Post by cathedralmaster on Jul 19, 2007 4:46:09 GMT
I've been playing my cleric and druid in the hells some and I think druids may need a little help.
Divine casters in general are not like arcane casters - if you want to do your job, you cannot sit behind a wall (not sure if that applies to turners). You don't have the luxury of saying, "Well I'm not a tank, you can't expect me to run out into the middle of a mob." To do your job so that others may do theirs, you've got to get out there. That means running out into the middle of a crit happy kders paradise with a build that is already short on feats even with BUR races and with hardly enough skill points to spare on even the skills you absolutely need (clerics and druids get 2 + int modifier per level, their BUR races have no bonuses to intelligence, and each already has 4 skills required before you can even consider extras).
So right off the bat, your not in a good position compared to virtually every other build in existance. No 80% conceal on top of your AC to protect you (the best you can hope for is 58-60% from shroud, 49-50% from mass camo). No uber saves so that you can survive what is thrown at you. No dex or str to spare for any kd immunity. No real room to fit critical hit reduction. No spell focuses you can drop so that you can pump yourself up. You're already at a disadvantage.
Now, that's bad enough if your a cleric. Trust me, it's bad. However, for a druid it's even worse.
Here's how druids seems to currently work. First off, you can forget earthquake and bombard. Outside of the ancient baatorian, earthquake seems to just do 0s on everything. Though bombardment does a fine amount of damage and would seem to be the perfect option for a druid, just sit behind a wall and blast, the current schema for banking makes it impossible. People spawn, deal with the spawns, then bank. Even when you ask people to pop loot early, it most often is simply not practical since the group requires all its members to focus on the current spawns. Try to pop it yourself and you're usually committing suicide.
You can also write off healing as something that makes a druid special. Clerics are simply far better at it. First, clerics get mass heal on the 8th level where druids get it on the 9th. Clerics get healing circle a level earlier (even bards get it earlier than druids). Clerics get spontaneous healing. Clerics have the skill points to spend on healing (something clerics are encouraged to do to the point where it's pretty much required). Most importantly, clerics get greater sanctuary as a spell. Druids at best only have the scrolls from umd.
It is both tragic and perhaps poetic of them that most druids commit suicide in vain attempts to heal anyway, or stand and heal the shifter, reducing them to the lowly state of a glorified Heal Pack. For what else is a druid to do?
You have four options left. The first is crumble. It's a good side ability of a druid, but it's far from anything that would set druids apart, especially if you continue the comparision of druids versus clerics who already have healing on their side. Druids have animal empathy. Clerics with a spell focus in evocation (the same school as implode) get an epic that grants a ranged ability to dominate anything that isn't mind immune with no save.
That leaves you with only Nature's Balance and the other epics. Nature's balance isn't too bad on paper, however in reality it isn't as useful as you'd expect. It's a fact of the hells that the things that have the highest SR that you'd want to drain (or alternatively the most focused mobs you'd want to strike) also have the highest likelihood of slash and burning your poor druid. Nature's Balance essentially requires you to run out in the center of a spawn, get in close proximity of near insta-killers, and break GS. In other words, it's usually a suicide mission, with a gain that is often hardly worth even attempting to die for.
So your down to the epics. Shunt and Immute are unassailable. But is that worth building and playing a character for? Even caster bards have more than that to do. Perhaps that's why people have such a hard time finding non-bots to druid in the hells. Who wants to spend all their time doing something Mish can do in the spare time he has when he rests?
So I was wondering if some kind of changes could be implemented to make druids more appealing. Could bombard be altered to not break loot in the hells, in order to make it useful? Could druids be given some kind of class ability or class secret that would allow them to occassionally cast a full GS? Could they be given some type of crit or kd reduction/immunity to set them above clerics? Perhaps the BUR race could be altered to give it some special advantage that would only be usuable with control class druid?
Could the issue be considered?
Divine casters in general are not like arcane casters - if you want to do your job, you cannot sit behind a wall (not sure if that applies to turners). You don't have the luxury of saying, "Well I'm not a tank, you can't expect me to run out into the middle of a mob." To do your job so that others may do theirs, you've got to get out there. That means running out into the middle of a crit happy kders paradise with a build that is already short on feats even with BUR races and with hardly enough skill points to spare on even the skills you absolutely need (clerics and druids get 2 + int modifier per level, their BUR races have no bonuses to intelligence, and each already has 4 skills required before you can even consider extras).
So right off the bat, your not in a good position compared to virtually every other build in existance. No 80% conceal on top of your AC to protect you (the best you can hope for is 58-60% from shroud, 49-50% from mass camo). No uber saves so that you can survive what is thrown at you. No dex or str to spare for any kd immunity. No real room to fit critical hit reduction. No spell focuses you can drop so that you can pump yourself up. You're already at a disadvantage.
Now, that's bad enough if your a cleric. Trust me, it's bad. However, for a druid it's even worse.
Here's how druids seems to currently work. First off, you can forget earthquake and bombard. Outside of the ancient baatorian, earthquake seems to just do 0s on everything. Though bombardment does a fine amount of damage and would seem to be the perfect option for a druid, just sit behind a wall and blast, the current schema for banking makes it impossible. People spawn, deal with the spawns, then bank. Even when you ask people to pop loot early, it most often is simply not practical since the group requires all its members to focus on the current spawns. Try to pop it yourself and you're usually committing suicide.
You can also write off healing as something that makes a druid special. Clerics are simply far better at it. First, clerics get mass heal on the 8th level where druids get it on the 9th. Clerics get healing circle a level earlier (even bards get it earlier than druids). Clerics get spontaneous healing. Clerics have the skill points to spend on healing (something clerics are encouraged to do to the point where it's pretty much required). Most importantly, clerics get greater sanctuary as a spell. Druids at best only have the scrolls from umd.
It is both tragic and perhaps poetic of them that most druids commit suicide in vain attempts to heal anyway, or stand and heal the shifter, reducing them to the lowly state of a glorified Heal Pack. For what else is a druid to do?
You have four options left. The first is crumble. It's a good side ability of a druid, but it's far from anything that would set druids apart, especially if you continue the comparision of druids versus clerics who already have healing on their side. Druids have animal empathy. Clerics with a spell focus in evocation (the same school as implode) get an epic that grants a ranged ability to dominate anything that isn't mind immune with no save.
That leaves you with only Nature's Balance and the other epics. Nature's balance isn't too bad on paper, however in reality it isn't as useful as you'd expect. It's a fact of the hells that the things that have the highest SR that you'd want to drain (or alternatively the most focused mobs you'd want to strike) also have the highest likelihood of slash and burning your poor druid. Nature's Balance essentially requires you to run out in the center of a spawn, get in close proximity of near insta-killers, and break GS. In other words, it's usually a suicide mission, with a gain that is often hardly worth even attempting to die for.
So your down to the epics. Shunt and Immute are unassailable. But is that worth building and playing a character for? Even caster bards have more than that to do. Perhaps that's why people have such a hard time finding non-bots to druid in the hells. Who wants to spend all their time doing something Mish can do in the spare time he has when he rests?
So I was wondering if some kind of changes could be implemented to make druids more appealing. Could bombard be altered to not break loot in the hells, in order to make it useful? Could druids be given some kind of class ability or class secret that would allow them to occassionally cast a full GS? Could they be given some type of crit or kd reduction/immunity to set them above clerics? Perhaps the BUR race could be altered to give it some special advantage that would only be usuable with control class druid?
Could the issue be considered?
- after that I was not quite prepared for the slowly, slowly-behind-the-tanks mindset you need to be in to do hell runs.
