Druid Changes Current On PTS

[Anthony01]

• Shield of Oak: Now absorbs all damage types. Now increases movement speed by 5% while up.
• Wild Strike: Now hits 5 targets.
• Spirit of the Wood: Now also triggers off of Wild Strike.
• Stone Burst: Removed.
• Fae Step: New 20 point root ability. Teleports directly to the target. 20m range, 15s cooldown, no global cooldown.
• Rage of the Fae: Reduced cooldown to 2 minutes.
• Brutal Impact: Now increases the damage of Fervent Strike and Combined Effort by 3-9%.
• Hot-Blooded: Now increases the Spell Power bonus of Bombard and Eruption of Life by 5-25%. No longer requires the purchase of Rage of the Fae.
• Slothful Spirit: Increased resource cost penalty to 50%.

Discuss!

• A few options.
  1) Make it reflect the damage negated, and rename it Shield of Thorns.
  2) Make the damage negated, heal us.
  3) Double or triple the amount of damage absorbed.
  Also, increase the Run Speed to 30% while active, or add the 5% run speed as a secondary effect. So it's either 30% run speed while shield is up, or 5% run speed + shield effect.
  
• I like this, good job. Wild Strike does need a slight boost in damage though.
  
• Would appreciate this ability more if used with any damaging ability.
  
• Stone Burst sucked, good riddance.
  
• I really like this. While not as spamable as the charge from Druid, it is off the GCD. Could you also make something similar for the Faerie pet? Maybe a port as well. Something along the lines of ports 10 meters ahead if target is out of range.
  
• No change. Would be nice though if effected Druid as well.
  
• I approve.
  
• I approve this as well. Any damage increase is a damage increase. Eruption of Life is still major suck though. Change it to Illuminate/Coda of Jeopardy/Spotter's Orders effect please.
  
• Useless against casters. Please make this drain the mana of mana users. (3% per ability like Debilitating Poison should do fine) Our only defense against them is a 5 second silence with diminishing returns.

I love that you're trying to make this into a PVP soul, but it still lacks tools to take down casters effectively. The cooldowns are nice, but the overall Utility of a "PVP Druid" is lacking, as well as any form of respectable burst damage. Also, can you add a HoT effect that heals for 100% of the heal of Balm of the Wood when you cast it.

[Feine]

Like the changes so far, but was still really hoping, in vain it seems, to see some better synergy between Druid and Shaman. That is, so that 51-point specs are not so mandatory and more options are available to hybridise between them (hint: 36-point passives might be better as 0-point passives, and 51-point roots are too big a damage boost for a single point).

About the changes specifically themselves, agree with those saying that Shield of Oak is still underwhelming.

Also: Could Anti-Planar Augmentation/Holy Champion affect pets as well? Feels like heavily pet-dependent souls get a much lesser benefit from this than others.

[Eughe]

Couple comments:

Please choose an attack direction for Druid, if we are going to be primarily ranged magic (which at this moment, we are), then quite a bit needs to be changed.

Fervent strike, made up a whopping 2% of my total attacks. In 7 minute parse, it hit a total of 11 times.

11.

Sanction Heretic hit 28 times, in 7minutes.

Combined effort hit 28 times.
EoL, melee. hit, hit around 30 times (i think, the parse doesnt separate the weapon attack and the life damage so it seems)


So 69 weapon attacks plus a good 40ish AA would mean would yield the following:

Craig Hammer - Only melee attacks affects this, making is even more useless. Not to mention there seems to be a discrepancies with the displayed damage and actual damage. It says it should be hitting 80 when it really hits 60. Since druid has a whopping 7 attacks, and most of our magic attacks are on a small CD, whilst our melee attacks are on a large CD, save for fervent, the chances of us using a melee skill in normal rotation (especially when combined with other souls attacks) is minute. Making crag hammer, a decorative buff.

In 7 minutes, it hit 114 times. Contributed 1% of my dps. Compared to Shaman in a 6minute parse hit for 311 times, damn near 3 times more, in less time. Doing 10% of my total dps.

No bueno.

Especially since fervent strikes gives our pets the ability to crit. Thats a pretty important feature.

Fae Hammer too suffer from this issue. As there arent a lot of melee attacks in a druids rotation.


And this leads us to Strength of the fae, the strongest combat buff we have in the most useless soul, catered to the most useless form of attack.
Now the saving grace of this skill, is EoL, as it make a sharp increase in damage when its used, but unfortunately, that sharp increase in damage, is still, LOWER, than a raged Satyr (kudos on the buffs btw, he seems to be doing a crap ton more damage) in fact, when buffed, satyr did more damage with one skill, than EoL did, in the same time frame.

Im sorry, SotF is just not good in its current condition. It needs to be for all damage, and needs to last at least, 15 seconds. And thats the very least, i think it should be nerfed and made an hour long buff, increasing pet effectiveness by 25%, and druids attack by 15% and reducing damage taken by 10%

Or have it work on the satyr too, so he can double dip with rage and SotF for some good burst.

----


I would like to know what causes the scaling of our shields and why its so small. In pvp, there is really no such thing as 899 damage.


---

Now i can understand why you may want to keep the spirits to an abysmal level damage wise since they debuff. But trickster spirit, basically removed a blue trinket from the enemy. Either its damage needs to be that of bombard (which isnt that high quite honestly, an untalented sanction was doing more damage total than it) or that buff needs to be bumped up massively.

10% reduction in all stats hard stats would justify its damage. If thats too OP (boo hoo). 15% reduction in attack and SP, 10% reduction in crit and mcrit. A worth while debuff that wont be ignored and actually make a difference in the heat of the battle.

But as it is not, trickster spirit it just plain awful.

And i still think we need a defense down skill. Lowering armour, evasiveness and magic resist/reduction by 10%

---

AoE damage is abysmal. I dont know if you want it like that but thats what it is.
My Shaman can easily pull off 3.4k AoE dps, druid is pulling 2.3k? With a pet? Blowing CDs?
10 mine parse.
No Bueno.


--

slumber still on a 2 second cast.

--

EoL is still under performing. If this is suppose to be a signature move, it needs to be a lot better than this. If anything, make it a combat buff OGC. One less melee skill one has to worry about.

--

Combined effort. A good skill. A skill that will not be used much in pvp, even with the warp (very nice btw). This should be a proc. Just like the other procs we have in inqui, shaman, etc. 50%, any earth skill used triggers its effects.

This is the only way that druid will be usable in pvp.


--

Balm of wood. I dont even..

--
Satyrs damage in combat, seems particularly good. However, it relies on CE to be active, and considering how PvP oriented this soul is, i just dont see him being optimal.

His HP needs a major increase as well. Its lower than most other pets save for ranger pets, which is tougher. A solid 5k min is whats needed for him.

--

Greater Fae

Another one solely dependent on CE being active to perform satisfactory, not great, but satisfactory.

Her SP contribution is non existent as well. Which is why she so heavily relies on CE. If stats transferred better, there wouldn't be much need for wield and CE/



So thats my thoughts on druids.

CE is a major thorn in druids craw when it comes to PvP, and the hosh posh skill type isnt helping.
Either the debuffs need to be better (and that includes wild strike as its damage out put is terrible for not only a targeted aoe, a targeted aoe that does nothing but crap damage)

EoL shouldnt be an attack.

and melee only skills need to be removed for something better, or changed.


But its nice to see you putting in the effort.


Edit:

Its PvE DPS is better, but it wont do better than Shaman so far, but will probably be easier to use.
But i would still take inqui. over druid.

[Jonchron]

Great changes Zinbik. Really like all the improvements. Druid seems to fit very well into the game now with just the few simple changes made. Don't go overboard with adding too many more things.

[Xnon]

Great changes Zinbik. Really like all the improvements. Druid seems to fit very well into the game now with just the few simple changes made. Don't go overboard with adding too many more things.

yeah cuz druid is the best soul for debuffing/buffing/range/mele/support healing out there .

but srsly tihs soul need to be focused on something,and it needs to be reworked even if trion dont like that if they want to fix it,its a total mess.

[Eughe]

yeah cuz druid is the best soul for debuffing/buffing/range/mele/support healing out there .

but srsly tihs soul need to be focused on something,and it needs to be reworked even if trion dont like that if they want to fix it,its a total mess.

I rolled my eyes at the post.

It doesn't even fit the other pet classes, much less the game.

Not to mention, when has Druid not parsed high self buffed? Pve stand point has always been raid buffed + consumables and soloing, which it does neither well when compared to alternatives.

Satyr seems to be on full throttle now, but it making up ~33% of a Druids dps makes things a little dicey.
Fae is still CE dependant and the AI is still a bit bleh although I need more testing with her.

Not to say the changes were bad, but there is still more to be done before Druid has a role.

[Ethanol]

The good thing about druid is that you could totally redesign it into something totally different without anyone complaining about it, because no one is playing it at the moment.

[TheGreatShabba]

I would love to see the following additional changes:

Eruption of Life is now a Off Global Cooldown self-buff.
Combined Effort is now a ranged attack. (Alternative: Wrap its effect into Bombard and increase the cooldown to 15 seconds. Druid has far too many separate skills as-s.)

This would give the souls some interesting complimentary utility with both ranged (Inquisitor/Cabalist) or melee builds (Shaman).

Zinbik, please consider something that achieves this goal. The combination of melee and range skills, along with the importance of Combined Effort right now is extremely awkward and can only potentially synergize with Shaman or a healing soul.

[rantology]

Are there any plans to allow pets to benefit from raiding consumables? (Powerstones, food, and Vials) I believe pet souls will always scale poorly in a raiding environment compared to other souls like Inquisitor and Shaman because they don't benefit from player consumables, but make up a considerable portion of the DPS.

Going to quote myself here because I forgot something else. On top of this question, is there any plans to allow pets to benefit from player talents as well? (5%sp talents, crit talents, crit multiplier talents etc.)

[Arynite]

One of the biggest problems I always had with Druid was their lack of mobility in PvP. These changes are a step in the right direction, but I would probably take things a little further.

Shield of Oak still seems a little weak. I would love to see the run speed buff get bumped up closer to 20%, especially considering how easily enemies tear through it.

Also, have there been any planned changes to Trickster Spirit? I find this to be one of the most "meh" skills because the spell and attack power penalties scale poorly in endgame. Furthermore, it does mediocre damage at best (especially considering the boost to fervent strike), and doesn't even proc Crag Hammer/Vengeance of the Winter Storm anymore. I would really like to see Crag Hammer proc on ranged attacks. It seems high enough in the Druid tree that it wouldn't break other ranged cabalist/inq specs, but might be a step toward promoting more hybridization and creative builds. As already mentioned by other posters, most of our good dps specs are currently 51 point builds.

Fun fact: Crag Hammer used to proc off Decays. At range. (The shaman weapon buffs only procced in melee range).

[Patchkid]

Some good minor changes, but like I said before in a different thread, there are three steps to fixing druid.

1. Make some of their abilities deal life damage (i.e. spirits, bombard, eruptions of life) so the tree can better synergize with Justicar.

2. Provide the druid with a unique utility, such as, but not limited to, having the druid debuff a target so that all pets (not just the druid's) deal an additional 5% damage. Attach this to one of their spirits or strikes.

3. Give the druid's pet better damage scaling. The changes might address it somewhat, but probably did not go far enough.

[Everyone]

Couple comments:

Please choose an attack direction for Druid, if we are going to be primarily ranged magic (which at this moment, we are), then quite a bit needs to be changed.

I am so confused by your post. What makes you conclude that the druid is a ranged magic soul?

Combined effort, eruption of life, and fervent strike are three of the four highest damage abilities the druid has, and they're all melee. Crag hammer, a central druid buff only affects melee attacks.

Am I missing something here? Are you using spirit attacks in your dps rotation? On the test dummy I just did a 946 crit with the spirits, and an 1154 crit with fervent strike. Why would you ever use spirits in your dps rotation?

[tro44]

I am so confused by your post. What makes you conclude that the druid is a ranged magic soul?

Combined effort, eruption of life, and fervent strike are three of the four highest damage abilities the druid has, and they're all melee. Crag hammer, a central druid buff only affects melee attacks.

Am I missing something here? Are you using spirit attacks in your dps rotation? On the test dummy I just did a 946 crit with the spirits, and an 1154 crit with fervent strike. Why would you ever use spirits in your dps rotation?

I think you missed the point.

the point is, that Crag Hammer doesnt proc from the newly changed ranged attacks (since they originally were melee attacks)

this seem to have been something over looked in the buff to their range, that developers may not have noticed before.

[Zinbik]

I'd just like to point out that I didn't touch the Satyr. He's always hit that hard (assuming you made full use of Fervent Strike, Combined Effort, and Rage of the Fae).

[Everyone]

I think you missed the point.

the point is, that Crag Hammer doesnt proc from the newly changed ranged attacks (since they originally were melee attacks)

this seem to have been something over looked in the buff to their range, that developers may not have noticed before.

What newly changed ranged attacks?