Quote:
Originally Posted by Gugg
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What does the Ranger bring to the table L1 through to L60 that a Druid doesn't?
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The ability to be a decent tank and melee DPS in groups. Both are pretty valuable because of the grouping "meta," i.e. chain-pulling forever. There's a general shortage of tanks, especially early on in a server's lifespan when people haven't made their twink warriors and SKs yet. And since most group content is so easy that a ranger can tank it just fine, it's nice to have a tank that also does respectable DPS and provides snare as part of their aggro rotation, meaning all mobs are always snared by default. It's much more cumbersome for a druid to do that, and costs them more because that mana spent on snares and lost from missing med ticks takes away directly from the only thing a druid does: cast spells. A ranger can spend all their mana on snares without sacrificing any meaningful aspect of their contribution to the group. Same goes for pulling with Harmony. Rangers are fantastic pullers in outdoor zones, arguably the very best. If a druid had to do it, they'd do little else since each pull effectively costs them a bunch of mana through not medding.
If you were to put together some theorycrafted min-maxed optimal party, maybe a ranger wouldn't find a place in it; but that's generally not the reality in the game, so for a party that can't pick the ideal lineup of classes, ranger checks more of the "nice to have in the group" boxes than a lot of other classes. It's much easier to assemble a party that covers the necessities if there's a ranger. Their asset package is much more universally applicable to the way people play the game than the one druids have. Add a ranger and you have a tank, snarer, one DPS spot covered, and a top-tier puller if outdoors. A much better tracker, too, if the group is poaching named mobs. These things are simply much more useful to a group than what the druid can do.
Druids don't really do anything
well. Unless the tank is really twinked, a druid can't comfortably be the group healer on their own, and it's especially hopeless if there's no enchanter. Their DPS in a group setting is unimpressive as well, possibly the very worst of all the classes that can possibly be considered for the role of DPS, having all the same problems as wizards but even less powerful nukes and no mana regeneration whatsoever until level 60. People like to theorize about this Swiss Army Knife druid concept where you heal a bit, DPS a bit and whatnot, but the fact of the matter is that a fucking paladin could do the same thing better, and it's just not something that the gameplay calls for in the first place.
There's practically no combination of classes you can put in a party that makes druid a good choice for an additional member. Healing can be covered by a cleric or even a shaman who's diligent about canni-dancing. Damage shields have a relatively narrow window of meaningful contribution; early on they last so short a time that it's almost a full-time job to maintain them, and later on they have no real impact. Besides, a magician can do it, and there's not exactly a shortage of those. Groups go out of their way to invite mages. Once you're 60, PotG becomes a really nice buff, but then you're done with leveling and there's probably very little incentive to group at all anymore as it has always been far more profitable to farm money and buy the stuff you need compared to grouping and hoping to win the greed roll on a valuable item.
The druid's class design simply doesn't apply very well to the way the game is really played. Groups don't want to port around a bunch, and people are so experienced with EQ that evac is very rarely needed. The grinding meta is chain-pulling low blues for hours on end and the druid's DPS package is particularly terrible in such a setting. Druid buffs are dogshit until level 60. It's just not a class that offers much to the grouping environment. Of all the classes, this is the one that most clearly displays how little the original developers knew about the way people would play the game years later.
In raiding, both classes are a bit sub-par, but rangers have a very useful tactical tool in Weaponshield, as well as the ability to do high damage from outside the range of AoEs in one fight per 72 minutes. They're also ideal raid target scouts, hacks notwithstanding. Meanwhile, druids basically just bring PotG and that's more or less all a raid cares about. The rest is half-assed spot heals and the bitch duty of porting a raid if necessary. They don't even have any must-have ports for raiding, that's all wizards. Circle of Summer/Winter give five more resists than the generic resist buffs that half the classes have, so the only relevant part of that is the modest convenience of the druid version being group buffs. Druid is a crap class in raids while ranger is middle of the pack with decent DPS, a good melee buff and meaningful tactical value.
Druid is obviously a convenient class if your ambition in life is to fuck around on your own and do relatively inconsequential things. Porting around the world and farming easy targets is what the class excels at. But then you've saddled yourself with a character that has such an unimpressive activity as its main forté and isn't really wanted in any other aspect of the game. To some, porting around and root-rotting shit or PLing/taxi-servicing for money is what they want, and then druid is a good choice. It's just not something that can be called "bringing anything to the table," in my book.