same thing over and over it gets boring and that's why Druids are fun. As I also said before the reason Druids have all these tools sets was because they were made for soloing. It wasn't to support your group. How can we be sure of that? because their heals majorly sucked. They have been buffed in those regards over the years due to attrition because there never were enough healers. Here's the thing, I don't like just healing, Clerics make zero Plat/Krono and don't get around very fast. So where does that leave us? I don't look for groups really all much but when I do want a group I never had or have a problem forming one.

So what was the point of this thread? I feel like this debate is worthless. Was it to try and make things harder for Druids? Not like finding groups wasn't hard enough anyway. You either like them or don't. To much talk is boring.

I mean its the tlp forum so yeah you're right most of this stuff starts and ends approximately before 2003ish.

By the time druids get good we'll all probably be on our Pantheon enchanters.

Druids get good in 2034?

Druids keep losing power over time relative to other classes that are supposed to be their peers like shaman.

As an example, I could use the insane power of Shaman 2.0 that ads far more melee ADPS than druids will ever add to casters.

But I'll use another example, shaman slow.

Shaman slow has always been far more powerful than druid ATK debuff....but up until lvl 80 it comes with a catch...if you are a shaman main healer...you are being forced to choose between a slow and a heal.

There is an inherent risk there, namely, is the tank capable of surviving the cast time of a slow without any direct heals. What do you do if slow fails, do you try again, how much health does the tank have. Do you slow on incoming, how reliable is the tank's aggro. There are several risks there.

But at lvl 83, that risk is removed. Shaman get counterbias slow, a very good slow that immediately fires a large heal over time on the tank, counterbias heal, as its recourse effect.

That completely removes the risk shaman had before, having to choose between a slow and a heal, the heal over time acts as a buffer.

It makes it far easier to keep a tank alive than a druid could, because your slow no longer comes with any risk, it becomes a freebee without the inherent risk it had before.

That's not to say that druids don't get better at healing, they do. Druids get promised reknit, that also acts as an initial buffer. But it is much more mana intenstive, and much less effective than what Shaman get.

Relative to other classes, druid simply keep losing power as expansions go by. They are very powerful in classic due to their utility, but that utility becomes meaningless over time, and unlike other classes, druids are not given to have a niche role that they can excell at.

This is a video game. Anything less than maximally optimal is worthless to these nerds.

ATK debuffs v slow is entirely dependent on who's being hit. The better AC the tank has the less effect that the ATK debuff will have on incoming damage as it will only increase the number of minimum hits.

An example comes to mind I believe this was back in SoF where as the bard I was chain pulling and occasionally catching a few hits that averaged about 1200 or so. The druid was dropping a single ATK debuff immediately after the SK got the mobs attention. The thing is that there was wizard in group who'd occasionally over nuke and get aggro and she'd be hit for around 800 rather than the 1200 the mob had on incoming.
I always slowed them on incoming myself and we never had issues with needing better slows and the ATK debuff worked great.
I think a lot of people just fail to realize how the game mechanics work in EQ. If you have a tank with maxed in era AC being healed by a cleric there's a really good chance that the tank will need neither ATK debuffs nor a slowed mob especially since in the modern game slows are all mitigated

The problem with ATK buffs is they’re generally not worth the spell slot or the time to cast on group mobs due to how fast they all die.

The Blessing of Ro AA helps this come Underfoot, but that’s only half the ATK Debuff possibility.

What they really need to do is update the Blessing of Ro AA to be a GoD AA for the first rank. Then introduce a new AA, Blessing of E’ci that autocasts our two ice Debuffs like Blessing of Ro does for our fire Debuffs. Do this around SoF. Then in a later expansion add a Blessing of Elements AA which autocasts fire, ice and skin to vines. Probably around HoT when the Debuffs are all in their final format and just receive value increases each expansion. Allowing Druids to Benefit from all their Debuffs against group mobs.

You just can't argue with min-maxers. They will always come up with something like; the ideal group consists of 5 Monks and a Cleric type answers. Evacuate? Don't need it because you never lose. Slower? Don't need one because the MOBs drop so fast and the Cleric CH. Or maybe 6 SK, or maybe 6 Enchanters casting charm. It never ends. <sigh>

Pretty dumb elitist comment. All classes are going to be sub-optimal besides 5 enchanters and 1 cleric groups.
So you haven't seen how druids dps on live lately I take it?

Lol you made me laugh when you said my comment was dumb but then go on to discuss about live druid dps on TLP server forums .

Druids are just taxi drivers .

I play a Druid on Mischief. I like tracking and sowing and porting, and I do OK in groups. On TLP, I'd probably rank them near the bottom, along with poorly geared Rogues, but I'm having fun. I knew the score when I selected the class as my main.

For raw power, one tank, one shaman, four mages, but I rarely see such combos, and I think most players just don't obsess over min maxing anymore.

This was important enough to resurrect a two year old thread?

Is this the thread about Necro's?