New Druid Advice from the experts

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I didn't specifically respond to everything you wrote, so I agree with you?

By removing your post suggesting prediction was impossible, that indicates you don't actually believe prediction is impossible. It is a good step in the right direction.

[bcbrown]

Geez you guys. I thought we're here to discuss gear priorities for a charming druid. We've talked a lot about the goblin ring and how and why it's good. But no matter whether you're able to break at 1%, at 5%, or at 10%, you're frequently going to have the other mob somewhere around 10-30% higher - most charm locations have level ranges, so it's rare to have exactly even matched fights. At lower levels there's nothing you can do about this, so I'm going to focus this comment on higher levels; the gear you should start thinking about in your early 40s and have a plan to acquire by your mid 50s.

In cases where your pet is the one at higher health there's nothing you can really do about it. ES arms dot and epic both help, but usually you'll need to add another dot or nuke for a reasonable kill time - a Chokidai Whelp for example has 4k hp, so 30% is 1200, so that would be 4 minute-long durations of the clicky Drones of Doom. I like adding a Winged Death if the mob's high enough, but others prefer nukes and I think that's just personal preference.

The more interesting case is when it's your pet that's the weaker mob, and it's here that the Gloves of Earthcrafting shine. If you're a Tunare druid this should be your priority. The quest isn't hard; the Vindi head rots all the time and I got mine just by asking when I stumbled across a kill. The other three heads are straightforward kills for even a casual guild; if you're unguilded on Green and want help with this, send me a PM and I'll do what I can.

When you notice the fight's at like 50%-70% or 70%-95% or whatever and your pet is losing, this is what will even it up. When you need to stretch one whelp across two sarnaks this is what lets you. Being able to finish a fight at 10% vs 15% is way better than being able to finish a fight at 2-3% vs 30% instead of 10% vs 30% like the ring would let you do.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Based on OP's requirements, they want the normal cheap Druid items:
1. Spells
2. Basic HP/MP Gear
3. Tunare Snare Neck
4. Goblin Ring/Ring of Stealthy Travel
5. ES Arms and Gloves (get these as soon as you can at 45 since they are cheap)
6. Lumi Staff
7. GCD item like Shrunken Goblin Earring

That can take you to 60.

Anything after that really depends on how strictly OP adheres to the following:

Originally Posted by Faywind [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I will be playing very casually, almost exclusively solo due to unreliable consistent play in a session (lots of afking).

Items like Tuna Gloves, Velious BP, and Epic are all good long term goals, but they will be tough to get for OP if OP remains almost exclusively solo. Tuna Gloves will need OP to get a group of high level friends to kill the non-vindi giants. That can be tough for people to do when they have to frequently AFK. Velious BP and Epic can be purchased, it will just take a lot of grinding.

[kjs86z2]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

In cases where your pet is the one at higher health there's nothing you can really do about it.

sure there is, spam sit

but you don't have to be perfect every time...theres nothing wrong with letting a pet eat 50% on a kill every now and then, and in some situations it can actually save you a ton of mana / downtime / headache (think imminent pop timers in tight spaces, etc)

tuna gloves and velious wrist are absolute BiS for charming leveling druid id take them over a gobby ring all day every day....even if you're a lazy solo player...you need to take the time to get people to help you get these

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by kjs86z2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

tuna gloves and velious wrist are absolute BiS for charming leveling druid id take them over a gobby ring all day every day....even if you're a lazy solo player...you need to take the time to get people to help you get these

This does need to be caveated. Velious wrist is the same DoT as ES arms. As far as I know, you mean Velious Wrist is BiS from 5-44, assuming it can still be clicked at level 5.

So velious wrist is only good if you can get them well before 44. At 45 you can get ES Arms for 10% of the price.

If you can drop 5k on a no drop item you only need from 5-44, you can probably afford a Goblin Ring too. Get both at level 5 in that case if you want to charm while leveling.

For Tuna Gloves, that item requires you to be 46+ to enter PoG. Great item if you can get the friends to kill the non-vindi giants.

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by kjs86z2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

sure there is, spam sit

but you don't have to be perfect every time...theres nothing wrong with letting a pet eat 50% on a kill every now and then, and in some situations it can actually save you a ton of mana / downtime / headache (think imminent pop timers in tight spaces, etc)

Yeah, depending on the situation, when a pet gets a solid upper hand sometimes its just better to eat the 50% loss and pull something else or straight up just camp aggro. One of the solution is to break charm and recharm the weaker mob and then assist it but then you're wasting mana recharming, rooting, and assisting in whichever way you chose to. Losing 50% exp sucks but then wasting a couple hundred mana for a neat double finish will often set you back more. A scenario where a mob has 30-40% hp left is the worst though, too much work to finish it but not really a viable pet unless you spend a lot of mana to help it out. Other times that mob just needs to die anyway so you take the loss and finish it.

#charmlife

[kjs86z2]

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah, depending on the situation, when a pet gets a solid upper hand sometimes its just better to eat the 50% loss and pull something else or straight up just camp aggro. One of the solution is to break charm and recharm the weaker mob and then assist it but then you're wasting mana recharming, rooting, and assisting in whichever way you chose to. Losing 50% exp sucks but then wasting a couple hundred mana for a neat double finish will often set you back more. A scenario where a mob has 30-40% hp left is the worst though, too much work to finish it but not really a viable pet unless you spend a lot of mana to help it out. Other times that mob just needs to die anyway so you take the loss and finish it.

#charmlife

yep, perfect is the enemy of good...as long as you're rolling along comfortably and not having to stop and med you're doing fine

[Snaggles]

Originally Posted by kjs86z2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

tuna gloves and velious wrist are absolute BiS for charming leveling druid id take them over a gobby ring all day every day....even if you're a lazy solo player...you need to take the time to get people to help you get these

You can click the ring as low as level 5. It’s droppable Kunark gear.

If you have raid velious gloves on a 40’s Druid and are still casting invis to break charm…wow.

[bcbrown]

Faywind how's your druid been?

Here's a leveling report. I've done 31-38 in CT gator alley. First greens showed up at 35, but xp has still been very fast and through 38 there were still a third blues. It's not hard to either pair greens v greens and blues v blues or charm a green, add thorns, send at a blue. At 37-38 I tried NK/EK charming griffons into hill giants and griffennes into griffons. Also did some snare/fear against griffons with melee and dots. This all worked pretty well, but CT gators were still faster xp even with greens. Tried Kedge entrance but still too tough. Got kills but they'd take 10 minutes and half my mana. At 39/40 Kedge entrance became viable. Killing the couple of hill giants that I did let me afford my level 39 spells.

I think I got the goblin ring right about when I hit 31 and moved out of the water to the alley. My spell bar has been snare/ensnare; root; dot; harmony; charm; thorns; regen/heal; gate. I made heavy use of gators fleeing at 20%; where I can I frequently swap between the three levels of magic dots to get a mob just below 20%. Oakleaf Scimitar/Guard Captain's Mallet plus 21% haste is great for finishing off fleeing snared mobs without mana.

I haven't noticed any benefit from invis now not costing mana. At full efficiency around 35+ I could do three sweeps/hour or 15 IvA/hour, but there were also plenty of times where I'd get out of the first fight at 30% mana and have to med back up, which might be 3-5 IvA/hour. Saving a spell gem is nice QoL but not important; otherwise I'd have to swap between Harmony and IvA or take Thorns off my spell bar. I lost exactly 8 mobs due to not breaking charm in time. The first two were fumbling with the new/different keystrokes for breaking charm. The next two were re-calibrating the max hit: gator pit can max hit for 5-6%, but gator alley can max hit for 8%. The other 4 lost mobs were mostly player error. Average hp on break was around 6-9% instead of the 12-15% I'd hope for without the ring. There was at least a half dozen instances where I would have lost a mob without the ring - these were almost all cases where I was distracted and glanced back just in time to react before losing a mob.

I killed a total of 432 alligators after hitting level 31. That's a 1.8% loss rate. Four of the losses were in the first few kills of level 31. There were a total of 402 gators after hitting level 32, or a 1% loss rate. I didn't record my losses in gator pit but I'll estimate a 10-15% loss rate there, some of which was due to being underwater. In chardok from 54-60 I'd estimate a 5-10% loss rate without the ring. Given 10 mobs in the entrance wing, that's between one lost mob per clearing of the entrance wing to one per every two clearings of the entrance wing.

When I get a 50%/10% health split on the two mobs I sometimes recharm or root/dot, but more often I'll use regen/thorns to melee the 50% away from the 10% until they run at 20%. I don't think this is a very common approach but I really like it. Combined with AC/HP gear it lets you efficiently use both your health and mana. This worked well in CT but in Kedge the fish are hitting hard enough that I'm switching to nuke or root/dot instead of regen/thorns for finishing off fights.

[BigChief]

Originally Posted by Faywind [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Title says it. Looking for advice on starting a new Druid, have a few questions. I've searched around the forums and have most of my answers.

I will be playing very casually, almost exclusively solo due to unreliable consistent play in a session (lots of afking).

I'm pretty dead set on Human at this point for various reasons so I don't need help there. I've got most of my gear purchased already too for when I start.

I will be doing as much charm killing as I can, not super interested in quadding or root rott/nuke playstyle as I have a wizard for that already.

So my question is, where to put my starting stats? 25wis 5sta? Does it really matter?

When I eventually get to 30, what school should I specialize in?

Finally, should I focus on mainly +WIS gear? Maybe throw in some +hp and +mana?

Thanks in advance.

If you want to charm things, Druid is not the class