Druid in Laurions Song

Your primary concern seems to be getting groups, and (imo) getting groups these days has very little to do with class. In all but a select few situations, between players, mercs, and people's boxes, you can slap together any few people and make it work. If you're a good player who's pleasant to be around, you'll make friends and get groups.

Druids are a very good raiding class. They boost caster dps, do good personal dps, and generally provided enough healing along side the raid wide healing going on to keep their groups alive. Mana is a problem, but there's a lot more support and tools at your disposal to keep it going.

Druids are a kinda mediocre grouping class. Mana becomes a larger annoyance, your ultra strong DoTs become less appealing in many circumstances, your caster support becomes less valuable in a group that might contain melees, and your healing is more of a liability than the other priests.

With all of that said, Druids aren't optimal for anyone focusing on group play. It's pretty undeniable shamans have them beat there. But they're certainly serviceable. If playing a druid sounds fun to you, then play a druid. It'll be fine.

This is what i'm looking for honestly. Sure i'm not a Shaman, I'm a Druid. But i'm competent, i'm at the keyboard, and it's either go with the PC, or go with the merc.

HOPEFULLY i get chosen over a merc in that situation lol

So just an update: everyone was right lol. Currently level 97, and things are rough >.< I've done a few pet charm things, done some quad kiting (have experience with a necro), and done some healing the tank merc while he does the work...

Druid heals are lacking. Their AAs are great...but for the 15-30 minutes they're down, I feel overwhelmed. Straight up spam healing the merc with only being able to get 1-2 DoTs on the mob without fearing for my mercs life.

Still enjoying the theme, and really enjoying being a DPS in a group and not a healer, so I'm going to carry on.

But now I'm very tempted to start a Shaman and see what the difference really is.

That's the merc being trash, like mercs are supposed to be. No bad reflection on the druid there. You won't have a better time healing a merc as some other class

But i've seen healer mercs do better lol

Only thing I can think of is when you have a healer merc healing a tank merc, the groups DPS contributes a lot. Killing mobs off before health starts to get too low or spikey.

Shaman is probably worse than druid at tank healing at level 97. They don't have enough ranks of reckless to rotate through so they quickly fall back to the horrible 3.75s base cast heals. The HoT isn't worth much if the tank is taking a lot of damage, though not sure how much slow/cripple adds up.

Druid has the same problem, but can throw a Blessing of Ro AA cast every 6s during spell gem refresh which reflects a heal on the tank worth ~75% of a *vida heal. Only thing is you'd need to swap to the mob to cast it, but the throughput should be higher 'cause it's basically a free extra heal every other cast.

I noticed at 97 I had gotten Pillars of Ro AA...which is the exact same thing as BoR...but no heal. Different timers, same recast, and....well..same thing. But they can stack. Why would one use PoR when BoR is exactly the same + a heal?

Pillars (Vortex of Ro AA) is the AoE version

Oh good catch, yup! Entities around your target! Thanks for clearing that up!

Druid and Shaman healing at that level isn't really all that different. You're reaching the levels where merc tanks are bad, and trying to both keep them up and do DPS becomes a real struggle. Shamans get their first fast cast reckless heal at 100 (iirc). So they start to distance themselves from Druids when they can use 2 at 105, and the gap becomes a gulf at 110 when they can rotate 3 perpetually.

It's been a long, long time, so things might have changed. Want to say quint kiting Ulthorks/Walruses in RoF EW was decent at that level if you're looking to solo. Probably some charm kiting strats in there as well. But you're reaching the point where making friends and getting that powerlevel 9000 is about the only way for things to not be super painful to level through.

So with my Beastlord, I tore through content. Wasn't much of an issue. This Druid is struggling a little bit lol. I'm finishing up COTF and doing some TDS things. Been trying my hand at EoK Lcea merc/part quests...and being 100 (with mainly COTF gear - a piece from ROF still, and 2 pieces from TDS), those 105 mobs rip through my merc.

Running Adrenaline Rush, Vivification, and Sterivida for my heals. If the first two are on their refresh timer and i'm left to spam the slow but spammable Stervidia, I can watch my merc go from 30% to dead in what looks like a single round (also, don't have any merc gear for him until 105 either).

It's rough going. I can kite, but at 100, it takes about 40% mana to finish off a single mob lol. Not sure that's worth it. So it's TDS for now which is challenging, but not so much that I have to revive a merc every 2nd or 3rd mob

You have *wild* expectations regarding that mercenary. EoK is level 105 content. Mercs are designed to just barely enable getting out the guild hall against the most basic easy enemies, not for "punching up" doing progression activity against monsters 4 expansions further along than their level.

Right, but you start off at 100 and level up to 105

I figured my healer merc on my BST could keep my pet up, I should be able to keep my tank merc up on the Druid lol...sadly mistaken

Edit: Hit 105 and got all of EoK's AAs and man...that made an entire world of difference. Especially the Focus lines. DPS went up like crazy and Heals are actually...healing. Not to mention got the option of merc gear and while DPS overall is a bit low, we're fighting through EoK merc/part quests and doing especially well.

Honestly, how do you become mana starved as a BST? I have a BST main, 120, havent maxxed AAs yet (need to get my focus ones), and i SOLO well (I dont MOLO as that reduces EXP for very little gain) and I never have mana issues, even just self buffed. You do realise you have Paragon and Focused Paragon, which gives you unending mana (almost).
I did solid chunks of merc and partisan quests solo (a fair bit of FD to split stuff up before sending in my pet) and I found very very few moments when I needed to sit and med. This includes some crazy multi pulls in Paludal Depths when my pet took on 3 mobs at once, and this was with the NoS crafted ear (not the raid one).

For pet tanking, max out your defensive AAs first on your pet, make sure you slow mobs on the pull. Use the pet defence buff and generally just try and split pull

When you say you’re charm killing/kiting…are you going 1 v 1?

Because THE way to level a Druid solo is to charm an animal, send it at a pile of mobs and let them bring your pet to near death, then invis. Kill your ex-pet with a DD or DoT if you aren’t concerned about mana cost of a quick dot per mob…
Then rinse and repeat. I recall doing a large bit of this at alligators in Chelsith for RoF era…when it was current.

General lack of things: gear / AA / augs

Only thing current about the BST is his level. Still rocking ToL visibles, non-vis spans a few expansions back, type 5s even further back, only a select few type 7 augs. No type 3 and too poor to get anything from NoS (havent really stepped into NoS either). And instead auto-grant AAs.

All while following the ABC rule. So overall lower DPS causes me to cast more spells (which maintaining 2-3 DoTs is mana extensive) causes me to use more mana. Even with the two paragons

Nope, reverse charm like you described did it a lot with the bears in FM

From your message, you're not boxing the bst with the dru, right? If so, why?

They work really well together. The druid can heal the bst pet, provide ADPS to the bst. The bst can perform tanking/dps and provides the druid much needed mana.

Long time away from the game. I'm sure my boxing skills are super rusty and didnt wanna commit to paying for multiple subs while still relearning the game. And I wanted to focus on one character and get them pushed through ASAP ('recall trying to gear 3 toons at a time was painful). I wasn't expecting to hit 120 so soon (still undergeared and lacking major AAs) . But I caught the ToL missions at the beginning of this exp bonus that pushed me through what was (apparently) the hell level of 118.5-120

They do seem like they'd go well together and it'd be fun to try, but unfortunately same account

It's a good time to switch to boxing! A heroic druid might swap just fine with your new level 100ish druid. Solo leveling a druid while you've got a level 120 beastlord just sounds paaaaainful. Even at level 125 with decent gear/AAs, playing a druid without another class helping with mana/tanking/dps just sounds miserable. Group synergy is just too strong in EQ, and with half-decent boxing skills you might triple your kill speed.

If you enjoy reverse charming mobs and watching them grind down, more power to you, brother. If you've got a social community where it's easy to find groups (especially ones with good mana regeneration), that's great.