Few druid questions

[Chrushev]

been a decade since i played so questions:

1) What level should a druid start kiting? And what area?

2) Do I need snare to kite or will SOW do?

3) Whats a good quest or drop for a druid for a weapon at lvl 15? I was looking at this quest. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=117 is that what I should do?

[Prince]

how about find a group u dumb shiva

[Wudan]

play necro if u wanna kite solo

[Messianic]

There's a couple ways to do it, but root-rotting is probably the most efficient. However, given the recent resist changes, I don't know what its situation is.

You can kite - running around w/ sow and letting the dot kill it, which you can do with snare or without. Kiting generally is less efficient since you don't get the med ticks, and usually you have a slight gain in mana over the mana cost of the root...

[Rasah]

1) Results may vary, but I didn't start kiting until I got Creeping Crud (level 24). Then you can live in South Karana until you are sick of the zone.
2) You don't need a snare, but it is certainly helpful for recasts.
3) Druids do crap for melee damage. Don't waste the time and money on the screaming mace. Get a Darkwood Staff. (get someone to sell you a Lambent stone cheap, and turn in to Sol Ro temple for staff) It does magical damage, and isn't that much worse than the screaming mace.

This strategy worked well for me:
Cast your AC/HP buff
Cast damage shield
Pull blue con mob with nuke
Beat on mob.
Watch his health and your health. If you are losing health faster than you'd like, cast another nuke. Or 2.
After fight, cast tree form.
Sit and med.
Your mana and health will regen together.
If your health gets to max first, consider using one less nuke.
If your mana gets to max first, consider using one more nuke.

Benefit to this is you get to keep your Offense, Defense and 1HB maxed out at the early levels, and it kills as fast, if not faster than root rotting with Stinging Swarm and Flame Lick.

[Messianic]

1) Results may vary, but I didn't start kiting until I got Creeping Crud (level 24). Then you can live in South Karana until you are sick of the zone.
2) You don't need a snare, but it is certainly helpful for recasts.
3) Druids do crap for melee damage. Don't waste the time and money on the screaming mace. Get a Darkwood Staff. (get someone to sell you a Lambent stone cheap, and turn in to Sol Ro temple for staff) It does magical damage, and isn't that much worse than the screaming mace.

This strategy worked well for me:
Cast your AC/HP buff
Cast damage shield
Pull blue con mob with nuke
Beat on mob.
Watch his health and your health. If you are losing health faster than you'd like, cast another nuke. Or 2.
After fight, cast tree form.
Sit and med.
Your mana and health will regen together.
If your health gets to max first, consider using one less nuke.
If your mana gets to max first, consider using one more nuke.

Benefit to this is you get to keep your Offense, Defense and 1HB maxed out at the early levels, and it kills as fast, if not faster than root rotting with Stinging Swarm and Flame Lick.

This - and if you want, you can often get a runed falchion on the cheap (200-300), which has a really good ratio/dmg among druid weapons. May have to build 1hs tho...

[Rael]

You can start kiting griffons in EK at around 14. Snare everything.

[xshayla701]

1) Results may vary, but I didn't start kiting until I got Creeping Crud (level 24). Then you can live in South Karana until you are sick of the zone.

this

[guineapig]

I find that you can root rot just as efficiently as snare kite and it's a lot less stressful too. And you should definitely be making use of your DS as an added form of DPS where applicable. I know the durations are currently a little whack, but if your hitpoints are at a 100% then it's another resource you could be using while saving mana for the next kill.

[Rasah]

Looking back, I might have pulled with Stinging Swarm. I think the length of the fight made it more mana efficient to do that than to use a nuke to open. Easy to test. Add up the damage the dot does for the duration of the fight, divided by the mana, and compare to the ratio of your nuke.

[Alawen Everywhere]

The sad part is that I'm getting berated in the other druid thread for being a weak player. Alright, here we go anyway:

Do you have any platinum? If you do, get a full set of charisma gear. If you didn't put most of your starting points into charisma, reroll and do that while you're still low level. Don't waste your time with Stinging Swarm when you have a great source of damage--charmed animals.

Kiting with just SoW is really dangerous on this server. Run speed just doesn't work the way it should. You're going to get smacked every cast without snare.

If you're really good, you can start quading at level 24 with Pogonip. It's hard.

When you're rooting, don't use the higher levels of root. Stick with Grasping Roots.

Send me a tell in game, I have a Cold Iron Morning Star you can have.

Edit: Fixed my SoW/snare comment, thanks Auvdar.

[Auvdar]

Maybe you are bugged with run speed, since with SoW on and snare I've never had any issues with getting hit. Unless I time a cast wrong, you shouldn't be getting hit all too often. (By timing I mean just run out of cast range, then cast right as the mob enters cast range.)

I will agree however, charming is a great way to go on this server. I think it opens up even more come kunark (animal MR debuff I believe).

[Torven]

If you didn't put most of your starting points into charisma, reroll and do that while you're still low level. Don't waste your time with Stinging Swarm when you have a great source of damage--charmed animals.

This is a problem I hope to see fixed or at least commented on by a dev. Druid charm should not be checking charisma, and charm is WAY too charisma dependent here to begin with. It's not nearly as big a deal for enchanters since they have a much easier time getting charisma gear, but for druids it's a huge problem.

If devs want to leave druid charm as-is, then there needs to be a big sign somewhere warning new druids to not click Halfling at character select and to dump every point into charisma. (something nobody did on live, obviously) As the game is now, Halfling druids cannot use charm without having dumped points into charisma, and they have 27 less charisma than the other druid races, making them far inferior druids.

[Chrushev]

huh thats pretty interesting... why would it be like that with Charisma?

Has any developer said anything about this?

[Messianic]

huh thats pretty interesting... why would it be like that with Charisma?

Has any developer said anything about this?

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19299&highlight=druid+charm

Might be a cause worth fighting for...

[Alawen Everywhere]

It's one of those anecdotal evidence situations. I wouldn't count on it changing. A woody with 25 points in charisma is awesome.

[Rael]

Maybe you are bugged with run speed, since with SoW on and snare I've never had any issues with getting hit.

If your snare resists you WILL be getting hit before the next one lands, even with SoW.

[Chicka]

Do you have any platinum? If you do, get a full set of charisma gear. If you didn't put most of your starting points into charisma, reroll and do that while you're still low level. Don't waste your time with Stinging Swarm when you have a great source of damage--charmed animals.


Alawen, thanks for the info here - when I roll a druid (which is inevitable, I'm a compulsive leveller) I would have totally messed up.

My question is: where does this put you end game? It seems like that would be a lot of wis to make up for the min/max mana thing, or, does it just not matter too much?

[Messianic]

If your snare resists you WILL be getting hit before the next one lands, even with SoW.

Not true.

I full-speed quad kited mobs before 29 as a wizard (since wizards get AoE snare then) and was able to cast Pillar of Lightning, which has a casting time of 3.6, and not get hit a vast majority of the time. I'd assume about 3.6 seconds is the threshhold, since I always cut it really close.

If you run far enough out of range of the mob while it's chasing you, you shouldn't have a problem re-applying snare without getting hit.

[Alawen Everywhere]

Alawen, thanks for the info here - when I roll a druid (which is inevitable, I'm a compulsive leveller) I would have totally messed up.

My question is: where does this put you end game? It seems like that would be a lot of wis to make up for the min/max mana thing, or, does it just not matter too much?

Do you mean your mana pool? I personally don't think think a druid's maximum mana pool makes much difference. We're not like clerics where our mana pool determines the possible length of a fight or a wizard where our pool is a measure of how much damage we can do. If a druid goes oom one or two spam heals sooner in a boss fight, it really doesn't matter much. Assuming you intend to eventually get your druid epic, it's not very tough at all to hit the wisdom soft cap with the 25/5 charisma/wisdom in your starting points.

As I'm sure you've read, it's really tough for halflings to get in charm range without charisma buffs. You should probably also be aware that all of this could be moot if the devs decide charisma shouldn't decide druid charm, but I honestly don't see a way for anyone to meet the level of proof they usually require for this sort of thing.

[Auvdar]

If you run far enough out of range of the mob while it's chasing you, you shouldn't have a problem re-applying snare without getting hit.

This. The only time I ever had problems with resists and being hit was in areas were I didn't have much room to work in. But since all my kiting was done outdoors, this was hardly ever an issue.

Hell I remember doing Hill Giants at lvl 26. Granted it was slow as hell (10 minutes to kill 1 about), but I never had a HP problem, only a mana problem.

Granted you will get smacked once or twice, it will happen. That is what your regen/heal is for ;)

Also going to agree with Alawen and reroll and dump all your points into +cha. I made the mistake of not doing this way back when, and it does hurt. It's not too hard to get full cha, but it's a ton easier to get wis.

[Prince]

are u dumb just get a group fuk