Let's talk CLASS BALANCE

[Zuranthium]

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

You're right, you pretty much can't solo heal a group (or possibly a bad group) - you need to adapt. Throw another priest class in, or grab an enchanter - a decent one which will control your groups pace. (and double your MP regen) This game was designed with trade-offs in mind. If you have any kind of advantage over another class, you usually pay for it. The druid IS the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, and that's just how it is, paid for in full.

1.) "Throw another priest class in"?? This statement doesn't make sense. A Shaman and a Druid together simply can not heal through most of the higher level content. If you "throw a Cleric in" then that speaks to the exact problem I was talking about - you NEED a Cleric to simply play the game at higher levels (and not just the very top end content). This is wrong. And once you have the Cleric in your party, a Shaman (or any melee class) is going to be at the front of the line for another other spot in the party before Druids are.

2.) Druids are not even a true jack-of-all-trades, Bards are, and there was almost never a case at higher levels where a group would take a Druid over a Bard. Just speaking from personal experience here. Jack-of-all-Trades means you can perform almost any given role in a pinch. Druids can not mesmerize. Druids can not provide huge amounts of party wide regen. Druids can not slow mobs. Druids generate far less damage than a Bard who wants to be offensive. Quite simply, Druids have teleports. And that's it. Not something a party actually needs. Maybe when they are done fighting, as you've sat LFG watching them for hours, they will give you some money to teleport them to the nearest city. Gee, that sure does sound like a fun role to play.

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

It's all about the play style you're looking for - if you want an extremely mobile priest class that can solo incredibly well (esp with ES vambraces & the AoE lightning staff), cast big nukes and evac you don't really have a lot of choices. Things are even better outdoors.

Druids don't cast big nukes. The Wizard is the only class capable of nuking at higher levels. Nukes from any other class are simply minor amounts of extra DPS. The amount of HP mobs have and the resist rates they have make nukes continually worse as you go up in level, to the point where non-Wizard nukes are complete trash.

I'm not sure what value the moniker of "priest class" is even supposed to have, given that Druids can NOT act as the defensive glue of the team. Again, Clerics become absolutely necessary. In the times where they aren't absolutely necessary, a Shaman is still the only other viable Priest class if you don't have an Enchanter. As I've said, the Shaman's vastly superior mana regeneration and their best-in-game slow spell allows them to prevent a MASSIVE amount more damage over time than a Druid. A Shaman on their own is literally as effective of a defensive character as 4 Druids put together. That is the power of their slow. If you have an Enchanter around to provide the slow, then MAYBE a Druid can possibly act as Priest for certain areas, but it's still a vastly inferior setup to having a Shaman because the Shaman's slow is better than the Enchanter's and they have more energy to utilize.

So, going back to the "what you're looking for", Druids can quad-kite and they can travel extremely well. And....yeah. That's it. That is not a complete class. What does it matter if you can quickly travel anywhere if nobody wants to group with you? You certainly can not quad-kite in the majority of the areas of the game either. Quad kiting in fact limits you to only fighting in a handful of areas in the game, if that is supposedly what a Druid is "meant to do" (and it's NOT - the game designers specifically said they never intended for Druids and Wizards to be doing that), which pretty much goes against the whole awesome mobility thing Druids had going for them.