Druid HoT changes? Not really the issue maybe? [Archive]

patrck17

07-02-2009, 10:44 AM

Wanted to open up discussion about these upcoming Druid changes. So far all I have seen posted is that they will be adding an additional component to our HoTs, and also something about emergency heals being relooked (though I am not sure if this applies to all healers or just druids). So first of all I play a Fury in an avatar geared guild so my perceptions will be from the high end raiding perspective with the end game loot available. I know it is pretty widely agreed that druids have kind of gotten the short end of the stick in this expansion and that is true for various reasons, but when I read forums or talk in public channels about druids, I rarely hear about people complaining that druids can't -heal-. I think this is because druids actually can heal, and heal well. I think from solo through raid content there isn't an actual task of -healing- that druids are incapable of meeting. The problem druids are having right now is finding a spot in raids because they cannot do much (often anything), to prevent damage, especially in the case of the huge AE's seen throughout the later part of the raid content this expansion. Also the group buffs druids have are far less beneficial to a group than cleric and shaman buffs.Focusing on the healing aspects for a moment. Druids can pretty much green an entire group from red in one cast. It isn't in any form difficult for a druid to keep up with the heals required by basicly any encounter in the game. The problem is when people are unable to survive an AE. What happens a lot is a scout will not joust far enough, because of a early/late AE or laziness, or the casters will just not have enough hp or resist/mitigation. Druids do nothing to increase the chance these players will survive an AE. So what ends up being required is a cleric or shaman in the group with the druid to keep the group alive. But if you are going to put in 2 healers, why not just bring both a cleric and a shaman, as they will not only keep the group alive, but increase utility/dps at the same time. Still a good druid can do 5-12k+ dps (depending on if they try or if they are a warden or fury etc) and keep a chokering group green on plenty of encounters, all trash really, many names. But they cannot do that on fights where there is tons of healing needed. And it seems that raid leaders have decided its easier/faster to just bring a shaman/cleric and have them do a few thousand dps each, than having a druid do it and deal with the chance of deaths. My question is, if you increase a druids hots with another component, and that component doesn't outright counter that big hit of an AE, what good will this do? Druid still will be able to green the entire group nearly instantly, but not prevent a 1 shot related death. Without dragging this post out any longer, I'll just say that I do not think it will help much to give druids a larger HoT (or however they are going to do this new "component"). Druids can heal fine, we just need useful buffs. Some kind of buff that will keep our group from getting 1 shotted. I know this is probably a difficult task as you don't want to send druids into the OP region, where you want a druid in every group cause of their [Removed for Content] buffs. But as it is right now you pretty much want a cleric/shaman in every group so I dunno. Anyways that is just my opinion, I just want to get discussion going so maybe somebody important will read it and get an idea of what everyone here thinks, whether it agrees with my opinion or not.

Yimway

07-02-2009, 11:24 AM

This change is to more specificaly work around how well a druid heals a tank/MT when wards and/or reactives are aslo present. Making the heals you cast that do no healing due to wards and reactives firing first will still have meaning.It was mentioned that your buffs were also going to get some attention. In essence that your group mitigation and HP buffs would be adjusted to be more in-line with other healers.The principle behind the changes is that for pugs, they will be happy to bring _any_ healers that is available. In raids, it will make more sense to stack HoTs on tanks in addtion to wards/reactives AND with the better group buffs, a druid might stand a chance at keeping a dps group up.The HoT banking has been the lightning rod part of the druid changes and drawing the most attention, but other general changes were discussed as well to make the druid more universally desired as a healer.

Odys

07-02-2009, 11:30 AM

I quite agree with you a posted exactly this as a comment in the fan-fair thread. My warden can pretty much bring back all the squishies back from red to green in a single cast, and she is only in T2 and never won a fabled. People still feel safer with warder or reactive since to produce a similar effect druids need to spam, so the are more suject to adversary effect like stuns, range etc ...Note also that druids do have a wonderfull anti-aoe which is extremelly usefull in raids.What they miss is utility and bufs.Here are some possibilities : groupewide spirit of the bat , removing the negative rooting effect of gustofwind, lowering the stiffe effect of the anti aoe (let's make it stiffle 5 seconds as example), giving druids way to face stuns (senerity?), tune up the elemental ward, make the final cure talent better (and work on the cure tree).

Yimway

07-02-2009, 11:34 AM

Sorry, I forgot to mention that abilities that stun healers are going to be changed to some other penalty. So for warden's your Genesis line and your tortoise shell should no longer stun lock you when used. What penalty will replace stun wasn't discussed, but I would expect a 50% heal reduction, or a 50% casting speed penalty, but not a complete removal from combat for the duration.

Odys

07-02-2009, 11:43 AM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>This change is to more specificaly work around how well a druid heals a tank/MT when wards and/or reactives are aslo present. Making the heals you cast that do no healing due to wards and reactives firing first will still have meaning.It was mentioned that your buffs were also going to get some attention. In essence that your group mitigation and HP buffs would be adjusted to be more in-line with other healers.The principle behind the changes is that for pugs, they will be happy to bring _any_ healers that is available. In raids, it will make more sense to stack HoTs on tanks in addtion to wards/reactives AND with the better group buffs, a druid might stand a chance at keeping a dps group up.The HoT banking has been the lightning rod part of the druid changes and drawing the most attention, but other general changes were discussed as well to make the druid more universally desired as a healer.</blockquote>Hell, if they buf our heals we wanna be overpowered in single groups <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Sure i won't complain but currently i feel much safer solo healing with my warden than with my mystic.Currently as far as i know the more knowlegeable people are the more likely they are to trust a warden.

Odys

07-02-2009, 11:44 AM

PeterJohn

07-02-2009, 11:47 AM

So I am assuming that since they are going to buff druids and fix all their weaknesses, that clerics are going to be made into DPS machines too? And give us better groupwide healing since we are not as good at that as single target healing?

Yimway

07-02-2009, 12:00 PM

patrck17

07-02-2009, 12:12 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>This change is to more specificaly work around how well a druid heals a tank/MT when wards and/or reactives are aslo present. Making the heals you cast that do no healing due to wards and reactives firing first will still have meaning.It was mentioned that your buffs were also going to get some attention. In essence that your group mitigation and HP buffs would be adjusted to be more in-line with other healers.The principle behind the changes is that for pugs, they will be happy to bring _any_ healers that is available. In raids, it will make more sense to stack HoTs on tanks in addtion to wards/reactives AND with the better group buffs, a druid might stand a chance at keeping a dps group up.The HoT banking has been the lightning rod part of the druid changes and drawing the most attention, but other general changes were discussed as well to make the druid more universally desired as a healer.</blockquote>This is informative and I appreciate the extra clarification. The fact that they are going to look at our group buffs is reassuring. I will wait till there is more information available to outright condem any changes they may implement.

patrck17

07-02-2009, 12:24 PM

<cite>PeterJohn wrote:</cite><blockquote>So I am assuming that since they are going to buff druids and fix all their weaknesses, that clerics are going to be made into DPS machines too? And give us better groupwide healing since we are not as good at that as single target healing?</blockquote>I thought hateshield fixed clerics groupwide healing. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> On the last Anashti fight we did I was in group with a templar. The templar's hateshield proc outparsed me entirely. I was spamming heals the entire fight and thats how much I contributed. Less than 1 item that the templar was wearing.I know I am oversimplifying a complicated situation, and I am not really trying to argue that clerics groupwide heal capacity isn't limited. I am certain that we could go back and forth with plenty of situations where druids do better than clerics and also many where clerics outperform druids. As my original post said, I am not really worried about druids ability to heal, just their utility, and in that case there is no comparison to clerics.As to the dps, it has always been my opinion that if you put enough dps gear on any toon they will be able to dps. This has been proven by bards and healers (not just druids). I guess it does take less dps gear for a druid to put up high numbers though. I expect that to change when they consolidate crits though.

YeldarbSpiritbla

07-02-2009, 12:31 PM

Excellent post.Paladins have an AA spec for a regenerating ward, and can even ward themselves for a small amount. Wizards have an AA spec for a regenerating ward that regenerates hps ON TOP of the hps the wizard already has. These are just the classes I know. The druid has no ward at all in any spell or AA spec and they're a healer? It would be a HUGE help to the druid class as a whole to just change Nature's Ferocity to have a small regenerative ward that wards everyone in group. Heck, you could even take the Increases the heal amount by 15% and replace it with a 15% ward, or 10% even. Something that wouldn't be greater than a shaman, but enough to make a small difference when the big boom came down.Also, a BIG detriment is Tortoise Shell. Why does it stifle the caster? Is that shell really that heavy? And the effect radius is 3 meters... seriously... Make it 10 or 20 meters and no stifle. You could even remove the increases hp regeneration, and could even shorten the duration. I usually know when a big ae is coming anyways, and never let it run it's full course.Just 2 small changes would do wonders for the druid class, btw, Nature's Ferocity is a Fury AA, and I don't know the name of the Wardens AA, but you get the idea.

YeldarbSpiritbla

07-02-2009, 12:42 PM

PeterJohn

07-02-2009, 12:49 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Doubtful, you still have other invaluable tools (stoneskin, control immunities, shield ally, etc) that still make you a more than abled healer. There isn't much reason to make you even more powerful.You can however expect a rework of your cure aa line to be more meaningful.</blockquote>Stoneskin and shield ally are still both single target "heals" though. I am not arguing that our single target healing needs fixing. I am specifically addressing our weakness, which is DPS and groupwide healing.As for the druid who was outparsed by the cleric by his hateshield: You are worrying too much about how your parse looks. My guess is that your group succeeded just fine. Don't look at the heal parse. This is especially true in a group where almost all of the damage is being done just to the tank, and very little is getting through the tank's huge mitigation and the cleric's repent and hateshield, leaving very little damage to be healed by the druid. That group probably didn't need to have 2 healers, and any solo healer wound have done just fine.I can tell you that as a templar, my heal parse is almost ZERO if I have a shaman in the group and the group is overpowered for the zone. NOTHING makes it through the shaman's wards. Should I complain about this?

Yimway

07-02-2009, 01:13 PM

<cite>PeterJohn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Doubtful, you still have other invaluable tools (stoneskin, control immunities, shield ally, etc) that still make you a more than abled healer. There isn't much reason to make you even more powerful.You can however expect a rework of your cure aa line to be more meaningful.</blockquote>Stoneskin and shield ally are still both single target "heals" though. I am not arguing that our single target healing needs fixing. I am specifically addressing our weakness, which is DPS and groupwide healing.</blockquote>I've seen raidwide dps on our templars over 5k. While they're not higher than most healers, they are high enough.Temps get way better debuffs than druids, so I can see a fine justification on thier dps being lower. Temps also get more useful group buffs, etc.I don't really see an arguement that temps need anything cause druids are getting a fix.

Baccalarium

07-02-2009, 01:50 PM

It's sad. It seems like a decision to change mechanics is being made purely on where druids show up on a heal parse. Yes when the tank is mitigating much of the damage on easier content and the other healers are healing enough to cover the heal load, the druids barely show up on the heal parse. Does that make them weaker healers? NO!. When the s*** hits the fan and all healers are healing to their max potential the druids have all the ability to keep the tank alive as the other healers, and at the same time they're rescuing the entire group. Heals wasted due to not being needed is hardly a way to measure a healer, the max potential ability to keep the group alive when the heals are needed is the true measure of a healer's worth. Smart players know that the heal parse (or dps parse for that matter) in not a pure measure of players ability to fullfill their roles.I'm happy to have something that lets druids get a bit more on the parse when the content doesn't require much healing, but to say that druids needed a boost seems to be a mis understanding of how to use the parsers. I've not seen druids in capable of solo healing groups, and their efficiency of healing while barely drinking their power pool makes them great for long painful fights. I know when I have a druid in the group, slowing the wards down to drop a few more debufs isn't going to get the tank killed. I've seen a warden keep a tank bouncing from red to green and back for nearly a minute while waiting for specials to come up so he'd have a chance to group rez the other four members of the group, and his power bar suggested he could have kept it up for several minutes more had it been needed.Grats druids. You were already excellent healers, boosts to that ability should both make it more visible, and make you even better.

patrck17

07-02-2009, 01:58 PM

<cite>PeterJohn wrote:</cite><blockquote>As for the druid who was outparsed by the cleric by his hateshield: You are worrying too much about how your parse looks. My guess is that your group succeeded just fine. Don't look at the heal parse. This is especially true in a group where almost all of the damage is being done just to the tank, and very little is getting through the tank's huge mitigation and the cleric's repent and hateshield, leaving very little damage to be healed by the druid. That group probably didn't need to have 2 healers, and any solo healer wound have done just fine.</blockquote>I had anticipated getting a response along the lines of "you shouldn't worry about the heal parse", which is why I stated that I was oversimplifying a complicated situation. I understand all the aspects of the fight and why the parse reflected what it did. Either me or the Templar could have healed the encounter solo, the reason two healers are in the fight (like so many other encounters), is just to take off the load of cures for added stability, kind of a "just incase" thing. As for the parse itself, I am not worried about how the parse compares us as healers, any experienced raider can read a heal parse. It does tell you about the fight though, just doesn't usually give you an idea of how capable one healer is vs another. The only thing that is distrubing to me is exactly what this parse does show, which is that in this encounter a druid's heals are not really used at all, infact were less useful than a single item wore by the templar. I outheal the same templar in the tyrannus fight. Like I said theres lot of situations we could discuss. I just think it may be somewhat out of balance for any one item to to contribute so much healing power. There was a proc which offered similar results in terms of heal capacity, overloaded heal, and what happened to that? I know everyone loves their hateshield, I use it on my cleric too but really, no 1 item should be able to contribute 30-40% of a healers...heals. That is another topic though so as to not derail my own thread any further I'll just summarize by saying I do agree with you for the most part about cleric group heals an dps. Though I don't think cleric's weaknesses cause them to be left out of raids as frequently as druid's do. Which is why I wouldn't put them as high on the list to get "fixed".

Munty

07-02-2009, 02:08 PM

<cite>YeldarbSpiritblade wrote:</cite><blockquote>The druid has no ward at all in any spell or AA spec and they're a healer? </blockquote>We do get 1 ward - but it only works against elemental damage.

Orthureon

07-02-2009, 02:14 PM

Why is it that when people say Clerics, they always think of Templars??? The Inquisitor has NO damage prevention or big spike damage handling ability, bar for Suicide... err I mean Sacrifice. We don't get stoneskin, lotto heals, a ward, we are missing one of the heals the templar has etc. As for the Ethereal Mist Gauntlets and Rune Etched Helm. those are pieces of gear that will lose their effectiveness with the expansion. So including them in an argument like they were class abilities is silly, even now many Clerics/Shamans (REH) are missing those pieces as they are very rare.All I can say is if I am to fall further down the healing ability line, just make Inquisitors an SK type class and call it a day. Currently the only real reason people use Inquisitors is for their mythical clicky cure. Which will receive a semi-nerf in the form of some detriments being BAD to cure, yay for clicky cure that will lose most of its effectiveness.BTW:<ul><li>HEALERS <ul><li>3308 level 80 Inquisitors worldwide </li><li>3540 level 80 Defilers worldwide </li><li>3732 level 80 Mystic worldwide </li><li>5268 level 80 Templars worldwide </li><li>6536 level 80 Wardens worldwide </li><li>6833 level 80 Furies worldwide</li></ul></li><li>FIGHTERS <ul><li>4314 level 80 Bruisers worldwide </li><li>4372 level 80 Paladins worldwide </li><li>4577 level 80 Berserkers worldwide </li><li>4692 level 80 Monks worldwide </li><li>5719 level 80 Shadow Knights worldwide </li><li>5837 level 80 Guardians worldwide</li></ul></li><li>SCOUTS <ul><li>3486 level 80 Troubadors worldwide </li><li>4024 level 80 Swashbucklers worldwide </li><li>4445 level 80 Brigands worldwide </li><li>4499 level 80 Assassins worldwide </li><li>4717 level 80 Rangers worldwide </li><li>5538 level 80 Dirges worldwide</li></ul></li><li>MAGES <ul><li>3853 level 80 Coercers worldwide </li><li>4157 level 80 Warlocks worldwide </li><li>4772 level 80 Illusionists worldwide </li><li>5202 level 80 Conjurors worldwide </li><li>6585 level 80 Necromancers worldwide </li><li>7150 level 80 Wizards worldiwde</li></ul></li></ul>Winner of least played class at level 80 goes to the Inquisitor!

Aule

07-02-2009, 02:14 PM

I'd like to see druids receive a groupwide buff that reduces the amount of damage taken by any aoe. As pointed out, unless it's an elemental aoe, druids can only heal a group that survives the aoe. If druids had a buff that reduced the amount of incoming focus or physical aoe's, probably the two biggest killers, it would go a long way to adding survivability to the group. Even if it was *'d if profession is not fighter. I'd like to see this statement made by a raid leader: "We need a druid to make sure the squishies stay alive."

patrck17

07-02-2009, 02:34 PM

<cite>Baccalarium wrote:</cite><blockquote>It's sad. It seems like a decision to change mechanics is being made purely on where druids show up on a heal parse. Yes when the tank is mitigating much of the damage on easier content and the other healers are healing enough to cover the heal load, the druids barely show up on the heal parse. Does that make them weaker healers? NO!. When the s*** hits the fan and all healers are healing to their max potential the druids have all the ability to keep the tank alive as the other healers, and at the same time they're rescuing the entire group. Heals wasted due to not being needed is hardly a way to measure a healer, the max potential ability to keep the group alive when the heals are needed is the true measure of a healer's worth. Smart players know that the heal parse (or dps parse for that matter) in not a pure measure of players ability to fullfill their roles.I'm happy to have something that lets druids get a bit more on the parse when the content doesn't require much healing, but to say that druids needed a boost seems to be a mis understanding of how to use the parsers. I've not seen druids in capable of solo healing groups, and their efficiency of healing while barely drinking their power pool makes them great for long painful fights. I know when I have a druid in the group, slowing the wards down to drop a few more debufs isn't going to get the tank killed. I've seen a warden keep a tank bouncing from red to green and back for nearly a minute while waiting for specials to come up so he'd have a chance to group rez the other four members of the group, and his power bar suggested he could have kept it up for several minutes more had it been needed.Grats druids. You were already excellent healers, boosts to that ability should both make it more visible, and make you even better.</blockquote>I agree with a lot of this post. Druids are really strong healers. But I think there is also some merit to the arguement that we are not as well equipped to heal a tank. I don't think this is a result of druids having weaker heals, just the fundamentals of the way our heals work, and the way encounters work. I do not think a druid+shaman or druid+cleric can keep a tank up as well as a shaman+cleric, and most if not all raid guilds seem to feel the same way. It is just the fundamental result of druids heals requiring a finite amount of time to work both before and after casted, while wards and reactives are not time dependant once cast. That means if a tank has wards or reactives on him, if he is hit they work right away, while druid's heals are independant of if the tank is hit, even if their is a heal active, it takes time for them to take effect. It isn't that druids heals are really broke or weak, they are just not as efficient as the other two.It is a mild misconception that druids are the great spike damage healers. The thought process being we have large fast casting heals. But nothing works as fast as instantly, which is how wards and reactives work (once cast, of course). You would think it would balance out, but it appears not to with large random incoming damage.

patrck17

07-02-2009, 02:36 PM

<cite>Itvar@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>YeldarbSpiritblade wrote:</cite><blockquote>The druid has no ward at all in any spell or AA spec and they're a healer? </blockquote>We do get 1 ward - but it only works against elemental damage.</blockquote>And that is not a characteristic of druids, only wardens. Furies are left with no ward at all.

patrck17

07-02-2009, 02:40 PM

<cite>Orthureon wrote:</cite><blockquote>As for the Ethereal Mist Gauntlets and Rune Etched Helm. those are pieces of gear that will lose their effectiveness with the expansion. So including them in an argument like they were class abilities is silly, even now many Clerics/Shamans (REH) are missing those pieces as they are very rare.</blockquote>Fair enough. Plus with the munzok's helm druids have access to a similar effect. Though I am not sure if it will be as good, depends on if it is regenerative.

Munty

07-02-2009, 03:04 PM

<cite>patrck17 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Itvar@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>YeldarbSpiritblade wrote:</cite><blockquote>The druid has no ward at all in any spell or AA spec and they're a healer? </blockquote>We do get 1 ward - but it only works against elemental damage.</blockquote>And that is not a characteristic of druids, only wardens. Furies are left with no ward at all.</blockquote>Yeah, sorry, when I said "We" I was referring to Wardens. It's still a sucky ward though, so Furies aren't missing much.

Tehom

07-02-2009, 03:05 PM

The issue druids have is being unable to prevent fragile group members from being one-shotted by larger AEs. A templar just via buffs frequently increases the survivability of mages by something like 40% - ~4k in group hp buffs for 10k-ish mages, and shamans arguably can do far better via wards. Druids are incredibly weak by comparison - on any difficult fight the mages are turned into paste by huge physical AEs which they're completely unable to deal with.I'm hopeful that they'll actually come up with a solution that fixes this - anything that's just 'You'll heal even faster!11!!1' completely misses the point. It doesn't matter how fast you can heal if your group is one-shotted.

Odys

07-02-2009, 03:31 PM

<cite>patrck17 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>PeterJohn wrote:</cite><blockquote>So I am assuming that since they are going to buff druids and fix all their weaknesses, that clerics are going to be made into DPS machines too? And give us better groupwide healing since we are not as good at that as single target healing?</blockquote>I thought hateshield fixed clerics groupwide healing. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> On the last Anashti fight we did I was in group with a templar. The templar's hateshield proc outparsed me entirely. I was spamming heals the entire fight and thats how much I contributed. Less than 1 item that the templar was wearing.I know I am oversimplifying a complicated situation, and I am not really trying to argue that clerics groupwide heal capacity isn't limited. I am certain that we could go back and forth with plenty of situations where druids do better than clerics and also many where clerics outperform druids. As my original post said, I am not really worried about druids ability to heal, just their utility, and in that case there is no comparison to clerics.As to the dps, it has always been my opinion that if you put enough dps gear on any toon they will be able to dps. This has been proven by bards and healers (not just druids). I guess it does take less dps gear for a druid to put up high numbers though. I expect that to change when they consolidate crits though. </blockquote>Well dps is not a bg issue, all clerics can solo. My mystic currently outparse my warden even if my warden has more aas. This is mainly due to larger strength, better weapon available and T2 3 piece dmg shield bonus. M new inqui that is xp lockedis probablythe cleric with the highest dps i ever had.Currently druids buf are a bit of a jole, no hp buf, power buf that nobody care off, super waek mana regen (bat spirit) , skill bug that melee classes do not need (they are capped), weak mitigation buf .... The only goof one my be the elemetal.We compensate those weaknesses with an overpowered epic (design choice which gav to wardens a spot) but this advantage dissapear in the high end.

Yimway

07-02-2009, 03:54 PM

<cite>Orthureon wrote:</cite><blockquote>Why is it that when people say Clerics, they always think of Templars??? The Inquisitor has NO damage prevention or big spike damage handling ability, bar for Suicide... err I mean Sacrifice.</blockquote>Because you have generally the highest dps potential of all healers. You also have some of the best healer debuffs as an inquisitor. Your AA heal specializations are very effective.There is nothing remotely broken about an inquisitor other than their dps is jacked a bit high for their class role.Why is it fixing druids makes other healers feel like they deserve cake?

LardLord

07-02-2009, 03:56 PM

<cite>Orthureon wrote:</cite><blockquote>As for the Ethereal Mist Gauntlets and Rune Etched Helm. those are pieces of gear that will lose their effectiveness with the expansion. So including them in an argument like they were class abilities is silly, even now many Clerics/Shamans (REH) are missing those pieces as they are very rare.</blockquote>Honestly, REH is probably one of the most significant problems, but it should be fixed naturally with the level cap increase (and if/when the masses start getting the Gozak helm).With that said, I bet all these changes are going to snowball, and you'll end up with Druids as the alpha healer next expansion. I mean, really all they need to do in order to balance Druids is give them a better way to buff their groups for survivability (perhaps just significantly buffing T-shell would do the trick), but now they're buffing their healing, which isn't necessary as Druids are already the best healers of damage, the advantage REH gives Clerics/Shaman is going to disappear, ect...basically, the question is whether Druids will get the buffs to allow mages to survive huge physical AEs. If so, you'll have raids running with four Druids. If not, they'll be in the same position in the raiding scene as they are now, except they'll have even more healing power that they won't even get to use on raids.

Vadja

07-02-2009, 04:26 PM

I agree that the one-shotting problem is the most important. Druid utility isn't that great admittedly, but I suppose our higher DPS makes up for this and could be seen as a utility in itself. However, keeping a raid group alive is fundamental and we're falling short on this.I'm wondering if simply upping our buffs might solve the problem. As we only heal after the damage is done it stands to reason that our buffs should give the highest HP and mitigation, but druid buffs give the lowest. I agree there's no point in increasing heal amounts; if our group had a decent HP pool our heals could keep up with the damage no problem.

LardLord

07-02-2009, 04:28 PM

<cite>patrck17 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Druids can heal fine, we just need useful buffs. Some kind of buff that will keep our group from getting 1 shotted. I know this is probably a difficult task as you don't want to send druids into the OP region, where you want a druid in every group cause of their [Removed for Content] buffs. But as it is right now you pretty much want a cleric/shaman in every group so I dunno. Anyways that is just my opinion, I just want to get discussion going so maybe somebody important will read it and get an idea of what everyone here thinks, whether it agrees with my opinion or not. </blockquote>Exactly. Forget this regen nonsense. 1) Remove the stun from shell and increase the range.2) Double the effectiveness of the AA that adds a health buff to the INT/WIS druid buffs.3) Replace health regen and magical resists portions of the Druid mitigation buffs with "Reduces all damage by X amount"...maybe make Wardens reduce physical damage and Furies reduce magical.That'd probably be enough right there, and I doubt they'd end up overpowered (assuming this regen nonsense doesn't go through).

Aule

07-02-2009, 05:39 PM

Allow druids to mitigate focus damage.

Rageincarnate

07-02-2009, 06:10 PM

funny story. I saw a pu soh lfm. It was lf healers and they had specifically asked for a druid. The comments that followed in channel chat went something along the lines of.. A raid that wants a druid? im not going to go into the details of the druid bashing.some of the comments i read made me lol abit.. Just wanted to share. i have an 80 warden.

YeldarbSpiritbla

07-02-2009, 07:40 PM

It really doesn't have to be much at all really. A lot of people are gunshy of SoE's changes because they have a history of going too far...Enchanters needed a bit of a buff, and all of a sudden, because of procs, machinegun enchanters became [Removed for Content] own dpsers. Shadowknights needed a bit of a boost, and all of a sudden shadowknights are the [Removed for Content] own tanks. And the list goes on.These In combat regens are nearly useless when ae's and boss hits are 15k - 30k. Shoot, you could probably get rid of them, and noone would know the difference. Just a light ward and one change to the tortoise shell, and we'd be fine. I can solo heal nearly every group dungeon in the game, but raids... it's a different story. I absolutely detest PUR's because people don't know what 3 meters is. One ae, and the whole group, except me, and whoever was truly paying attention, are dead. I'm not looking to be a main tank healer, just someone that can keep a group alive through the thick of it. If they even hit red after an ae, I can get them into the green, that's not the problem. A bad jouster that gets a point blank hit in the face is probably going to die, but if they're at a decent range, and they are doing what they are supposed to, and pick good gear, I SHOULD be able to keep them alive.Top end boss fights consist of MT, temp, defiler, OT, cleric, shaman, 3rd group shaman or temp, 4th group shaman or temp... Yeah, there's a problem...

Xalmat

07-02-2009, 07:43 PM

I believe they also said Druids would be getting +HP buffs in line with what Clerics and Shaman currently get.

Odys

07-02-2009, 10:18 PM

I agree with everything that is said here (except the stupid idea that druid should suck since would be dps hybrids .... almost all priest can do decent dps with gear and aa properl set). The problem is see with buffing us is that we would them be totally overpowered in single group content. I feel much more confortable solo healing with my warden than with my mystic and things won't change before i get a fairly large amount of casting speed and healing amount then the mystic may catch up due to the mecanic (more benefit from heal bonus and cast speed). We use started to raid and did leviathan, the two warden were way ahead on the parse; we did Guk with warden and mystic and the warden outparsed my mystic by quite a lot, sure i was slowing & debuffing and my sentry is not parsed but the situation was balanced : more buf/debuf and utility for the mystic and pure strong heal for the warden.So you probably need to be past VP to be in a situation were dps become so bursty that druids sink. It follows that dev should be carefull not to make druids the new kings of single group content.PS : i met defiler able to solo heal much easier than my warden but they usually were heavy raider in fabled suit with mythical. I do think that in T2 gear with a bunch of TSO legendary (fabled seems inexistant for healers) warden are not anway behind, they probably hold their rank among the 3 defensive priest (Templar, defiler, warden).

Generic123

07-03-2009, 04:37 PM

<cite>Baccalarium wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes when the tank is mitigating much of the damage on easier content and the other healers are healing enough to cover the heal load, the druids barely show up on the heal parse. Does that make them weaker healers? </blockquote>What it makes them is expendable, hence the problem. If they are not going to do any healing, and have no buffs/debuffs why would you bring a Druid at all?

Acknar-EF

07-03-2009, 09:41 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Orthureon wrote:</cite><blockquote>Why is it that when people say Clerics, they always think of Templars??? The Inquisitor has NO damage prevention or big spike damage handling ability, bar for Suicide... err I mean Sacrifice.</blockquote>Because you have generally the highest dps potential of all healers. You also have some of the best healer debuffs as an inquisitor. Your AA heal specializations are very effective.There is nothing remotely broken about an inquisitor other than their dps is jacked a bit high for their class role.Why is it fixing druids makes other healers feel like they deserve cake?</blockquote>Normally i dont post but when i see this drivel....Apparently you need a bit of information about Inquisitors. We are plate healers. That is where the similarities between us and Templars end. As for experience, I have an Inq, Templar, Fury and Mystic and have raided on all of them through the beginning until present. I can tell you flat out, healing is easier by a longshot on a templar. Now on to your points. We do not have the highest dps potential of all healers by a longshot. That would be Fury's. Im pretty sure they classify Furies as druids....I would love to be able to be doing 13k while solo healing a group. We do not even come in near the top compartively and especially after the recent changes.As for our AA's? We have abominations for AA. 2 of our EoF trees are absolutely usless with a 3rd that increases our range by 5m. Absolutely amazing! Heck one of our trees stays close to heart with our original mythical. We can make it so that when we use one of those fantastic debuffs, the wizard that just took aggro will keep it a bit longer!! The only decent line we have is Battle Cleric. O yes...and please check out our boards to see our fully functioning, nerver screwing up line of abilities that havent been addressed since EoF. Please do not post misinformation. By all means shoot me a tell on Oasis if you require clarification.On to the original topic at hand. Do Druids need to get some enhancements? Yes, absolutely. They do need some healing enhancements to allow group survivability while doing top tier content. They could also use some help in the buff department as well to allow them to enhance their chosen group or Raid. Acknar 80 InqTyranny, Oasis

Muraazi

07-05-2009, 06:21 AM

While they are in the process of fixing some heal mechanics. Maybe they could make it so reactives triggers didn't get used while the target is warded too. I'm talking about my reactives triggers disappearing when they aren't doing anything because the shamans ward absorbed the blow.Anyway, I'm alittle late in the conversation and not exactly up to par on the mechanic changes. But, from what I heard its banking HoTs. What makes you think the "banked" HoT ticks, wont trigger just like a reactive? 3 ticks banked, AoE hits bam the banked ticks prevent whatever amount they are for. Shrug, 2k per member? Sounds exactly like what you guys are asking for.

Tehom

07-05-2009, 10:54 AM

At this point I'm becoming firmly convinced that what really needs to happen is for cleric and shaman hp buffs to go raidwide, in the same vein as what they're doing for enchanters/bards.My feeling is that each concentration slot should allow a cleric or shaman to do their single-target hp buff to one person per group, and the groupwide variants for Aegolism and Tenacity should go raidwide. Same with the group resist/hp buff and group mitigation buff (since that's also a significant hp buff in the case of templars, and a significant ward in the case of defilers), coagulate (effectively a hp buff, even if many shamans don't have it in their spec). With a defiler and mystic in the raid, you'd hit 4 of 6 people in each group with single-target hp buffs, and either have the mystic drop his mitigation buff to make it 5 of 6, or add a 3rd shaman to get complete coverage. Even with 3 shamans and 2 clerics, you'd potentially open up 3 raid slots to druids that currently don't have any. You could then also enhance utility abilities for more raidwide coverage - have sanctuary go raidwide, Act of War and fanatical devotion go raidwide, divine recovery, naturewalk go raidwide, blessings from templars go raidwide and Ancestry from Mystics go to 1 per group, etc. Even more importantly, once hp buffs are covered there's a stronger argument for druids simply because they -do- possess the strongest ability in raw healing - it's just that currently doesn't matter at all compared with one-shot prevention. You could still use clerics or shamans instead of them, but the buff redundancy would make them arguably weaker than druids in those spots, which is how I think it should be.If group buffs are made into requiring less redundancy, the emphasis becomes more placed on what the healer is actually casting rather than just what they passively bring to a group, which is a very good thing in terms of the game's health in my opinion. It'd finally give an argument to having an outstanding druid with quick reactions and good judgement over a cleric who only occasionally heals a bit while watching TV or whatever.

EvilMissKitty

07-05-2009, 04:15 PM

This is from the POV of a Raiding Fury.We (esp. Wardens) do NOT need more heals. The game mechanics are working as is, 3rd place behind wards & reactives. Moreover, when there are 13-25k aoes hitting the group Wards/reactives are still going to give better survivability than hots even if we do get more hps.To put it simply, all we want is to have something that makes us NEEDED. That's all the majority of us want. We need more useful and desirable buffs/dps buffs/utility. We only have one desirable buff (Feral) and that is only a single target. Somehow, the developers have forgotten what our class description is In addition to regenerative healing, Furies can enhance the physical attributes and mystical might of their allies, making the attacks of their party members even more formidable. Let's be honest other healers and classes have taken over this.Please make us NEEDED and/or somewhat desired in the Caster group.

Odys

07-06-2009, 05:29 AM

Technicaly it should not ne that hard, druids are the one wo bring back groups on their feet while the other prevent them from dying. We need for that less spiky damage and better offensive buf for furies and defensive ones for wardens.There is also a lot to say about how + HEAL amount and casting speed affect druids. Warden do get the less benefit from it.Mythical also have a large impact, the day my mystic get her (if it ever happen) she will win immediatly +300-400 heal bonus (1/3 of her wisdom) and almost infinite mana.Last i agree that HOT mecanic hould not be changed, making encounter with higher average dps but lower spike damage would clearly make druids much more desired in high end raids.In single group druids don't suck, i remember a failed Ferzhul attempt i was with an inquisitor the parse showed that i healed twice more than him (including inquisition). Not his fault inquisitor are single target offensive healers and warden a pure group healers.Please also keep in mind that if read often people asking for a non druid healer it is simply because they already have one, druid population is high mainly because the have menial abilities that make everyday play more fun (like immunity to root and snare).

Generic123

07-06-2009, 12:25 PM

<cite>Odys@Storms wrote:</cite><blockquote>Technicaly it should not ne that hard, druids are the one wo bring back groups on their feet while the other prevent them from dying. </blockquote>On paper, yes, but this is no longer the way the game is played. Most of the healer oriented proc items proc heals, not wards or reactives. This means a well geared Shaman or Cleric uses their buffs/wards/reactives to keep the group from dieing and their gear procs to bring their health back.

Aneova

07-06-2009, 01:29 PM

<cite>Aule@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>Allow druids to mitigate focus damage.</blockquote>Wardens get a Crit Mit buff, and Tortoise Shell in general blocks all AE's that are in direct even if the incoming damage is Focus Damage but that's true of all AE blockers.

Oakum

07-08-2009, 08:27 PM

<cite>Odys@Storms wrote:</cite><blockquote>I agree with everything that is said here (except the stupid idea that druid should suck since would be dps hybrids .... almost all priest can do decent dps with gear and aa properl set). The problem is see with buffing us is that we would them be totally overpowered in single group content. I feel much more confortable solo healing with my warden than with my mystic and things won't change before i get a fairly large amount of casting speed and healing amount then the mystic may catch up due to the mecanic (more benefit from heal bonus and cast speed). We use started to raid and did leviathan, the two warden were way ahead on the parse; we did Guk with warden and mystic and the warden outparsed my mystic by quite a lot, sure i was slowing & debuffing and my sentry is not parsed but the situation was balanced : more buf/debuf and utility for the mystic and pure strong heal for the warden.So you probably need to be past VP to be in a situation were dps become so bursty that druids sink. It follows that dev should be carefull not to make druids the new kings of single group content.PS : i met defiler able to solo heal much easier than my warden but they usually were heavy raider in fabled suit with mythical. I do think that in T2 gear with a bunch of TSO legendary (fabled seems inexistant for healers) warden are not anway behind, they probably hold their rank among the 3 defensive priest (Templar, defiler, warden).</blockquote>Lol, yes, its our wisdom and agility buffs that make wardens defensive. Whens the last time you wanted a warden doing most group content due to those two buffs? One is only good for very high end zones UNTIL the group/raid gets good gear and learns the strats (farm status) and the other well, it only helps other healer classes and pallys power pool by a little bit and a couple hundred more resists where 10k plus are now the resist goals, lol.Not very defensive. More defensive then the Fury group INT buff though. Not more defensive then ANY cleric or shaman whos armor makes them more personally defensive then a druids leather or buffs, lol. You have to be alive to heal. Of course that is why both druids were balanced back with LU-13 to have more dps then both clerics and shaman.The problem then was (besides the same lack of a reason to be needed on a raids once they were on farm status) cleric and shaman solo'd horribly due to low dps. Furys outdpsed wardens by a small amount and Wardens out healed Fury's by a small amount but that was balanced against each other and the margin was not that big. In order to fix soloing on cleric and shaman they raised dps on them with aa's and pure dps boosts even from their attacks. They boosted Fury's to do a suitable margin above cleric and shaman but simply forgot about wardens other then to give them a melee line in EoF but no gear to support it there or with RoK until near the end when stuff was added.They have yet to fix wardens DPS yet, and sounds like they just dont want to. I guess they figure too many clerics and shaman would complain about it and you see some post here with wardens shouldnt outdps clerics and shaman already, lol.

Baccalarium

07-08-2009, 10:34 PM

<cite>Generic123 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Baccalarium wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes when the tank is mitigating much of the damage on easier content and the other healers are healing enough to cover the heal load, the druids barely show up on the heal parse. Does that make them weaker healers? </blockquote>What it makes them is expendable, hence the problem. If they are not going to do any healing, and have no buffs/debuffs why would you bring a Druid at all? </blockquote>If only two of the three healers were required to heal for the content, why do you choose the druid to call worthless. Any two of the three healers would have been sufficient. As such any of them could have been considered the expendable one. There was no reason to think it was the druid that was more expendable than the others than a tilted heal parse.

RogueSpideyChick

07-09-2009, 08:50 AM

patrck17

07-09-2009, 08:51 AM

<cite>Baccalarium wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Generic123 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Baccalarium wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes when the tank is mitigating much of the damage on easier content and the other healers are healing enough to cover the heal load, the druids barely show up on the heal parse. Does that make them weaker healers? </blockquote>What it makes them is expendable, hence the problem. If they are not going to do any healing, and have no buffs/debuffs why would you bring a Druid at all? </blockquote>If only two of the three healers were required to heal for the content, why do you choose the druid to call worthless. Any two of the three healers would have been sufficient. As such any of them could have been considered the expendable one. There was no reason to think it was the druid that was more expendable than the others than a tilted heal parse.</blockquote>You are right that any 2 of the 3 would be sufficient to heal the content. The reason druids are the ones that get the short end of the stick is because shamans and clerics are just as capable of healing, but offer much better buffs. I would say it isn't uncommon for a guild to have druids sitting out of raids who are actually stronger healers than the shamans and clerics who are in the raid, simply because those shamans and clerics are good enough, and have better buffs. I know when I form raids I only put a druid in if there isn't a cleric or shaman available, and I am a fury on my main. Most of the harder content and progression pulls I do on my coercer. I still don't think I've ever been on my fury for some of the avatar kills, like justice. It isn't cause it can't be done, just cause theres usually a cleric or shaman available, and they just benefit the raid more.Also another note is that a lot of encounters this expansion have nox and arcane cures. So clerics and shamans are perfect for this. There is always the thing about curing yourself and having your healers just manually cure, that will work, and druids do this when they have to, but its easier for shamans and clerics, making them less expendable. Usually it is the encounters which have elemental ae's (like myznak) where you see the most self curing and manual curing, cause it is the shamans and clerics doing it, cause its easier to do it that way than to bother with getting in a druid. Wardens are especially screwed cause at least furies get nox cure. Try to remember there is no arguement that druid's raidspots have been almost completely taken over by the other healers. Everybody knows that it is true. Who decided that druids were more expendable? I guess the raidleaders, when they set up a better raid by leaving druids out. We are just trying to illustrate why so that developers know what to target to fix the problem.

Nero

07-09-2009, 10:41 AM

What if Druid's HoT can repair Ward of Shaman?

RogueSpideyChick

07-09-2009, 10:44 AM

<cite>Nero wrote:</cite><blockquote>What if Druid's HoT can repair Ward of Shaman?</blockquote>that's an idea that's been floating around for about 2 xp's now & tbh, i like it.

Odys

07-10-2009, 04:51 AM

"you see some post here with wardens shouldnt outdps clerics and shaman already, lol"Well my mystic outdps my warden and solo faster, the warden used to be ahead but the damage shield proc on the mstic set changed it. Moroever my warden has much more gears (lot of legendary dps) and a bit more aas. Last since my mystic wear T2 plus some dps jewelery she solo with high hp/resist and reasonnable heal amount, my warden solo in monk gear and is trading efficiency for safety.We are progressing in ROK, starting from nothing with no mythical player in the guild and my mystic is clearly catching up m warden. She gets full benefit from gear and she brings more survivability.

Kizee

07-13-2009, 12:07 PM

Oakum

07-14-2009, 12:27 PM

RogueSpideyChick

07-14-2009, 12:34 PM

<cite>Oakum wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Aricajade@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nero wrote:</cite><blockquote>What if Druid's HoT can repair Ward of Shaman?</blockquote>that's an idea that's been floating around for about 2 xp's now & tbh, i like it.</blockquote>No thanks, being a healer buffer will not help in the area outside of raids where druids hurt trying to solo heal like cleric and shaman do and keep groups up with big spike damage and really weak group buffs.</blockquote>what? druids r AMAZING heroic solo healers...it's the raid area where they DESPERATELY NEED help.

StaticLex

07-15-2009, 03:28 PM

I wouldn't mind the proposed hot banking change I guess. Maybe it would let me do less spamming without losing effectiveness as a healer. /shrugI don't see tortoise shell becoming any sort of saving grace for the class either. Even if they removed the stifle effect from the ability and didn't replace it with a weaker drawback, I still wouldn't spec for it. 30 seconds of AE block is stupid when the fight lasts a couple minutes+ and the group simply dies on the 2nd or 3rd AE anyway.The Heirophantic Genesis line? Ehh, there are more things wrong with this spell line than just the stifle. Basically the only times I use it are when 1.) I somehow know an incoming AE is going to stun or stifle me, 2.) as ghetto power regen for someone, or 3.) I ninja-AFK to take a leak. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> I'm not exactly sure what advantage this spell was supposed to offer that made the stifle a worthwhile trade-off (the ability to heal while stunned/stifled I guess?) but I have a feeling it's missing the mark.Overall I'm pretty happy with the warden class, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't mind seeing a couple tweaks:Serenity should bust stuns and stifles and erase (one-time) every curable detrimental from the warden in addition to granting them immunity from stuns and stifles for its duration. This is hardly overpowered with a 5 minute reuse and compared to similar tricks that other classes have IMO.Tortoise Shell should simply be erased as an AA and its AE blocking effect (with an increased range) added to the Heirophantic Genesis line. This would let the warden AE block the group and heal the tank, which is exactly what makes these two spells suck on their own. Kill two birds with one stone and move on IMO.

Farore

08-09-2009, 05:06 AM

<cite>Aricajade@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Oakum wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Aricajade@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nero wrote:</cite><blockquote>What if Druid's HoT can repair Ward of Shaman?</blockquote>that's an idea that's been floating around for about 2 xp's now & tbh, i like it.</blockquote>No thanks, being a healer buffer will not help in the area outside of raids where druids hurt trying to solo heal like cleric and shaman do and keep groups up with big spike damage and really weak group buffs.</blockquote>what? druids r AMAZING heroic solo healers...it's the raid area where they DESPERATELY NEED help.</blockquote>Also don't forget just healing, every healer except the druids(esp mystics and inqs, and to a slight lesser extent, temp/defiler) has better buffs, debuffs, rezzes, support, and utility.....while of course having better heals. just wanted to add more bullet points to ensure that everyone knows, other than raw heroic healing, druids have nothing else to possibly offer, though fury gets a smidge for feral in the support category...

snowli

08-10-2009, 12:48 PM

<cite>Aricajade@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nero wrote:</cite><blockquote>What if Druid's HoT can repair Ward of Shaman?</blockquote>that's an idea that's been floating around for about 2 xp's now & tbh, i like it.</blockquote>but that only makes druids more desireable if they're grouped with a shaman, and borks cleric healing as reactives may never fire, putting clerics in the healspace druids often are, with their heals largely unused and often uneeded.Elsewhere, in a lot more detail, I've suggested adding a percentile damage reducer component to group and single target regen spells for druids, applied before wards. Perhaps 12%of the incoming hit blocked from group 8% from single target, the buff component lasting around 15seconds and duration increased (not decreased) by agility line aa's. So 20% maximum per person sliced from incoming damage before wards are applied, then after them reactives, then our normal heal ticks. Figures are speculative and just to show working principle.This would need to be in combination with a big buff desireability and utility overhaul. More HP & phys mitigation amongst other things. Plus I'd like to see things like all stun/stifle healer components for all 6 classes removed in exchange for something else (maybe casting speed debuff) like tort shell & genesis in wardens case.Root on sandstorm changed to a snare.Also better use for fairy 100% more speed, much more HP and crucially 50m range spells and a script that makes the fairy fly to within 25m then cast them, not the constant fly to max range, begin cast - fairy finds it's now out of range, fly again, lagfest that negates the fairy unless everything is stationary for sometime.I'd like to see a better use for the tree also, mana heals? cure effects? Overall druids need more cure ability to put them on par with some other healers imho.

StaticLex

08-10-2009, 04:15 PM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Aricajade@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nero wrote:</cite><blockquote>What if Druid's HoT can repair Ward of Shaman?</blockquote>that's an idea that's been floating around for about 2 xp's now & tbh, i like it.</blockquote></blockquote>Horrible idea. The day the class I play becomes a barnacle on the azz of another healer is the day I hit the delete button.

Tehom

08-12-2009, 04:17 AM

I think a solution to druid woes, now that they're doing the 'carryover healing' thing for HoTs, is to make druid HoTs increase the unconsciousness rating of targets by their remaining heal values until they're consumed. It'd prevent the one-shot problem while still having something of a different feel from wards.

snowli

08-12-2009, 06:39 AM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think a solution to druid woes, now that they're doing the 'carryover healing' thing for HoTs, is to make druid HoTs increase the unconsciousness rating of targets by their remaining heal values until they're consumed. It'd prevent the one-shot problem while still having something of a different feel from wards.</blockquote>This is another potential idea to make druid heals more useful than the rollover ticks healing at addressing the fact druid healing is reactive not proactive and doesn't effectively increase HP and 1 shot survivability.However "remaining heal" would heavily bias towards constant heal spamming and never doing anything else, so it would need to be fixed figure over the duration.Also, having the group fallover unconcious then standup might be funny a few times but not a huge confidence/morale booster, and if you took that out, then it's a ward, just the same as shamen.A lot of the discussion of ways to make the heals more effective could be influenced a lot by the buff overhaul that SoE also mentioned. Having much larger HP pool buffs makes much better use of druid healing as it is right now.I wonder if something different from raw HP amounts might be considered for buffs, such as increasing by a percentage? What if the increase was curved slightly, so those with lower total HP got a slightly bigger percentile boost (although obviously less in total terms) than those with higher HP.Death prevents could be another way to go, it would need to not be overpowering of course. Possibly some type of modified death preventer could be considered, that would stop a single hit from reaching more than a % of the recipient's maximum health, then expire, and could be proactively used quite regularly.I still like the percentile damage reducer component idea for heals, a 15second (aa duration expanded) 12% damage reducer on the group regen and 8% on the single target regen that let any character max out at slicing 20% off incoming damage before the usual wards, then reactives, then direct heals.It's also worth mentioning the established positions of Wardens (MT group or making the tea) and Fury (Castergroup or holding the pom-poms) do have slightly different constraints in terms of who they're healing. Some of the suggestions in this thread and others are better suited to large HP pools and some to smaller. To make both classes happier about raidability (alongside buff/utility changes) you may need 2 differing solutions.

Tehom

08-12-2009, 01:54 PM

Yeah, the difference between fury and warden groups are why I think any change to furies can't take the form of any sort of hp multiplier - the base value increases of shamans and clerics are so huge as percentage gains when compared to casters that anything they'd come up with would almost certainly be inadequate.

Barx

08-12-2009, 05:13 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yeah, the difference between fury and warden groups are why I think any change to furies can't take the form of any sort of hp multiplier - the base value increases of shamans and clerics are so huge as percentage gains when compared to casters that anything they'd come up with would almost certainly be inadequate.</blockquote>There are ways around that, though...Protection of the Boiled CabbageExpert*Increases target's base hitpoints by 10%**If target is Fighter*Increases target's base hitpoints by 15%**If target is Priest*Increases target's base hitpoints by 15%**If target is Scout*Increases target's base hitpoints by 25%**If target is Mage

Banditman

08-12-2009, 05:35 PM

In addition to the "rollover" effect mentioned, take the base "tick" value of a HoT and add it to the player's HP while the HoT is active. Allow Single Target and Group HoT's bonus of this nature to stack. Some might argue that this effectively "doubles" the value of a Druid heal, but I don't think it would have that practical effect.It would however allow a Druid to more effectively help their group to survive that big AE. It wouldn't be damage reduction per se, but it would help the group survive, which is the bottom line anyway. Once a group survives the AE, there is no doubt that a Druid is by far and away the most effective class at replacing HP.Druids do need "some" help, I agree. However, at L80, there are nearly as many Druids as there are Shaman and Clerics combined. Things simply cannot be that broken with numbers of this magnitude.With the myriad of AE's in TSO, the content is definitely there for Druids.

Midsong

08-12-2009, 07:55 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Druids do need "some" help, I agree. However, at L80, there are nearly as many Druids as there are Shaman and Clerics combined. Things simply cannot be that broken with numbers of this magnitude.</blockquote>Just because a class is popular doesn't mean that it is competative or even viable in all areas. There are a large number of examples across MMOs that demonstrate this phenomenon.A class can be poplular or non-popular just because of the concept of the class.... because the class is good enough at something at lower teirs but breaks down at higher end.... because of a general misunderstanding about the class.... because at one time it was THE class to play for that role but additional content has rendered them ineffective and people don't want to switch.... because the class is effective enough for one type of content that the majority of players participate in but can still be rather ineffective in other areasIt is an interesting phenomenon, especially when the most powerful class is virtually not played.

StaticLex

08-12-2009, 09:11 PM

Things simply cannot be that broken with numbers of this magnitude.Yeah, that's some really terrible logic. hehI think quite a few people have a summoner toon on their account, but that certainly doesn't mean those classes are in nice shape right now.Anyway, I think I am one of the few people who thinks druids, or wardens at least, are in fairly decent shape. There are a couple tweaks I wouldn't mind seeing of course, but the same could probably be said for any heal class.

Banditman

08-13-2009, 10:00 AM

Summoners aren't really all that broken either tbh, especially with the changes announced. Ours regularly parse 11-13k in a raid doing 150k. Our Conjy had a really nice parse of 27k going on Gynok before we had an unfortunate accident.Now, while I agree that numbers aren't everything, they are telling.If, for instance, you simply said that from L1 to L80, there were as many of X as there were of Y, no, that wouldn't mean all that much. How many of those are "abandoned" toons? You really don't know. However, when you look only at level capped characters, you see a character that has been played up to the cap, and while not the huge investment of time it used to be, it's still no trifling matter.Someone at level cap has played the character enough and decided it was entertaining enough and functional enough to invest that time in.Ideally, you'd have more search options at EQ2 players, so you could "only" search on characters played in the last 30 days or something. With that sort of flexibility in a query, you could extract a much more meaningful set of data. However, given the tools currently available, we have probably the best approximation we can get.Actually, in a dream world, you'd simply get a table layout and submit a SQL query to get the data you want, but there is no way SOE allows that. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

patrck17

08-13-2009, 10:43 AM

Protection of the Boiled Cabbage should be implemented, if only for its super cool name. heh I like the idea of upfront damage reduction. The numbers of course can be played with to make sure it is balanced but it would solve the problem without really changing the spirit of druid and how they work, and won't be stepping on the other healers toes. Furies would be able to keep their caster groups alive (though they would need some kinda decent buff to be put in the caster group again, maybe take lucidity and make it groupwide (the way tenacity is) and put a base damage modifier on it, or + spell bonus) and wardens will have much more capacity to keep a tank alive.I hope someone glances at this post and considers it.

snowli

08-13-2009, 11:12 AM

Protection of the Boiled Cabbage is a great name <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Good example of an adaptible percentile HP buff with the figures per archetype too.

StaticLex

08-13-2009, 02:28 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Summoners aren't really all that broken either tbh, especially with the changes announced. Ours regularly parse 11-13k in a raid doing 150k. Our Conjy had a really nice parse of 27k going on Gynok before we had an unfortunate accident.</blockquote>1.) Your conjuror probably has the mythic. Mine does as well and I can tell you right now that I can't even believe I attempted to play the class ( in T8 ) without that item. The difference between pet surviviability seemed astronomical before and after. So, pointing to a toon that has that item, again, is really bad logic IMO.2.) The class still brings almost nothing to a group/raid aside from average DPS + the liability of being a squishy (2 if you count the pet that can't be examined/cured of detrimentals).If soe goes ahead with the changes they've suggested then yeah, the class will definitely be worth picking up. Until then though, summoners are still probably the worst off class.

patrck17

08-13-2009, 03:18 PM

Not trying to be a jerk here but lets try to avoid derailing the thread to a summoner discussion. I was actually writing a response to the summoner comment myself but I stopped. Should a dev actually look at this thread we don't want them to have to sift through a few pages of summoner discussion and give up.

Atrocious ShadowStalker

08-13-2009, 05:27 PM

TBH I'm not sure which would be easier / more balanced to implement: damage reduction or temporary hp buff from our unused heals. Both concepts have their merits. We definitely need help with spike damage, other than that I can heal fineI would like some better buffs though; maybe +CA for Wardens and + Spell Crit for Furies + HP for bothAlso would like perhaps through the Cure AA line options for group cures of Nox / trauma or curse - doesn't seem there are that many elemental fights.

StaticLex

08-13-2009, 06:32 PM

<cite>Castion@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>TBH I'm not sure which would be easier / more balanced to implement: damage reduction or temporary hp buff from our unused heals.</blockquote>Like I said in the warden forum, classes that do this are already in the game. I'd suggest checking out the shaman forum if these sound like the type of game mechanics you would prefer playing with.

d1anaw

08-24-2009, 01:25 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sorry, I forgot to mention that abilities that stun healers are going to be changed to some other penalty. So for warden's your Genesis line and your tortoise shell should no longer stun lock you when used. What penalty will replace stun wasn't discussed, but I would expect a 50% heal reduction, or a 50% casting speed penalty, but not a complete removal from combat for the duration.</blockquote>Maybe I'm dense or something, but I don't get the whole point of being stunned to use a spell. I don't raid, so it's really important that I not be stunned, since I don't have a huge group to cover me when I am. So I just don't really use those spells, which is a shame because they could be quite useful. But for my style of play, I cannot afford to be unable to respond.

StaticLex

08-24-2009, 02:30 PM

<cite>d1anaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>Maybe I'm dense or something, but I don't get the whole point of being stunned to use a spell. I don't raid, so it's really important that I not be stunned, since I don't have a huge group to cover me when I am. So I just don't really use those spells, which is a shame because they could be quite useful. But for my style of play, I cannot afford to be unable to respond.</blockquote>Being a raider doesn't really have anything to do with it, every healer is still plenty busy taking care of their group. As far as Genesis is concerned, I'm guessing it was meant to be used when a stun or stifle was incoming. You'd be unable to 'respond' anyway, so you may as well heal for something instead of nothing.

Oakum

08-26-2009, 08:34 PM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote>Things simply cannot be that broken with numbers of this magnitude.Yeah, that's some really terrible logic. hehI think quite a few people have a summoner toon on their account, but that certainly doesn't mean those classes are in nice shape right now.Anyway, I think I am one of the few people who thinks druids, or wardens at least, are in fairly decent shape. There are a couple tweaks I wouldn't mind seeing of course, but the same could probably be said for any heal class.</blockquote>Very true in the first part. There are a lot of druids as ALTS on a lot of accounts. I have a friends who made them after seeing what I do with my warden. They bring them out when bored with their main or have to have a healer and a main character healer is not available. lol.Wardens are fine with a very well geared tank or if they are very well geared themselves for group content. I actually think the tanks gear is a more important factor then wardens. Of course a well geared tank makes any healers job easier but the druids NEED it more then the reast of the healers.Soloing, well, we have some nice tools like charm animal and roots but I have seen a well geared templer solo down to named around the jailor by killing where as a druids best chance is to charm kill or at least use a tinker FD item and train past the first big room.Wardens do need some serious tweaking I would say. As a druid that traded leather for heavier armor in order to do DPS, we are not where we should be. The survivability of a druids group in raid is not nearly as good as a shaman or clerics. Some people talk about "if the raid would joust or put on resist gear" ect their would be no issues but not all aoe's are joustable and why would a raid leader take a druid along to make the raid lose DPS and slow down the killing if a cleric or shaman is available instead? Sure, some druids will get in raids because they are RL's or GL's or simply been in the raid so long that no one would suggest them sitting. For the up and coming druid, its a different matter. They can heal equally to the other healers, just can't compete with an equally geared cleric or shaman in the "keeps tank/group alive" catagory.

snowli

09-10-2009, 10:39 AM

The druid ability to replace lost hitpoints quickly, doesn't really solve the bad state of our buffs in terms of preventing members from getting 1 shotted. You can't heal the dead as someone aptly put it. Because druid heals do nothing to increase the effective hp of group members, it makes no sense to compound that vulnerability with by far the worst mitigation and hp buffs compared to other healers. Sorting out our buffs would be first priority imo.A different issue I haven't really seen addressed is the duration of our heals. Often the sitatuation that lets someone die, is not that healers can't heal enough, it's that they are prevented from healing by other circumstances, they may be CC'd via stun, stifle, fear, mez, charm etc - there maybe LoS issue as someone moves (or is feared or KB'd out of range) or behind geometry. With the other 2 healer archetypes, they have healing that can cover upto 30 seconds, and many have buffs or debuffs that can cause healing aswell during these CC, LoS, range events. Druid healing not only operates in under 10 seconds and then is gone, but our aa's actually reduce the "cover" time even further, and we don't have buffs debuffs apart from warden tranquility which relies on beingable to cure effects to generate signifcant healing. (for sake of argument I've cancelled out the healing pets, versus other healers healing pets, besides the druid ones seem a best situational and frequently wasted cast time when something better could be cast in practice to me)If simple buff improvement, or more complex heal or percentile damage reducer components (percentile giving a significantly different heal mechanic to wards or reactives) were introduced to druid healing to address 1 shotting - I can still see some viability for roll-over heals if they also could extend the duration that healing "cover" is available. I'll try and make clearer what I mean with a quick example.Example: I cast a group HoT for the initial heal and then 5 ticks of 1000 per group member over 8 seconds. The HoT rollovers being discussed as I understand them mean of that 6000 healing tick (1k per member) if only 1 member has damage to heal, say 3k damage, he could receive another 2k above his own 1k from the unused ticks on other group members, using up 3k that tick and leaving 3k unused. If that exact damage scenario repeats for 5 ticks that leaves 15k leftover effectively, I would be interested in seeing that leftover healing amount used to create upto another 6k tick, and more after extending the life of the regen out to 30 seconds total if sufficient leftover healing remain to do so and it wasn't already refreshed.In essence if the amount unused by the regen over the course of it's ticks is sufficient, it could go on creating new potential healing ticks up until a total of 30seconds duration is reached i.e. if there was 30K maximum healing (1k x 6people x 5ticks) that healing potential would roll itself over upto 30seconds, applying the normal maximum of 6k in any tick interval to the group, whether it was 1k to all members or 4k to one member alongside 4x 500 to other members that tick etc until the 30k was used or 30 seconds was up (or it was refreshed).

Ferunnia

09-12-2009, 02:43 AM

That's too much like a 30 shot reactive. Not practical for our healing brethren. There's a reason our heals cast so fast. We're expected to use less of our potential healing, or we'd be 3-4x stronger at healing than anyone else...For example, in a group with a dirge and coercer, I crit on every heal. Now, in my heal spec, I tick off around 2k on the inital and I think like 1600 on the following 5 ticks of autumn's (God I need some T4 crap for at least the Autmn's Kiss bonus...)...spread out over 6 members it's 10k heal's per person or thereabouts, on one target it'd heal somewhere in the neighborhood of 24k according to what you were saying. Max healing off autumn's for the whole group including inital ticks is somewhere in the 60k-ish range...I can effectively heal 5 group members tanking 5 ^^^ mobs...Our healing is fine, our buffs are garbage. We will always suffer not being able to prevent incoming damage, and having to react to it, but thats a choice you make when you pick Warden/Fury on the character creation page. My suggestion? Make Primal Fury Give .5%Base spell and combat art damage off the shadow tree aa, and make the myth make it groupwide. Or adversly, increase the HP buff from the Lucidity line, and make the myth make it group-wide...heh...for that matter, remove our intimidation aa from the fourth line of shadows and let us add an effect to lucidity for a total of 5% Spell double attack. (Not sure how the pvpers would feel about this...but a 5% spell double attack>>>>>int debuff....)Then either make our debuffs worth having on our hotbar (Maybe shorten the recast timer on maddening swarm for the interrupt and have it debuff mob double attack by a little along with what it already does, and make Intimidation debuff Elemental/Nox resists along with the agi/wis it already does)....as of now the only use of the swarm spell is to proc potm on ae encounters...and intimidation is a useless as teats on a boar.That would give us a bit of desireability in raids, but the kicker needs to be this....Change our worthless hp regen on our mit buff to buff group hp...I wouldn't be annoyed but with other healers sitting at the same amount of damage potential (All things equal...a fury, mystic, or inquisitor buffed properly all do about the same damage), having "safer" heals, and having far more utility? well it sucks. If our feast spell(whatever it's called now...) gave temp hp instead of the worthless tiny regen....it might be worth casting if it lasted a min, maybe a min and a halfOne last thing...Make fae flames proc off spells already, jesus, devs...(BTW, just fury ideas here, I dunno enough about wardens to say anything about em...they're extreme healbots...but they have a lot of the issues with buffs furies do, from what I understand...maybe even worse)

snowli

09-12-2009, 08:29 AM

There's a big problem with gear options for wardens because of the big hole in the item table apart from maybe T4 raid gear being almost the only armour I've seen which even has +heal and +combat for example not +heal with +spell only. T4 isn't available for a lot of players, and you already need gear suitable to your class to get T4 anyway. Stuff that's good for melee, sucks for healing, stuff that's good for healing might be good for spellcasting too sometimes but sucks for melee.There's no way the buffs of a warden justify taking a DPS approach really, roll a dps class instead - warden buffs aren't worth being a damage spec healer in my analysis, sure sometimes it's fun to do dmg, or the situation allows it because of groups makeup, but it's never an optimum choice and any worthwhile dps really needs an AA and gear setup that reduces your heal potential to bugger all.That sort of leaves wardens with just healing as an option really. Warden buffs are just bad, especially in the hp mitigation department, this applies to fury's too though not quite as much imo. Neither druid can heal proactively in advance of incoming damage, neither druid can increase survivability or protection against 1 shots nearly as much as other healers, buffs are weak and our ability to cure is a lot weaker than other healers, our debuffs are bad, and debuffs are non-existant for wardens (okay slight debuff to elemental resists on 1 nuke and agility debuff in a root which epics are all immue to?). Plus if you get stifled for 20seconds on a shaman or priest (and weren't immune or purged it which we can't do) you might still have 10seconds of cover going in your heals, as a druid your heals expired at least 10 seconds ago and your group was just having to survive on the basis of their gear and our crappy buffs.Finally while I agree mythicals should be important, they shouldn't be the saving grace of the class, otherwise how do you get new druids coming through to replace those that leave or reroll, if they aren't desireable before myth it's much harder to get the spot to get mythed.If we can't do anything else well, not buff, debuff, cure, break/immune control effects, increase survivability versus 1 shots, or dps without turning our healing potential off pretty much, all the warden has to offer is healing output once the character has already survived the full damage. It's not enough.

snowli

09-12-2009, 01:05 PM

<cite>Ferunnia wrote:</cite><blockquote>That's too much like a 30 shot reactive. Not practical for our healing brethren. There's a reason our heals cast so fast. We're expected to use less of our potential healing, or we'd be 3-4x stronger at healing than anyone else...For example, in a group with a dirge and coercer, I crit on every heal. Now, in my heal spec, I tick off around 2k on the inital and I think like 1600 on the following 5 ticks of autumn's (God I need some T4 crap for at least the Autmn's Kiss bonus...)...spread out over 6 members it's 10k heal's per person or thereabouts, on one target it'd heal somewhere in the neighborhood of 24k according to what you were saying. Max healing off autumn's for the whole group including inital ticks is somewhere in the 60k-ish range...I can effectively heal 5 group members tanking 5 ^^^ mobs...Our healing is fine, our buffs are garbage. We will always suffer not being able to prevent incoming damage, and having to react to it, but thats a choice you make when you pick Warden/Fury on the character creation page. My suggestion? Make Primal Fury Give .5%Base spell and combat art damage off the shadow tree aa, and make the myth make it groupwide. Or adversly, increase the HP buff from the Lucidity line, and make the myth make it group-wide...heh...for that matter, remove our intimidation aa from the fourth line of shadows and let us add an effect to lucidity for a total of 5% Spell double attack. (Not sure how the pvpers would feel about this...but a 5% spell double attack>>>>>int debuff....)Then either make our debuffs worth having on our hotbar (Maybe shorten the recast timer on maddening swarm for the interrupt and have it debuff mob double attack by a little along with what it already does, and make Intimidation debuff Elemental/Nox resists along with the agi/wis it already does)....as of now the only use of the swarm spell is to proc potm on ae encounters...and intimidation is a useless as teats on a boar.That would give us a bit of desireability in raids, but the kicker needs to be this....Change our worthless hp regen on our mit buff to buff group hp...I wouldn't be annoyed but with other healers sitting at the same amount of damage potential (All things equal...a fury, mystic, or inquisitor buffed properly all do about the same damage), having "safer" heals, and having far more utility? well it sucks. If our feast spell(whatever it's called now...) gave temp hp instead of the worthless tiny regen....it might be worth casting if it lasted a min, maybe a min and a halfOne last thing...Make fae flames proc off spells already, jesus, devs...(BTW, just fury ideas here, I dunno enough about wardens to say anything about em...they're extreme healbots...but they have a lot of the issues with buffs furies do, from what I understand...maybe even worse)</blockquote>Btw Ferunnia I think maybe my suggestion wasn't clear to you, it wouldn't increase the total potential heal at all, it would be nothing like a 30shot reacive, if there was 30K potential heal in a group regen there would still be exactly the same 30K potential heal available in my suggestion, just instead of that heal only being available over 8 seconds, it would be available over upto 30 seconds. It's purely an extension of the time before it expires, not a change to the amount of healing that could be used.As it stands now, cast both regens and 1 or both have often expired before the tank's even finished pulling.

StaticLex

09-12-2009, 10:36 PM

Stuff that's good for melee, sucks for healing, stuff that's good for healing might be good for spellcasting too sometimes but sucks for melee.This is one of the few things I'll agree with you on. I've got a bank full of crap that would be amazing for a fury. Heal crit + spell crit and heal amount + spell damage out the azz, but basically nothing with heal crit/amount + melee crit or DA. The ONE sweet item I've seen that I would actually love on my warden is that belt out of Kurns x 2 that is priest only and has some melee crit bonus or something on it. Other than that I have to slum around for scout garbage that nobody wants.Neither druid can heal proactively in advance of incoming damage, neither druid can increase survivability or protection against 1 shots nearly as much as other healers..<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /> Roll with people who gear/spec their toons right and you won't have to worry about one shots IMO.

Tehom

09-13-2009, 05:41 AM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote>Neither druid can heal proactively in advance of incoming damage, neither druid can increase survivability or protection against 1 shots nearly as much as other healers..<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /> Roll with people who gear/spec their toons right and you won't have to worry about one shots IMO.</blockquote>That's a pretty clueless thing to say given current trauma AEs versus casters. Even with 100 crit mit, a paladin in raid, and a bard in group to add physical mitigation, using hp potions, using hp adornments, using hp character trait selections, using physical mit adornments, and AA selections for survivability, they can be pretty close to one-shotted at max range by some trauma AEs without significant hp buffing and warding. More to the point, there's no reason whatsoever to expose them to that risk when druids offer absolutely nothing in exchange.

RogueSpideyChick

09-13-2009, 08:03 AM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote>Neither druid can heal proactively in advance of incoming damage, neither druid can increase survivability or protection against 1 shots nearly as much as other healers..<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /> Roll with people who gear/spec their toons right and you won't have to worry about one shots IMO.</blockquote>That's a pretty clueless thing to say given current trauma AEs versus casters. Even with 100 crit mit, a paladin in raid, and a bard in group to add physical mitigation, using hp potions, using hp adornments, using hp character trait selections, using physical mit adornments, and AA selections for survivability, they can be pretty close to one-shotted at max range by some trauma AEs without significant hp buffing and warding. More to the point, there's no reason whatsoever to expose them to that risk when druids offer absolutely nothing in exchange.</blockquote>dont even bother arguing with him. he has no idea. he says he has np healing in raids. if he'd say what content he's raiding, ud realize that he's doing pug raid status mobs in tso & farming rok instances & has never even see the further mobs in the tso zones, let alone pull them to know the extent of how hard the ae's hit, along with the amount of cures involved.

snowli

09-13-2009, 10:13 AM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote>Neither druid can heal proactively in advance of incoming damage, neither druid can increase survivability or protection against 1 shots nearly as much as other healers..<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /> Roll with people who gear/spec their toons right and you won't have to worry about one shots IMO.</blockquote>You appear to be agreeing with the 1 shot assessment right there, in your own words you are saying, to group with a druid your group members need superior gear & specs to survive than with other healers, because druids don't offer the same survivability against spikes/1shots.StaticLex, it seems like you've taken a contrary or devil's advocate position and are sticking to it no matter what, even if you don't entirely believe in it? Is there really no aspect of warden for example you'd change apart from adding gear that was good for melee based leather healers?

StaticLex

09-13-2009, 03:05 PM

in your own words you are saying, to group with a druid your group members need superior gear & specsStrange, I looked over my own words and I didn't see "superior" anywhere among them. I think you should re-read.

snowli

09-13-2009, 03:23 PM

StaticLex you're just avoiding my questions. Should having a druid healer require those groups to be better geared and specced or to take more preventative measures like jousting more, selfcuring more etc than other healers for survivability? You are arguing that other group members should be relied on to make up for a deficit in the druid classes, and that doesn't work on any logical level because whatever measures other group members could take they could also take with a different healer archetype and still have yet better survivability. It also means you concede that druids have deficits that their group mates need to cover for, so your position appears inconsistant to me.Is there really nothing you'd change about wardens? Nearly every thread talking about ways of addressing some issues druids have, I see you posting that nothing needs changing, is that really your position or would you change anything, specifically about warden?There's no reason you have to answer, but I'm just curious what your opinion is, because it doesn't seem the common opinion and runs counter to mine. I'm not raiding top end content but I still see where changes would be useful/warranted versus how my other healers perform.My warden does bring great HPS to a group, and good personal mana regen - however when you weight up other healers better much much better buffs/utility, better curing, and better recovery from or prevention of control effects, and vastly better debuffs, and some healers easier time of gearing that simultaneously improves both their healing and adds to their damage output - the warden needs some help in those areas.

StaticLex

09-13-2009, 06:18 PM

..that doesn't work on any logical level because whatever measures other group members could take they could also take with a different healer archetype and still have yet better survivability.Whoa whoa whoa. First you argue that wardens fail to keep a group alive on their own. Then I suggest it's the responsibility of each player to gear their toon properly. NOW you change your arguement from wardens failing to protect their group to wardens protecting their group less than the next guy (presumably a cleric/shaman).I think I've seen a few people try to pass this argumentative trick off over the course of the last month or two and I'm not going to let it fly anymore. You need to 1.) pick one arguement and stick to it, and 2.) realize that classes each have strengths and weaknesses.Furthermore, I almost hate to break it to ya but wardens heal faster than anyone, and heal for more. The fact that shaman and cleric might have the random, unintentional chance (via HP buffs which are probably meant to make up for slow casting) to save some scrub from a 1 shot has NOTHING to do with the playability of the warden class.I've talked with multiple other high end raiders, both inside my guild and out, about gearing and playing for survivability versus gearing and playing for DPS. They straight up admit to me that they will push the parse as far as it can go, whether it comes to gear or staying on a mob for 10 seconds even after a 10 second AE call has been made. The difference here is, I don't consider it my problem if they get owned.Nearly every thread talking about ways of addressing some issues druids have, I see you posting that nothing needs changing, is that really your position or would you change anything, specifically about warden?I have never, EVER said there is nothing I would change about the class. Some things I wouldn't mind seeing tweaked:1.) The mythic stoneskin click should be able to target the warden, and should have a 1 second cast time.2.) The 2 emergency heals should have their reuse times lowered to 10 minutes.3.) Tranquility should tick every 5 seconds.4.) Serenity should bust stifles in addition to stuns.5.) Tortioise Shell needs a bigger (30m?) range and the stifle component removed.wardens r worse off than furies in the whole raiding perspectivelol Right.

Ferunnia

09-14-2009, 12:59 AM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>Example: I cast a group HoT for the initial heal and then 5 ticks of 1000 per group member over 8 seconds. The HoT rollovers being discussed as I understand them mean of that 6000 healing tick (1k per member) if only 1 member has damage to heal, say 3k damage, he could receive another 2k above his own 1k from the unused ticks on other group members, using up 3k that tick and leaving 3k unused. If that exact damage scenario repeats for 5 ticks that leaves 15k leftover effectively, I would be interested in seeing that leftover healing amount used to create upto another 6k tick, and more after extending the life of the regen out to 30 seconds total if sufficient leftover healing remain to do so and it wasn't already refreshed.In essence if the amount unused by the regen over the course of it's ticks is sufficient, it could go on creating new potential healing ticks up until a total of 30seconds duration is reached i.e. if there was 30K maximum healing (1k x 6people x 5ticks) that healing potential would roll itself over upto 30seconds, applying the normal maximum of 6k in any tick interval to the group, whether it was 1k to all members or 4k to one member alongside 4x 500 to other members that tick etc until the 30k was used or 30 seconds was up (or it was refreshed).</blockquote>Having a pool of health to pull from and triggering over time would be too much like a reactive. That's what I meant. I just always thought cast speed and reuse of our regens should have increased with the speedier regen tick speed from our aas so we could always have them running. It's more mana intensive than any other healer type (And with a warden with their epic this isn't a problem anyways...a heal spamming warden won't OOP unless the mob mana drains), but it would hinder our healing less. Though with time compression and enough reuse speed gear we can get close to being able to chain our regens back to back...as it is with just the gear I wear and TC I can overlap the single target heal's final tick with a new one off a new cast.And we have never been the type of healer that is meant to preheal overly...we're reactionary healers. You can keep regens stacked if you want, but we cast heals faster than the other healers for a reason. (Tank temp buffs should be soaking damage on the pull so you aren't getting aggro anyways, if you're talking about heroic stuff...in a raid if it's possible to preheal without wiping the raid it'll be soaked by the shamans in the raid, then the clerics's reactives...if they don't suck at their job)I'm just trying to get attention away from our heals and back to our buffs, which is where the problem is and will continue to be most likely.StaticLex....what world do you live in where any raid/group would prefer a druid over a shaman or cleric if the same level of gear and skill is involved? Facts ring true...an unjoustable one-shotting ae is safer for a cleric/shaman to handle, and some of it is because of the heal types involved but just as much has to do with the amount of hp any other healing archetype can buff compared to druids.And yes, wardens offer less with their buffs than furies in any raid with mostly T4...if you don't need a warden's healing power you're better off with a healer that can at the least parse higher and still keep the group alive. The only exception to that I can think of is the rare instance that the warden's elemental ward would actually do something.

snowli

09-14-2009, 09:40 AM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote>..that doesn't work on any logical level because whatever measures other group members could take they could also take with a different healer archetype and still have yet better survivability.Whoa whoa whoa. First you argue that wardens fail to keep a group alive on their own. Then I suggest it's the responsibility of each player to gear their toon properly. NOW you change your arguement from wardens failing to protect their group to wardens protecting their group less than the next guy (presumably a cleric/shaman).I think I've seen a few people try to pass this argumentative trick off over the course of the last month or two and I'm not going to let it fly anymore. You need to 1.) pick one arguement and stick to it, and 2.) realize that classes each have strengths and weaknesses.Furthermore, I almost hate to break it to ya but wardens heal faster than anyone, and heal for more. The fact that shaman and cleric might have the random, unintentional chance (via HP buffs which are probably meant to make up for slow casting) to save some scrub from a 1 shot has NOTHING to do with the playability of the warden class.I've talked with multiple other high end raiders, both inside my guild and out, about gearing and playing for survivability versus gearing and playing for DPS. They straight up admit to me that they will push the parse as far as it can go, whether it comes to gear or staying on a mob for 10 seconds even after a 10 second AE call has been made. The difference here is, I don't consider it my problem if they get owned.Nearly every thread talking about ways of addressing some issues druids have, I see you posting that nothing needs changing, is that really your position or would you change anything, specifically about warden?I have never, EVER said there is nothing I would change about the class. Some things I wouldn't mind seeing tweaked:1.) The mythic stoneskin click should be able to target the warden, and should have a 1 second cast time.2.) The 2 emergency heals should have their reuse times lowered to 10 minutes.3.) Tranquility should tick every 5 seconds.4.) Serenity should bust stifles in addition to stuns.5.) Tortioise Shell needs a bigger (30m?) range and the stifle component removed.wardens r worse off than furies in the whole raiding perspectivelol Right.</blockquote>StaticLex I agree with your 5 points, I'd have more, grabbing a few at random, death preventers having bonuses applied correctly to both triggers not just 1, death preventers triggering infront of bloodletter, faster cast aoe immune trees and fairies that heal zonewide while moving in fairy's case (less obstructive tree graphics also), big changes to cure lines, SoW only being overwritten by a faster SoW, pitiful AA animal charm dps for 3 concentration slots is a joke, and AA animal mezz also is pointless - they're useless on epics and there's almost no animals in heroic content anyway. How many animals are there in all the heroic shard instances... the 2 bears in that 1 snowy room in crucible maybe?The big area where everyone but yourself appears to disagree is buffs and heals need adjustment to improve the survivability a druid can offer against a large spike of damage all at once. No-one is arguing that wardens can't replace HP very quickly, but that's useless on someone who was just 1 shotted.You're trying to suggest there's some change in my arguments is a rather transparent parrot tactic, take a criticism you don't want to answer and fire it wildly back at the other party to try and make the debate personal and thus distract from answering the question at all. I don't care about scoring points with you or engaging in personal competition, I was curious which of the 2 positions you have, you really feel is right.StaticLex I'll ask you again, your first position appears to be druid heals & buffs are fine without any changes, your second position appears to be other group members have to be sufficiently geared and specced and jousting to compensate for any problem with the survivability druids offer against spike damage.I have a mystic also, I'm quite aware that wardens replace health quickly, no-one argues they don't. Plucking a random example if there's 20k in damage going to be arriving simultaneously on your tank, because of unlucky rolls, crits, aoe's, huge pull whatever - it doesn't really matter than the warden can replace that damage 3 seconds faster than the mystic, what matters is that the tank can have an effective HP far above 25k and beyond with the combination of mystic buffs aa's and wards, with the warden the tank had 15k hp and died. Extent that example across any class or group member/s, the point is not having enough effective HP's can be fatal, druids provide massively less effective HP's than other healers, irrespective of how the group improves their personal survivability against spikes, it is much larger with other healers, and maybe allows those group members to choose gear suited to doing their key role better.It's not a mystery why raid spots can be fewer for druids. It's not a mystery that if the potential spikes in a zone become too large that the druid's heroic solo-healing role can be called into question also.Druids replace health very quickly, but often it just doesn't matter that other healers take a little longer to replace health lost to a big spike they still replace it, what matters is who survived the spike. That's why a reactive healer like druid should not be paired with the weakest hp/mitigation buffs of all the healers, it's entirely the wrong way around.

snowli

09-14-2009, 10:21 AM

Ferunnia, take an example like solo healing Kor-sha Atrebe's lab, on the second named those adds that can stifle the group, during that stifle there's a long period with no healing at all. 8 second heals are gone quickly and most of their potential heal is totally wasted, that's not nearly so true for shaman/clerics whose class heals wards/reactives last upto 30seconds. Stifle/stun/mezz/charm/fear are more dangerous for a druid, because our heals are over so fast there's a much longer time our group will be exposed with no heals going on, and exposed with much weaker buffs on them to begin with, also druid tools to break or be immune to CC aren't as good as other healers.Maybe druid heals need to last longer if there's still potential heal left, maybe druid Crowd Control break/immunity tools need to be improved, maybe spores could be groupwide and not cause any agro for wardens, but the duration of healing cover when druid is CC'ed is definitely an area that needs looking at in my view.

Tehom

09-14-2009, 03:11 PM

StaticLex, my perspective is as an endgame raider. I won't claim to be in the best raidforce out there, though we do pretty well for ourselves in one-pulling most mobs most of the time, including Ykesha. And I have to tell you that while I think your confidence in your class is largely admirable, you're really far off base with the overall use of druids.What you may not realize is that as healers become stronger, HoTs become increasingly marginialized compared to wards. There's three encounters I can think of offhand in the game that have a small incentive to druid healing - Gynok for the MT, Ykesha for the MT, and the twins fight in Kurns x2. All three use immense incurable/slow-to-cure DoTs that can do an enormous amount of damage over a short period of time, so the fact druids can heal an overall larger amount than anyone else over a short but not instant period of time becomes meaningful. For -anything- else in the game, it's all based on one-shots and curing, and whatever you may think the best way to prevent one-shots is based on hp buffs and wards. Druids are the weakest at hp buffs by a mile and tied with templars for being terrible at curing.It'd be different if you had some strength to make up for it. But druids are weaker at utility than any other priest class too - the accuracy on your +skill buff and the +CA proc on Feral for furies are mighty thin compared with all the other priests. Defilers are roughly comparable in not having much to boost damage (RoA is about it), but we get enormously stronger healing and the ability to self-cure status effects as a tradeoff. The area you're strongest in, short-period burst healing, is almost completely absent in current content. That might change eventually, but I wouldn't be betting on it.

patrck17

09-14-2009, 04:47 PM

Very well stated Tehom, I agree completely with your assessment. I chimed in because you mentioned the twin encounter in the x2. I recently had the opportunity to heal this encounter and wanted to give my thoughts on it. Firstly, the tank in my group was a SK, pretty much the best geared tank on the server, full instanced and most avatar gear. The other healer was a mystic, and I am a fury, all of us have 200aa, all instanced gear (cept no gozak hats), and avatar gear. We had a couple well geared alts in the raid but for the most part it was all of us on our mains. Basicly we were able to kill the mobs, but the SK in my group was spiking like crazy, like I was spamming every heal I had to keep him from being 2 shotted, and this being the best geared tank on the server. At the end I looked at the parse and I had parsed a lil higher than the mystic, which made sense cause the mobs were eating through the entirety of the mystics heal capacity and requiring nearly all of mine (which is very high, if you can manage to get the heals out before the tank is dead). Anyways after the encounter I was left thinking to myself what average geared fury would be able to heal an average tank through this encounter? I was barely able to do it and I was healing an extremely well geared tank. I assumed as is usually the case a warden would have a much better chance at it since they are so much stronger healers, but I couldn't see a typical group bringing in a fury for the job. I guess there is a chance we were doing something wrong and just brawning our way through it with our uber gear, but still on that encounter if you are going to bring 2 healers, I cannot imagine anyone bringing a fury, unless they had no better choice. Just my observation though. The templar defiler guardian group didn't seem to have as much trouble, which wasn't surprising.

Frametree

09-15-2009, 02:47 PM

<cite>He's not worth your valuable time, Chath. Nice post. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></cite><cite></cite><cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>StaticLex, my perspective is as an endgame raider. I won't claim to be in the best raidforce out there, though we do pretty well for ourselves in one-pulling most mobs most of the time, including Ykesha. And I have to tell you that while I think your confidence in your class is largely admirable, you're really far off base with the overall use of druids.What you may not realize is that as healers become stronger, HoTs become increasingly marginialized compared to wards. There's three encounters I can think of offhand in the game that have a small incentive to druid healing - Gynok for the MT, Ykesha for the MT, and the twins fight in Kurns x2. All three use immense incurable/slow-to-cure DoTs that can do an enormous amount of damage over a short period of time, so the fact druids can heal an overall larger amount than anyone else over a short but not instant period of time becomes meaningful. For -anything- else in the game, it's all based on one-shots and curing, and whatever you may think the best way to prevent one-shots is based on hp buffs and wards. Druids are the weakest at hp buffs by a mile and tied with templars for being terrible at curing.It'd be different if you had some strength to make up for it. But druids are weaker at utility than any other priest class too - the accuracy on your +skill buff and the +CA proc on Feral for furies are mighty thin compared with all the other priests. Defilers are roughly comparable in not having much to boost damage (RoA is about it), but we get enormously stronger healing and the ability to self-cure status effects as a tradeoff. The area you're strongest in, short-period burst healing, is almost completely absent in current content. That might change eventually, but I wouldn't be betting on it.</blockquote>

Ferunnia

09-19-2009, 02:02 AM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ferunnia, take an example like solo healing Kor-sha Atrebe's lab, on the second named those adds that can stifle the group, during that stifle there's a long period with no healing at all. 8 second heals are gone quickly and most of their potential heal is totally wasted, that's not nearly so true for shaman/clerics whose class heals wards/reactives last upto 30seconds. Stifle/stun/mezz/charm/fear are more dangerous for a druid, because our heals are over so fast there's a much longer time our group will be exposed with no heals going on, and exposed with much weaker buffs on them to begin with, also druid tools to break or be immune to CC aren't as good as other healers.</blockquote>The tradeoff the shamans and clerics have is our heals are 3 times the total heal amount of theirs. It's nice to think that the reactives and wards do more than soak the first hit while you're stifled, but they generally don't. Most of a group ward goes to protecting the tank, and same goes for reactives...I've seen both types of heals eaten up almost instantly and have my heals still ticking, contrary to what you're saying. Rarely does a plate or chain healer even get to see their heals come close to lasting full duration...the only place that the extra duration is useful is pre-healing on the pull. Our cast speeds close that advantage since we can go from standing there to going full blast healing in half the time it takes our other healing brethren.And I'd say stifle/stun/mez/charm/fear are worse when you're a healer whose biggest heal takes nearly twice as long to cast as ours. I state again, duration is not our problem. It's having a recast almost twice as long as the duration on the group heal. Other than that cast times and durations are fine...our buffs are what suck, plain and simple. We can't heal that which has been one-shotted, end of story. (p.s. on those adds on the second named of atrebe's, they arrive at a certain percentage, no? if you're really having problems, figure out what they are hitting you with and use a guild status item to counter it a % or two before they arrive. I personally ignore the stun/stifle/ w/e it is and just stack heals on the tank the whole time I'm able to cast. If you die on that fight it's because your tank needs to gear up more, or he'd die even if a cleric or shaman was healing him. Almost all status effects can be avoided or mitigated by smart positioning or planning your timing.)

Shareana

09-20-2009, 10:10 PM

Please remember that everyone is entitled to an opinion and they are encouraged to post them as long as they are within the rules of the forums... <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

patrck17

09-21-2009, 01:09 PM

<cite>Ferunnia wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ferunnia, take an example like solo healing Kor-sha Atrebe's lab, on the second named those adds that can stifle the group, during that stifle there's a long period with no healing at all. 8 second heals are gone quickly and most of their potential heal is totally wasted, that's not nearly so true for shaman/clerics whose class heals wards/reactives last upto 30seconds. Stifle/stun/mezz/charm/fear are more dangerous for a druid, because our heals are over so fast there's a much longer time our group will be exposed with no heals going on, and exposed with much weaker buffs on them to begin with, also druid tools to break or be immune to CC aren't as good as other healers.</blockquote>The tradeoff the shamans and clerics have is our heals are 3 times the total heal amount of theirs. It's nice to think that the reactives and wards do more than soak the first hit while you're stifled, but they generally don't. Most of a group ward goes to protecting the tank, and same goes for reactives...I've seen both types of heals eaten up almost instantly and have my heals still ticking, contrary to what you're saying. Rarely does a plate or chain healer even get to see their heals come close to lasting full duration...the only place that the extra duration is useful is pre-healing on the pull. Our cast speeds close that advantage since we can go from standing there to going full blast healing in half the time it takes our other healing brethren.And I'd say stifle/stun/mez/charm/fear are worse when you're a healer whose biggest heal takes nearly twice as long to cast as ours. I state again, duration is not our problem. It's having a recast almost twice as long as the duration on the group heal. Other than that cast times and durations are fine...our buffs are what suck, plain and simple. We can't heal that which has been one-shotted, end of story. (p.s. on those adds on the second named of atrebe's, they arrive at a certain percentage, no? if you're really having problems, figure out what they are hitting you with and use a guild status item to counter it a % or two before they arrive. I personally ignore the stun/stifle/ w/e it is and just stack heals on the tank the whole time I'm able to cast. If you die on that fight it's because your tank needs to gear up more, or he'd die even if a cleric or shaman was healing him. Almost all status effects can be avoided or mitigated by smart positioning or planning your timing.) </blockquote>I agree with what you say about the cast time and duration not being the issue, but rather the reuse. It almost seems like it was overlooked when they created our endline ability. I think the desired result was for the heal stance to shave off those 2 seconds completely and we'd be casting them more often and they'd be ticking faster, effectively increasing our heal strength, but they just overlooked that to do that they'd need to take off the reuse as well. Just a minor oversight that has a very noticable consequence, on our side. I wish they would fix it to either reduce the reuse or to take off the 2 second reduction, so we can benefit from the other stats the heal stance provides. This aa line is going to continue to be useful in the next expansion and I would hate to have to deal with not being able to have a group hot up because the heal stance is messed up. Maybe not as big of a deal for wardens, but us furies only get one group hot.

Prestissimo

10-26-2009, 04:01 AM

I personally have no issue getting into a group as a warden. If people are getting killed, I make it a point to mention druid cures suck and I can only heal damage that has been done, I cannot prevent it. If they are getting one shotted, back up. If they are getting lots of dots that aren't getting cured, potions. If they wanted more health, they could have waited another 20+ minutes for another type of healer to post in chat seeing as when I play healers are HARD to find and they should be happy with having any healer at all.Basically it boils down to wardens restore alot of health quickly across the group but don't prevent damage at all which therefore means you should setup with this in mind. You know the saying taking a knife to a gun fight.... same idea as taking the wrong type of healer to a certain type of fight.

snowli

10-26-2009, 12:42 PM

You are certainly right about reuse, often I'm picking inferior legendary gear, with lesser resists hp and all other stats, just to get any pieces with the reuse that is so lacking on all the priest fabled drops packed with cast speed that pretty much only help a druid cure faster.I still think the size of the druid heals oesn't compensate entirely for their tiny duration. When you get CC'ed in some fashion there often isn't very much tick power left in the heals that were running, if you happened to be in the "hole" between the duration of our group heal and it's recast that is nearly double, then your group is surviving on druid crappy hp buffs until you are able to cast again. Shaman & cleric group wards and reactives are recastable 20 seconds or more before their duration actually expires, it's an important distinction, plus they get the useful buffs we don't.The agil line AA should include a reuse reduction, and the duration being shortened should be scrapped and an extra tick added, the effectiveness multipler should stay the same. While we're at it there's what 1 polar bear and 2 mammoths (that room in crucible) in all of the TSO group and raid content that are even open to the 8 aa's we have to throw away to get regen boosts. 8 aa's devoted to 3 trash mobs in one lone group instance, isn't a good value for money situation.

StaticLex

10-26-2009, 01:34 PM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>When you get CC'ed in some fashion there often isn't very much tick power left in the heals that were running, if you happened to be in the "hole" between the duration of our group heal and it's recast that is nearly double, then your group is surviving on druid crappy hp buffs until you are able to cast again.</blockquote>Heh.. There are multiple tools to get around 'CC'. Tranquility yourself. Get the Serenity AA. Learn to use Heirophantic Genesis. Or.. buy a signet? In fact, the vast majority of the time anything that stuns or stifles the player wears off fairly quickly, so unless your tank gets absolutely owned in the face by even a trash mob it's an easy enough thing to recover from IMO.

Prestissimo

11-17-2009, 07:40 AM

For the warden: tranquility yourself if you're afraid of CCs otherwise Tranq the tank, sandstorm and cancel the maintained effect on yourself so you get the 3 minute durration on the group but not yourself (including the stupid root), pop the tree and farie even though they're WORTHLESS they still might contribute a single heal or two and since power is a non-issue it doesn't really matter if they leech you a bit. A signet costs less than what you net in one instance run status and coin combined so laziness is the only excuse I accept for not carrying one for the (rare) situation where it really is THAT huge of an issue that no other healer/preperation/workaround can make that last second save that you could have if you were cured.That mitigates alot of the concerns including reduces the damage the group is taking and the rate at which people squish, but still does nothing to stop the one shotters. When I'm on my warden, the only thing I worry about is the squishy types and having enough rezes to bring them back. Druids got the EXTREME short end of the stick on rezing and absolutely no one can justly argue that. When your class is designed to spam heals to counter one class flaw, and then you add the clustered muck of cure insanity called TSO and a lack of a group cure in terms of the most frequently seen group based dets, and absolutely no way to prevent huge hits, then add in the final blow of extremely gimpy buffs.... you have a class that is designed to be handicapped before they start.The druids are designed to restore a ton of health quickly but requires that the life be missing from the pool and the target not be dead yet. Those are mutually exclusive when you throw in the massive amount of CCs that we face every second in TSO.My proposed solution for wardens:<ul><li>Give the wardens a stance option that would divide the amount healed per tick in half and double the number of ticks remaining at the same time interval they were origionally.</li><li>Add 1k hp to the single single target wis buff and leave the HP bonus aa alone as it is. If the 1k isn't enough, it lets the player put a bit more into at the cost of aa points and still will not on a single target add up to that of the healers that specialize in HP buffage.</li><li>Increase the resistance given by the cure aa line to about double what it is now, make Tranquilities aa enhancement cause the ticks to occur faster AND recast faster, make the end line ability cure all hostile effects (up to x amount of levels) on all group members instead of just the one person when they almost die or replace it with a perma-buff that reduces cast time/reuse of cure timers.</li><li>Increase either the heal ability OR the max hp to a reasonable survival level of the farie/tree.</li><li>Overflow hots to other group members (at a slightly reduced rate such as 1 point overflow per 2 points overflowed from the intended target) and all remaining points of heal get banked on their primary target. (to keep along the lines of fast restoration and less about warding/reactive healing)</li><li>Increase mitigation/resistance buffs to be on par with other healer's resistance buffs, OR increase our group elemental mit/ward, change it to be against all types of magical damage, and reduce the casting/reuse time to be up faster so we can take the matter into our own hands when need be.</li><li>Add a 1 trigger stoneskin component upon death and increase the heal amount up to about 2-3k hp on our death save so that it actually has a realistic chance to save someone rather than tease them before the dot finishes them off while we're still stunned (as thats about the only time it would be used IF we even get it off in time). The other possibility is to leave it more or less as it is but make it a dramatically longer durration or an until cancelled buff.</li><li>Reduce reuse on rez timers by about 1/4.</li></ul>I'd be completely satisfied with those changes as it keeps us in our current role, but narrows the gap between other healers enough that we'll be competative in more than one healing role. I rolled a warden to heal, not dps while I wait for a heal to get past the shamen/cleric. If I wanted to continue doing that, I'd roll a fury. As for fury changes, I know the class well enough that I could function at healing as one but I wont pretend to know the class intricately enough to make a list on ideas to fix them.

wee

11-23-2009, 11:14 PM

This is my first post, so forgive me if this is just dumb or something. As for my EQ2 background, my main is a lvl 80 warden, that I've been playing for about 2 years, and I'm in a casual raiding guild which is working it's way through the TSO content.I was reading these forums a couple of days ago, and I read (somewhere, can't remember where) that we druids are being vague and/or all over the place in asking the developers to help our class, and so they haven't done much of anything, which I recognize and agree with. For the record, ideally, I would love to see something (anything) that would help us prevent our groups from being one-shotted.However, it's also been suggested in these forums (again, forgot where specifically) that our role is/should be sort of a DPS/healer hybrid. If that's the case, then I think the wardens are still falling miserably short, for a couple of reasons: 1. There just isn't a whole lot of gear made with melee wardens in mind. We are left to cobble together a random assortment of gimpy monk/scout gear that no one else wants, and none of which helps our healing.2. I think the wardens fall so far behind the furies in terms of DPS because we have to spend 20 AAs just to get our combat arts, and then we can't upgrade them to master, grandmaster, etc.3. Even in a melee spec, a big chuck of our DPS comes from infusion (spell based damage) and glacial assault (spell based damage). As such, melee wardens are expected to be sort of a 3-way hybrid...we need good melee stats for our auto-attack and combat arts, but we also need good spell crit, etc, for infusion and glacial assault. And oh yeah, we need all the healing stats too, lol.I was thinking that a way to make wardens able to do more DPS is to cut out our damage spells and just give us combat arts from the beginning, and make things like infusion and glacial assault melee based damage for wardens, rather than spell-based as they currently are. This will eliminate our need to be specced for healing, melee, AND spell-casting just to be viable. It might also make the developers come out with more gear specifically for melee wardens, because rather than being something we CAN be, it would be something that we ARE (if that makes sense). And then we could use those 20 AA's for something more amazing (I don't really have any particular ideas).All that said, I would still greatly prefer something that would help us prevent our groups from being one-shotted. However, I was thinking this might help us DPS, if that is to be our role.

StaticLex

11-24-2009, 02:59 PM

<cite>wee wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is my first post, so forgive me if this is just dumb or something.</blockquote>Oh it's dumb alright. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/136dd33cba83140c7ce38db096d05aed.gif" border="0" />1.) Druids are HEALERS. Not DPS, not "hybrid" (whatever the hell that even means). HEALERS. Whoever is telling you otherwise is wrong, so stop listening to them.2.) Infusion on a warden is stupid. Check a zonewide on it once, it'll parse like.. 9 DPS. It's garbage.If you keep these two things in mind you will be in a much better position to make non-dumb posts. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />

Ferunnia

11-24-2009, 07:23 PM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>wee wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is my first post, so forgive me if this is just dumb or something.</blockquote>Oh it's dumb alright. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/136dd33cba83140c7ce38db096d05aed.gif" border="0" />1.) Druids are HEALERS. Not DPS, not "hybrid" (whatever the hell that even means). HEALERS. Whoever is telling you otherwise is wrong, so stop listening to them.2.) Infusion on a warden is stupid. Check a zonewide on it once, it'll parse like.. 9 DPS. It's garbage.If you keep these two things in mind you will be in a much better position to make non-dumb posts. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Rude post...even by my standards. But on the infusion thing...were you standing within range of the mob? If not, congrats, you're dumber than that other poster (not that they seemed that dumb to me)...though you already proved that by believing we're pure healers. I'm done with you.

Tehom

11-24-2009, 08:19 PM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>wee wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is my first post, so forgive me if this is just dumb or something.</blockquote>Oh it's dumb alright. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/136dd33cba83140c7ce38db096d05aed.gif" border="0" />1.) Druids are HEALERS. Not DPS, not "hybrid" (whatever the hell that even means). HEALERS. Whoever is telling you otherwise is wrong, so stop listening to them.2.) Infusion on a warden is stupid. Check a zonewide on it once, it'll parse like.. 9 DPS. It's garbage.If you keep these two things in mind you will be in a much better position to make non-dumb posts. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Yeah, you're screwing up pretty massively if infusion is ever parsing that low. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

StaticLex

11-24-2009, 08:37 PM

9 DPS is a slight exaggeration but it doesn't change the fact that it is an absolute waste of 24+ AA for a warden. I speced for it months ago. I parsed it several times in the Befallen shard instances. AT MOST it parsed 500 on a zonewide (most of the time it was good for a couple hundred DPS). That was with me running around spaming group heals and spirit of the wolf CONSTANTLY.The amount of work it took in key punching to produce this pathetic amount of damage should offend the sensibilities of anyone who isn't a noob....though you already proved that by believing we're pure healers.WOW, just wow.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/1cfd6e2a9a2c0cf8e74b49b35e2e46c7.gif" border="0" />And some of you people wonder why you can never get a raid spot.

Oakum

11-25-2009, 10:35 AM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote>9 DPS is a slight exaggeration but it doesn't change the fact that it is an absolute waste of 24+ AA for a warden. I speced for it months ago. I parsed it several times in the Befallen shard instances. AT MOST it parsed 500 on a zonewide (most of the time it was good for a couple hundred DPS). That was with me running around spaming group heals and spirit of the wolf CONSTANTLY.The amount of work it took in key punching to produce this pathetic amount of damage should offend the sensibilities of anyone who isn't a noob....though you already proved that by believing we're pure healers.WOW, just wow.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/1cfd6e2a9a2c0cf8e74b49b35e2e46c7.gif" border="0" />And some of you people wonder why you can never get a raid spot.</blockquote>While I agree the value of infusions is questionable, I have a melee spec with it on it but usually just use my normal aa spec.On the other hand, I think you are confusing EQ2 healers with the EQ1 cleric. The EQ1 cleric was the pure healer.In EQ2 all healers have side abilities to cast when healing is not required. Clerics have temp buffs, Shaman have debuffs, druids have DPS spells.Thought you were around long enough to see this but I guess not, lol. Or is it a simple case of the bible quote that goes something like none are so blind as they who dont want to see or something like that, lol. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and static is welcome to his just like people are free to disagree.I always get a raid spot ATM becuase the raid is short on healers for now and its restarting content it hasnt done before or hasnt done in a while due to periodic rebuilding.In PoTAO I dps between 3-5k on trash in full dps gear/stance and could add another k or 2 if the raid had a brig probably. Several months agon I was 5 to 7k with a brig in the raid but that was before the proc nerf too. Now on named I was 2 to 3rd on the heal parse in full heal gear/stance just like a warden should be in a 3 healer MT group.If you sit around conserving power when your healing is not required, you are not using your full capabilities to help the raid. A couple more k dps means the raid progresses that much further. Especially if both druids are using their max potential. Its just sad that the temp buffing and debuffing priest can out dps a druid though when their healing is not really required.

StaticLex

11-27-2009, 02:10 AM

<cite>Oakum wrote:</cite><blockquote>On the other hand, I think you are confusing EQ2 healers with the EQ1 cleric. The EQ1 cleric was the pure healer.</blockquote>I think you are the one that is confused. I'm not saying druids lack the ability to do absolutely anything but heal. I am saying they are a HEAL class. The same way I call brawlers a TANK class (eventhough 98% of the 't a r d s who play them think they are DPS).That is all.

iceriven2

12-03-2009, 11:24 PM

my warden is melee specced but i also have infusion. I am only in t3 or below with average jewelery and my infusion does 700-900 dps alone

Yure

12-10-2009, 05:19 PM

Suprised no one mentioned that infusion will hit the nagi's adds in TOMC even if you are not cursed.I know I grab a number of adds when people were either drunk or nearly asleep.But one fight won't off set the cost in AA. But it a hybrid spec o well.Though haven't tried in a few month.

Carthr

12-10-2009, 06:28 PM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Oakum wrote:</cite><blockquote>On the other hand, I think you are confusing EQ2 healers with the EQ1 cleric. The EQ1 cleric was the pure healer.</blockquote>I think you are the one that is confused. I'm not saying druids lack the ability to do absolutely anything but heal. I am saying they are a HEAL class. The same way I call brawlers a TANK class (eventhough 98% of the 't a r d s who play them think they are DPS).That is all.</blockquote>Pretty sure you are the confused one. If all your doing as a healer is healing, you're only doing about 60% of your job. And Brawlers as tanks...lol..no... I think of them more as a support class.. One that provides dps, and avoidance buff on the tank and some haste/accuracy.If you trully wanna be good at this game, start thinking in grey's, instead of black and white..

Prestissimo

12-10-2009, 09:17 PM

Brawlers can tank very well if they have the gear nessecary and have enough skill at playing their brawler. Theres one on my server whos been MTing content for 3 years, and can very easily tank PotAO for his raid force. I frequently one group with him through PR, all the epic contested in RoK and the Rime lords, and he's many times 4, 3, and even 2 pick up grouped VP for many people on the server to get their mythicals.My warden has parsed an 11k hps fight before, and has been completely and utterly worthless on others because of group structure or the content faced, or both. My warden has solo healed all of Ward of Elements before, and has been unable to solo heal a group through the 3rd guk instance the day after he solo healed a different group through the 3rd guk instance.Everything in this game falls into the grey shade somewhere along the line and almost all of the time remains there. Thinking that classes are only one thing all of the time is an epic and critical mistake. When I'm functioning as a spam healer, i'll keep infusion in my spec rather than melee purely because when you're chain healing non-stop you wont be able to cast alot of dps spells in between if any at all. Infusion gives you a way to at least contribute some dps in that scenario despite it being less than ideal. If you're not spam healing non-stop, you can go melee spec and stand up there in the mob's face and melee it and CA it and do pretty respectable dps considering. Both methods are the most viable option in certain situations, and blanket saying they aren't is more arrogant and wrong than anything else that could be said about the warden. Granted neither of them is the most ideal use of a warden, but then really how frequently does a warden get a 100% ideal scenario? I've seen maybe 3 times total where I've been able to use all of my tools to their full potential, and my warden's seen a LOT of use. Inefficiency is the story of a warden's life, and demanding that the warden be played with the intention of using it's maximum effective potential is just not realistic.

StaticLex

12-11-2009, 12:28 AM

<cite>Carthrax wrote:</cite><blockquote>If all your doing as a healer is healing, you're only doing about 60% of your job.</blockquote>If you have time to do anything but heal then you roll with some fail tanks.

Tehom

12-11-2009, 05:53 AM

<cite>StaticLex wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Carthrax wrote:</cite><blockquote>If all your doing as a healer is healing, you're only doing about 60% of your job.</blockquote>If you have time to do anything but heal then you roll with some fail tanks.</blockquote>I'm not really sure where you're going with this, since everyone was talking about raiding, and it's not like any trash in this expansion can hurt real tanks. So why would a tank being good mean that you have to heal more? I assumed you meant because of the rate he'd be pulling or some such, but still.Anyway, the whole only-heal thing really only holds for wardens who get no useful debuffs whatsoever. Anyone else is screwing up if they never cast em, at least from how current fights are designed with epic-tiered adds.

StaticLex

12-11-2009, 08:09 AM

I was under the impression the discussion shifted to non-raid play. But whatever, even in raids there is basically no time to do anything besides heal or cure. The guild I'm in doesn't carebear around with 8 or 9 or 10 healers. We use defiler x 2, warden x 2, templar x 2 with the wardens solo healing the two DPS groups. If we ran more healers then yeah I guess I could joust the AEs with the scouts and contribute my pathetic 4 or 6 K DPS on the mob. Or we could just drop a healer and add a class that actually parses.Fortunately, I think we'll continue to stick with door #2. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" />

Prestissimo

12-27-2009, 07:36 AM

The inquisitor's clickie effect pretty much replaces a druid in most scenarios so even HoT banking would be pointless when you can group cure and restoratively heal ontop of already existing reactive heals.Perhaps a group wide purity with AAs to increase frequency and or number of ticks of it's cures. Maybe wards in addition to or in place of mit increases on the warden cure line. Maybe something like the ansestor that works for the group and absorbs up to x amount of damage OR heals the group for the same equivilant amount. Instead of the stupid tree that blocks everyone's screen. Maybe a cure dumbfire pet seeing as curing is already so massively overused that even a dumbfire pet randomly hitting players would still be curing effects off most of the time and would give the druid a little edge in curing and would also stay in line with the idea of many smaller reactive repetitions rather than something proactive. Druids are quick health restorative healers, so perhaps make them able to rapid cure just like they can rapid heal.Just to throw out a couple ideas if they haven't been said so far.

Pinepal

01-12-2010, 01:31 AM

I would suggest changing the elemental ward on wardens to ward all non direct damage. Similar to how the AE blockers work. So we really couldn't ward the MT against damage but we could use the ward to help with AE damage in a squishy group.

LadyEdderkopp

01-15-2010, 06:00 AM

I'd love to see some "buffed up" buffs on druids, from this thread I can see that wardens need them and I know from personal experience that furies do..I would however also like to see some change to the joke that is regens, since healbonus became really important in the game they have been somewhat broken with the bonus only applying to the initial tick instead of beeing spread out in some fashion. Only the initial tick is worth mentioning, especially on us furies that don't have any enhancements on our myth.I can cast my single target regen on a tank, healing him for 4k and then (if the tank isn't at full health) some very small (in comparison) additional ticks.. OR I could cast Back Into the Fray to heal my tank up to full health directly (since we don't have damage preventions and I group mainly with PU tanks atm I asume that they will be at under 50% health). This whole issue makes regens not the important class foundation it should be but rather just another heal that you cast since your stronger heals are down.Now with shadow-fury AA's (at least 175 AA's) we can enhance our group regens non initial ticks somewhat but the need for quick healing kinda makes that mute, it would be better to just have another groupheal in many instances (since they are faster cast and heals for more directly).That said we (druids) really need some way to avoid our group dropping in one shot or in a few very quick shots. Buffs, banked up regens .. anything really. In addition to that, some way of making US not drop in one shot either would be nice, you can't heal someone who's dead but you really can't heal when you are dead either.. Even if you make it through whatever AE's are thrown your way any mem-wiping mob or an add and we go down faster than most mages.Lastly I would like to see some buff/spell that makes a fury usefull to a tank.. We are supposed to help casters (which we don't really do) and wardens are supposed to help trauma damage dealers (which they don't really do that much either) but where is it written that furies can't have any way of helping your tank?Wardens do.. Any healer class does really but even the other druids help tanks more than us and because of that is more wanted in upper grouping content.The list for wanted healer goes:1. Templars.2. Shamans (which one depends completely on the situation).3. Inquisitors.4. Wardens (hey, if we can't get a cleric/shaman [Removed for Content]).5. Lets just do this tomorrow instead.6. Fury.(this is in PU groups for the tougher zones, my server.. True story..)Druids are at the bottom of the list because we really don't have the buffs/damage prevention to deal with spikes on non-über groups and furies are at the very bottom because we have no way what so ever to help a tank.Yes, all zones can be healed with all classes really.. I'd like to think that I'm one of the better furies doing PU groups on my server and I can keep a decent group up against almost anything but so can one of the worse clerics/shamans or even a half decent warden so some kind of change is warranted.//Shepherd of Oasis(I can soloheal all the zones I have tried to, good luck finding a PU group to PoF that will take a PU fury)EDIT:Fixed some of the spelling..

Odys

03-01-2010, 11:03 PM

<cite>LadyEdderkopp wrote:</cite><blockquote>The list for wanted healer goes:1. Templars.2. Shamans (which one depends completely on the situation).3. Inquisitors.4. Wardens (hey, if we can't get a cleric/shaman [Removed for Content]).5. Lets just do this tomorrow instead.6. Fury.(this is in PU groups for the tougher zones, my server.. True story..)Druids are at the bottom of the list because we really don't have the buffs/damage prevention to deal with spikes on non-über groups and furies are at the very bottom because we have no way what so ever to help a tank.Yes, all zones can be healed with all classes really.. I'd like to think that I'm one of the better furies doing PU groups on my server and I can keep a decent group up against almost anything but so can one of the worse clerics/shamans or even a half decent warden so some kind of change is warranted.//Shepherd of Oasis(I can soloheal all the zones I have tried to, good luck finding a PU group to PoF that will take a PU fury)EDIT:Fixed some of the spelling..</blockquote>Quite true, i remember when people wanted my not even t1 mystic instead of my t2+ warden. I m also always amazed by people who doubt that i can solo heal almost any instance, and i not speaking here os stupid players. I still love my warden, mainly because i can keep alive even mesy groups in moderate difficulty content, she shine in easy/moderate content made in weird groups without taking care, it's fun sometimes to keep alive a wizzy tanking or a group taking massive aoe ecause after being focussed in the raid the tank just zerg the mobs.I also love her to solo, i don't care about any mob below ^^, i just pass and fart at his noose.But clearly this not serious play.