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Old 11-24-2011, 11:46 AM
usedtobejubaloftorv usedtobejubaloftorv is offline
Aviak


Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 62
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As I get more experience grouping with my druid I am coming to understand how to play it as a min-maxing powergamer... since you can do so many things (if none as well as a specialist, and not all at once) you need to configure yourself for the group you are with and how the players operate together.

For example, I joined a group with a SK, war, rog, bard, cleric. To start, I picked up the snare role, freeing the bard to do something more productive. Then I picked up the patch heal role so the cleric could use her mana more efficiently on larger heals, throwing in pack regen to lighten the heal load further. After that, the best I could add value was to add damage, so up went DS on the puller/tank, STR on melee dps, and finally surplus mana went to straight up nuking.

Now when we moved camp, cleric couldn't handle the extra healing... so I switched from nuking to cast more heals instead, which enabled the group to more easily adjust to fighting higher level mobs at the new camp.

So I'm figuring out that, as the utility guy in a group (more so than even a bard), my druid's job is first to analyze the group's strengths and weaknesses, patch up any potentially fatal weakness first and then take over roles that free up more specialized classes to concentrate on what they are good at. That way my actions can be translated into maximum effect, if only through the second-order effect of enabling another class to optimize its efficiency in a given situation. The implication of this is that given a different group configuration, my role within it could be completely different.

This kind of approach accepts at the outset that your abilities are duplicated by so many classes that the only unique ability you are likely to have in any given group is evac, and to work that overlap to optimize what others can do.

I'm still working this out here but I think I'm on the right track...