I've been playing both combos, but my play time is being crunched, so I'll really only have time to do one. I love the bst and druid ports, but I'm thinking the shm/sk is going to allow me to do a lot more content. Can a dru/bst come anywhere close to doing the same content toward the high end? Both my groups are in the high 70s atm. Any help would be much appreciated.
>I'm thinking the shm/sk is going to allow me to do a lot more content. As much as I hate to admit it, this is very true, unless you want to be pet cleric on the bst.
I wasn't sure how I'd do without slow. Right now it helps a lot but maybe later it's less important? I don't really have any experience past 80.
Druids have attack debuffs that should be at least roughly equivalent to slow in total damage reduction. There are also some slow proc weapons for SKs, but they're mostly bad and not needed. You clearly like having a druid, and they have synergy with SKs at higher levels. It's MUCH easier to keep a SK alive while tanking than a bst.
Is this true? Granted I've never played with a druid above level 70, I had no idea this was the case. Their attack debuffs later on are really (roughly) on par with a ~65% slow? This would definitely change my mind about leveling my druid any higher.
Slow is heavily mitigated at higher levels, so you will rarely be able to land it for full 75% reduction in the number of swings. There is a discussion here and, more recently, here. Basically, your 75% slow can be mitigated down to roughly "under 20%", at which point Druidic debuffs become competitive.
This is quite true. It has been, in variable fashion, since the Elemental tiers of Planes of Power. The good news(?) is that ignorance is entirely forgivable. Even playing with a druid may well not have guided you to the knowledge because so few of them value their own abilities as highly as they should. The real bottom line is that both healers have relevant debuffs, so you look for other reasons to choose between them, if you're just choosing on power versus feeling. The upside of using a shaman as your box healer is developing a functionally unlimited mana pool much earlier than the druid (a properly raised treehugger will get there, though), and the melee-boosting shaman epic 2.0 that combos in supersweet fashion with SK "god mode" tanking of shd epic 2.0 + melee discs. In my opinion, the mana pool thing has significantly reduced relevance with knight tanks, who run out their own mana pools anyhow. The upside of using druid as your box healer, besides utility (ports & Tracking (mmmTrackingmmm)), is better sustained boost to dps & healing via casting boosts. Proc aura for additional casting damage, and crit booster Black Wolf multiplying the damage & healing of taps. Also, though it's relatively minor, the druid version of defensive proc, Reptile, combos better with your innate nuke/heal crits than shaman Sluggishness.
IIRC slow mitigation was very rare outside of raid mobs up through GoD (when I stopped playing my druid). So to compare druid debuffs in the same category was so isolated that it was essentially irrelevant. I haven't really paid attention to slow messages on my box, but how often are slows "mostly" mitigated in later expansions? Even if we assume its the majority of the time and the best slows are mitigated to ~20%, does the druid debuff = 20% damage mitigation? It looks like the best one only reduces attack by 90, which doesn't seem like much at all, though admittedly I have little context about player ATK values vs NPC atk values. Don't want to derail this thread (though I guess it is still relevant), but I'd be really curious to see some parses or data that can make this comparison a little more clear. On the same token, I also wonder exactly how effective the SHM/ENC cripple line of spells in terms of damage mitigation, seeing as they reduce STR (STR = ATK) by around 300 at their best.
Druids have quite a few stackable debuffs -- see this page. As Fanra pointed out here, that's a lot of spells (and/or AAs) to cast, which can be an even bigger issue when boxing.
I think one of the interesting things about slow vs druid debuffs is, slow has been farmed out a good bit via multiple slowing classes and via weapon procs, poisons and now even a defensive proc. I got a Usasium a few weeks back and as someone often playing with no slower (sk mage or sk rog), it's a pretty amazing item. Many of these are an ok substitute for the real thing, where there aren't a whole lot of generic attack debuffs similar to what Druids get available to the masses.
Great info, thanks guys! This gives me a lot to think about, and I think makes my decision even harder , but that's a good thing in this case. I guess another question would be for those boxing an sk and shm/dru, do you find your spending more time on the sk or the healer? Sounds like the druid might take a little more active time to use, but that might be worth the ports/track ability.
The biggest problem you'll have with tank priest is mobs die slow. 2 dps mercs will help, though. Personally I prefer sk/ench or sk/dps. Mage is really an amazing sk bot and very effective with pretty darn minimal attention.
Great link, this is really interesting. These are quite powerful when stacked I guess. Definitely starting to reconsider leveling a druid. Used to be my favorite class back in the day, but didn't seem to have much going for it anymore. Guess I was wrong. Only problem is stacking 6 debuffs on each mob might be a bit of a PITA.
On group mobs I only cast Blessing of Ro. Sometimes I also use the ice -atk debuff, but it has a resist rate of ~20%. The harder mobs that I want to cast it on are also the ones that punish wasting time on a resisted spell instead of a heal. For the others, nuking will reduce damage taken better because it helps apply the best debuff, dead. Reptile's proc can't crit heal. It's a heal+HoT in one spell. Like how the dots with an initial DD component (shm disease dots?) can't crit with the initial DD.
Slow mitigation was introduced in the second tier of Planes of Power (Plane of Storms), and was pervasive in the elemental planes. Nearly every mob, like we're talking 99.99_%+, returns a "Partial" message when slowed. What Partial means varies by zone, with higher tiers of content within an expansion mitigating slow more. Within a zone, Mostly slowed would mean your slow was more (1.5x more) effective than Partial in the same zone, and Slightly would mean your slow was less (1/2) effective than against basepop. Both of those variants are very rare compared to Partial slow. Druid attack debuffs reduce incoming dps more effectively than mitigated slows, and besides the overall effect they specifically drastically reduce the likelihood of bad spike rounds which are enormously more dangerous to tanks than just "dps". This post on samanna.crucible.net explains well what atk debuffing does. Best Shm atk debuff is -165 str on Crippling Spirit AA fully hastened AA is available every 3 minutes Best Dru atk debuff is -82 Fixation of Ro AA PLUS -229 Moonbright Frost Rk. III PLUS -270 Blessing of Ro AA all usable on every mob Ah, I stand corrected. Perhaps I'd seen it crit on shm (who have crit HoT AAs) and misattributed the source.
Maybe some of the more knowledgeable folk can chime in, but I've had great success with an sk/wiz combo. I'm only in the low 80's myself though, but for mercs I'm using a cleric and wiz, and I'm thinking for harder content I can just swap to two clerics. Again though, maybe someone more knowledgeable can comment on the success of this at higher levels for high end content.
