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.

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).

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.

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

Has any developer said anything about this?

http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...ht=druid+charm

Might be a cause worth fighting for...

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

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

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?

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.

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.