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

"TSS is when "it appears" they took a step back and looked at class identity and gave every class a true identity. (they had been building up on it for the last 3-4 expansions though"


Agree

And yet Yelniak is FLOODED with Druids so shaman being more " desired " isnt affecting their playability, in fact I see more of them than any other single class other than the random boxed mage "groups".

At least you can just about delete any mob in classic group zones minus Hole. Max level warriors will get outdpsed by a level 34 necro running around clicking a single button bound to venom of the snake.

But you are correct, wizards are definitely a tier below druids early on.

Druid is probably the most popular box class

There are reasons for this. For example I am with what is probably the biggest guild on Yelinak right now with over 1000 members. Obviously many of these are alts/boxes but even with that we are often splitting into two raids to accommodate everyone and have knocked out all raid targets in classic. To get to the point, we have very, very few druid mains in our guild, probably like 70% of our druids are boxes and another 20% are alts. Also, out of 100-150 raiders nightly, probably only 6-8 druids actually join the raid and often it is as a box.

Why so many druids?

Most are boxes to support power leveling or provide ports. It also takes a lot of effort porting 100+ people to Lavastorm to pick up Naggy, then SFG to pick up Vox, then back to Ferrot or So Ro to pick up CT or Inny, all in a single night.

But yeah, out of 1000 plus members, I doubt we have a dozen Druid mains.

I highly doubt your single guild has 1,000 individual members considering servers only hold about 3-5k players max before major degradation of performance. It's probably a couple hundred members each with multiple alts/boxes.

Having a dozen druids out of a couple hundred mains is basically right on average. 14 total classes in classic means all things being evenly distributed is (1 / 14 = .07)*200 = 14 of each class per 200 chars. It means there are classes way less popular than a druid.

Usually "boxes" do not use the LFG tool and anytime of the day you pull up that tool I promise you the majority of people LFG are Druids in greater numbers than shaman and certainly much greater than classes such as Wizard, rogue and warrior. It is a very popular class in the early expansions.

I did point out that "obviously many of these are alts and boxes" but our member count is 1041 as of the time of this writing. We have 107 Druids listed as members and of this I am saying maybe 10% of them are actual mains. Usually as far as druids actually in our raids, out of 72 total participants, maybe we will have 3 druids which is a pretty under represented compared to the ratio of druids we have in our guild.

107 of 1041 = 10.28% of Guild which makes it one of more numerous classes represented in our guild however only 3 druids of 72 members of a raid = 4.07% of Raid and in most of our raids, you limited to just playing mains. The point is, there are a metric ton of druids out there in the game, but they aren't mains, rather they are boxes or alts used for the very reasons I mentioned in my previous post.

There's loads of players who are pretty casual about Everquest and just want to putter about and enjoy the view. To them, druid is an excellent choice because of ports and general versatility, and that's why there's plenty of them. It's just not a good class in the eyes of those who care about effectiveness and efficiency. Some players think that the most enjoyable way to play the game is to see how much you can fine-tune a grind to fully maximize the XP/hour, and there's nothing wrong with that, either. Unfortunately, in that context, druid is absolute garbage until much later on. There's no theoretical group composition where a druid is an ideal member. This class just can't compete with the others. Druids don't belong in min-max society.

If thats the case then there is no theoretical group makeup outside of enchanterx2, clericx2, and bardx2 (one to pull and one to sit in camp playing mana song) that others can compete with. IF we are strictly talking of classes being an ideal member.

Right, but you'll be hard pressed to find friend crews who actually want to play that exact combination of classes. However, you'll find plenty of friend crews who choose their classes based on how powerful they are in a fixed group because that's how they intend to play, and for players like those, there isn't really any combination of five classes that would lead the sixth player to choose druid based on the merits of the class. They might choose it because they just like to play a druid, but it won't be because it's the ideal class for any given group setup. There is no possible group setup where a druid can be called optimal.

Yeah I can see that too. The Druid's skill set does definitey have its appeal to it and I have always wanted to like the class because of its ability to do pretty much everything.

So, a few things...

I think this has a lot to do with desirability in groups... slow while not required, is a huge efficiency boost especially when a group is filled with boxes or less geared players. later on, the adps buffs (panther, champion, epic, etc), all add up to a lot of extra dps over the long term that just makes it easier to over power mechanics.

Druids do bring a bit to the table with ports & evac, but they have a problem of being good enough at everything, but not really excelling at anything... A druid is a good enough healer to heal anything in the game, but you will either need to bring an enchanter/shaman for slows, or they will struggle where a shaman would excel... They can dps, but even working as hard as they can stacking dots perfectly & nuking non stop, they won't ever really compete with even other casters, never mind a monk or a zerker in the early game... Later on they get more tools... and they are not only fun to play, but good to have around for some of the cool things you can doo with them, but frankly, shaman is easily the most OP class in the game so its hard to compete with the tools they get especially as the game goes on.

Only because of PL!! after a few expansions not even the boxers will want a druid. Right now is more of a krono farming thing ..bards , druids , mages, enchanters all have insane numbers ..later on ..the numbers will drop specially druids....

A big thing I've noticed never gets mentioned is that old EQ was SLOW... you killed slow. DS, therefor, was significantly bigger of a deal -- now it's just a plvl tool for the most part, or an afterthought in groups.

A druid gets good regen and good thorns, both of which are rekt by modern TLP having dps on steroids. Now we get to the dots... a real druid specialty... that is trashed by the pace of modern TLP. (If your group is getting full runs on dots, then you know why you settled for a druid lol -- you didn't get the classes you wanted.)

I've made a post in the past on how to improve druids and it was very reasonable. Until they are changed, they're just a fantastic plvl toon to have on a spare account.

The ENTIRE reason I am maining a druid right now is to be able to PL my Bst when SoL releases on my second account and farm plat/krono to gear the Bst from day 1.

That, and I will also use him to PL an Enchanter along the way.

Druids are amazing!!!

The thing about the screaming fast DPS on TLP is that in reality it makes any slow a lot less useful as well

Pulls multiples, ae slow. If it lands it lands. If not, oh well, not much trouble anyways.

well past level 111 some tank could MOLO some current missions , shm can do great later , but IMO not *THE* most Op class in game. { can't speak for TLP area tho }

Lol what a nightmare, imagine being in a guild where you meet in EC Tunnel to then port a 72 zerg force x 2 two zones away instead of beginning with Vox and ask your raiders to be at Permafrost Entrance 15 minute before raid start. And imagine then coming on the forums with a thin veiled brag about downing 3 raid targets on the same night.