Druid DoTs

They want a particular experience. They want it over and over. As long as it's true that 1) they're willing to pay for it in sufficient numbers to cover costs, and 2) it doesn't harm those not involved with their "fun", then it's legit to sell it to them.

Is Root-Dot tactic back as a viable gameplay style now? I want to try it.

From August of this year's patch:

- Made the following changes to root spells:
- - Reduced the likelihood that direct-damage spells will break root on a target.
- - The chance for direct-damage spells to break root is now further reduced if you are a higher level than your target.
- - Archery and throwing attacks now have a small chance to break root.
- - Hitting yourself with a direct-damage spell will no longer roll a chance to break root/snare.

Some changes to root behavior it seems you wouldn't be aware of

It never stopped being viable.

They did this to clerics too, for the undead lines of dots. Personally, i think it was a bad decision. More choices is what makes for fun gameplay, not fewer. What they should have done, on the top end, is if it's a matter of debuff space on raid mobs, is to make a new line of dots for those classes that does not stack with the others, but does more damage and costs a lot more mana. Maybe they do the same damage as stacking several dots, but only land on raid flagged mobs. Theres no reason to affect the rest of the game from low level players, to casual groupers, to people trying to solo by kiting or root rotting.

Viable in that you can kill things. You'll be oom in one or two pulls, so expect to sit a lot.

That's what you want. Kill quick and take advantage of ooc regen.

I'd rather sit less and kill things more... like it used to be.

Then cast dots from 5 expansions ago? Nothing stopping you from playing badly if you want to.

A number of classes got their spells "Consolidated" so "stacking" is no longer needed. To trade this off, DB upgraded the damage and mana to approximate the change in DPS and mana from no longer being able to stack. However most (all?) the consolidated classes subsequently got nerfed because now casual players could actually do similar DPS as players skilled at stacking (Like Necros). Note... Necros have yet to get their DOTS consolidated so this DPS loss does not affect them.

That makes no sense. If I have to stack 5-10 dots to get the same effect as 1 dot, then I will do it, because I want to DPS. So there's no choice, I'm doing the same exact thing, but with 5-10 spell casts instead of 1.

And guess what? Loading fewer dots in my spell set lets me load other spells. So now, I DO have choices. Which, as you say, makes for fun gameplay.

The following table shows the damage from our Wrath DoTs pre-consolidation and current. If we did stack all our old Wrath DoTs it would do less damge and cost more mana than Nature's Fiery Wrath does today (+ we do not need to waste time casting 7 spells).


p.s. it's a pita grabbing old values from eqreosurce so be gentle if I made a mistake

I opted to retire the Druid in the last nerf and replace him in my box with my Enchanter. Less healing but more killing.

It costs more mana for me to use the main magic insect dot alone than it used to cost to cast the most recent two insect dots plus the sun fire dot. I know because I did this on every mob for years, and only since the change have I been hurting for mana.

It may cost more mana but those 3 spells would also be doing less damage. If you are using too much mana then you could always cast a lower level horde.

Did you switch to an enchanter before their DoTs took a hit ? Since that change my enchanter lost a fair chunk of DPS but I've not had much time to play with spell lineup.

Also, Gift of Magic ftw

The DoT consolidations were what finally got me to go install Gina, so I get a good notification when GoM goes off. Amazing damage, and zero mana cost!

That's an odd thing to do considering druid DPS is way better than enchanter at this point.

Enchanter has been my long term main (since 1999)... so switching is a misnomer. My other main and most of my DPS, is a Necro. When I decided to box I leveled a Druid as a better all around partner for a number of reasons (travel, pocket healing, DPS, etc).

After the nerf, I found the Druid only helping on about 1/3 of the pulls since he was almost always OOM. The Enchanter is puling more weight via DPS over multiple pulls and contributing more overall through control (travel is worse but that's not a big deal)... between the Necro set of skills for DPS/pulling/tanking and the Enchanter's set of skills pulling/control/off tanking... I can go and do pretty much anything group related.

I don't miss the Druid much at all.

Ah well that works. It sounded like a DPS issues at first but encs definitely have a lot of other stuff to offer.