[Kika Maslyaka]

The Druid Universal Conspiracy to Kill (DUCK!)
-- Rolli Polli, Retired Druid of Rodcet Nife (and one cool fellow)

Our conspiracy has gone on for too long and it has finally been uncovered by the normals. It's time to fess up. Yes, we the Druids of Norrath have been in a conspiracy with Verant Interactive, Sony Online Entertainment, Microsoft, Disney, the Catholic Church, UUNet, the Masons, Ford Motor Company, and *your* ISP for the past few years. It has been the goal of this conspiracy to ruin the game play of every non druid in EQ, get ph4t l3wt for the druid army, create a master race of dr00dz, and steal the formula for Coke Classic. We have thus far succeeded with everything but the Coke deal, however there is a guy who will trade it to multi-quest Jboots for him. -- Someone get on that please.
I would like to apologize on behalf of the Druid Universal Conspiracy to Kill, AKA DUCK, for the following:

- KSing that fire beetle from you in west commons when you were level 1. Hey, it was dark and we thought you needed help. Yes, I know that a 49th level druid could cast Greater Heal just as easily as Starfire, but we druids all forgot how to heal around level 20.

- Getting clerics nerfed into uselessness, along with warriors, necromancers, wizards, mages, enchanters, rogues and rangers. It was a drunken bet and we didn't think they'd actually do it.

- Training those fifteen hill giants over you in the Rathe Mountains. After all if you don't want to fight, you shouldn't sit in the far back corner, up against the wall, where nobody can find you, it was hard enough getting all of those giants to aggro on you in the first place...

- Taking your spot in the orc group when you were level 10. While it's not our fault that your class sucks, we do occasionally feed pizzas and nachos laced with morphine to the Verant staff but that is only to keep them under our power.

- World War II. -- Sorry, don't know what happened here. Give one newbie a Skin Like Nature and next thing you know he's invading Poland.

- Global warming. It's a well known fact that quad kiting causes global warming. All those druids running around at high speed has thrown the planet off blaance and it is slowly moving towards the sun. Don't worry, if we get too close, we'll all just run in the opposite direction for a while.

- The DOT related corpse poofing bug. If we can't get the loot, then you can't either. We have a secret look-ahead algorithm that determines if we would have won the /random for the drop. In the event of a predicted loss, screw you mode is engaged and DOTs start flying.

- World hunger. Sure we could take all this foraged food we don't want and give it to those starving kids in Africa, but it will take at least five minutes to port there and back. We don't want to lose our shot at the FBSS if it drops then...

- World War I. OK, it is COMPLETELY not our fault that Archduke Ferdinand could not get a port and had to walk. How were we supposed to know he would get jumped and ganked by PKers? I think wizards should share the blame here, but they refuse to fess up. Hindsight shows us that we could have helped avoid a lot of trouble though.

- Original Sin. Heh, that's a good story. It wasn't actually a snake, we made that up to cover for us. It was a druid in tree-form who just wanted to have some fun with a couple of n00bs. How were we supposed to know that they were going to get /petitioned? Honest mistake, won't happen again.

- Alien Abduction. Nope, that's all a sham too. We port into the middle of nowhere, see if some unsuspecting lowbie wants a quick port home and then leave them on Rigel 7. We made up that UFO thing cause the GMs were getting on to us.

- Richard Nixon. -- What were we thinking?

- The Decline of Western Civilization. In truth, this really isn't our fault. It's just a combination of all the other things we've done, compounded by corporate greed, human indifference, general moral decay and rap music. Might as well take the blame for this one though, we've got nothing better to do.

Again, I would like to apologize you on behalf of the DUCK. If, in the future, any further wrongdoings by druids come to light we will be apologizing for them here. We've done so much that we just plum can't keep track of it all and our book keeping is terrible.

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Attack of the Killer Gnome
Unknown Source - was posted on original SOE newbie forums

I was invisible and running through the Karanas one day when I noticed a young gnome near the gypsy camp. He was fighting a lion and though it looked like he would win the battle, being a fellow gnome, I decided to help the guy out.

I targeted the lion, clicked on my mesmerize spell, then *started* to type: "I'm mesmerizing the lion for you." I got as far as: "I'm " when I remembered that I had replaced my mesmerize spell with an Area of Effect mesmerize spell... and that I was standing next to an NPC enchantress. Gulp.

My movement keys are mapped to "w a s d" so I frantically stabbed at my keyboard, trying to MOVE and interrupt the spell.

I forgot that I was in typing mode.

The gypsy enchantress didn't like my attempt to mezz her so she promptly charmed me and made me go after the gnome I had been trying to *save*. I watched in horror as my peace-loving character, knife flailing like a crazed sushi chef, chased the little guy down and stabbed him to death.

I found my victim later and apologized profusely... I even gave him a nice weapon and a piece of armor. He was great about it, and laughed when I told him what happened.

He said he didn't know WHAT was going on. One minute he was fighting a lion, the next minute a strange gnome appeared out of NOWHERE, announced: "I'm wwwaaaddd", then sliced him up like Freddy Krueger.



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Barm's Tips for Melee Management - Shaman play Guide
By Barm McLir of the Saryn Server (Originally found at Shaman's Crucible's message boards

There are times during your career as a shaman that you'll find yourself grouped with those crazy melee type classes. I offer the following tips for working with the gate-inhibited:

Melees are poor at math and don't understand that 20 mana is less than 100 mana, thus they keep pulling. You can help the tank visualize your mana bar by keeping his health bar at the same level. Some warriors cannot comprehend this either and pull anyway. This is called natural selection.

Paladin get a very annoying ability called Lay of Hands that they carry around like a personal get out of death free card. They will happily pull Venril Sathir to your right courtyard group confident that LoH will save the day. It's imperative that you "fizzle" a few heals, forcing them to burn this right away. Now, your group is relatively safe from your pally for one game day.

Monks get a similar ability called Mend. They tend to be more selfish in its use, so make a hotkey saying Monk, please cast MEND on %t. and click it every two minutes. If they try to claim they can’t, tell them your brother’s 16 monk can Group Mend. Then accuse them of being ebayed.

Tanks think all casters med at something like 500 mana a tick. When you report your current mana they, despite being poor at math, mentally tack on another 30% to compensate for .003 second delay your message spent traversing the internet. To correct for this, subtract 30% from all mana reports. This is called the "Scotty Principle."

Rogue twinks are your enemy. They join the group with 15 hit points left dual wielding 10/10 weapons that proc Insidious Taunt and immediately demand haste. You cannot afford to heal rogues. Give them something with a boot icon -- Scale of Wolf for instance.

Many people do not understand the Ranger class and think they are like that dirty, unshaven guy from Lord of the Rings. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Rangers actually follow very strict principals of honor like Shaolin priests. Under their Bushido-like code, nothing brings more shame than being healed by another. Pat Morita explained this all at the last Fan Fair. He did say they were kinda dirty.

Keep your pet alive over all other group members. You can justify this by explaining that your 55 pet costs 50 mana more than Reviviscence. Be warned, they will try to confuse the issue by pointing out that you can’t even cast Reviviscence. Go into a long dissertation regarding the concept of community mana and the respect thereof.

If melees ask for strength say something like, "Yeah, that would be sweet -- maybe this drolvarg will drop it?" [Optional] Then cast Maniacal Strength on your pet.

Some shaman suggest casting buffs on yourself or a pet as timers so you know when to refresh. While this may sound good on paper, it does not factor in the warrior who clicks off each buff every few minutes trying to check the names.

Don't get angry at the tank who responds to your "OOM" with "haste plz". What they really mean is, "Hastily get thyself to the zone while I buy you precious second with my unworthy life's blood, Good Priest." It's just hard to type all that between the crunching sounds. Respect the dying request of this proud roleplayer.
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