[aresprophet]

Originally Posted by slowroll [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

2) Root Rot: Snare, root, DOT, med. This is way more mana efficient because you get to med while the DOT ticks away, but it does take awhile. If you have a large mana pool you can do this with 2 or 3 mobs at a time.

If you fight low-dark blues root consistently lasts its full duration (with only the occasional early break) making this extremely efficient. It is, however, very slow. And root-rotting more than one mob at a time decreases efficiency: every missed tick of meditation due to casting/pulling/moving adds up quickly. Best used for slow but steady kills when a better method isn't available (e.g. ice giants in EF)

3) Quad Kite: Snare four mobs, run circles around them until they are all together in a tight cluster, AOE nuke them until dead. This give you alot of XP for your mana, but it can be dangerous until you get it down.

Second-best soloing method but it's limited by the number of viable quadding spots. You can't quad-kite until 34, and at that level your best option for quadding (SK gnolls) is a heavily-contested spot. By 39 you can probably take spectres (I did them at 35 but I had a manastone and 200 wis, would NOT have been able to without the manastone) but they, too, are heavily-camped. Other good quadding options are HGs (heavily camped) seafuries (heavily camped) raptors (pain in the ass to get too and heavily camped) ... you get the idea. Fantastic exp that leaves you with just enough downtime between pulls (one average, 6 minutes) to read a book, do homework, dick around on the internet, etc. Very relaxed and not at all dangerous once you have the hang of it, barring lag and random disconnects.

4) Charming: Snare animal, charm, buff animal, sick on another animal. Some people love this tactic, others say charm does not last long enough. Honestly I have not done this tactic much, but it has worked for me when I have.

Best druid exp in the game, but if quadding is limited this is even more severely limited. Finding equivalent-level animals in a safe fear-kite environment is nigh impossible: at 24 you can do griffennes/griffawns in NK or mammoths in EF, and after 29 when the exp dries up it's basically over until you're 51 and can do raptors (I have successfully charm-killed in the bear pit in Permafrost. I would not recommend it unless you have balls of steel and a bind point outside the zone, and even then there are greener pastures). If you are charming low-dark blues charm will typically last its full duration; with ensnare on (to make recharming easier) you need to use fear to actually kite, but with Feral/Savage Spirit the pets do better and safer DPS than any PC in the game can ever hope to do. The holy grail of druid soloing, but it suffers from (a) limited availability (b) heavy competition (c) significant risk (d) total inefficiency if you have a bad string of resists and early charm breaks and (e) zero downtime to do other stuff. It's high-risk high-effort high-reward.

All that being said, try and find a spot in a good 6 man group that already has a Cleric. Work smarter not harder :P

Druids have the dubious distinction of being more useful to an exp group than a wizard. So there's that. When you get right down to it, regen/chloro/regrowth are the most efficient heals in the game and damage shields are the most efficient damage in the game. You can keep both up while doing a fair amount of DPS and spot-healing depending on the circumstance. You're not useless, you just don't stand out in a group. At all. Most people would rather have a shaman or any other DPS class (even a wizard despite them being lazy useless bitches <3 wizzies).

Then again, if you're fighting somewhere with charmable animals that isn't solo friendly (e.g. bats in SolB) you can put every other DPS to shame. You + enchanter charming pets = mobs die too fast to nuke anyway.

Druids are versatile, remember that. If your preferred solo method isn't available for one reason or another there's always another option.