Shhhhhh! If we stay quiet they won't find out druids get everything

Ofs

Played a WIZ to 30, BST to 30, ELE to 30 and have now played a DRU too. Druids are so insanely overtuned in terms of convenience and utility it is insane. They have everything and it is starting to feel like I'm making a stupid choice if I don't just play a druid.

Portals (beter than WIZ portals now, btw), evac, SoW, gate, invis, charm, heals, summon food/drink, super desirable in groups, counterspell, damage shield, amazing soloers, good damage dealers with a selection of dots and nukes, their damage AND healing scales with the cover-all-stat WIS (so the argument that other healers outscale them and they become less desired later is out the window), they are true hybrids that fit into a group in more than one way, free money by AFK portal tip-receiving in town, and now they even have a mana regen stance.

Most classes are lucky to have 2 or 3 of these, and druid just... gets 'em all. Maybe they want to make a sort of "gets it all"/teacher's pet class that is easy to choose for grown ups that want the easiest way through this game - and if that is the case, it is a totally fine design choice. The devs know what game they want to make. However, if this isn't intended and they are somehow wondering why 30% of the playerbase will be playing druids come October 1st, then this is it.

(Yes, Shamans and Enchanters are also good classes with a lot of nice utility and awesome buff suites. Yes, their buffs are more desired than the Druid's. None of them come close to DRU in terms of being a complete, self-sufficient package deal)

tummystix

no seriously guys... i'm not

Fidric

Amendale

Yeah, Druids are very nice. They are the number one played class. I think this is by design, IIRC, it was the same in early Everquest. They just have utility out the ying-yang.

The Beastmaster rework was an interesting counter experiment; they removed utility almost entirely. In return, they got great DPS, and now it too is a popular class... probably number two behind Druid.

These two classes will skew the average. Several classes will be niche, and that is okay IMHO. Makes it more interesting when you do see someone playing them.

Cornmuffin

You forgot that they are great power levelers too! (And can quad kite! Numbers will be adjusted)

(You’re right, and I’m being a druid for all of those reasons - but also and mainly - wolf form is dope - so sad rangers will lose it)

GM_Trent

That's OK. Enchanters get Druids in their rework.

Growlron

Oh trust and believe, Shamans are VERY much aware of the Pro-Druid faction on the dev team. It is clear as day who the favorite classes are.

I like to RP meme the Druid Shaman rivalry in game as a call back to EQ frictions between the classes.. but its clear to me a number of the devs are Druid mains from EQ and never let go of the grudge.

Phuture

Amendale shaman is number 2 behind Druid, not sure where beast falls but I think it is outside of the top 5.

Phuture

Growlron shamans are also insanely powerful even after the consume changes.

Earlier today on a fully stacked 30bst alt, a 24 shaman was soloing the same camp in statless tattered chain armor. They are crazy powerful still.

Phuture

Ofs I don’t think most people realize the amount of damage their damage shield actually does, even at high levels. If your tank gets hit 20 times a fight, and you kill a mob a minute for ten minutes, that is 200x30=6,000dmg. All done with one low mana cast and no further thought or reaction time needed. And that isn’t even that many hits for the tank to take. If he takes 40 hits, that turns into 12,000 damage, all done before any of the fights even begin.

To put that to context, it’s 10 level 60 wizard nukes (without int mod damage). A wizard would have to nuke every mob once just to equal the damage the Druid and shield does, with tiny mana cost and no effort over the ten minutes.

And I think the dshield is a good spell, but other classes do not have such low mana, low effort sources of damage.

Ofs

Growlron Druid just feels like a devkit they forgot to remove from the game, honestly.

feeWAIVER

Druids kinda have to be OP, as a way to ensure the game will always have a healthy population of healers available.

MikeXG

I'm not against druid having this wonderful kit but it could be tuned a bit, and I'm sure it will when they adjust charm and do a second pass at the classes. Personally, I think druid should not have charm - Sure thematically it fits, but charm is such a powerful mechanic (even if they nerf it) that combined with the rest of what druid can do its beyond OP. I duo with a Druid friend (I play BST) and its a super fun duo, but he would rather not have to charm and when he doesn't he feels like he is wasting the classes full potential, which he technically is if able to and choosing not to charm. If Shaman is the "DOT" Healer and Cleric is the "Melee/Martial" healer then Druid should be the "DD" Healer. I think they should drastically tone down or even remove the DOT lines and replace them with something else, maybe a debuff line or new DD line that has an added component like a short duration MASSIVE snare or something. Additionally, I think they should remove charm from druid. They would still have an amazing kit, be very powerful, be very desired in groups, still able to do DMG between DS and DD spells.

All that said, I never wish nerfs for anyone (unless it is WAAAAAY out of line) I'd rather everyone get brought up than a class get brought down when that options is viable. Druid just needs a few tweaks and it would be a perfect (balanced) class with a vast kit.

just my 2 copper pieces, my experience with druid is grouping with one, not playing one.

Cheers :-)

Laskey

Poorly disguised nerf thread - I would prefer to bring up the other classes than drag down whoever is perceived to be 'best' at any particular time or where does it end?

As damage and heals get reworked I expect Druid heals will not be sufficient for raids but ok for grouping/solo.

This is probably their zenith.

Gathbard

It's not Druid being too strong. It's every other class feeling subpar, other Jack of all trades (Bard) most of all, but to be fair they didn't have their deep dive yet.
Druid is particularly egregious because it literally has everything.

I refuse to believe it is the case, but sometimes it really feels as if someone wanted to fulfill their own Druid fantasy and developed the rest of the game around it.
It's almost as if they made Druid and then ran out of steam for most other classes.
And it's not just their scaling, or that they have a fun, well developed and thematically appropriate kit that actually let the player feel like a Druid main character in a fantasy world, It's their toolset.
They're consistenly strong in every aspect.

Even Enchanter is not that complete. They're good within their niche, but they're more like the Robin to a Druid's Batman.
If druids could melee tank effectively they would legit have everything a character could possibly have in this game.
I believe it's a design flaw that should be addressed, but I don't think they should be nerfed because they are arguably the best designed class in the game at the moment.
Every other class and their kits should fulfill their fantasy with the same level of completeness, and frankly it's too late to achieve that with EA around the corner (would be nice to see though).

There's an argument to be made concerning the fact that it might be a "starting out" kinda deal, like it was in EQ, with other classes scaling better in their respective fields of expertise as the game grows, with druid falling out of fashion, but I didn't think that was great even at the time.
The "Jack of all trades" concept is extremely difficult to get right and sometimes I think this game should've sticked to hybrids at most.

Anyway, nerfing Druid would be a mistake, imho. It's the only class that actually feels like one, whatever that says about the state of the game as a whole.

Foojack

Gathbard I don't think the "you're the main character" vibe is what NWC is going for.

Gathbard

Me neither. That wasn't the point of my post.

Raven

The druid kit don't tempt me at all. I don't like buffing, it irks me. I don't want to sit in town porting people. I bet you by the time a druid sits in town porting people; my equal level character who is fighting somewhere will net out more money/hour than porting. Been there, done that. I want to focus on efficient grouping and druid is not efficient when it comes to grouping.

Let those dr00ds get their toys while we laugh killing hard content NPCs as a group.

As long as they keep most of the druid abilities like SoW/Unity not functioning in-doors then druids are balanced.

Because the ONLY thing I want the druid for is SoW and since SoW doesn't work indoor I'm not inviting a druid in my group. And in out-door grouping I'll invite a shaman over a druid.

Also, are we going to get Journeyman boots? 😃

Mork

The druid doesn't get everything, they removed several things with the rework.

Velthorian

Started this way in EQ as well. Eventually the tables turned when Druids shined at nothing and where less in demand, particularly for raiding. True jack of all trades, master of none. It's strong AF early, but as things get polished, and classes start fitting into their roles more cohesively, they start to fall apart. Being mediocre at everything leaves no raid position. As the game is now, they are a bit "Too good" compared to their competition, a little Too close to Mag/Wiz DPS, a little Too close to Shaman DOTs, a little too close to Cleric healing. The solution is nerf druid or boost the others.