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

Care to give your personal review of every xpac from GoD onward to give some validity to this claim?

I can’t believe this thread made it passed shamans having slow. That’s it. That’s the reason why shamans are better

I don't know why but this mentality grosses me out. It's like people who make generalizations about the world but refuse to ever travel beyond the borders of their own little town.

The Shaman DPS boost to group just can't be understated. With a Shaman my Paladin goes from mediocre DPS to reasonably good DPS. Any melee DPS as long as their weapons are reasonably current will skyrocket in output. However they only shine their brightest in a melee heavy group. Mix in casters and chanters or bards become more desirable if slows aren't essential to be the best.

Druids really have been at times great but other times, sometimes multiple expansions kind of lackluster. An ebb and flow to them that never really feels just right.

Druids really found their place about 6 xpacs ago and they've been on point ever since.

Not that I necessarily disagree with you concerning the general mindset, but this IS the TLP forum. The generalization isn't about the world in general, it is specifically about their own town. It isn't really helpful when you say "Man, I love my town, but I wish we could paint our houses red," and someone else says, "Well, in other parts of the world, you can paint your house red." They're not talking about the other parts of the world, they're specifically talking about their corner of it. So when they say "I wish we could paint our houses red," you need to mentally append "in my town" to the statement. Because they're not talking about houses in another country. When someone says "I wish Druids were better" on the TLP server, they're not talking about Live. If they're going to play the general TLP experience, which seems to be reliving a small pocket of expansions over and over again, then that's what they're referring to.

I get that. And I'd totally agree if it was Classic and not TLP. But TLP isn't classic. The word "progression" in it is supposed to mean exactly that. TLPs continue beyond <insert arbitrary expansion that people are terrified to go past>

I know I personally am a big fan of the Druid, and would love for them to be a good pick for groups in the way that many other classes are. I ended up swapping over to a Shaman on Yelinak because I felt detrimental to my group (granted, I'm in a somewhat different situation than people who are generally pugging, in that we're 4-5 people who play on Discord together.) I always felt like there is a "wild card" pick in any group, and if I'm playing the Druid, I'm basically always the wildcard, so we always needed to hunt for a "good class" to fill the last spot(s). But since we're playing the TLP, the knowledge that the Druid gets good years down the road isn't really as comforting to me as you might think. The Shaman's kit just seems so much better than the Druid's at the levels we will be spending the majority of our time playing. Which is unfortunate, because I prefer the class fantasy and overall kit of the Druid.

Yeah in the early game I think druids were more solocentric as opposed to the shaman's groupcentric role. Which was fine back when everybody didn't have all the min/max stuff figured out. But now it's known that grouping is the way to go (along with all other changes made over the years) it kind of leaves druids in a bad place for a while.

As a shaman I see every raid what a druid can do. Shaman dps is ok, but a druid can really burn it. Would love more raiding druids in CT. Let the shaman heal, let the druids dps!

Real talk, and I will trigger all the druid fanboys with this statement, however this applies to many classes.

Druid (and a lot of other classes) suffer from the anything you can do someone can do better. especially in early expansions

Unless there is a charmable animal, 99.99% of the time you are better off with another class in that role (at least for a lot of the early expansions). Even with a charmable animal an enchanter is generally still a better choice.

HOWEVER
It is very rare that you will find a zone with enough mobs to sustain the "optimal group". with a charm pet especially, pulls will get INCREDIBLY long or not worth it, and you will be waiting on respawns. I know in Lguk we were able to pull all of dead side and still waiting for respawns.

Even in a group without a charm pet you will most likely not have enough mobs, especially during prime time. So the short answer is it doesnt matter.

As time goes on and druids get some of their really solid tools the become powerhouses and are incredibly nice to have. The atk debuffs are very nice AND parses show that the later atk debuffs (I think 70+) have as much dps decrease on the mob as a max mitigated slow. The AC and resist debuffs are incredibly nice as well.

Early on though, I would still like a few druids in each raid because the AC debuffs DO make a difference for your melee dps. The resist debuffs are also incredibly nice for your caster DPS, they do make a huge difference.

I am still in the group that thinks a well played druid is a great group/raid addition, even moreso in later expansions.

To be honest, I think shamans would still be better even if they didn't have slow. If we look at the assets of the druid class, most of them are meaningful in such a limited scope that they just don't have much value.

Their buffs aren't particularly impactful; damage shields become effectively irrelevant at 50+, and while the mana regen from their PotG line is nice and all, it's really not that much compared to the other sources of FT available at those levels. Still, this is probably the main strength of the class.

Evac is largely irrelevant in today's game. On TLPs, it's so impractical to do because you probably lose the camp if you evac, and actual group wipes are virtually non-existent once you're past the "everyone's in banded and fine steel weapons" stage of a fresh server. I can barely remember ever being in a situation that called for an evac beyond the first couple of weeks of a new TLP.

Ports? Eh. Convenient for the first few months of a server and then almost completely redundant. And even before Luclin/PoP, how impactful are ports really? It's convenient to cut down on travel time, but if you're sitting down to play for several hours, it didn't matter very much whether it took you two minutes or ten minutes to get to your destination. It's nothing more than QoL. It adds basically nothing to the equation of how good a class is, in my book. Literally zero impact on performance when actually engaged in content, it's just a faster way to get to said content.

Root is such an ineffective method of CC (and available to so many classes) that it barely warrants a mention. Snare is slightly more useful since some dungeons do become awkward if nobody can do it, but almost half the classes can snare and efficient groups don't really need it anyway as three solid DPS can usually finish a runner off long before it becomes problematic. After Kunark, dungeons largely stop being filled with shaman mobs that SoW everything, too.

Druids aren't good enough healers to single-handedly heal a group in most cases, whereas a shaman can in a pinch if very diligent with canni. They aren't good enough DPS for anyone to be happy with having a druid filling that role. They don't bring any meaningful utility to a grind session. Their debuffs don't become impactful until, what, six or seven expansions in?

Whereas even if we pretend that slow didn't exist at all, shamans have amazing buffs as well as Malo, vastly superior mana management, and an incredibly efficient heal over time. A lot of the time, shamans are better DPS as well; it's really only in the select few places where druids can make meaningful use of charms, or on targets where shaman DoTs won't land, that druids have the upper hand in this department--but since neither of them are a DPS class, this doesn't matter very much until way, way later when the druid is sort of re-designed into a halfway DPS class.

And then you add slow to the equation and it becomes obvious why shaman is widely regarded as one of the very best classes in the game whereas druids are traditionally considered literally the worst. How anybody could possibly contrive to believe that druids are somehow better is beyond me. It's the worst class in Everquest for the entire de-facto lifespan of a TLP server, at least - I have no idea what goes on in the latter expansions - challenged only by pre-Luclin rangers.

Lol this part was funny Tunare and Karana really need to up their game if they want more TLP worshipers!

This is the TLP forum. The overwhelming majority of TLP players only care about the first year or so of a server's lifespan. It is absolutely reasonable and expected that unless stated otherwise, discussions like these pertain to that aspect of the game. He is 100% correct in saying that what happens in House of Thule, or whatever, has no bearing whatsoever unless it's specifically pointed out that that's the topic. It's safe to say that almost nobody who clicks on this thread cares about anything after GoD or maybe OoW at the latest. If that "grosses you out," you're the one who's being irrational.

The community creating arbitrary, meaningless era limited within a TLP lifecycle is irrational. To speak only about a limited portion of the game when a typical TLP isn't limited to just that portion of the game is irrational. One of the primary aspects, intents, and goals of a TLP for DPG is to get players to see all game content at an accelerated rate. Recycling some of the worst developed content in terms of class design and balance is irrational.

I'm not going to judge sushi by the ones I can purchase at a gas station. Nor am I going to talk about class balance by leveraging less than 10% of the entire TLP cycle.

Thats why I would love a TLP that started around TSS. I think it would actually be pretty popular. The fact that TLP's start to fall off around GoD/Omens I think is a factor of more then just "I hate that era of the game". I think it also has a lot to do with people are burning out, especially if they are trying to get as much done during those expansions as possible. I know that is what happens with me at least.

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).

If you havent played EQ past GoD/OoW I encourage you to give it a try, its actually really fun and in depth. I probably wouldnt box on that server either, as at that point in the game each toon has enough to do to keep me amused.

Even if you want to post the most narrow sighted comment in the history of comments, this comment isn't even accurate.

Classic warriors or rogues are by far worse than druids. Warriors are literally one of the worst classes in the game for doing a significant part of their class design - aggro. They produce less aggro vs just about every class in the game in classic.

Basic tank formula: Tanking = Mitigation + Aggro. Without good mitigation, you cannot tank effectively. Without good threat-generating abilities, you cannot tank effectively. Warriors are garbage at threat-generation. Therefore they aren't really good tanks. If they aren't good tanks, they are a bad class because that's the ONLY designed role for them initially. Considering they are so bad at aggro generation that it's almost worth having a ranger tank over them in classic I'd say yes, they are about the worst class in the game for that era and probably the worst class in the game for a specific era out of all classes in any era ever.

We used an SK tank for almost everything until GoD except for a few mobs in my last hardcore guild. A few mobs required defensive, but it was like avatar of war, Emp SSra.... honestly not that many. Then Weapon affinity and procmods become a thing and warriors get to play the game. Oh yah, fearless also trivilizes a lot of fights from a tanking aspect.

Infinite agro, dps dont have to hold back, etc.

I would go so far as to tell the raid if anyone could pull threat off me I would give them a krono. Made for some REALLY fast fights.

I would go so far as to say once rogues get their epic in kunark their dps becomes respectable. Its not monk dps, but if you gauge every dps in the vacuum of the monk dps, every class sucks

Very true, i had a hell of a time holding agro on my ogre warrior on Selos

Even with anger augments in my weapons and certain agro proc weapons like the hammer in Plane of Innovation, and the one from one of the bosses in Ssrea temple (dont remember name)

Was really hard to maintain agro on warrior, even into PoP... on my SK its a joke, i never lose agro unless i want to

I see your warrior and raise you a wizard, they use us to eat DT in sky lol