Next expansion?

[grim]

Find a 95 zerker who has decapitation maxed and go to the grounds! Xp is fast there

 

[Artemus]

I've noticed zerkers are the new mass murderers of the game. During double exp weekend, a guild on my erver had two zerkers grouped in Erudin burning in the far south. Pull everything and mass slaughter the Erudites. Wait for respawns, rinse, repeat.

 

[SiegeTank]

I've noticed zerkers are the new mass murderers of the game. During double exp weekend, a guild on my erver had two zerkers grouped in Erudin burning in the far south. Pull everything and mass slaughter the Erudites. Wait for respawns, rinse, repeat.

No doubt they kick ass. But I've seen rangers and shadowknights do some seriously cruel mass killing.

This is why I'm annoyed that Sony has perma-nerfed druid quad-kiting by not releasing a new targeted aoe DD spell of the type used for quadding since Karana's Rage at level 62. That one does 1100 dmg to up to 4 targets so clearly useless at high level even for quadding greens. Compared to the 250k kill shots that rangers and zerkers routinely can trigger---without evening using mana---that's sad.

The argument way back when was druid quad-kiting was "over-powered", leading to druids leveling up too easily and, believe it or not, hogging too many mobs in the zone when grabbing and killing four at a time! Compare that to zerkers, SKs and rangers rounding up 1/5-1/2 of ALL the mobs in a zone and slaying them all at one time!

I'm not even complaining since there are always mobs available to XP on "somewhere." But I'd love to understand the developers' rationale to give mass-slaughter abilities to a few selected classes and deprive it, or take it away, from others.

Prediction: zerker decapitation will get nerfed within a year. It wasn't even working till a not-so-long-ago patch so zerkers should take its present over-poweredness as an early Christmas present from Sony, but one that they're only "borrowing" for the time being. Just a hunch...

 

[dune157]

Druids suck and always will. They are super low on the totem pole imo. I used to play a top 10 druid on my server. I mean they can be useful, but people are going to choose other classes every time before a druid. They aren't pure enough of any form to really be used before other classes that they are like.

 

[SiegeTank]

Well, druids sucking is besides the point. Sure, they're going to be suckier if they don't get the spell and strat upgrades that other classes get.

Nobody disputes that druids are a jack-of-all-trades utility class, for the most part. But they're fun to solo because of that and quad-kiting was a fun thing to do from time to time.

The other impediments to quad-kiting are summoning mobs and, to some extent, caster mobs. These are also potential impediments to swarming and decapitation/headshotting strats. But the devs presumably intentionally have designed certain mob populations in certain zones NOT to have summoners and few, if any, casters. The only problem I see in those zones SOMETIMES are named mobs popping in a mob group, which can mess up a zerker or sk's day.

My humble suggestion, sure to be ignored by the powers at Sony (especially posted on this site, for obvious reasons) is if you're going to allow certain classes to slaughter dozens to hundreds of mobs all at one time, GIVE DRUIDS UPDATED QUAD-KITING AOE DD's! LOL

 

[Dealings]

have all 3 priest classes at my disposal

in a caster grp w a mage pet or real tank druid not only does the job but brings alot more to the table (for the casters)

RoF T3 named np

PeteSampras forced me to go w out shaman buffs (the douche) and now I dont miss em, imo the worst healer is the shaman of the 3.

As far as the cleric for a healer when I started noticing he was staying too full of mana I tried to do more with him , then moved to a druid and am very happy with it as a main healer atm.

Not deleting cleric or shaman, its just that the druid for grp content can heal no problem and can bring more goodies.

Shaman for melee grps
Cleric for weak grps

 

[SiegeTank]

Plus, druids got 96% AA rez in RoF. That last 6% of rez-recovery XP used to be a major reason to favor a cleric over a druid.

I do think if druids got legit complaints, clerics have even more legit gripes. I can't imagine starting to play EQ today and making a cleric as your main toon. /shudder

 

[zdozbou]

A good Druid can keep right up with a Cleric for healing.

 

[Aanorok]

A good Druid can keep up with a mediocre Cleric. If the Cleric knows what they are doing, they will blow everyone's doors off for healing.

 

[riot]

A good Druid can keep up with a mediocre Cleric. If the Cleric knows what they are doing, they will blow everyone's doors off for healing.

I agree but my opinion is limited from my very narrow experience with Druid healers. I use a j5 tank as opposed to a normal PC tank so that is where my opinion is formed and shouldn't be taken as fact as I've never healed in a good group with a pc played and well equipped tank.

But this is what I have found as opposed to when I used to box a cleric.

Druids are decent healers at best but are no where near the healing powers of a good cleric. Druid heals are either long cast times or long recast delays which makes healing hard hitting named mobs really tough when there are no slows or debuffs available.

I usually run a j5 tank and j5 cleric then just keep Druid afk in group as j5 cleric is more than enough healing for a normal chain pulling group. I switch over to Druid after pulling a named though just assist the cleric with heals and pop AAs as needed.

Like I said, my experience is very limited so take it with a grain of salt. If someone has some tips that might make healing on druids a little easier, I'd be willing to try them out. I use 3 single target heals, group heal and delayed heal right before named gets to camp.

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[William12]

They should of made all 3 healing classes interchangeable years ago. Just like all 3 tanks should be equals. It does nothing but help the game and give people more options for raids, groups, etc.

 

[SiegeTank]

Nah, I disagree. What's the point then? You gonna give clerics ports and druids slows? They're not all the same. If you mean give them the same exact healing abilities then who would ever play a cleric if you could have cleric heals along with either shaman or druid class abilities?

The 3 tank classes aren't all the same either, and that's a good thing.

I don't think you've thought this out!

One of the best features of EQ is that the classes ARE different yet a group can accomplish a lot with a wide variety of classes adventuring together. OR SO THE EQ PROMO MATERIALS TELL ME!

 

[riot]

Each class has its specific roll and it's good like that. There are things clerics can do that druids can't and vise versa. There are things sks can do that pallys can't or warriors and vice versa. It creates a more unique playing experience when there is a wide array of classes all with their own special talents. Raiding is where class diversity really shines.

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[William12]

The thing is all of that worked great when the game was popular. Now trying to fill a 54 person raid it is not realistic. Just because a druid has ports doesn't mean no one would play a cleric or a shaman etc. Clerics have plenty of positives that druids or shaman do not have. Balancing them to be equal healers would suck sure but it is something that should be done for a game that is 14 years old and going on its 20th expansion.

What's going to happen when the game has less and less players ? A game with a limited player base should never have a NEED class for group or raid content and right now a cleric is a NEED class.

 

[riot]

The thing is all of that worked great when the game was popular. Now trying to fill a 54 person raid it is not realistic. Just because a druid has ports doesn't mean no one would play a cleric or a shaman etc. Clerics have plenty of positives that druids or shaman do not have. Balancing them to be equal healers would suck sure but it is something that should be done for a game that is 14 years old and going on its 20th expansion.

What's going to happen when the game has less and less players ? A game with a limited player base should never have a NEED class for group or raid content and right now a cleric is a NEED class.

I get what you are saying and I guess I also agree with you. Sometimes I forget that this game doesn't hold the player base it did in the past. When having 200+ people in zone for a PoP backflag raid was the norm lol.

There could be some class balancing to adjust to the smaller player base or even some new class specific AAs that would be kinda useless in a group setting but amazing in a raid setting. Like a Druid AA that reduces cooldowns on heals or increases healing done based on how much damage people around him are taking or just simply how many people are around him. Kinda like the Mage stuff that increases damage based on how many summoned pets are in the area.

It will be difficult to truly buff druids while making them competitive with Clerics but not on par or better than Clerics. No one should heal better than a Cleric just like no one should tank better than a Warrior. Other classes can be adjusted to come close but they should never surpass them IMO.

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