Druid is overall weak and needs a buff

[QuantumFX]

And by staking an ice storm, SoV, and LS, not top of some melee a druid might manage to hit the DPS of a good BB kiting for about 3x the mana and 5x the incoming damage. yay?

Actually it’s cheaper than blade barrier kiting. You aren’t dependant on the A.I. pulling out the phasing/burrowing/teleporting/ranged combatant nonsense and you kill stuff faster.

For most casters it’s better to kite stuff around because they don’t have the ability to survive for too many hits (Generally this applies to Arcanes) or their particular AoE only procs on a moving target (Blade barrier) This isn’t the case with druids. A druid has the option of the arcane spellcaster’s persistant AoE with the divine caster’s ability to fight.

[Shmuel]

being kinda good at alot of things but 3rd rate at all of them does not make a good toon. right now this is how druids seem. it should, although it is not, be possible to spec and build a 1st rate melee or caster, or 2nd rate both, but to do so druids need some buffs. ill leave discussion of melee for other cause i don't envision one very well and haven't thought about it enough.

at the end of it all, i cant see druids as something other than a spell caster nuker. of course they should not be more powerful than a sorc savant at a specific element, but the should be about halfway between wiz and sorc for all 4 of them, especially considering they have very little in the way of cc or instakill potential.

right now they are not good enough to do that. here is how i would fix it:

change the druid spell power enhancements to something like:

Druid Elemental manipulation 1`: you have 40 spell power to all acid, electric, fire and ice spells.

Druid Divine manipulation 1: you have 40 spell power to all positive, negative, light and (wishful thinking) darkness spells

Druid elemental and divine manipulation 2,3,4 follow with the same idea. Instead of the acid/elec vs fire/water thing.

Season's herald should give about twice the spell power it does currently. seasons herald 3 should give 2 additional caster levels and max caster levels, not 1, so a druid ends up with 4 not 3, compared to a sorcerers 6.

Hierophant capstone should apply to evocation spells as well as conjuration and transmutation.

Add feat: natural spell: no spell casting penalties when in animal or elemental form (other than the obvious reduction in ice spells in fire form and etc...)

thoughts?

[dredre9987]

The biggest problem with druids is..the game doesn't treat them like druids.

They get lumped into 'nuker' or 'tank'

That is what wizards and fighters do, not druids.

If any modifications come out..they need to be in terms of making the druid, more druid.

Everyone wants to nerf or expand bear and wolf forms...leave them just like they are.

ADD travel forms

Bird - zilch combat, reasonable defence .. can be used like leap of faith with a long glide.
Seal - fast swim with very long breath. for underwater travel

add instances where druids can talk to animals as part of the adventure, maybe for a small
exp bonus or to make a fight easier.

If the druid does not attack, then regular animals should not attack them, or at least target
them last...unless the druid attacks.

make druids more,,,druidic

What is this WoW?

[Dolphious]

Actually it’s cheaper than blade barrier kiting. You aren’t dependant on the A.I. pulling out the phasing/burrowing/teleporting/ranged combatant nonsense and you kill stuff faster.

For most casters it’s better to kite stuff around because they don’t have the ability to survive for too many hits (Generally this applies to Arcanes) or their particular AoE only procs on a moving target (Blade barrier) This isn’t the case with druids. A druid has the option of the arcane spellcaster’s persistant AoE with the divine caster’s ability to fight.

A max+empowered Storm of vengeance alone costs 90 sp for 4d8 (+5d10 to *1* target every *4* seconds), Max+emp BB costs 75 SP for 15d6.

Throw in that lightning storm and ice storm and you're pushing 200 SP. You could drop almost 4 BBs for that price.

Sure you've got the durability to stand in it and fight or block, but the caster/archer mobs in MotU are smart enough to just step out (a good thing, don't get me wrong) so you run into the same problem as the BB kiter with those mobs.

Ok, I'd rather have the druid spells for teleporting mobs, so there's that. Druid also wins in the "I don't care how much SP I burn I'm going to turn this room into a hellscape of destruction, muhahaha" which is darn fun, but really not applicable to that many situations.

[SisAmethyst]

Actually it’s cheaper than blade barrier kiting. You aren’t dependant on the A.I. pulling out the phasing/burrowing/teleporting/ranged combatant nonsense and you kill stuff faster.

For most casters it’s better to kite stuff around because they don’t have the ability to survive for too many hits (Generally this applies to Arcanes) or their particular AoE only procs on a moving target (Blade barrier) This isn’t the case with druids. A druid has the option of the arcane spellcaster’s persistant AoE with the divine caster’s ability to fight.

I actually have to agree with Dolphious. Its however not always a Question of cheaper but efficiency. On a FvS or Cleric I could as well use Implosion or other spells to kill a mob. BB is good because I can collect several mobs and run with the train through them till they are dead, I don't cast this for a single enemy.

However especially Archers in the Kings Forest will not wait and stand in your cloud or storm, while you hit them in a melee attack, they will move, out of the danger zone. Also as already said, yes you will eventually kill everybody, but compared to an Artificer for example you still need comparable longer to kill them. Mainly because your DCs are to weak and they save every second.

While 'Storm of Vengeance' for example sounds nice on paper and last about 60 seconds on level 20, but it doesn't work out that good in the Kings Forest. The Drow fairly easy make the reflex save to reduce the damage on half, and the first thing they do is to step out of the Zone and hammer on you with arrows or the Necromancers casting their deadly arsenal from distance. That on the other hand mean, from the 15 maximal possible hits of electric damage you may only notice about 5. Earthquake while a nice visual has the same issue with the Reflex save, your enemies in higher level save it quite often.

So yes, a druid has the HP and armor to fight in his firewall, which is cool and works fine in the mid level. They are durable and this way can defeat sooner or later nearly every enemy, only problem is that the higher the level goes its more later then sooner. Don't get me wrong, I like the Druid from his style and its refreshing different (e.g. using with vigor healing over time instead higher spot heals) but they are below my expectations.

Still have to do some new testing after respecing the Enhancements a little bit...

[QuantumFX]

A max+empowered Storm of vengeance alone costs 90 sp for 4d8 (+5d10 to *1* target every *4* seconds), Max+emp BB costs 75 SP for 15d6.

Throw in that lightning storm and ice storm and you're pushing 200 SP. You could drop almost 4 BBs for that price.

Ah… I see. I thought you were implying that it would take 5 times as long to kill with Ice Storm.

Sure you've got the durability to stand in it and fight or block, but the caster/archer mobs in MotU are smart enough to just step out (a good thing, don't get me wrong) so you run into the same problem as the BB kiter with those mobs.

That mainly applies to the pure ranged combatants. I was referring to the stuff that switches modes from melee to ranged. (ex. Hobgoblins.) But, killing the stragglers goes to the Druid as well. They can cast 2 long range DoTs (Greater/Creeping Cold) for those types and don't need to keep a stack going for them.

Ok, I'd rather have the druid spells for teleporting mobs, so there's that. Druid also wins in the "I don't care how much SP I burn I'm going to turn this room into a hellscape of destruction, muhahaha" which is darn fun, but really not applicable to that many situations.

I think that applies to just about every non-raid end boss. Going back to my original post, when you compare Melee + DoT + PAoE on a Cleric vs a Druid. The cleric has to choose 2 of 3. (Melee + DoT or PAoE + DoT) The Druid gets them all. It’s kind of like the difference between a Pale Master and an Elemental Savant. The PM thrives in killing the mobs between the quest entrance and the boss. The Savant thrives in killing the boss.

[Dolphious]

I think that applies to just about every non-raid end boss.

Yeah, you can mana dump to a greater extent than a FvS, but for the most part if you're mana dumping it was going to be any easy fight anyway (sans the handful of self healing bosses, were the ability to really mana dump is quite nice).

Going back to my original post, when you compare Melee + DoT + PAoE on a Cleric vs a Druid. The cleric has to choose 2 of 3. (Melee + DoT or PAoE + DoT) The Druid gets them all. It’s kind of like the difference between a Pale Master and an Elemental Savant. The PM thrives in killing the mobs between the quest entrance and the boss. The Savant thrives in killing the boss.

That's a good point, and it is quite nice for boss fights that include significant trash. Being able to have 2 PAOEs going while doting and meleeing with semi-passive HP regen, is an impressive ability, and LOADS of fun, but you can't keep it up for long, and you take a lot of damage.

It's also subject to resistances more than most casters. Devil bosses for example are immune to fire, and resist cold and acid. If you have an ice storm, SoV, creeping cold, and GCC, you're eating those resistance 4 times.

*IF* they "fix" the druid spellpower enhancements to not be so hideously expensive this kind of thing might be a saving grace of the druid, but with the current spellpower situation you have to take into account how weak most (probably all for a druid with significant melee beyond flame blade) are going to be compared to other casters.

[Stormdum]

I rolled a druid on my completionist, Triaja, and for me it was an absolute blast until Necro IV. After that it started to taper off. I tried a pure caster druid and I chose fire elemental form at level 13. I blew through necro IV almost as fast as I would have on any other casting types (I'm comparing to savant and AoV primarily). Vale wasn't too bad but once I hit Reavers Reach, Challenges and Eveningstar things were pitiful. Here are some specific problems of note.

Druids Lack of Viability Starts With Enhancements: The amount of damage I deal is an absolute pity in comparison to sorcs or even wizards. The spell power progression in the enhancement line caps druids at 65 were as the spell power progression of sorc/wizard is 100 (IIRC). That is 35% less than sorc/wizard. Druids are lacking in spell power!

Druids Lack of Viability Continues With Absence Of Popular Spell Shapes: While running Impossible Demands (a very basic epic quest) I noticed both the need and lack of popular spell shapes including cone and ray. I have a dot, an ice storm, some ice flowers and a freezing spray to use while in water elemental form.

Season's Herald: The Druid PRE Seasons Herald seems as though it was meant to train players to go back and forth between fire and cold spells, however, if you notice closely the icon of a Druid of Summer bears the description of a Druid of Winter and vice versa. Only the combat log can tell Druids what form they're really in.... if it's not wrong there too. Another thing that I'd like to comment on is the subtle change from Summer to Winter (or Winter to Summer as it really may be). I've noticed the puff of smoke and the icon change over my head maybe half a dozen times since I took the PRE. Looking for the icon in my buff bar was also tedious considering the stark resemblance Druid of Winter has with Blessing of the Three Dragons but now that I've trained my eye a bit better it's getting easier.... Now what season am I really in again? =)~

Survavability: I'd like to touch base on two different areas of survivability.

• Damage Reduction: Elemental toughness has become a joke at higher levels. DR 5/- is not enough. DR 20/- wouldn't be enough but at the very minimum you should consider a damage reduction value which scales with character level or caster level. I appreciate the fact that I can switch back and forth between elemental forms and retain my elemental toughness but I often use snowslide (wolf form) to get to the heat of battle quickly. Once I switch back to elemental form having to recast elemental toughness is a waste of mana if I remember to recast it at all.

• Self Healing: Please consider adding the cure and mass cure spells back to the Druid spell list. Currently I'm suffering from the lack of a quickenable single target cure spell apart from heal. Having a heal scroll on the ready is often times not enough to save myself from death and having a quicked/maxed/empowered single target cure would help offset that. Don't forget if I want my cures to have oomph I sitll have to sacrifice AP and to me that expense would be well worth it. Also, I understand that you may be erring on the side of caution with the strength and durration of vigor but it needs needs a pick up. Thirty seconds seems like a good start for the heavy portion of vigor tapering off to 2 min on the light end. If that seems like too long then make them extendable with 15 seconds and one minute before the extension.

Call Lightning Storm: The long awaited spell call lightning storm appears to have it's damage nurfed by any mitigation of caster level. Since both elemental forms and the PRE both affect caster level of call lightning storm that means that there are few druids capable of seeing the spells potential. My half-elf dragonmark on an Arti saw crits as high as 2000 and my druid's best damage values were around 250-400. FIX THE BUG ALREADY!

All in all I'm disappointed with Druid. I am no way, shape or form (no pun intended) a fan of switching back and forth between elemental forms. Mine takes way too much damage and suffers in severety the ability to kill things efficiently even when in elemental form. My intention was to hit most of the challenges for first time bonus before TRing, however, I can't even stomach how gimp my build is and will be TRing promptly after emptying the TR cache.

This makes past life 25 for Triaja with 3 arti, barb, clr, fvs, sorc, and wiz.

[simo0208]

I'll keep it simple:

Buff them. It's good for sales for the druid to be powerful. They should be as powerful as casters (though different) at top levels. They aren't. They're a niche class like bards and rangers.

[CombatLibrarian]

Druids are versatile and, if balanced, they would therefore be weaker than a class that is specialised.

I suspect that druids are better healers than barbarians, better offensive spellcasters than fighters, better melee DPS than a sorc. That does not mean they should have their effectiveness with respect to these aspects reduced.

Of course they will be somewhat weaker with full caster spec than an arcane. And they will be weaker in DPS mode than specialised melees. And that doesn't mean they should be boosted in these aspects either.

The interesting thing is that they can do a lot of things quite well and am perfectly satisfied with mine. In any case it takes time for the true strengths and weaknesses of a class to be fully worked out. Give druid some time as it is before wasting valuable development time tinkering with it.

In a perfect world, that might mean something, but this is not a perfect world or even a perfect game.

Here's the thing. This game's endgame is not balanced to leave any room for anything but the absolute best. The best dps, the best healing, the best tanking, the best buffs. In a raid, a jack of all trades is not needed or useful. Instead, it will be clearly superior to bring classes that do a small selection of things very well. Turbine has designed the game this way, rather unapologetically so. You can't simply say "well it's balanced for them to just be weaker even if feats and enhancements are all geared towards that role" but that just doesn't fly in this game, and it doesn't create a class with longevity.

I'm enjoying the hell out of my druid for now, but I would REALLY like to see them fixed by the time I reach the point that it matters.

[fatherpirate]

With raids and anything lvl 20 or above...your playing wow, not D+D
Not saying it is bad or good.

Just that it is.

[CombatLibrarian]

One is that I was able to find only a single build that's competitive with other "divine warriors" -- a wolf who takes 3xnatural fighting, 2xshield mastery, toughness, and improved critical. If you don't take exactly these feats, you aren't competitive with a clonk in melee.

Pardon me while I have a newbie derp moment. How is it possible to take that set of feats with the druid BAB progression?

[Expalphalog]

Pardon me while I have a newbie derp moment. How is it possible to take that set of feats with the druid BAB progression?

Splash in Fighter or Monk

[CombatLibrarian]

Splash in Fighter or Monk

The posts I see refer to pure druids though. What I discovered is that the feat progression was intended to include the epic levels.

[vengfarga]

Only played with the animal forms so far. Should cap in the next couple of days. A simple way to up each form would be -
Wolf - the big healthy 18-20 x3 crit listed but not working. With all the double-strike available that would certainly make a difference.
Bear - they're mean to be tanks, so why not glancing blows? The size of those Dire Bear paws it certainly LOOKS like I'm hitting everything on screen! Not too over-powered, codes already there, would make a big difference.

Thoughts?

[manfredshw]

bear attack animation and speed is way too slow.

[Osma77]

Simular to what other people have said reguarding natural fighting, but I feel more streamlined:

Animalistic fury
Each level of druid provides 1% doublestrike while in wolf form.
Each levell of druid provides 1 ac and 1 prr while in bear form.

Elemental embrace
Provides +1 caster level to cold spells while in water form and +1 caster level to fire spells while in fire form. This increase starts at lv 5 and increases by 1 every 5 levels.

The animal increase will result in a Max of 20% doublestrike for wolves and 20 ac/prr for bears. Natural fighting feats would then be optionally on a dps standpoint and bears would be much stronger tanks.

For casters this ability would replace the forms current spell level bonuses and increase them while removing the neg penalties. While this would be a small buff to casters, it would be a buff.

This change would also have the effect of making the class FAR more versitle when it comes to changing forms. Without the need for those three feats, casters could still pull some dps while in wolf and tank much better in bad situations. Melee would have far more options, with bears and wolves both being able to choose between a different feat choice such as cleave or dodge, while still being able to take natural fighting for a heavy dps builds. Or even some caster feats for some form of hybrid (beartank healspec?)

Opening up those feats will make the class much easier to play while not overpowering them to the point of needing to nerf them.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

3 questions from my side :

1. How bad or good is the Druid in lower levels ?
2. How good or bad is he as a party member ?
3. Is this, as the Druid is now - according to the D&D rules ?

Number 3 especially because I'm unfamiliar with the overall rules system to a greater extend.

[Expalphalog]

Animalistic fury
Each level of druid provides 1% doublestrike while in wolf form.
Each levell of druid provides 1 ac and 1 prr while in bear form.

/signed.

This would be a pretty darn good change, IMO. It would make 'form switching' a viable tactic and free up some feat slots on a class that currently needs them.

[Metathron]

Summarizing the recent discussions a bit there seem to be basically five main problems with druids with three of them major:

MAJOR:
1) Feat/Enhancement/Spell-slot starvation really impedes diversification, and you end up being a fairly specialized wolf, bear or caster. Druids are currently simply not as versatile as many had hoped.

2) According to many, even specialized you are still not as good as the more specialized classes. Specialization vs. versatility is always a trade-off, but see 1).

3) Some animations are just really bad (wolf running attack for example)

MINOR:
4) Itemization with non-steel armor

5) Pet is too fragile to be useful on higher difficulties (actually it is of marginal utility over all)

Bottom line: The druid needs to offer something besides animal graphics compared to the Favored Soul, as it is currently pretty much worse across the board at higher levels at least. Almost half the spell points and worse enhancements on the caster side, and arguably worse or on-par melee capability compared to a GTWF Khopesh FS. If the FS had one good nuke at lower levels the Druid would have no advantage at all.

Some suggested solutions:
1)
-Reduce the feat tax of melee investment (some decent suggestions above)
-Reduce some of the caster enhancement costs (and maybe improve them a bit)
-Make the form abilities SLAs, or if you don't want that, at least allow you to use the Summon spell slot for form abilities, because currently it is extremely problematic to carry abilities of more than one form. Players want in-action versatility, not by changing forms between shrines, which frankly makes it kind of useless.

2)
-It would help a lot if the listed 17-20x3 wolf form crit profile actually worked
-Bear form might need some love, glancing blows was suggested.
-Casters really need more mana efficiency, as they are currently worse nukers than non-AM wizards, and wizards were already rather poor compared to sorcerers. Add a temporary spell point enhancement for humanoid&elemental forms also (and make them all cheaper, versatility = fun), and/or improve their enhancements.

3) This is easily solved by just fixing the freaking animations. (Most notably: !! WOLF RUNNING ATTACK ANIMATIONS & SOUND EFFECTS!!)

4) Just add more non-steel medium armors, it's downright confusing right now that you have a medium armor class with almost no medium armor accessible. Also consider adding non-steel heavy armor for bears who want to be a bit more tanky and take the feat.

5) The pet is just a pain to keep alive. Players tend to avoid getting caught in a huge crowd beating on them, especially lightly armored DPS classes like the pet is designed to be. Unfortunately the pet isn't clever enough for this, and likely never will be. Let's face it, if the pet was a player you would never group with him again. Give him more defensive enhancements please, and/or make him use diplomacy *often*. In retrospect a bear tank pet would have been a lot easier to balance.