Druids

Discussion in 'Priests' started by negolin, Aug 14, 2021.

  1. negolin Journeyman

    I could be wrong as I haven't played high end druids but it seems as if the class has suffered a bit in terms of usefulness. Great for soloing traditionally, power leveling, etc. What about the idea of giving the wood elf beastlord pet to druids (treant pet) and change the beastlord pet to a black wolf or coyote (there are some in Greater Faydark). The treant pet wouldn't have to be as powerful as the beastlord's but much more than the little black bear. Another option would be to increase the druid's present pet's (little black bear) power. Again, this may have occurred in the high end but I do not have a high end druid. I think if the druid has more dps they may be more useful overall. Thanks.
  2. Cragzop Cranky Wizard

    If your druid doesn't feel useful, ask for some tips. Druids are more than fine at the top end, especially in dps. The changes since I leveled a druid through the mid levels (40-85) probably make my experience not very useful as a guide, but by the time all the modern spell lines kick in, druids are great.

    I know why people are fascinated with pets, but doing anything with druid pets is not the way to go. 5x powered Boo Boo is still a speed bump.
  3. Dragnath Elder

    Druids are amazing, I wouldn't change a thing. Someone posted a list of possible patch fixes that could be done that mostly fixes minor issues which would be fine to implement if they didn't nerf anything else, but I love playing my Druid as is.
  4. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    While I will agree the wood elf beastlord pet being a treant is really dumb when Wasps were an option… I don’t want to see druids get a full time pet.

    If they were to do anything pet related for druids I’d like to see our charm spell become more valuable. Boost max level on charm fo be equivalent to our max level so we can charm any even or blue con mobs. Also I’d like to see druids get an upgraded Magic Debuff for animals spell. With current resist values on mobs charm just fails almost instantly without any Debuffs. Having our Glamour of Tunare spell upgraded ideally in an AA form would help here. Also having an upgraded pet haste ability that grants more than just haste. Hit damage modifiers, double/triple attack increasers, flurry mod etc. If you go to some T1 zone right now and charm an animal and try to parse it out you will be extremely depressed at the DPS output of the mob.

    Alternatively I’d love to see a PoP era revival of Dire Charm. Currently the AA charms level 46 and under mobs permanently or a modern mob for a fixed 5-6 minutes. In the next expansion if they could add some level 110~ (If level increase expansion) trash mobs in each exp zone and raid zone and then add a rank of Dire Charm that permanently charms these mobs so that we could still do some pet DPS, that would be cool.

    But really on my hierarchy of wishes for druids, pets or charm changes are all very low on the totem pole.
  5. Marton Augur

    Druids are in very good spot dps-wise.

    Regarding pets, I don't really see druids as a true pet class. Maybe they could get better charm like Darchon said, but, honestly, I don't think druids need more dps at this point.
  6. Alkyvret Nature's Boiling Wrath Enthusiast

    If I may...
    a) past boo boo bear at level 50, druids are worthless as pet classes. outside of charming a kodiak for 6 minutes in GD? nope. They're definitely not a pet class.
    b) druids, in my opinion, have the most utility of any class in EQ, with the exception of bards. What I mean by that is, druids are (again excluding bards) the ultimate jack-of-all-trades character. DPS? Amazing. You absolutely have to work for it... but Nature's Fervid Wrath is amazing, as are our other dots and DDs are ok too. Healing? sure! We lose to clerics and shamans on a pure level but depending on your style you can beat all but the best healers on raids in terms of parse amount and true effectiveness with shadow healing and fast rejuvs, playing the "saviour" role. Support? Druids have wonderful caster group buffs and rotation buffs, plus great debuffs to throw on mobs to benefit primarily casters. I'm talking Season's Wrath, Ro, Sunray, sumac, icerend, chill, the list goes on. Absolutely amazing class if you know what you're doing :)
    oh, and I can link a 3.5 million DPS parse if you need some proof :p
  7. Szilent Augur

    :doubt:
  8. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    On parses, Shaman and Cleric Rain/Splash absolutely crush anything druids could dream of healing.

    Way back in HoT when the Rejuv line was introduced, druids could top heal parses. But once Cleric Remedy got revamped and Shamans got several Reckless lines they could multibind druid single target healing became 3rd tier among priests.
  9. Szilent Augur

    4th.

    yes I know there are 3 priest classes.

    maybe 5th, but you just won't find a ranger that will give up DPS to stream heals, to find out if they're stronger healing in practice.

    Druids have heals. And that's a super thing. It is, to be sure, infinitely more than can be said for the rest of the characters in their usual raid groups. They have a notable, if still overall limited, concentration of healing tools in "rescue" heals; so they're more suited to fill-ins when other better plans fall through than, for instance, the rangers mentioned above. But the fact that to stay busy healing (i.e. to make healing their core full time role, to answer faithfully "I'm a healer" when asked about one's raid role) a druid has to use a Vida heal is just the pits. It's a clear (to me) indication that "staying busy healing" is not the correct or intended role for a druid.
  10. Dragnath Elder

    Are you able to provide any insight to your spell lineup on the 3.5M parse? I am not 115 yet (111 currently) but I'm only around 500k on a burn with a group of SK, RNG, CLR, ENC, BST, DRU. I did do a single hit of over 6.5M the other night though but I think that was a fluke.
  11. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    Why is Sumac in your list of debuffs? It doesn't stack with Season's Wrath which has 100% uptime. I can't imagine wasting a valuable spell slot on Sumac.

    [55922/5611] Skin to Sumac Rk. III
    Classes: DRU/108
    Skill: Alteration
    Mana: 350
    Target: Single (If Living)
    Range: 200'
    Resist: Unresistable
    Reflectable: No
    Stacking: Skin to Vines 21
    Focusable: Yes
    Casting: 0.5s, Recast: 1.5s, Rest: 1.5s
    Duration: 3m+ (30 ticks), Dispelable: Yes
    1: Increase Spell Damage Taken by 2% to 12% (v296, Before Crit)
    2: Limit Max Level: 115 (lose 10% per level)
    3: Limit Effect: Current HP
    4: Limit Type: Detrimental
    5: Limit Resist: Fire
    6: Limit Type: Exclude Combat Skills
    7: Transform Body Type to Plant
    Text: Your blood runs green and your skin becomes a mat of leaves.

    [52211/41150] Season's Wrath VIII
    Classes: DRU/254
    Skill: Melee
    Target: Single
    Range: 300'
    Resist: Magic, No Sanctification
    Reflectable: No
    Stacking: Season's Wrath & Elemental Arrow 17
    Focusable: No
    Casting: 1s
    Duration: 60s (10 ticks), Dispelable: Yes
    1: Increase Spell Damage Taken by 16% to 25% (v296, Before Crit)
    2: Limit Type: Detrimental
    3: Limit Resist: Fire
    4: Limit Resist: Cold
    Text: You feel weakened to the effects of the elements.
  12. Dragnath Elder

    I use both as Season's Wrath has a 60s recast time, if you are killing multiple mobs per minute you can still get Sumac off for extra damage. I could see the argument that it isn't worth a debuff on a mob if you are killing in less than 60s though.
  13. Szilent Augur

    There's a couple key things to Alkyvret's claim, he didn't just "deal that much damage" with some buffs on and casting some spells. First is duration, it will have been < 1 minute. Also he'd have a bard besides the Enc you're grouped with. And most crucially, many millions of the damage in the "3.5M dps" were actually that Enchanter's, whose very carefully timed Chromatic Haze button will have generated two 24M dmg hits off "Alkyvret's" Nature's Fing Wrath cast. All the rest of everything Alkyvret will have done added up to a millionish dps. Totally solid, but well over half the flashy "parse" is from the key enchanter button.
  14. Dragnath Elder

    Thanks for the info. It can be hard to figure out what type of damage my toons should be doing between some people being raid geared, and general parse cherry picking.
  15. Rolaque Ancient

    You need to examine your own log files to understand what is happening.
  16. Alkyvret Nature's Boiling Wrath Enthusiast

    ok I may need to explain, now that I'm a month late.
    What Szilent said was correct, the 3.5 mil was a cherry picked number with an enchanter (two, actually), on a thirty second fight - with a good group (chanter, bard, necro) you can average a million DPS on no more than a 5 minute fight. Long term DPS? For me, that's about 400k indefinitely.
    If I'm burning by myself, it's 1.15 mil DPS on a 90 second fight.
    Nothing fancy other than NFW, sunshock, horde, erupting sunray, season's wrath, blessing of ro aa, and chill of the arbor tender if you have time to let it proliferate. AA nukes are only useful if you have surplus mana, that's been proven elsewhere.

    On the topic of sumac! I use it on very rare instances, but I included it since it has its uses. I have it in a flex slot on my spellbar, so only load it when I need it (IE killing the tantorlings on the Tantor raid)

    On the topic of druids vs shamans/clerics, I stand by what I said. Their numbers will stomp ours, but if you look at actually useful heals, a lot of HoTs and splashes end up healing like 4 people across the whole raid. Now, I agree that if a druid logged in a shaman or cleric they would do a better job of healing. I just don't think we're too far away if you're fast on the buttons.
    Dragnath likes this.
  17. Dragnath Elder

    I did some extensive tests in GH with my druid and on any fight less than 100s sunshock and chill of the arbor tender give me less DPS than if I continue with the rest of my spells. Right now my burn is:

    Spire of Nature
    Focus Arcanum
    Blessing of Ro
    Season's Wrath
    Destructive Vortex
    Improved Twincast
    Natures Fury
    Nature's Guardian
    Spirit of the Great Wolf

    Composite Winds
    Nature's Fire
    Nature's Fervid Wrath
    Nature's Frost
    Horde of Hyperboreads
    Nature's Bolt
    Typhonic Roar
    Nature's Fire
    Winter's Wildshock
    Nature's Frost
    Remote Sunshock

    I am consistently getting about 400k dps on a 100s burn, I do have some other tank buff things in there as well that would slow it down a bit (Spirit of Bear, Wrath of the Wild, etc.)

    I am assuming a lot of it is I just hit 115 2 days ago and don't have my AA's maxed. Should also mention all my spells are Rk 2. with the associated type 3 focus'.
  18. Rolaque Ancient

    Max AAs will help tremendously. You should see a significant increase, as in close to doubling your dps. However, you need to have a 3 or 4 dot rotation, which will do about 70% of your net dps. Sunshock should be in there, with Horde. The Nature's line is a waste of mana, because you don't get any triggers from your aura or other procs. Use Winter's, Typhonic, Remote for a decent rotation. And for the GH, use regular twincast. For me it makes it easier to perfect your nuke and dot weave, without any downtime. In my experience the GH parsing is a good indicator of the adps boost you get from bard/chanter in groups or raid with improved twincast. But no haze. Yet.
    Dragnath likes this.
  19. Dragnath Elder

    Thanks for the tips, I'll try it out.
  20. Sancus Augur