Why are Shamans almost universally thought to be better then Druids?

I have done some parsing on these AC/Attack debuffs. The difference is so negligible you can't tell which parse did or didn't have the debuffs used. Any bonus it gave could easily have just been explained by RNG. Parse a fight with and without slow and you can easily see the difference. Sun's Corona, the level 67 debuff reduces attack by 90 and AC by 19, Immolation of Ro decreases AC by 36... We're talking about mobs with attack and AC that is probably pushing well over 1500. That 45 points of AC reduction is super beefy.

Let's look at increased fire dmg next. Who uses fire nukes, because it really just increases the chance for the spell to land by a tiny amount (Breath of Ro reduced fire resist by 33, malosini reduces several resists by 70) and necro fire dots already land basically all the time. It really only benefits wizards and mages. We had 1 wizard from classic - GoD and now we have no wizards. Mages have to spend most of their time sitting on their hands classic-PoP because they are going to pull aggro from their pets and die long before they make any real use out of landing fire spells a tiny faction more often. That is really bringing so much ADPS to the raid that it is definitely worth not adding another shaman to Avatar your melee, or just adding another melee. Oh wait...

By the time druids get those caster ADPS buffs 90% of people have moved on to the next TLP. Or are you saying someone should play a druid in classic because they will eventually get black wolf? The plant body spell? It's level 73 and TSS? That's one way to play the long game, I suppose. You would be far better off playing a useful class in classic and switching to your druid alt when they stop being bad. Which they do eventually do. I am not disputing that, but this isn't about TSS+ druids, it is about Classic-PoP druids because that is the TLP time frame.

No one cares about the extra mana regen. They all have plenty of mana regen, at least on Mischief. They didn't care before OOC regen and they care even less now. They would rather have the cleric buff so they can squeeze in more buffs.

My guild raided Kunark - GoD without a main druid and there was literally never a time when we thought "Gee, it would be nice to have had a druid for that fight." Druid boxes were the first to get booted for players who logged on late.

Kahna, this is the TLP forum and deals with the entirety of a TLP, not just the first 1/3rd of it, so I was pointing out things that benefit druids during a TLP, not just TLPs as experienced by people who constantly reroll on the new one(s) every year. My previous post talked about how Shaman were strong using tools that come out in CotF, so your same argument can be applied to that one as well.

didn't we have like 6 or 7 main druids in CoC during Luclin?

You could easily replace the topic with "why is [X] class considered universally better than Druid?", which helps inform the answer.

Druids just don't have any defined role in the game, and almost any other class can do what they do, but better.

That said I do think Druids are given a bad wrap on TLPs, probably because most druids are boxes and not mains. If you enjoy the druid play it and get to know the class well. A main druid played well will perform better than a boxed shaman or cleric.

The TLP time frame is classic - live, no matter what. Just because rerollers impose other time frames onto themselves, it doesn't mean the actual time frame is anything other than classic (or whichever starting expansion devs decide on) to live.

Also, speaking in absolutes as if druids are pure garbage is short-sighted and serves as nothing more than provide an irrational reason why people would be unwillingly to actually go out of their comfort "time frame." Forum posts can be very influential, whether you like to admit it or not, and some random lurkers will and do read ignorant posts about how X class is trash and decide it's not worth their time and decide it's not worth their time ever playing outside of specific era of EQ.

what about agnarr, thats pop locked, so no TLPs arent classic-live

The OP is in classic. The OP was asking about classic druids. But sure, talk to them about how wonderful druids will be on their server 2+ years from now. That is super useful information for them in the here and now.

Classic-OoW druids suck. They don't even remotely start to get better until TSS. Don't play one as a main in Classic unless you hate yourself.

You're right, I didn't see where he said classic. Druids aren't as bad as you make them sound, though.

Druids are nowhere near as bad as these negative nancies make them sound

druids are doing some respectable dot damage on yelinak so far

drifting death or whatever its called

Slow and malo are you answers. Shaman slows are way more useful in future content than anything the Druid can do. When you’re grouped with the king dps chanters, malo makes their lives easier with charms. The best xp groups I’ve had outside of aoe was cleric, shaman, tank, 3x chanter. No where does a Druid fit in that group unless they’re playing suedo chanter and charming.

Druids can out parse a shaman in DPS. Shaman can effect an entire raid. Plus we top parse heals and still can parse top 10 dps.

They are worse at any given role than pretty much any other class. I do think they could probably outparse a classic rogue, so I guess there is that, but they don't have to be classic rogue levels of horrible to still not be worth playing in the early game.

If you want to see a truly bad classic class look no further than warrior. Druids aren't a bad class. Shams are just stupidly OP and terribly designed/balanced.

Agreed.
As a shaman main. It would be nice if they could go back and fix some of these classes, like a complete redesign of druids. Shamans eat it much harder in later expansions as you only get partials or completely immune stuns, but I think it slows and needs a bit of a nerf. We get a lot of other excellent tools to help with fights that could be buffed, like cripple lines or tweak the leopard/puma lines as they seem to fall off pretty hard.

Back to druids, I'd like to see their dots may be buffed, or maybe their debuffs include additional components similar to Immolate. I heard some time ago they were supposed to be a melee caster.

I don't know how you'd avoid that without being a ranger.

But Extinguish Fatigue seems like something a shaman might cast as a dedicated debuff/buffer. Maybe by making their slows more in line with enchanters but changing it to more disease/poison base slows.

And make druids more nature-lined dot/debuffs but keep some debuffs without a DD/Dot component because it would suck to break CCs to debuff.

I don't know. I haven't put much thought into this, but I am also the one asking to make canni more like lich. Soooo...yeah. lol

EDIT: I wonder if they couldn't make druids a caster/melee (staves /2h) and not just use a similar combat system that's kin to Beastlords, including sword and board.

I always main druid, its the best class in the game

/laughs in TOL druid

Every class has advantages and disadvantages depending on what level they are. Personally, I found shaman's very weak as soloers when they were around level 19. I think shaman should get their first pet at this level instead of waiting till level 32.

Also Shaman and Druids have to wait far too long to get the Healing spell at level 19 when Clerics get it at level 10. One problem that EQ has in classic up until Luclin when focus items are introduced is that heals across the board take far too long to cast and in many cases the player is dead before the spell will land.

Regarding druids, they are penalized unfairly as many of their spells are outdoor only. This restriction needs to be removed. Druids have no Temple of Sol Ro quests and Druids who worship Karana have no quests unlike Tunare Druids who are blessed with many. Druids transportation utility becomes far less important after Planes of Power. Also Druids should get a Plane of Growth port spell as Wizards get ports to the Planes of Sky and Hate.

In addition to the best spells: the Resurrection line, Clerics get plate armor and the Yaulp line and can do some nice melee damage while they are waiting for the opportunity to heal, not to mention their Stuns and spells against Undead and Summoned. Both druids and shaman should get some form of resurrection spell in classic EQ. I'd slightly enhance the melee damage output of clerics, druids, and shaman.

I think Darkpaw needs to go back and spend a bit of time rebalancing the classes at least for the TLP experience. If I was a EQ dev, I'd work on Rogues first. A level 14 enchanter animation hits harder and more often then my level 20 rogue with a Serrated Bone Dirk. Rogues need more group utility. I recommend giving them a Kick that stuns. The WoW rogue has this ability early on. Blizzard did a terrific job giving both their Warrior and Rogue some great debuffs and group attack enhancements. Also, rogue gear itemization in classic is woefully inadequate.

For Bards, I find playing group songs when multiple mobs are in proximity generates far too much hate and subsequent death. I'd give them a low level anti-hate song like Song of Dawn which is available at level 53 which they can put into the Melody rotation.

At the very least all of the spells from level 1 to 50 from subsequent expansions (ports excluded except zephyrs and translocates which have already been granted) should given to casting classes from EQ classic and onwards on TLP servers. Level 14 Enchanter's Breeze and the level 20 Bard mana song should be in from day one! Melee augments introduced far into the future magically are available from classic and onwards, why not caster spells too?

As I have said in many previous posts, the devs should be rolling level one characters and actively playing EQ on company time. We can bloviate till we are out of breath on the forums, but nothing replaces the insight that devs get when they walk a mile in the shoes of the players and actually play their MMO.

Because shaman ARE better than druids.

It's not that simple and a wise druid can do better once they learn how to fully stack their debuff lines.

Stacking several fire (Ro) and cold (Eci) debuffs is possible and cumulative. This begins in Velious and a PoP era druid can lower: ATK -232, AC -25, Fire -75, Cold -55, for 10 minutes using 4 spells (not counting Flame Lick dot line). That's noticeable and can turn a loss into a win, depending on group makeup.

I agree that druid debuffs need a large boost to compare with shaman.

ps: I previously posted about this here.