Druids, Frank and you?

metvayne1

Dalayan Beginner
Ok, so I have felt this for a very long time, and along the way I have met some people with the same sentiments, others not. I feel that Druids need a little help. Druids do not fill any niche because of their jack-of-all trades build, that I can expect. Although this provides the player with a lot of options and possible fun factor, when you get into the serious raiding (and especially 6 man game) this starts to become a major detriment. Druids cannot match the healing power and speed of clerics. When you throw in HoTs, the efficiency and aggro generation is unmatched. Druids do have a quicker cooldown on their quick heal, but it's still very underpowered. Shamans have better longevity due to their ability to regenerate mana, so they can heal a single target for a longer amount of time. Don't get me started on runics. Yes, the shaman runic snares, but its so stupidly more efficient than the druid one, which sees little to no effect from the HoT portion. The druid group heal has an obscene mana cost, which if lowered, would still render it situational use, which is fine since it is nice to have options with regard to what heal you want to use. The high mana cost is in no way justified by the HoT portion, which is pretty useless. I think that many druids would be happy to see the HoT removed and the mana cost lowered.

Now let's talk DPS. We all know clerics with Divine rage, Yaulp VI and ancient hammer can put out 300 dps. A druid can eclipse this mark by chain nuking a mob with almost 0 cold resists. Even so, their dps output has horrible mana efficiency, even twisting in blizzard. Shamans can DoT, which in most situations (not all) is a preferred method of DPS. DoTs spread out hate generation and are typically more mana efficient. Not to mention the DoT (which shamans get 2 great single target ones) are poison based and not too difficult to land on conventional NPC's. Not only that, they can heal while putting out almost optimal dps via DoTs, while druids cannot (partially the same goes for clerics). Nuking just takes too much cast time, and is just plain inefficient in terms of mana and time usage. Mask of the hunter is also no better (actually worse) of a self buff than the bulwark line. So druids in the mana regen department are also the worst of the 3. So here you have it, both the most inefficient in terms of DPS and healing with mana output, and the worst mana regeneration. Losing on both accounts.

Druid pet: At first this pet was really fun seeing it nuke for 501 dmg (post archaic) and DoTing. It loses it's novelty when you realize the major function of a druid in a group is typically healing and this new cool spell doesn't help you with that! The damage output of this pet is above average for a non relic pet. The problem is, it doesn't have the bulk to back it up. If it's going to keep the hp it has, I feel this pet would serve better proc/casting a single target 300-500 pt heal on group members. The pet is less likely to be in the line of fire healing vs procing a 500 dmg DD and chain proc'ing a DoT. I think it would be a step in the right direction.

Keep in mind, I make all these accusations and observations having extensively played all 3 priest classes. There is a markedly large difference in power between druids and the other 2 priest classes.
 
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Right, we should be using extremely mana inefficient heals. Oh wait, our mana efficiency is already ass. That totally solves our problems, thanks bro
 
As someone that has boxed a Druid and Cleric extensively I would have to agree that Druids are vastly Underwhelming.. outside of being great for farming I do Not see much of a reason to Ever play a Druid over a Cleric in the high end..

I can think of 3 tier 9+ 6 man encounters that it is plausible to bring a well overtier Druid to but that is IT..

.. really I think the big Monster is 6 man encounters themselves but that is something for another thread to tackle

Shit guess they will have to start using cascading vim, 4 sec cast time? no way!

Protective Lustration about it
 
Druids are the best for quests, but yes, they have problems getting into serious groups.

If anything gets changed (even though I like my current pet, just have to be careful when you have a mezzer around), I'd like Frank to keep his melee damage and just the dd proc getting changed, even though I doubt casting a small heal would save many groups. The current proc (water barrage) is also quite a lot of aggro for a pet.
Compared with old druid pet, this is one of the best Gruplok spells you can get if you ask me. I wouldn't like to have it turned into a wizard familiar like thing.

Also, if we could have tomes that enabled recall minion and hold minion command after completion, it would be marvelous. Having the pet run into mobs that AE on pulls is dangerous. While the old pet was bad enough to be only useful soloing as a free rune, Frank is pretty nice and worth keeping around.
 
The druid group heal has an obscene mana cost, which if lowered, would still render it situational use, which is fine since it is nice to have options with regard to what heal you want to use. The high mana cost is in no way justified by the HoT portion, which is pretty useless. I think that many druids would be happy to see the HoT removed and the mana cost lowered.

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 :(

And about Frank, hes cool. Dude just needs more hp tho, he dies so fast when he gets agro :(
 
I agree that frank is good and cascading vim is also pretty good, but they don't improve the power of a druid, they just improve the utility. That's just not enough for druids as they stand.
 
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 :(

And about Frank, hes cool. Dude just needs more hp tho, he dies so fast when he gets agro :(

Does a stronger hot still prevent cascading vim from being cast? It did a while back and I don't know if it ever got fixed.
 
On raids I have Vim memmed and the lv55 gheal. Normally I use the lv55 version, but when shit goes bad for my partymembers I blast off a Vim. Surely the 1010mana cost is stopping me from using it as a primary gheal, I would be oom before a mob is even half dead. But increasing the HoT would certainly make it a better option for me at least!

How many druids are there with their Runic btw? I know Mallas & myself, who else has it so far?
 
Tiras uses his all the time its always cock blocking my Protective lustration. Also, I really don't see what is so bad about druids. I almost always box one when I box a healer, duo, group raid. In my experience they fill their role of the second best healer and bring TONS of utility. Of course they are not going to get the best nukes or best heals, because they get decent versions of both. This is like saying a bard is terrible because he can't tank like a warrior or out dps a rogue. In closing I think it would be awesome to make the pet better but is it not already better than the shaman pet, I don't see anyone shedding a tear because shamans are not THE healers for 6 man content either.
 
I don't see anyone shedding a tear because shamans are not THE healers for 6 man content either.

Not that I completely disagree but generally sham/clr work far better than any other combination. CLR/CLR is better on unslowable mobs. but slow + infinate patches is pretty strong combine w/ a clr. Although i would agree that shams scale terribly due to low base on heals
 
The trouble with the druid class is different than the troubles wizards and enchanters have had in the past because, except for hard-to-find outdoor quest mobs, it is not even possible to design content where a druid is optimal. They excel nowhere.
 
The problem with druids is their utility is nearly useless. Who the hell cares about ports in a group? In a raid? All they have is archaic And the utility of archaic doesn't anywhere near make up for the loss in healing power and efficiency from a cleric and shamans utility craps all over it. Not to mention their dps is ridiculously inefficient and substantially lower than a shamans and a clerics isn't much lower and requires no mana.
 
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also druid DS is pretty worthless compared to mages being 2? less and having resists and much longer duration. WoN is nice but highest end a lot of classes can run focus w/ capped regen (with SB). Regen is pretty worthless except for the stam part. no real stat buffs. SoS is like the 1 major buff. Roots and snares dont really get using in raids and many other classes have them. Grp heal is 6 sec cast which after the refresh can be enough to kill caster grps even when spammed depending on tier.
 
Cascading Vim is pretty inefficient in practice and honestly doesnt help druids gheal any better than they already could unless you are getting absolutely destroyed by AE's to the point where people in the group are losing 40-80% hp PER TICK. This spell could use some serious re-working IMO
 
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