Protectors of Moonglow

von **Chili** » Di 09 Apr, 2002 10:00

State of the Druid ----------------------------------------------------------- Dear EverQuest Live Team, The Druids Grove community of players wish to submit this open letter to you today in the hopes that you will read it carefully and earnestly and consider implementing some of the ideas, suggestions, and requests contained therein. Much debate and work went into this document, and it reflects the input and opinions of players of high-level druids who have been contributing to the class knowledge base since The Druids Grove, the first and oldest EQ druids online message board, opened in 1999. This document is also online and can be found at <a href="http://pub13.ezboard.com/fthedruidsgrovegeneral.showMessage?topicID=26783.topic.">pub13.ezboard.com/fthedru...783.topic.</a> It is pinned at the top of the General EQ Forum along with feedback to Jahaar's post on the impending changes to Succor. We thank you for your time in reviewing this document; we know you are all quite busy working on and implementing many of the exciting new changes we've heard about in your State of the Game letters as well as your caster balancing project. We look forward to hearing from you, so please stop by The Druids Grove <a href="http://pub13.ezboard.com/bthedruidsgrove">pub13.ezboard.com/bthedruidsgrove</a> anytime. May the Spirit of Norrath keep you safe in all your travels! * * * The State of the Druid in the Endgame and Near-End Game When EverQuest first came out, the Druid became a class known for its versatility and its lesser ability to fill numerous roles. We could fill in for a missing cleric in a pinch; we could inflict a decent amount of direct damage should the situation call; we had the second best HP/AC buffs in the game; and our damage-over-time spells were a viable tool. We were also the primary teleporters in the game, through sheer numbers if nothing else. We were not the best in any of these fields; such was the price we paid for our broad spectrum of abilities—we knew this and accepted it. However, if Druids were not the best in these fields, they were second or third, otherwise we would not have been considered viable, if lesser, alternatives to the primary classes in those abilities (Clerics, Wizards, Necros, Shaman, etc). As the game matured, so did the need for specialized abilities. With the advent of Kunark, Druids became less desirable. Even so, we were extremely viable and popular, and could still manage to fill a variety of roles reasonably well. The druid Kunark spells were well balanced and kept druids in line with their secondary role in a variety of areas, and indeed finally made us first in one field: fire and cold resists. With the Velious expansion, the need for specialization in the high-level game further increased. A Druid could no longer heal well enough to be considered a viable healer for any high-level group. The disparity between our direct damage and that of Wizards grew. Our mana was insufficient for the tasks required of us. Verant, however, recognized some of these difficulties. In addition to the existing Kunark-era Mask of the Hunter, Druids received Protection of the Glades to help us regenerate mana faster. Protection of the Glades also returned us to our position as viable buffers by giving us a role buffing raiding casters. At the time, Druids and Shamans still could not sufficiently heal for their levels, and Verant responded by giving both Druids and Shamans Chloroblast and Druids Nature's Touch. Luclin has changed things yet again. The high-level game has jumped another level. Unfortunately, it has left Druids behind. Where Druids were once secondary in a variety of abilites, we are now lucky to be considered third. Unfortunately in the high-end game, the need for specialization is such that being third or fourth best as a support class leaves us seriously lacking. The Druid community has held long and heated online discussions over what we feel is necessary to bring the Druid class back in line with the rest of the game. Ultimately, we have come to the conclusion that our primary concern is our growing inability to keep ourselves and our groups healthy in the high-end raid-focused game. There are other peripheral concerns, which we shall address later. Druids have long served as the main secondary healers on a raid. No ability we have, other than transporting people to and from a raid, is used more often or considered more important than healing. This opinion is held by both Druids and other classes who regularly assign us without debate to a healing role. With the previous additions of Chloroblast and Nature's Touch, the Druid's ability to heal as a secondary healer, or the primary healer of a caster group, was secured up through the upper-mid level of the game. Unfortunately, the high-end game, as it exists now and where it is moving, finds the Druid unable to fulfill his/her role as a priest. The ever-growing hitpoints of the player characters require more healing than Druids are capable of. As players hitpoints increase, so does the damage delivered by the nonplayer characters they fight. This combination has devastated the Druid's ability to heal. In particular, level 60 melee fighters are easily breaking 5,000 hitpoints, with warriors breaking 6,000 (with full raid buffs). These are merely average level 60s. Those in the most accomplished guilds are breaking between 6,000 and 8,000. Level 60 casters are topping 3,500, with priest classes reaching 4,000. Again, casters and priests in very accomplished guilds are topping between 4,000 and 4,500, respectively. Your average level 60 druid has under 3800 mana with full enchanter buffs on. Using Nature's Touch, a druid's largest and most efficient heal, it would take a druid 2000 mana and 42.5 seconds to heal 4,400 points of damage (5.5 second cast time with the default three-second recast time on any spell). Comparatively, for 200 mana a Shaman can heal 1,200 hitpoints in 24 seconds (30 seconds when you add the six-second cast time for Torpor). A Paladin can heal 3,564 points of damage for roughly 800 mana (taking into account the 10% healing penalty and the mana cost penalty for a hybrid) every 32 seconds with his group heal, providing he is in a full group. Furthermore, he can do so at level 58, as opposed to level 60. For 250 mana a Cleric can heal 1,500 points of damage over 34 seconds (including cast time). As you can see, Druids are finding themselves in a position of having to use over half of their mana pool over a very long period of time to heal a single caster or priest, let alone a melee class. This is further compounded by the fact that nonplayer characters are dealing far more damage far quicker than ever before. Even in an area such as NToV, let alone some of the Luclin zones, 42.5 seconds can equal 1,500 points of damage to every member of the druid's group from AE attacks. This doesn't include melee damage from these NPCs. At this rate a Druid finds it difficult to keep himself alive at times, much less a group. Indeed, a Druid will swiftly find himself out of mana with his own health too low to use mod rods and his group's health swiftly dropping. Druids are the class most called on to be secondary healers. Paladins are mainly a melee class. Shamans are usually busy with buffs, slows, and debuffs. Yet Druids find themselves behind both classes in healing ability. The Druid community has thought long and hard about a balanced solution to our dilemma. First, we would ask Verant to remove the 10% serverside healing penalty for all non-cleric healers. We wholeheartedly agree with the 5% bonus that clerics receive, but the penalty has outlived its usefulness. There is no question that clerics are the most efficient healers in the game, as they should be. Second, we suggest three ideas for bringing our healing up to a point where we are viable in our normal raid position as secondary healers. 1) Change the duration on Nature's Recovery from three minutes to 24 seconds and remove the recast time. 2) Give Druids a group heal—something along the lines of 880 hitpoints healed per member for 900 mana. This in particular was well thought of by the Druid community as it highly compliments our role of secondary healer on a raid or of primary healer of a caster/non-main tank melee group. 3) Give Druids a larger direct heal. Nature's Touch is insufficient for our current needs; the damage-per-second output of mobs has far surpassed the ability of Nature's Touch to keep even ourselves healthy, much less an entire group. While our current ability to heal in the high-end game is undoubtedly our greatest concern, there are some other issues we feel important enough to warrant review. First, Protection of the Glades. In light of Blessing of Aegolism and the proliferation of self-casting mana regeneration buffs among the casting classes, combined with increased mana regeneration from Koadics Endless Intellect and AE manasong, Druids have found the requests for PotG to have dropped to almost nil. Most druids report that less than a half dozen players ask for PotG on a raid anymore. PotG is overwritten by Aegolism and Blessing of Aegolism. It doesn't stack with Mark of Marzin (which the Druid community strongly hopes is simply a bug). The hassle of maintaining PotG and the short-duration Symbol of Marzin isn't worth it. These are the reasons. Therefore, we would ask Verant to consider two steps. 1) Give Druids a single-target version of PotG. For most 60 Druids PotG has become a 1200 mana single-target self-buff. Compare with the Cleric's self-only buff Blessed Armor of the Risen, which costs 275 mana. It has recently come to the community's attention that a single-target version of PotG is currently being developed on Test. If so, we anxiously await its arrival. 2) Change the stacking properties of PotG and Aegolism so that Aegolism and Blessing of Aegolism will not overwrite PotG. We do not necessarily believe the two spells should stack, but the aggravation of having to recast PotG five times in 15 minutes because various clerics refreshed their group's Blessing of Aegolism is enough to drive a poor Druid to drink. Simply make it so that neither spell overwrites the other. Second, the Druid community has resoundingly spoken out against the effect on the Nature Walker's Scimitar. The dual-nature component of its effect means that it has a very high resist rate. The duration of the effect renders the DoT component useless and worse than the level 44 DoT's damage per tick. The cast time and duration also make the snare itself of lesser value. This is further aggravated by the proliferation of mobs immune to changes in movement speed. When a mob is immune to snare, it ends up being immune to the damage portion of our epic effect as well. Last but not least, not only does the Necromancer epic not stack with our epic effect but also overwrites it. The Druid community would ask Verant to change our epic effect to a straight DoT with the same resistance as our other DoTs and a duration of one minute. This brings us nicely to our third concern: DoTs. Druids don't receive an upgrade to damage-over-time spells after level 53. We would ask for an upgrade to Winged Death—something along the lines of 1950 damage over 50 seconds at level 58 or 59. Fourth, the Druid class needs the ability to teleport on Luclin. Our inability to transport our groups and guildmates around Luclin has eliminated one of our primary services to a guild engaging Luclin targets. Any Druid below level 57 finds himself unable to offer this service to a group (the ability to evacuate it from danger) since using an evac that takes the group off Luclin is a certain way to end it. Rarely will a group continue if it must spend 20 minutes returning to the hunt location. The final request is a two-part request. Look at our cold-based spells, specifically Moonfire. Consider giving us a cold debuff line similar to the Ro's fire/ac/atk debuff line. In sum, the Druid class is no longer the well-balanced, desirable class it was two years ago. Active high-level druids are becoming rare indeed, and we are a broken class in the high-end game. Our desirability has dropped dramatically because our ability to serve our groups and guilds has declined much with the past two expansions. There is little use for a healing class that cannot heal, nor is there much use for a teleporter who cannot teleport. The Druid community strongly hopes that Verant will work with us to rectify some of these issues so that we may continue to be valued by our guilds, peers, and friends. <table border="0" width="513"> <tr> <td width="85">written by</td> </tr><tr> <td width="85">RealLife</td> <td width="150">Torsten Raithel</td><td width="100">(Board-Admin)</td><td width="270"><a href="mailto:torsten.raithel@tark-online.de">torsten.raithel@tark-online.de</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="85">EverQuest</td> <td width="150">Ghumb Inyourway (Oger-Krieger)</td> <td width="100">Leonore (Elfenbardin)</td> <td width="270"> </td> </tr><td width="85">UltimaOnline</td> <td width="150">Eleonora (Barde)</td> <td width="100"></td> </tr></table>

von **madtom** » Di 09 Apr, 2002 10:46

hehe alles raunzer gibt wenige klassen die schneller exp machen als druids und jeder hl druid kann eine volle gruppe (wenn auich nicht tankgruppe), sogar bei area mobs ohne probleme am leben halten, dmg is auch net so uebl wenn auch nebensaechlich im endgame die buffs sind genial (circle of season, potg (mana regen)) also isses net so schlimm find ich raunzen halt wie alle klassen Mad Tom

von **Ahlanah** » Di 09 Apr, 2002 15:24

eine uber gilde braucht in etwa 2 druiden, das ist das problem, mehr ist ok, auch wenn sie loot wegnehmen, aber 2 reicht definitiv. und das wird sich auch nicht aendern, wenn druiden besser heilen oder buffen koennen, denn im zeitalter von groupbuffs, manapumpen, modrods und aehnlichem, aknn ein druide alleine einen 40 mann-raid mit seinen buffs versorgen, und die highest end gilden haben clerics sogar fuer die castergruppen, bzw binden die caster mit melees ein. druiden haben schon immer geraunzt, ka warum das so ist. an den whinerfactor kommen praktisch nur noch wizards ran, bei denen es eine zeitlang sogar teilweise gerechtfertigt war. das traurige ist, dass nachdem sie ein upgrade erhalten weitergewhined wird, das war schon immer so und wird auch immer so sein. druiden=whin0r <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=":;)"> insidia

Protectors of Moonglow

Kann es sein das die Dr00ds a bissi unzufrieden sind?

Kann es sein das die Dr00ds a bissi unzufrieden sind?

Re: Kann es sein das die Dr00ds a bissi unzufrieden sind?

Re: Kann es sein das die Dr00ds a bissi unzufrieden sind?

Wer ist online?