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

Ofs

Laskey I mean, I did say «Druids are so insanely overtuned in terms of convenience and utility it is insane», so I wouldn’t exactly say I made an effort to disguise my opinion that druids stand out like a super duper sore thumb in the current class roster.

Metavahn

MnM is about fixing the mistakes of EQ and making it in a modern package for more people to enjoy, not simply copying EQ

That obv includes nerfing obviously overpowered abilities like charm, and kiting is being nerfed also by giving alot more mobs ranged abilities

Want a strong pet be a pet class like bst or ele not the CC class with loads of utility

Winston

Feels like OP is trying to cope with wanting to play a popular class, but ignoring the facts.
Let's get into it.

They are, objectively, the worst healers. Not necessarily bad, but just not the best.

They do not have the raw healing throughput, rez, hp buff, shielding ect of a Cleric.
They do not have the on demand mana regen, stat buffs, AoE healing, and ability to mitigate damage with SLOW like a shaman.

They are, objectively, mediocre DPS.

Their end game nukes are dwarfed by wizards by a multiplier of almost 2x, before taking into account wizard int stacking and % based damage bonuses from marks.
Their dot line is just OK, taking an entire minute of full duration to do 600 damage at max rank, while a necro does over 2000 using just their dot lines, completely disregarding pet damage.

Charming

While a druid can charm, enchanter charm is so far superior it shouldn't even be considered the same mechanic. Not only is druid charm limited to a specific monster type, the break chance does not continue to improve as the enchanter line does, with their final charm spell still noting a "very high chance to end early".
Not only is their charm inferior, but the tools available to manage it are as well. A druid does not have stun, rune, or short mez abilities for charm break - meaning that while indoors mana must be expended to root, re-charm, and heal damage that occurred due to break. With the inherently increased break chance, along with a lack of CHA stacking as WIS (healing) is their primary function - a druid, as with many of its roles, is an acceptable but inefficient charm DPS class.

What Druids ARE uniquely good at

Transporting players between major cities
Providing outdoor travel utilities
Power leveling
Providing a party with role based redundancies.

The ability to flex between casting heals when required and moderate DPS when mana is abundant, as well as offload jobs such as curing, snaring, ect to the druids mana pool provides a smooth grouping experience. This flexible level of support allows specialty classes to focus on their specific areas of expertise where they are more efficient, while letting the druid fill the gaps as the needs of the group evolve over the course of a session.

Thanks for attending my TED talk. Please consider these points the next time somebody tells you Druid is OP because they hate walking normal speed.

Gathbard

Coming into a thread about Druid being overpowered to claim that they are in fact the weakest class in the game is a wild take.

If you're gonna compare class kits you should look at the current situation in game, or how for instance shamans can't even get group invites now, after their "on demand mana regen" was heavily nerfed.
Or how they can't keep up with heals at higher levels. I guess that's ok if they have a "redundancy druid main healer".

Out of curiosity, how many other classes have you played and for how long before coming to that conclusion?
Or did you just look at them on paper? Did you consider the current state of the game or an idealized version where every class is perfectly in line with their description?

At least I'm glad that as a bard player I can state my opinion on druid's overpoweredness without being accused of movespeed envy complex, since I'm pretty sure we can run faster.

If a class looks OP, if it smells OP, if it feels OP compared to everyone else...it's probably OP.
And that's not even the issue. I'm the first one saying that nerfing Druid would not be the right thing to do and that the focus should be on bringing up the others, but pretending that your favourite class is not blatantly more powerful than the others out of fear of it being nerfed is not good for the health of the game.
Druid is fine where it is, it's every other class that is lagging behind (well, maybe not Enchanter).

But out of fairness I do have to admit my own bias:
As a player of a class that gets constantly told "you can't have much l because you're a jack of all trades" , it is very frustrating to see the other jack of all trades class being the strongest class in the game, on top of providing better support than me, despite not being a support class.

Ofs

Gathbard Fully agree.

There are some things in this game which I would consider flagship utility that basically act as a reason in and of itself for choosing a class. These are the abilities that change the way you feel and see the game, and they are the abilities that make you feel «it is so freaking cool that I can do this, I love my class». Numbers can and will be tweaked, but utility is constant and constitutes the texture, color and the shape of your journey.

Here are some that come to mind:

Portals
Speed of the Wild / TM
Evac
Res
Being able so solo efficiently (pet or snare kiting)
Charm
CC (mez in particular)
Hybrid roles
Feign death
Invis
Call of the Hero (if the gods are good)
Gate
Desired buffs for group play

Out of these, the druid has 9 out of the 12, and that is if I don’t count root as being CC. That is wild, in my estimation, considering the state of most other classes in this department. I understand the instinct to pearl clutch when this glaring inequality is brought up, but I agree with you: it would be to the benefit of the game’s health if this wealth was spread out much more. Doesn’t necessitate nerfing druids, but at the very least the other classes should get something that a druid can look at and say «damn, wish I could do that — can’t wait to roll a ___ next».

Edit: formatting

ehcko

Ofs wait, is this your video?

https://youtu.be/wTH3WCkmBk0

Ofs

ehcko that sure sounds like my nasty voice

Laskey

[unknown]

Looks like they are already post zenith with the changes to healing over times now - in the end they will be a fine generalist but outshone in various areas by others.

Xhieron

To me the tell is, "Druid is really appealing to play" for x, y, and/or z reasons.

Isn't that the goal? I want to have decision paralysis on class selection because all the classes have such awesome tools--not because they all have such limitations that they don't appeal at all. Gate doesn't make druid more appealing to play. It makes ranger less appealing, because it's a QOL convenience that makes the game more accessible. It doesn't actually change the combat loop. Same with ports.

I think what we should take from the druid class's success isn't that it's got too much but that everybody else has too little. Culling utility isn't a strategy that makes classes attractive (or justifies higher raw numbers). It just increases the likelihood that the niche a dev team envisions for a class will drift away from the realities of actual play.

Why shouldn't BSTs get SOW? Why shouldn't Rangers get Feign Death? Would the game suffer so much if Clerics had invis or paladins had an AOE Lull? Druids look like the golden children only by comparison to the dearth of powerful utility among other classes. I'd go so far as to say that even among non-utility--actual combat altering stuff--proliferation is a good thing. Give the spellblade a wizard nuke on a 20 minute cooldown. Give the shaman back its pet.

Druid should be the template for success that we see replicated--not the outlier.

Redmax

Druid has a lot, but they have the same spell slots as any other caster. So yes they are good as in having the best utility, but it's limited and some spells are worse than many other similar classes. Best "situational class" I'd say.

Nyx

Phuture

Just to make sure we are talking correct numbers here, a wizard does nuke for 2000+ damage at level 60.

So its a bit incorrect to say they would have to nuke every mob at least once to keep up with that. Currently with my Int at 60 I can nuke for about 2500. So in about 2 mobs I can cover the DPS that the druid DS does over a 10 minute period.

I am not discounting that its good free low cost dmg the druids and Ele can do with that DS. But just clarifying the numbers are not quite as you paint them to be.

Krooguh

Druids nuke harder than Elementalist.

Jaxon

When EA drops if we see 47% choosing druid on start it may illustrate what a great kit the druid class has.

Dredlord

Just nerf druids, they should only be able to port and sow my static group for that fat loot. Hell no I'm bringing such an OP class to heal me like a cleric, nuke like a wizard, slow and haste like a shaman, mess and charm anything like an enchanter and their DS is more dps than a necro or elementalist pet. just nerf them to the ground so they only thing they will be good at is making some silver porting all these whiners.

Kirrund

Winston Druids are still one of the top three most powerful classes in the game, along with necro and enchanter.

Raybane

Jaxon And if we don't see that, then what?

It's not exactly easy to prove Druid is too strong as the class isn't the strongest at anything. The entire strength lies in being able to do many things. But how many things or how well is too strong in a jack of all trades class?

Fell

@Raybane a class is too strong when there's no reason to play a competing class. But no one making a group says "we need a druid for DPS" -- their nukes take far too much mana for sustained dps. Nor does anyone say, "forget the shaman or cleric to heal us, we REALLY want a druid". In fact, without an enchanter in group to slow, druids will struggle to main heal groups that shamans and clerics can heal easily.

The one imbalancing element druid has is charm, as it can add insane dps beyond what a wizard can do. Personally, I think that should be removed, and instead their (far lower DPS) bear pet returned. A friendly bumbling bear pet also fits the archetype better than a druid controlling, say, a charmed sewer rat or monstrous bloated spider.

riverbender

Xhieron To me the tell is, "Druid is really appealing to play" for x, y, and/or z reasons.

Isn't that the goal? I want to have decision paralysis on class selection because all the classes have such awesome tools--not because they all have such limitations that they don't appeal at all. Gate doesn't make druid more appealing to play. It makes ranger less appealing, because it's a QOL convenience that makes the game more accessible. It doesn't actually change the combat loop. Same with ports.

I think what we should take from the druid class's success isn't that it's got too much but that everybody else has too little. Culling utility isn't a strategy that makes classes attractive (or justifies higher raw numbers). It just increases the likelihood that the niche a dev team envisions for a class will drift away from the realities of actual play.

Why shouldn't BSTs get SOW? Why shouldn't Rangers get Feign Death? Would the game suffer so much if Clerics had invis or paladins had an AOE Lull? Druids look like the golden children only by comparison to the dearth of powerful utility among other classes. I'd go so far as to say that even among non-utility--actual combat altering stuff--proliferation is a good thing. Give the spellblade a wizard nuke on a 20 minute cooldown. Give the shaman back its pet.

Druid should be the template for success that we see replicated--not the outlier.

100%

Winston

Krooguh Where do you guys get this shit?

Druid at level 60 nukes for ~ 600 base damage with their best single target nuke.
An Elementalist surpasses this by level 50, doubles it by 54, and by level 60 is doing 1600 base damage per single target nuke at 60.

This doesn't even consider that the Ele pet is currently the best pet in the game and provides mana free uptime on every single mob over the course of a play session. A druid and Ele are not even close in the DPS department.

EDIT
Thanks Bombadil for pointing out there was a recent Ele numbers adjustment. I will update this comment with the correct numbers Saturday.

Winston

Kirrund Except that they're not - and you don't have to take my word for it.
You can prove it to yourself just by asking yourself this question;

Assume you are in a dungeon and you need to find a replacement healer or a replacement DPS for your grind group.

You can pick any heal class; are you picking druid before shaman or cleric?
You can pick any dps class; are you picking druid before ARC, BST, ROG, SPB, WIZ, ELE?

If you're being honest with yourself the answer is no.
Of course you're not, because those other classes are better at the role you need to fill. SoW doesn't work in dungeons, Druid Lull doesn't work in dungeons, some of their damage spells don't even work in dungeons.

Quite simply - Druid is a flexible class that can perform two different roles moderately well but will almost never be the first choice for a serious party comp unless all other more important utilities such as slow and rez are already covered.

« Previous Page Next Page »