Druid's Role in 46+ groups.Follow

I've played my druid up to 34 now, then decided to take a break and try another class. For most of my life I've been the main healer in my group, but in 46+ planes groups I always had to wait for a cleric. What exactly is a druid's role in 46+ planar groups? List them all if there is more than one.

I could not disagree with Senyene more!

Other than the point that Druids are not effective healers against PoP mobs pre 58, I disagree strongly with every thing that was said.

Druids are a very valuable group member in the 40's and 50's, it is during this time the Druids DPS output really begins to blossom.

And I do not mean melee. If you are holding a weapon for meleeing in your hand you should use it to clean your ears out.

Through 44 and up you start getting strong upgrades to your fire and magic DDs, you get new cold based DD's and major improvement to your rain.

You also get a couple of significant upgrades to your magic DoT and your fire DoT, you start getting the Ro series of debuffs.

It is during this period that you start to surpass the Mage's nuking power and begin to draw closer to a Wizard. Any Druid who does not learn how to use this effectively is nuts.

Sure, the magic based nukes get nulified indoors, but try using Drifting Death/Winged Death in combo with Calefaction/Ice/Firestrike etc. Learn how to debuff effectively for your own fire spells. Use the Fire based DoTs in conjuction with fire nukes. Begin learning how to use your rain effectively.

All of this while you continue to support CC, group buffing and back up healing and curing.

To put it in straightforward terms, your role is DPS - using your nukes and dots.

You should work toward an equipment set up that gives the best support for this role. This is one of the reasons I continually speak against Druids meleeing. You should be using your primary, secondary and range slots to give you as much mana, mana regen and mana efficiency as possible. You need focus items, flowing thought, mana and hit points every where you can stuff them.

And when you are in action, if you are not casting you should be medding back mana. If your mana regen and efficiency is so good that you are always near full mana, you are not nuking/doting enough.

Now is the time that you start putting into practice what you have learned about aggro management. The secret to a good Druid or Wizard is being able to maintain a constant high DPS output, with out making the Tank chase his mob all over the battlefield.

Regarding healing in the 50's. Do not undrestimate the usefulness of Chloroblast. No, it does not make you a main healer, but it is super mana efficient and fast, with improved healing and mana preservation you can chain cast it almost indefinitely. It is also relatively low aggro.

Being able to bring significant DPS and add in Chloroblast makes a Druid a +member of any group. Untill you get Chloroblast keep Healing Water handy, its not as fast or efficient, but still low mana cost and faster than SH. In fact the combination of Healing Water and Superior Healing plus good mana regen will allow you to main heal in many situations, if you cannot find a Cleric.

But, as I have said, your real job is DPS!

The druid role in experience groups is pretty simple and yet very complex. Briefly stated, your role is to flow to fill whatever the group lacks.

Heals improve as you grow. You will find it difficult to heal a group at this level by yourself (though newly introduced spells make it easier). However, you and a paladin can heal just fine - he uses his wave spells every now and then so you don't have to keep spending mana healing casters, and you're good. You + any other priest class will work beautifully as well.

Buffs. If you have a cleric in the group your skin line stacks with his symbol line to give the highest HP boost overall. Some melees prefer to have the cleric's HP buff instead to save a buff slot. Either way works. Work WITH your cleric, you're not rivals. Keep an eye on his health, and heal him/the group if the cleric has aggro.

Debuffs. You have some of the best AC/ATK/FR/CR debuffs in the game, and they stack with everyone else's. Use them. The AC and ATK debuffs will help your melees; the FR/CR debuffs will help your casters - and your melees if they're using weapons with FR/CR based procs.

Damage output is okay at this level, but your nukes are relatively mana inefficient. I used to nuke just enough to bring the mob down, not to compete with the wizard or mage who can sustain damage output better.

SNARE. If there is no other snarer, or even if there is - snare everything you can as soon as its health drops below 60% or so. Rangers, necros, wizards can all overwrite your snare but it's still a good idea to get yours in there in case they forget or get resisted. Aggro on snare has been reduced recently, which is unfortunate in a way - that used to be my tool to take aggro off of the enchanter.

DS, as above. Keep DS on all tanks and on yourself (so you know when it falls). If you log a few fights you can calculate how much damage your DS does. It adds up, especially on unslowed mobs.

Crowd control, as above. LET YOUR GROUP KNOW when you root mobs, as it changes the aggro pattern. Again, work WITH your primary CC if you have a bard/chanter. Kite mobs around if necessary until they can debuff and land a mez. ONLY USE DOTs ON ASSIST.

Tracking. If you're in a dungeon especially, everyone wants to know when the named pops. Keep an eye on track.

Well I don't want to turn this into yet another long drawn out debate about nuances and hair splitting, but Sickseventwenty says a number of things that perpetuate the (false) sort of EQ lore about Druids that I detest.

I really do think that the druids who go around thinking that they are some sort of "jack of all trades" are those that don't know how to play their class in a group and perpetuate the belief among other classes that druids aren't worth having.

Druids have two specialties, healing and magic DPS. All the rest is secondary and can be duplicated by many other classes, BL, SK, Ranger, Wizzy, Shaman can all fill in as snares/cc/buffer. Hell even a mage and a chanter can stick a DS on the MA. (How's that for a mouthfull of jargon

Any way putting the healing thing to one side, as I was specificaly talking about damage, as this is where I think a lot of Druids really let themselves down.

At 44 (we were talking about the mid 40's to 50's right?) A Druid has three main damage spells (we were talking about grouping and I said indoors because this is the situation misunderstood the most).

Drones of Doom 34*11 damage, 141 mana 4 sec cast time. (Some may question the number of ticks, every parse I have ever done gives me 11 hits despite the stated 60 second duration).

Drifting Death 65*11 damage, 200 mana, 5.3 cast time.
Calafaction 444 damage, 250 mana 2.5 cast time.

So at 44;

In an encounter that lasts 10 ticks a Druid can contribute 1533 damage for 591 mana.

If the encounter only lasts 7 ticks a Druid can contribute 1137 damage for 591 mana.

If the encounter lasts longer the Druid may choose to cast Calefaction again, personally I would continue to meditate.

At 49 a Druid gains Ice and Starfire. 612 damage for 250 mana, 6.1 cast time. The choice between Ice and Starfire is situational, however the fire debuff in Ice can be very beneficial if you happen to have another fire nuker in the group (even for yourself if it is a long enough fight).

So at 49;

In an encounter that lasts 10 ticks a Druid can contribute 1701 damage for 591 mana.

If the encounter only lasts 7 ticks a Druid can contribute 1305 damage for 591 mana.

Or, the Druid can cast Ice + Starfire, 1224 damage for 500 mana 12.2 sec cast time (as opposed to 11.8 cast time for the DoT combo).

At 52 a Druid gains Breath of Ro, 92*11 damage for 250 mana, 3.5 sec cast time.

So at 52;

In an encounter that lasts 10 ticks a Druid can contribute 2339 damage for 700 mana.

If the encounter only lasts 7 ticks a Druid can contribute 1711 damage for 700 mana.

Or, the Druid can cast Ice + Starfire, 1224 damage for 500 mana 12.2 sec cast time.

At 53 a Druid gains Winged Death, 143*10 damage for 350 mana, 5 sec cast time.

So at 53;

In an encounter that lasts 10 ticks a Druid can contribute 3054 damage for 850 mana.

If the encounter only lasts 7 ticks a Druid can contribute 2257 damage for 850 mana.

Or, the Druid can cast Ice + Starfire, 1224 damage for 500 mana 12.2 sec cast time. Or Ice + Starfire + Ice, 1836 damage for 750 mana and 18.3 sec cast time.

So what is the point of all of this? Simply to make the point to any Druids not sure of what they can bring to a group, that using a combination of your DoTs and Nukes, balanced against med time and the length of each encounter can add a tremendous amount of DPS to a group and any group that cannot see the benefit of this is not worth playing with.

All the arguments about whether a wizzy is more mana efficient or whether a mage might have a bigger nuke are irrelevant. Its not like you have a choice between casting a wizzy nuke or a druid nuke, or switch between being a mage one second and druid the next is it?

You are there, you are filling a group spot, if you are not healing you should be doing as much damage to the mob as you can.

PS.. I can hear someone saying "but yeah, fights in LDon last about 3 ticks". Well, go to Fungus Grove and fight Shik'na and the fight witll last about 20 ticks.

Its all relative a Druid casting Ice + Starfire in a 3 tick encounter every second encounter would probably be contributing more damage than anyone else in the group. (Not sure about my mental arithmatic there, that may not be enough med time to sustain that level for the average equipment setup but you can see my point.)

My point was and is that a druid is NOT a one- or two-dimensional character. Absolutely everything depends on who else is in the group and what slack needs to be picked up.

I can't recall many times at all when I was able to get more than one nuke off in a fight at that level. Granted it's been a while but I do not remember being a heavy nuke until fairly recently. It's possible that my groups tended to have high dps and mobs just dropped unusually fast.

But, whatever. If you choose to believe that I don't know how to play a druid in a group, please feel free to do so, sir.

im not uber or anything but i think i have played my druid enough to know that what i said was all true from my experiance. i have soloed lots and i have grped lots and i know what my job is in a grp or raid. if you wish to believe i dont know how to play my class in a grp you are free to keep doing so, but the fact is i know perfectly well how to work in a grp.

i know druids arent a jack of all trades but they are capable of doing lots of things from pulling to dps to main healing and backup healing to adding a DS and buffing. in an average grp i find myself doing doing most of these things, sometimes ill be exclusively healing sometimes ill be exclusively on DPS or generally its a mixture, im often a puller to due to the harmony spell, if theres a shaman in the grp but no cleric i often find myself as main healer and in lots of cases i find my mana bar full so i nuke (in most cases DoTs are just a mana drain because they dont use there full potential), i generally debuff most mobs too. the fact is in most situations i do lots of things and apart from boss mobs that take a while to bring down i generally dont use DoTs

i do use DoTs alot however, when i solo.

Edited, Fri Feb 13 10:45:03 2004 by sickseventwenty