The answer is basically C2 and/or a manastone/fungi tunic/fungi staff and a cleric to CH you when get low on mana. This way you can keep regen/DS up and still be able to do some decent dps and off-heal or root when needed. It's actually a lot of work playing a druid in a fast-paced group with that kind of mana regen, but if you do it well it really does add a lot more to the group than I realized before leveling a druid.

/thread

damage shields will out DPS most everyone but rogues/monks/warriors

Its like that over all level ranges. But the monsters you fight give out exponentially more exp, so you never even notice...

re-roll ranger....;)

Also don't be fooled by this perspective, right here. Yes, we've established druids aren't desirable for groups, and that they find parties harder to come by. But you're ignoring a segment of the population that doesn't min-max so strictly, that groups with people they like.

I'm not debating the fact that druids are horrible group members, but it is going way too far to say you will not get exp groups. This isn't sugarcoating, it's reality. The ideal classes aren't always going to be around. A druid is far more inefficient, but it doesn't ruin the group, it doesn't even necessarily preclude having an exceptional group.

If you don't have any/many friends and you sit on your ass lfg, yep, you're going to find that nobody will invite you. You can port, use it to your advantage. Find a cleric, a tank, dps, etc and build a group. Go wherever they are and pick them up.

You'll find there are a lot of people who don't like to play EQ like a spreadsheet. The game is trivially easy anyway.

Ever lose your corpse in the PoF? If EQ is easy exactly which MMO is hard, because everyone I have ever played has been a breeze in comparison.

You're right I probably should have been more specific. The game can be unforgiving and tedious, but the level of complexity and capacity for skill is relatively low for most classes in my opinion.

Then again it's easy to say that after 10 years of MMO's.

+1 ephirith.

Here is the thing about playing a Druid: even if you can find groups, it's got to suck knowing that just about every group you joined would be better if you were replaced with another class.

I played a druid and monk as my two mains on live since day 1, and here.
May not be the "best" choice for a normal everyday XP group, but a good druid can definitely hold their own if played correctly. I won't go into details, or give you examples of a druid with a VP robe and their healing efficacy as it doesn't apply to your every day druid you will run across looking for XP.

Semi off-topic, being these are raid and not group oriented but someone's gotta stick up for the druids and their usefulness.


Druids in the raid scene are irreplaceable, so don't give up if you have plans on raiding:

NS is better than Hero (everyone loves the regen, but sham/necs need to have it).
Group resists save tons of time/mana.
Patch healing MT and keeping your group alive.
Against a weak to fire mob (Hosh, gore, etc) druids can do some mean DPS AND heal themselves if they need to. Chain nukes for 1150 add up very quickly when a mob has 32k hp. Also, Breath of Ro debuffs their AC/FR even more while doing 103 a tick, stacks with all debuffs.
Porting for quick mobilization.
Kiting adds in places like Sky, VP and juggs in trak engages.

if you want a hard MMO, go find some of those MUDs I programmed back in the early '90s - you lose a level plus any surplus XP every time you die.