Druid Review (The Good, The Bad & The Ugly)

[Failedlegend]

Well me and my friends have been trying to play various Druid builds both single class and multi-classes and well here's what we think so far.

The Good

Most of the Animations: Somebody(s) put ALOT of love into this cleave, summoning, intimidates, dancing, trip,etc. all have unique animation whilst in animal forms and were loving it

Ease of Shapeshifting: No stupid timers, no healing penalties/immunities, instant transformation with a minimal cooldown well done

3 Druid Past lifes + Augment summon + Magister + Palemaster or Arty make an awesome "Summoner" build

The Bad

- Animal form abilities such as slashing, roaring, leading your "pack", etc. cannot be done whilst raging since for some odd reason they've been made spells instead of subfeats of the animal forms granting at certain druid levels...also causes them to require SP...so you know I cannot roar w/o mana

- "Flame" Blade...why choose the most commonly resisted element...why not make it Elemental Blade so you can swap the element depending on the situation...maybe make them different weapons if you'd like...Earthen club, Lightning Spear, and Ice Sickles or something similar

- Good berries have to major issues, can only be used in taverns but can only be created in quests AND disappear upon logout them also they only heal hp for warforged (lubricated seems to heal sp for fleshies)

- Monk Unarmed damage and Animal form damage do not stack greatly reducing the usefulness of the iconic Drunk

- Healing capabilities are subpar when compared to other classes especially with their unique regen spells only lasting a few seconds and having no mass heals of any kind.

- Schizophrenic in both elements & spell school...druids have very few spells in every element in ddo but not enough that you can actually focus on an element (8 Fire 3 of which are useless, 4 ice, 3 air, 4 untyped/physical/force, 2 radiant)

- Bear form while awesome thematically is underwhelming both because it falls WAY behind in defensive capabilities to SD Fighters, DoS Paladins or Earth Monks and offensive capabilities of well pretty much anything...the attack animation while cool is very slow especially the first attack is delayed.

- Requiring Druid 9 before being able to take Nat fighting is a PITA for multiclassing builds it means regardless of the build you can NEVER MC before 9 or delay these 100% required feats to not suck.

- This is a minor mostly flavor driven complaint and I can understand why it was done but I was very disappointing when I realized my Zombie Bear (or Ghost Wolf...or Fire Elemental Vampire) would not be possible.

- The Prestiges are not even worth taking some normal enhancements are more powerful than these

The Ugly

- Whenever you interact with ANYTHING you disappear for a second than switch to a human than disappear for another second or two than switch to animal form again, it looks stupid and my dog can pull switches fine without twitching out...why the rapid transformation to flip a switch

- When falling or feather falling the animal form shadow is your normal form (ie dwarf)

- The Wolfs equipment icon seems to get stuck (ie. mine still looks like generic starter leather armor despite him wearing +3 Ice guard leather armor now)




Anyways I'm going to be continually editing this as were current discussing our various likes/dislikes but feel free to respond and I'll add your druid grievances/likes to the list...overall though Druid seems fairly underwhelming