Druids, Frank and you?
- Thread starter metvayne1
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I think that's what you meant to say. If druids aren't able to contribute on very specific encounters that very few ppl who play this game will ever see is that a problem with the class or with the design of those encounters?
Cascading Vim being situational isnt really what bothers me and I can live with its insane manacost, but rather then seeing the HoT component removed i'd have to say I prefer that it be made longer! Like, 4 or 5 ticks in stead of 2.
Vim is a pretty awesome spell and I absolutely love it as it can be a most beneficial groupsaver! But yeah, the HoT component is somewhat underperforming and sometimes you see it wearing off like 3 seconds after the cast... wth
I agree with the duration of the HoT component. Having it only tick twice just makes it super mana inefficient when compared to the other druid grp heal options. I would really love to see it have 4 to 5 ticks, making the runic worth the mana cost.
Manguadi
Dalayan Beginner
I know people vilify the gheal all the time, but in my experience it's easy enough to time if you know how the fight is going to work. The trouble comes from lack of ghots. Hots enable clerics to accomplish two things at once and they let clerics play more less reactively than the other healers.
Typical group healing comes in the form of slow, steady AE damage, or large and periodic damage. Almost never does a group take AEs so rapidly that a group heal is necessary from 100% life. If druids has a regen spell with a long duration, say 1-2 minutes which healed for 300-500 per tick it would give them a new niche and a unique spell.
Untasid: Not being able to go to certain encounters is just the most obvious example of why druids are bad. If, like you say, the encounters are the problem, then the only solution encounter-wise would be to simply make the fights easier. You can't design content specifically for a druid because a druid doesn't do any particular role well enough that a different class couldn't simply replace them.
Typical group healing comes in the form of slow, steady AE damage, or large and periodic damage. Almost never does a group take AEs so rapidly that a group heal is necessary from 100% life. If druids has a regen spell with a long duration, say 1-2 minutes which healed for 300-500 per tick it would give them a new niche and a unique spell.
Untasid: Not being able to go to certain encounters is just the most obvious example of why druids are bad. If, like you say, the encounters are the problem, then the only solution encounter-wise would be to simply make the fights easier. You can't design content specifically for a druid because a druid doesn't do any particular role well enough that a different class couldn't simply replace them.
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If encounters, or even entire zones for that matter, weren't designed around having POT4 the same argument could be made for Bards not being useful (that's a whole nother issue though that has been beaten to death in the past). It just goes with the territory of being a jack of all trades class..I do still think Cascading Vim could use some love tho
Also I could be wrong but druid ghealing consumes a lot of mana. And yeah the hot thing.
vistachiri
Dalayan Master
Here are the actual problems, and not the bullshit ones people are making up as we go along.
1) Druids need a defining debuff that fits with their role as a healer, and a niche. Being an underpowered cleric, is not a niche, and is in fact a joke. Archaic is awesome, don't get me wrong. Too many people have no idea how useful it actually is, and many druids just don't fucking cast it. Which is stupid. So so stupid.
2) Cascading vim, is not good. Personally I don't even see a reason I would keep it up most of the time if I had it. It's horribly inefficient, and tries to do multiple things, and does none of them well.
A note about druid dps. If you're nightfiring, you're doing it wrong. Unless you need it dead fucking pronto, and there are other classes for that. Our dots are actually pretty fucking great because of their super reliability. There are many places actually, having extensively played shamans as well, where your poison dot will absolutely refuse to land. I can think of like 2 places where druid dot has any difficulty landing whatsoever, and it is because the mobs are actually immune to magic, and/or spells.
The pet sounds fine, a small heal added to it would really just be completely annoying, and end up fucking up timing, and cockblocking parts of your heals. Recall minion for druids however, is a great idea, and if we have a serious pet now, we should get something like it.
Their buffs however, are fucking fine.
Roots and snares used to be good, before everything in the game summoned. The few times I've used snares on raids as a druid were the best times I've had one one, because we're snarechampions
Tbh if shamans had slightly more healing power and a group heal, or you could have 4 clerics on a raid, druids wouldn't even get used. So I'm divided. We are not a jack of all trades however. We do a small amount of dps, comparable to the dps the other healing classes do. So unless shamans and clerics have suddenly also become jack of all trades classes I think we got fucked over.
The druid groupheal isn't too hard to predict granted, IF you know what is going to happen, but it's a major slash across the throat of the druid's healing power, and OMFG I NEED TO SAVE EVERYONE NOW ability. In most of the more difficult content this is like taking a knife to a gunfight. A druid is a crippled healer. If you get a bunch of adds, a druid is fucked, whereas while using eldo, I've barely batted an eyelash until i hit 15m. Even if you have an idea of what is going to happen, you cannot predict every single thing. Clerics can save you even when shit hits the fan, druids are not good at that. Shamans are good at that in a different way, like a long distance runner.
Grouphots are only part of that. Hots are amazing, and really I don't think clerics should be as good at them as they are. Druids should also get them. They do allow playing less reactively, but you can't possibly say with a straight face that being able to heal the group completely twice in the time it takes to cast one group heal that heals for less isn't a problem.
Part of the problem is that clerics are used for fucking everything is there is no competition at all. The only reason to take a shaman instead of another cleric is slow, or if you cannot find another cleric.
The biggest problem with said encounters isn't that a class is bad or good, it's that it takes 30 fucking years to get there and if you wipe you're fucked and I hope you enjoy doing the whole thing over. A mistake that 6man content such as cmal did not make, and something that seriously cripples the fun of doing any of it.
1) Druids need a defining debuff that fits with their role as a healer, and a niche. Being an underpowered cleric, is not a niche, and is in fact a joke. Archaic is awesome, don't get me wrong. Too many people have no idea how useful it actually is, and many druids just don't fucking cast it. Which is stupid. So so stupid.
2) Cascading vim, is not good. Personally I don't even see a reason I would keep it up most of the time if I had it. It's horribly inefficient, and tries to do multiple things, and does none of them well.
A note about druid dps. If you're nightfiring, you're doing it wrong. Unless you need it dead fucking pronto, and there are other classes for that. Our dots are actually pretty fucking great because of their super reliability. There are many places actually, having extensively played shamans as well, where your poison dot will absolutely refuse to land. I can think of like 2 places where druid dot has any difficulty landing whatsoever, and it is because the mobs are actually immune to magic, and/or spells.
The pet sounds fine, a small heal added to it would really just be completely annoying, and end up fucking up timing, and cockblocking parts of your heals. Recall minion for druids however, is a great idea, and if we have a serious pet now, we should get something like it.
Their buffs however, are fucking fine.
Roots and snares used to be good, before everything in the game summoned. The few times I've used snares on raids as a druid were the best times I've had one one, because we're snarechampions
Tbh if shamans had slightly more healing power and a group heal, or you could have 4 clerics on a raid, druids wouldn't even get used. So I'm divided. We are not a jack of all trades however. We do a small amount of dps, comparable to the dps the other healing classes do. So unless shamans and clerics have suddenly also become jack of all trades classes I think we got fucked over.
The druid groupheal isn't too hard to predict granted, IF you know what is going to happen, but it's a major slash across the throat of the druid's healing power, and OMFG I NEED TO SAVE EVERYONE NOW ability. In most of the more difficult content this is like taking a knife to a gunfight. A druid is a crippled healer. If you get a bunch of adds, a druid is fucked, whereas while using eldo, I've barely batted an eyelash until i hit 15m. Even if you have an idea of what is going to happen, you cannot predict every single thing. Clerics can save you even when shit hits the fan, druids are not good at that. Shamans are good at that in a different way, like a long distance runner.
Grouphots are only part of that. Hots are amazing, and really I don't think clerics should be as good at them as they are. Druids should also get them. They do allow playing less reactively, but you can't possibly say with a straight face that being able to heal the group completely twice in the time it takes to cast one group heal that heals for less isn't a problem.
Part of the problem is that clerics are used for fucking everything is there is no competition at all. The only reason to take a shaman instead of another cleric is slow, or if you cannot find another cleric.
The biggest problem with said encounters isn't that a class is bad or good, it's that it takes 30 fucking years to get there and if you wipe you're fucked and I hope you enjoy doing the whole thing over. A mistake that 6man content such as cmal did not make, and something that seriously cripples the fun of doing any of it.
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Miffy
Dalayan Adventurer
From what I have had thrown in my face with ikisith spells, you can't expect to compare ikisith spells with old world spells and in general they are pretty mana inefficient and or very situational.
tinkaa
*fake Tinkerbell*
PoT4 isn't something inbetween like druid utility is, it is unique. Not to mention bards have a lot of other useful stuff going for them. Which druid ability is so good that noone else excels at it?
vistachiri
Dalayan Master
Except you can, because there are ones that are good. As opposed to ones that are bad. That argument is and has been like giving a monk a 50lb hammer that they will use twice in the game and saying you shouldn't compare it to the previous weapons, because it's totally different and useful in a different way.
A quick litmus test for a good spell is whether it is actually worth a spell slot. Druids remaining shortbus healers seems to confirm cascading vim doesn't help them at all.
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I used a druid for a while until I had the chance to play Nifera's cleric. And that's when I started boxing Ayesha everywhere.
Much much muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh better. And who gives a shit about druid utility ? It's not like they have slows or something invaluable. You cast buffs with them then /camp .
They really need some love in the healing department, not a lot, but they are just not competitive.
Much much muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh better. And who gives a shit about druid utility ? It's not like they have slows or something invaluable. You cast buffs with them then /camp .
They really need some love in the healing department, not a lot, but they are just not competitive.
Manguadi
Dalayan Beginner
This argument is about bards being necessary, not useful. If you took pot4 and mots away from bards entirely they would still be useful in all the same places.
Chanter hate! Chanter style spells don't seem like the answer to druid woes though, its not gonna make them better at their job
vistachiri
Dalayan Master
I don't really think long recasts are going to be very good on a druid. Personally I already hurt for spell slots on Imeriaz, I also don't think buffs are going to particularly remedy things.
The problem with raids is everyone stacks clerics until they either cannot find anymore, or cannot fit anymore (usually the latter), because no other healer even comes remotely close. If you add a druid to a 3 cleric raid, you basically end up with the effectiveness of 3 1/2 clerics. There is also no reason to double up on them (except for low attendance nights). This is because their primary role (Healing) they are bad at because
A) Their group heal sucks. Cascading Vim does not remedy this because its massive drawbacks make it fairly undesirable.
B) 0 breathing room from hots, for which cascading vim would only be good if you wish to run oom faster than casters several tiers below you.
Shamans have a niche, slow + never running out of mana. Druids have archaic and that is pretty much it.
I would not be surprised if say the class raid cap was 4, if the standard healer setup for most became 4 clerics and 1 shaman.
The problem with raids is everyone stacks clerics until they either cannot find anymore, or cannot fit anymore (usually the latter), because no other healer even comes remotely close. If you add a druid to a 3 cleric raid, you basically end up with the effectiveness of 3 1/2 clerics. There is also no reason to double up on them (except for low attendance nights). This is because their primary role (Healing) they are bad at because
A) Their group heal sucks. Cascading Vim does not remedy this because its massive drawbacks make it fairly undesirable.
B) 0 breathing room from hots, for which cascading vim would only be good if you wish to run oom faster than casters several tiers below you.
Shamans have a niche, slow + never running out of mana. Druids have archaic and that is pretty much it.
I would not be surprised if say the class raid cap was 4, if the standard healer setup for most became 4 clerics and 1 shaman.
Miffy
Dalayan Adventurer
This is a completely different issue, there are a lot of classes where there will only EVER be one max in a raid. Not every raid MUST be optimal setup especialy with lower tiers you work with what you got. This actually makes druids good because they can slip into a dps role pretty easy if thats what the raid calls for.
I mean if your argument is clerics heal better than druids, then what's your solution making druids heal as good or almost as good as clerics? The only problem brought up that I agree with is that druids have no one thing that they are specially needed for, unlike shamans. It would be nice if druids had some spell that meant you always want that one druid in your raid. And by some spell I mean some sweet buff/debuff.
I mean if your argument is clerics heal better than druids, then what's your solution making druids heal as good or almost as good as clerics? The only problem brought up that I agree with is that druids have no one thing that they are specially needed for, unlike shamans. It would be nice if druids had some spell that meant you always want that one druid in your raid. And by some spell I mean some sweet buff/debuff.
as someone who used to main a druid before switching to a rogue I agree, my druid always felt useless, I was usually just stuck in the caster group and told to keep them alive, which required insane timing with the druids long cast times on their group heal and no hots.