Let's talk about Advanced Apiculture again sometime this year

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bluetequila

Dalayan Adventurer
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Let's talk about this tome again. It's been almost an entire year since a thread was dedicated to it and in fact it's even been mentioned on the forums.

It could really stand to be more useful. Let you summon Bees indoors at reduced strength? Improve the DoTs themselves? Forget improving current damage altogether and provide an additional bonus to HoTs as well?

Healing bees that summon with your HoTs! Shielding bees that summon with your HoTs! Maybee a Shield of bees, absorb damage and provide a DS! Maybee Divine Beenevolence where your HoTs get a small DB chance for a small heal? Yes beease!

Queen bee you get UP TO 12% of the time for a small DPS increase outdoors is lackluster and it's one of the (if not THE, singular) cheapest and least desirable class tomes ATM which is a shame since I think it just needs a little push in a different direction to be on par.

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Seriously I've never encountered anyone who actually -likes- this tome and the only people I've seen complete it are either out of stuff to do (and some I know who otherwise fit the bill haven't even bothered) or did it for the Codex bonus beecause they found it cheaper than any other tome.


Ramifications. Clerics have already secured their role as raid healers, I'd assume Shaman as well due to their virtually limitless mana and stronger single-target healing, yet something like the shield of bees for instance could give the Druid a little extra raid utility (and we all know HoTs tend to get wasted due to the 6 second ticks.. tank needs to be healed NOW when they can sometimes go from 100% to nearly dead in one round) without stepping on their toes. It might actually make people want to take them along if the HoTs provided some small absorption as well!
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Honey for thought.
 
IMO druids mainly suffer because their go to heals are HOTS, and hots are limited by the old clunky tic system. They only heal once per 6 seconds, and a raid tank can go from 100 to 0 in that time frame. They are also usually at 100%, meaning most hot tics do nothing.

This thread gave me an idea, what if hots provided some invisible/innate bonus DB (through tomes)? So a group Hotted could gain an extra DB chance before or after the DB buff for 30?40% chance. A tank that had double druid hots running could maybe even be at 50-60% chance? (25-30% per HOT). A lot of druids on raids just use their far inferior quick heals and group heals as things are now, that extra DB chance could help add enough utility to make it worth keeping hots running instead.

Just a thought...
 
Silosobi said:
IMO druids mainly suffer because their go to heals are HOTS, and hots are limited by the old clunky tic system. They only heal once per 6 seconds, and a raid tank can go from 100 to 0 in that time frame. They are also usually at 100%, meaning most hot tics do nothing.

This thread gave me an idea, what if hots provided some invisible/innate bonus DB (through tomes)? So a group Hotted could gain an extra DB chance before or after the DB buff for 30?40% chance. A tank that had double druid hots running could maybe even be at 50-60% chance? (25-30% per HOT). A lot of druids on raids just use their far inferior quick heals and group heals as things are now, that extra DB chance could help add enough utility to make it worth keeping hots running instead.
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bluetequila said:
It might actually make people want to take them along if the HoTs provided some small absorption as well!
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Don't know if this could be any more reasonable than a death save, but I like the idea to build in either a damage reduction or damage absorb for Ancient/Relic Hots.
 
On the rest of the bees - oh this tome could be so much fun.

First and foremost, the bees should be able to be used inside if this is to be at all competitive. I also think bees should have a strong mitigation (maybe immunity to DS), and a really high chance to dodge spells / attacks. One AOE easily wipes these things on outdoor content. Aside from that, I think a small increase in dmg for the dot per rank is a reasonable baseline for the tome with the following additional incentives.
  • R1) No penalty for indoor use. Queen Summon chance at 10%
  • R2) Bees receive the full benefit of haste buffs on the druid. Queen Summon chance at 20%
  • R3) [this is where I want to get crazy] Bees proc a very small DOT which stacks with itself or has a component like intensify where each time a mob is hit with it, the dmg is increased. Queen Summon chance at 30%
  • R4) Bees have a chance to proc a spell interrupt (like the mini stun component of enchanter DD spells) Queen Summon chance at 40%
I also like the idea of some sort of mad beekeeper stance for the druid - decrease the cast time while stanced to 1 second a pop while active.
 
I feel like there are some great ideas in this thread - each rank doing something new, offensively, is interesting, but I don't feel like it adds all that much to Druid. The spell itself is in a pretty good place ATM (I feel) which is why the chance of summoning a queen bee (again, outdoors!) is baffling to me. It doesn't really do anything but more damage, and at this point I feel more like some utility would just bee lovely.

But as much as I'd love Bee healers, I can't argue the original intent seemed to be more damage. It just feels like it fell short a bit.
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While it may not have generated a lot of interest, positive or negative, I am glad we have at this point at least talked about it in 2015.

I am still hopeful for a defensive addition - I have watched my BEES! ramp tank (and die in one round) which was inspiring as well as pretty entertaining. Having an ability like that for an actual beneficial spell would be most excellent.

Perhaps somebody who could speak well for the tome could chime in?
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I don't see the problem with some class tomes being fun / not class balancing kind of things. Actually, I like it. Bees don't so much, but it's hardly the only class tome that is nearly useless to complete.

In my opinion, it shouldn't change; and if Druids feel they need to be improved to be better balanced, that perceived imbalance should be looked at in ways that are not a single class book.

As they are, you basically want one Druid in a raid, just one. But the same can be said of a lot of classes. Not seeing that as a problem either.
 
enasc said:
As they are, you basically want one Druid in a raid, just one. But the same can be said of a lot of classes. Not seeing that as a problem either.
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In fact I say that for about every class but CLR. (Yes I like bonus loot, and 18th slot can be p.much whatever!)
 
It's not a problem, it just sucks to only have 2 class tomes implemented and one of them being so bad. If the third one got put in and was decent the bees probably wouldn't bother people much
 
enasc said:
I don't see the problem with some class tomes being fun / not class balancing kind of things. Actually, I like it. Bees don't so much, but it's hardly the only class tome that is nearly useless to complete.

In my opinion, it shouldn't change; and if Druids feel they need to be improved to be better balanced, that perceived imbalance should be looked at in ways that are not a single class book.

As they are, you basically want one Druid in a raid, just one. But the same can be said of a lot of classes. Not seeing that as a problem either.
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this post is pretty spot on, the balancing bit
 
tripleb said:
It's not a problem, it just sucks to only have 2 class tomes implemented and one of them being so bad. If the third one got put in and was decent the bees probably wouldn't bother people much
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I think both druid class tomes are effectively useless in a raid, I dont think any other class suffers from this. I definitely agree that its a pretty lame thing
 
I'm all for flavor class tomes, but it doesn't hurt to suggest tomes that would help balance the class in areas they are weak. Obviously that is raid/main tank healing for a druid, but its a hard balancing act. Druids simply cant be as good at healing as clerics because of all their utility (even though its minimal in a raid).

I would definitely argue that if we have this bee/dps tome, make it substantially more powerful. Druids are bad dps, and almost never have a reason to do it. Clerics can do free dps, and shamans can actually do good (and half free) dps. Druids being the worst dps healer is just weird. They pretty much never should be dpsing in a raid or 6 man anyway because it burns their mana, so if they have this flavor dps tome, make it actually powerful, so that druids who complete it can at least see some cool powerful effects on the odd occasion they actually are dpsing.
 
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