As a druid on raids and healing MT and caster group, I find it isn't unheard of to die at the beginning of a big fight and still heal the entire length of the fight. White wolf for, mod rod, shawl 3.0, clicky mana regen potion, clicky mana regen familiar, clicky mana regen items, casting our mana regen, and gbs when possible if you know you have enough to heal and using Stervida, with raid gear my mana slowly goes up (yeah with fast heals/group heals it takes a hit). Since you can have constant wolf form on with AA's/BP and such it is possible, you just need to look closely at how to gain mana back the fastest when every little bit counts. There are some fights this won't save ya on...but at least you can get a few more heals in, but most of the T1/T2 ROF fights I have found this to work. If you are group geared...forget about it....if you don't use potions/mana regen familiar, or have finished almost all your AA....forget abut it. It takes it all (and decent raiders in group) to get healing again properly.
There's a thing called balance? There may be, but its bad balance. If the classes were balanced druids would not be in the massively poor state they are in. Virtually 98 of 100 people acknowledge druids I have talked to are in a horrible state, and by far the most unbalanced classes. The other two just see druids as healers (not surprisingly, this statement is generally made by certain int classes). Why would you be a druid if all you wanted to do was heal? I run every class there is, all but one above 80, most above 85. 5 above 90, and every toon above 80 has 1200 aa or more, almost NONE of it PL'd (maybe 50 aa total). Not like I don't have experience with the other classes, their spells and aa's.
Since you're going around talking about how terrible druid are, could you go in to some more details on why you feel that way and some details about your druid? To me, our main issues right now are the lack of a way to gain mana after death or keep up on mana in exp groups. And the kind of boring batch of AAs and spells from SoF.
Well I have posted many times before Lila so sorry if you have not seen them (thousands). I just don't post as often on this shared class forum as I feel its mostly useless. Would take me a long time, and willing to do that in an e-mail or pm to you if you wish, but in synopsis: Druid dps is near the bottom from a class that used to be closer to the top middle by design and a class that could solo reasonable dot kiting or kiting, or normal charm kiting. In the group game, where people generally want a cleric or even a merc, druid dps is just sad, even with the small help received in ROF. My druid only has 3.3k aa (not a lot since I had 3k back in 2009 before I took a break), but he was rated from 8th-16th on my server from 2004-2009. DPS - I stack the rain with 3 dots + 2 nukes and I still get almost embarrassing dps vs. a dps class. We should be at the top of the dps for the priests and approximately upper ~1/3 of all. As I mentioned before, my wiz at 73 would beats my 90 druid consistently without using any aa discs. just hitting 2 nukes. In a good group, barely useful to use the dots because the mob will be dead sometimes as it is before you can cast your 3rd spell. Necros and wizzies, mages, zerkers, or whatever dps class you got in group just did 500k of damage, in the time you did maybe 30K-50K. Really? What is your highest nuke if you run a druid? Surely its not close to 400K !!! How much time does it the highest rated/best equipped druid in all of EQ to do 400K? Because a certain tier 1 ROF "casters" (not the worst class balance) can do it in less than 5 seconds, and repeat it again and again. The GAP in dps has grown to be a chasm. And it doesn't even improve much once we stack in our 5-6 spells (which again, the nukes cast too slowly to stack well (3.25 Winters xxx (and don't even get me started on the resists and agro this causes for the small amount of extra potential damage vs our standard fire nuke, but the 3.25 is fixed), and the dots do much too little damage). with our nukes casting from 3 seconds (rains being our best, which is another massively problematic issue). So how do you propose to stack dps for the max effect? The stacking to improve dps doesn't even work very efficiently vs. most other classes. Would love to see your line up and what your "unadjusted" average dps is i.e., dont' add in the extra timer based aa and discs and let me know what you are doing. Guarantee its embarrassing vs. MOST other classes. If you are happy to be just another healer, then good for you. But I have the original, 2nd and 3rd "summary" of what a druid definition is, and it specifically mentioned "damage dealing". The current one? hmm. Healing is fine, or more then fine. That that is just needed for raids most of the time, or the occasional group. However, why start a druid if you just want to be a healer? Clerics were meant to be healers most of time and SHOULD be the best. MOST druids I know prefer to dps in groups and support. Most druids I know have quite or changed mains because of POP forward nerfing and reinvisioning of the druid. In fact, one good friend with a 95/6500 aa/tier 4 voa druid finally just gave up his druids as ROF shipped cause he finally gave up hope of true help. For stacking to work and help dps, one needs to be able to cast certain spells in order and keep them going. When a nuke takes 4.5 Every class pretty much now has a fast cast big nuke, EXCEPT the druid. This is an important factor in dps stacking. our spell slot limitation alone limits the stance you take anyway, so the need to further "gimmck" it with white wolf / blackwolf as separate aa's was really not needed. Most of the druid dots need to be upped 50% to 100% per tick, fast cast, the fire dot / fire debuff dot casting (Sunray) speed need to be improved to no more than 1-1.5 seconds. Utility: Hard not to get wordy here our debuffs have improved (although, hardly anyone but druids and maybe raid guild leaders even know what they do), but most of our other utility offerings have either declined or just not been continued, or have stacking issues, limitations. Our ds and regen finally improved more then marginally, partially through efforts I and others made in prior betas and forums. However, chanters and shaman got the best improvements in utility (I also have a high level shaman btw who would consistently get a group in in content over my druid who was 10 levels higher then him - hence he caught up without me even trying or wanting him to). agro control? Druids have actually fallen behind here quite a bit. virtually every class can de-agro now, and druids don't even get a fade until the 90's (stuck with egress or succor they got 10 years ago until then), whereas most other classes that never had it get something like that at 85. wall of wind which many druids on this forum seem to love bites in my opinion, and mobs tend to charge again with that much more vigor. If it blurred also, then it would be useful. I have never seen it blur if its supposed to. What most don't realize is EVERY class has a ton of utility now and druids are NOT near the top of the ladder. Mages, a "favored class by a long shot" have some of THE most important and powerful utility yet their dps has been increased since re-invisioning. Debuffs 3 seconds (kinda slow, and if using the aa keys, HoR is SLOOWW, Fixation not as bad). I used to run the mitigation numbers on the debuffs and it could get decent. I know it was upgrade. However, I am wondering how much it really does in today's game with attacks, ac's and hp's so far up. I mean 27/28 ac reduction?
and ack post ended up way too long and I did not mean to attack your question. Was just trying to give some explanation and data. its an emotional, long term subject.
First of all, if you haven't read it yet, go read this: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/druid-raiding-druid-guide.131/ It will cover a lot of the basics on DPSing and I'm going to build off of it for how we changed in RoF/SoF. We are actually very solid at dpsing in both the raid and group games. You will need to keep your nuke AAs and black wolf maxed, with DOT AAs being nice to have. . It's been a while since I was 90, but at the group level you should not be using 3 dots. Nature's Wrath line is worth using at 95/100, along with the Sunblaze line. Other than that, you should be chaining Rain, Remote, Split nuke, and Summer's. Pop the spell Twincast every time it's up and try to start with rain and you should be able to get another twincast rain in before it wears off. Roll your discs and try to use them as often as possible. I didn't do many group parses during HoT, but on grinding to 95, I was getting 2nd behind a rogue over 6 hour stretches. At 95 we get a couple nice boosts to DPS, between our big nuke line (Roar of Kolos) and an upgrade to black wolf. And our VoA/RoF BPs extend wolf forms, group one allowing almost constant use, and raid allowing constant use. Grab a RoF BP as soon as you can. At 100 our DPS weave uses NWW, roar, remote, roar, rain, summers. I leave out rain a lot because that is too many spell slots. And depending on group kill speed, I'll also use Sunblaze if it's going to run it's course. Your discs should always be on lockout, except maybe Nature's Fury, since it will require you to take a med break right right after and it's worth saving for named mobs. Our fade is at 95 (same for wizards), get it, love it. Quick Damage exists for a reason. Don't use Sunray in groups, it only pays off on lost damage/time in raid settings. Get Blessing of Ro, never cast the spell version unless you need the reflect heal.
Yup agreed with everything you say. Still don't see druids from my friend parses of Bots and Ta Veran do anywhere near top in dps. Groups I don't use Sunray anymore. I use two dots max, if not a quick group and aside use exactly the set up you mentioned. Thanks
Druid's primary role on raids is as caster or tank group healers. You HAVE to do that, your personal DPS is not going to make up for a damage caster or tank going down. Once events are known, you can figure out which are safe enough to move over to DPSing. Tank group healers rarely ever get to do that and some guilds may need backup MT heals for all events. Some druids are clerics in leather, some don't look for chances to dps, and some don't know how. None of those are the fault of the class and shouldn't be viewed as such. We have the tools to do a lot, but it's still on the player to use them correctly.
That's strange... My druids sustained DPS (~23k in group gear) generally puts DPS classes sustained DPS to shame... Can't burn worth a damn I'll admit, perhaps that's because I only started playing him in September. As for the mana issue... Yeah, while DPSing I run out of mana after 90 minutes or so - I sit out 2 fights and I'm set... Healing - I use the right heals and heal efficiently - ran out of mana once while just healing - took 7 hours. Now, when you're trying to be the DPS and the healer at the same time, yes, there's a mana issue.
Use the burn guide from Daldaen's guide and the weave from my post above, your burns should be up to par after that. If I'm rolling Nature's Fury, I run out of mana far faster than 90 minutes in a group. Without clarity, mod rods or using NF, I have to med up every ~20-30 minutes in a fast group. Our burn spells are just so much more expensive than heals, they're like chaining our long reuse expensive heals. Along with Specialization & Spec augs favoring alteration making heals proportionally cheaper. On dedicated healing, I can get by almost exclusively on the very low cost Vida. While doing DPS and tossing in heals requires using the faster cast, higher cost heals. There's also the extra mana from using spells that don't match your wolf color. But mixed still burns less mana than dedicated DPS.
When I'm able to DPS on a raid mob, I tend to leave out rain due to the potential to hit adds that we don't necessarily want to hit, or hit myself in belly-casting situations. (We're mostly raiding ToV and the SL raid currently.) Should I be adding that back into the mix? I would love to see an upgrade to the dawnstrike line. I don't use it at level 100, but at level 90 I would throw it in the DPS mix, and would still at 100 if we had an upgrade to it.
My highest nuke so far that I have noticed is just above 140k. Single: [Wed Apr 17 21:50:23 2013] Minadin hit Sevalak for 141396 points of non-melee damage. However, as Iila mentioned above, it's a good thing to have twincast running whenever possible, and I did, so I actually did more than that: Twincast: [Wed Apr 17 21:50:23 2013] Minadin hit Sevalak for 131086 points of non-melee damage. [Wed Apr 17 21:50:23 2013] Minadin delivers a critical blast! (131086) [Wed Apr 17 21:50:23 2013] You twincast Katabatic Roar Rk. II. [Wed Apr 17 21:50:23 2013] Minadin hit Sevalak for 141396 points of non-melee damage. [Wed Apr 17 21:50:23 2013] Minadin delivers a critical blast! (141396) That's 272.5k in one cast, which isn't 400k, as you predicted, but it's closer than you might think. Granted, I was probably using a bunch of our DPS discs at the time, like First Spire, Nature's Fury, probably the BP, and maybe one or two others. Also, the previous nuke to that one was also a twincasted, critting Kolos line nuke: [Wed Apr 17 21:50:19 2013] Minadin delivers a critical blast! (122807) [Wed Apr 17 21:50:19 2013] Sevalak is lashed by the Roar of Kolos. [Wed Apr 17 21:50:19 2013] You twincast Roar of Kolos Rk. III. [Wed Apr 17 21:50:19 2013] Minadin hit Sevalak for 128491 points of non-melee damage. [Wed Apr 17 21:50:19 2013] Minadin delivers a critical blast! (128491) Which combined for 251.3k, so between the 2 casts, in the span of 4 seconds, a druid was able to deal 523.8k of damage. Might have been more like 550k if I had NWW running (I might have).
The AE range on rains is pretty small. It should be safe to use any time the adds aren't actually standing in or next to your target. SL is one of those, along with a few parts of other raids. There's far more places to use it than not use it. Dragons should be completely fine to use it on. It's pretty easy to resist the waves on yourself and waves that do hit can be taken care of with a group heal or SoTW. My best from the last week is 198604, with full bard and ENC support, plus self discs. [Mon May 20 17:18:33 2013] Illa hit Nest Protector for 198604 points of non-melee damage. A twincast NWW can easily break 200k, with the unfocused crit ticks hit for over 50k. Be in a necro group for bard and enc support and you can see 100k ticks [Mon May 20 17:16:57 2013] Nest Protector has taken 113106 damage from your Nature's Withering Wrath Rk. III. And relevant to above, crit rain hits are for 61k, so a twincast rain hitting two targets can do 480k. If you're grouped with a tank who can handle 2 or more mobs at a time, rains are VERY good dps in exp groups. But the important thing from all this isn't to look at what the high score numbers are from nukes or dot ticks, but your actual dps. None of us should be spamming JUST Katabatic Roar any more than a Wiz is just going to cast Ethereal Weave. Work on your DPS weave and what you do during gem downtime to maximize payoffs. Being off by one spell or sequencing slightly wrong can easily cost 10k+ dps on a burn, and that mistake is 100% on the player. Don't blame the class for your failings or whine about other people who can play their class correctly.
Very nice post, Illa. This past Wednesday I tried mixing in the Rain spell on the dragons I was able to primarily DPS on (didn't hurt that I was in a damage caster group with a bard) and went from barely making parses, to being about right in the middle of them. Max ticks on my NWW dot were around 70k, maybe because it's rank 2 and I had no chanter, but that was a good addition too. Anyway, druids aren't that poorly off when it comes to DPSing these days, I guess is the point, even though I would still like to see it increased somewhat to get back to our relative power circa Luclin, but I'm kind of a rare breed these days I guess. Evocation spec druid from a bygone era. Our main problem continues to be that we don't have any way to fast regen mana during a recovery.
I'm glad to hear that info helped you out. If you're not already using it, Chill of the Visionary is also very good against the NToV dragons, easy to twincast at the start and will last for a full duration or two. And the spell gem can be cycled out for another spell easily because of the long duration and short gem refresh when you need to recast it. I think we're doing pretty good on dps, but I would like to see something to work with our dots, or a unique druid disc.And some kind of burst mana regen of course. I'd say we're doing better than we were during Luclin era. We can solo better, we're not just the priest used when there aren't enough clerics or shm and we can do good enough dps to not embarrass ourselves. Luclin was nowhere as bad as Velious for us, but the raid roles we had were not very good. CH was a terrible thing and sticking us with a worse version was a bad patch for a larger problem. Quadding + charming in Luclin was a lot of fun though. A charmed wolf in ME with a Dawnfire and stun weapon was a chainsaw.
yeah but! clerics tend to save that spell for themselves..I get better results asking a Beastlord for a Para. The fact remains that this was promised to Druids. All we need is a 1 shot of mana AA
Everyone, I just did an experiment with my level 100 T1 and T2 ROF raid geared druid and level 100 ROF group geared cleric. We went to Shards Landing and I let a snake kill my druid. Then the cleric cast the SoF Call of the Herald AA. The druid came back with 4000 mana. Since I had rez effects, I think this was a pretty fair test. Until druids get an emergency mana draw, clerics could help by casting Call of the Herald and rezzing druids after the fight. Hope this helps, Larksong
Loratex said: ↑ “Just ask a cleric for quiet miracle then... Boom there is your mana” my hunny (druid wife) has run into this problem too. she asked for a quiet miracle after a death so she could have mana to keep the caster dps group alive and the cleric told her no i need this for myself.
