Druid Questions

[nhdjoseywales]

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

I found charm kiting to be kind of frustrating when I tried it at level 19 or whatever in e. karana. The charm likes to break often, I wish I could snare and root, had trouble trying to control adds because I was sitting back a way. I can't afford the nifty goblin ring and I'm a human druid so I couldn't hide to break charm. The guide made it sounds so easy and there shouldn't be much downtime. I had a lot of downtime try to med my mana back up and had to run to zone often.

why cant you snare and root?

[williestargell]

Apparently he's not aware you can snare or root the intended pet before you pet it and then pet it afterward. Snare is much more effective here because it lasts lots longer.

[Daldaen]

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

why cant you snare and root?

I believe he is referencing the fact you can't do both until 1 month into Velious when Root and Snare stack.

The reason I say Goblin Ring > spending 5k on WIS gear is because it saves you time, allows you to be more precise with your breaks, and saves you EXP.

Without the ring you will be trying to hide break (which fails often) or casting a 40-50 mana spell with a 4-5 second cast time. You will sometimes have pets die in this period of time and sometimes when you hide to break you don't react fast enough after hide to cast invis or you hide, break immediately and the mob has too much health to die in one nuke when he likely would've lost that health in the 4-5 seconds you were planning on delaying. Plus this will let you med another tick longer usually because you can insta break whenever and not need to cast a spell.

When charm killing you will basically be casting snare or root (root indoor, snare outdoors), charm, and a nuke to kill your pet. Cutting out the invis cost does save some mana and getting more Med ticks can offset the lower WIS.

All that being said, if you have 4-5k available to yourself and you buy the goblin ring, the next 100 plat you get you could buy a few wis pieces and then when you're porting every 50-100 plat you could buy another piece.

Whereas if you spend your initial 4-5k on all that wis gear, you now need to spend awhile saving back up that much to buy the goblin ring.

Charming with one and without one is hugely noticeable. By the time you're leveling in kedge you definitely want one because it doubles as instant invis so you can travel around the zone easily (just learn where the mermaid area is and remember to invis there). Also at higher levels using it to break charm is extremely convenient because it doesn't prevent you from casting another spell immediately (like a root or a nuke) because it's a clicky. Whereas a spell invis will require you wait the 2 seconds until you can cast a new spell.

It's not required by any means but it makes life much easier. Far easier than the extra few hundred mana that gear would provide you. And yea, though you may need to stop and med a few mobs earlier than the Druid in wis gear, you will likely level equally as fast because you aren't losing any pets to late breaks from failed hides or casted invises. By your 30s you'll have porting and be able to make the platinum to easily close any mana gap you would've had with another Druid very quickly with how cheap that gear is.

[williestargell]

btw, if you time the tick you lose zero med time casting invis. tick/stand and cast/sit/tick.

As someone who has both a druid and enchanter, and who has had periods of having and not having the rings while charm exp'ing, I really do classify that as a luxury - you need a little more timing to cast the invis rather than click it. That is all.

Not all druids are going to spend 100% of their time charm soloing, some will group and some will solo via other methods (root rot and quadding). Unless your charm soloing a very high percentage of the time mana > goblin gazughi ring.

+mana items also need to be considered at low level. Something like Hollow Bone Bracers for your arms with 15 mana > 3-4 wisdom at low-mid level.

[loramin]

The guide Beckoning mentioned is this one, and it's great! I can't wait to use it for my Druid, and to add all the spots in it to the Per-Level Hunting Guide.

As for the ring, I'm with Daldaen: it makes more of a difference than buying an equivalent amount of gear IF you are charming ... which you really should be if you are soloing.

My Druid is only 24, but so far I've gotten way faster XP with charming than with rotting. It's not completely downtime free, but because it uses about the same amount of mana to kill two mobs:

• charm: 120
• 2x snare: 30
• nuke: 70
• maybe a heal if first charm gets resisted: 60
• ----------------------
• 280

as it takes to kill one by root/rot:

• 2x root: 60
• 2x crud DoT: 200
• 2x flame lick: 20
• ----------------------
• 280

it certainly means less time spent meditating (not to mention less time actually spent killing the mobs).

[williestargell]

add one invis vs. animals in there at 30 mana and that's what you're gaining from the ring. virtually nothing, because if you're running out of mana more than once in a blue moon while charming you're doing something wrong.

Charm soloing is fastest if you are a min/maxer and sadly almost everyone is, but outside kedge (which most druids should avoid like the plague cause its too dangerous for the average player) and perma bear pits the exp differential between charming and other methods of killing is over stated.

If you never quad and never root rot you've missed out on a good chunk of the druid "experience". And if you want to group then that goblin gazughi ring is going to be found to be totally useless when you're OOM as the group healer.

I'm not saying you shouldn't buy one. I'm saying you should buy the other basic gear first. I'm saying if you're 5k short of buying a hiero cloak you should sell the ring and buy the cloak, and then buy another ring later when you get another 5k.

Druids arent just an exp solo class, they can be a class to solo for valuable loots and to do that, you mostly have to root rot. If you go for that ring at low level you slightly increase your ability to charm solo totally at the expense of having enough mana to do anything else. You could completely equip the toon for that 5k, enabling him to use all the tools in your arsenal, or you could buy one item and wear cloth armor for the same price. It's just not logical to blow your whole bank on the one item.

[nhdjoseywales]

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

add one invis vs. animals in there at 30 mana and that's what you're gaining from the ring. virtually nothing, because if you're running out of mana more than once in a blue moon while charming you're doing something wrong.

Charm soloing is fastest if you are a min/maxer and sadly almost everyone is, but outside kedge (which most druids should avoid like the plague cause its too dangerous for the average player) and perma bear pits the exp differential between charming and other methods of killing is over stated.

If you never quad and never root rot you've missed out on a good chunk of the druid "experience". And if you want to group then that goblin gazughi ring is going to be found to be totally useless when you're OOM as the group healer.

I'm not saying you shouldn't buy one. I'm saying you should buy the other basic gear first. I'm saying if you're 5k short of buying a hiero cloak you should sell the ring and buy the cloak, and then buy another ring later when you get another 5k.

Druids arent just an exp solo class, they can be a class to solo for valuable loots and to do that, you mostly have to root rot. If you go for that ring at low level you slightly increase your ability to charm solo totally at the expense of having enough mana to do anything else. You could completely equip the toon for that 5k, enabling him to use all the tools in your arsenal, or you could buy one item and wear cloth armor for the same price. It's just not logical to blow your whole bank on the one item.

its not about that 30 mana, its about being able to determine exactly when charm breaks as opposed to its gonna break in 5 sec, i hope the mob life is where i estimate it will be and not higher so it beats on me and i have to use mana to heal and not lower so it dies right before the invis goes off and i lose the xp and waste time.

[loramin]

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

add one invis vs. animals in there at 30 mana and that's what you're gaining from the ring. virtually nothing, because if you're running out of mana more than once in a blue moon while charming you're doing something wrong.

If you've never charm soloed with/without the ring then I could understand why you'd have such a hard time appreciating a stupid invis vs. animals ring ... but if you tried both ways then you'd know what a difference the ring makes.

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

Charm soloing is fastest if you are a min/maxer and sadly almost everyone is, but outside kedge (which most druids should avoid like the plague cause its too dangerous for the average player) and perma bear pits the exp differential between charming and other methods of killing is over stated.

Over stated how? When I charm, I get XP faster (a little less than double) than when I rot. That's a fact, based on my experience soloing places like East Karana from levels 14-24 (not soloing Kedge).

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

I'm not saying you shouldn't buy one. I'm saying you should buy the other basic gear first.

Can you really say that anything is better than something you've never tried? You should actually try soloing with/without the ring at low levels before claiming it's better/worse than anything else.

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

You could completely equip the toon for that 5k, enabling him to use all the tools in your arsenal, or you could buy one item and wear cloth armor for the same price. It's just not logical to blow your whole bank on the one item.

Daldaen's already explained this much better, but I'll try again. Adding gear just ups your max mana/HP. It doesn't increase how fast you recover HP or mana, and it doesn't make you do more damage: all it does is make you a bit safer.

But the ring actually speeds up the rate at which you kill things. Unlike a mountain of gear, it actually gets you more XP, faster (when soloing; when grouping gear doesn't really speed up XP gain).

So it's really very simple: a single item that gets you more XP is better than a pile of items that don't get you more XP.

[loramin]

P.S. My main is a Shaman so I am all about the root rotting. When I first started my Druid alt I root/rotted because that was what I knew. But then I tried charming, and even though it took a little work to learn (the first hour or two was kinda rough), it worked so much better than rotting that I switched to charming almost exclusively. Nowadays I only root/rot when there's no animals around to charm.

[williestargell]

Daldaen's already explained this much better, but I'll try again. Adding gear just ups your max mana/HP. It doesn't increase how fast you recover HP or mana, and it doesn't make you do more damage: all it does is make you a bit safer

This works fine if all you're ever going to do is charm. Do you not have some friends you want to group with where you're going to nuke and heal and cast buffs. Naked you will not have enough mana to buff your group without needing to med after. Root rotting will be next to impossible to do correctly without some mana pool from gear. Soloing for loot in places like guk will be impossible to do naked.

If you wish to be one dimensional fine. I do not, and I think it's unfair to set up a new player for that type of non-fun experience. I don't want to see a druid get to level 55 and not know how to play in a group or solo in a dungeon for loot.

Seriously, if you want to do nothing but charm solo why are you playing a druid who's biggest strength is diversity instead of an enchanter?