Druid Questions

[nhdjoseywales]

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

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?

cuz chanters cant port

[kledar]

can't you just switch rings when you're not charming?

[loramin]

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

can't you just switch rings when you're not charming?

Of course you can. I think what Willie was getting at was, if you sink all your plat in to the Goblin Ghazuli ring, you won't have any plat left over to buy an alternate ring, and then for some odd reason you wouldn't get any more plat until you...

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

get to level 55 and not know how to play in a group or solo in a dungeon for loot.

But of course, you can always get more plat after buying the ring, and in fact one of the easiest ways for a druid to do so is to port people. And what's the fastest way to get to level 34 so that you can make money porting? You guessed it: charming.

[Daldaen]

It's all pretty irrelevant since you can get to 30/40 pretty quickly then just port people for 20-100 plat donations and in no time at all you can afford decent wisdom gear.

Wisdom gear doesn't help you much pre-30, because returns are weak. You can go Mana gear instead but most of that stuff sucks post-30, and you'll want to sell it and buy wis gear anyways. (Or it's really expensive)

My suggestion was mainly focused on the OP. Who had 4k to throw around on a Druid and I suggested the ring first.

You can blast through 14-30s charming (where a ring will be immensely more helpful than a few hundred mana), then while porting people, fund your own wis gear.

Going the other route of buying up wis gear first leads to saving up for a goblin ring or you'll get tempted and buy GEBs or Gatorscale Legs or Mammoth Cloak, etc. And by the time you can afford it you've already past many of the levels when it would've been very useful (when learning charm killing)

Again - Druids have 0 reason to do anything but charm 14-60. It's the fastest way to EXP. It allows you to hone your skills at pulling, handling a charmed pet, root CCing, maintaining your own buffs, etc. You're never at the whim of someone else's AFKs or screwed if someone camps. You can AFK whenever you want. If you need plat, porting is decent at low levels and power leveling at higher levels.

If you want to group because you liked a certain zone or your friends or guildmates are going and you wish to join, by all means, join them and have fun. Don't listen to the people who say because you charm killed you will be useless in a group. Especially in your typical P99 6-man group.

Snare mobs when low on HP if they're runners (don't do at 100%, cause you'll take aggro)
Damage Shield MT (at lower levels this is tedious, around 29-39 when the duration is increasing its a lot more valuable)
Regen MT (easier to do entire group when those spells are available)
SoW puller if outdoors (if outdoors, use Harmony and pull yourself... Harmony enabled Druid is best puller)
If no CC class, utilize root before mobs get to your camp to park them out of combat (hit melee mobs first, don't root casters outside of camp)
Heal people who need it (if cleric in group let them handle most healing just cover healing the cleric or help heal everyone on big pulls)

Having spent all your money on the ring and having minimal WIS gear is really a non issue. Plenty of Druids went 1-30 in leather armor and no WIS gear. Those Druids soloed and grouped just fine. In no way are you crippling your ability to group or solo if you spend all the plat on a clicky. You'll just end up taking a break from killing sooner than a mana twinked person would.

Or just farm up like 8k on your main and buy it all hehe.

[kremlar]

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

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.

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

Having spent all your money on the ring and having minimal WIS gear is really a non issue. Plenty of Druids went 1-30 in leather armor and no WIS gear. Those Druids soloed and grouped just fine.

I was kind of skeptical about suggesting somebody twink with just a goblin ring over a set of gear, but these are both really good points that changed my mind.

The only problem is that they don't sell for 4k, so unless OP wants to farm up another couple thousand plat it's not relevant.

[Daldaen]

I haven't bought one in awhile, I think I spent like 4.5k on my last one. Aren't they still around 4-5k? Or are they more.

So long as they are sub-10k they are worth it IMO.

[kremlar]

Rare to see them under 6k at the moment.

Not saying they aren't worth it at that price, just that it's a purely academic discussion if op has been away for a while and doesn't wanna relearn his old character and/or grind plat before living the mangy druid lifestyle.

[Renault]

You can agree to disagree with Dald, but it doesn't make you right.

There are plenty of arguments for what to stack. Some people will say Mana/Wis depending on level. Some will say HP/AC for a charm class. Sometimes resists, depending what you are doing. And then there are specialty items, like Gobbie Ring.

I 100% agree with Dald - you save xp and get a better feel for the potential of the class using a Gobbie Ring. Stacking wisdom only helps you to have a higher max mana pool, not a higher mana regen, and for most group situations on a druid, max mana pool isn't that important anyway. You will be meditating between chain pulls. For root/rotting or quadding you may need to stack mana, but then we have to discuss lumi staff, and in either case that is a 34+ discussion.

So...here are some options. I also agree with Dald that mid-30s druids can camp lots of items solo, but a Gobbie Ring in the late teens-mid 20s charming range is when it shines. It saves a significant % of mana, makes charming way more manageable in EK, and lets you learn how to do it right before mobs hit too hard.

[williestargell]

Again - Druids have 0 reason to do anything but charm 14-60

other than having fun and learning to properly play your class. this game isn't about how fast you can race to 60 for everyone, for some its about having fun on the way to 60.

All your advice is boiled down into one nugget - which is that the only way to play eq is to min/max. Min/maxers are what is wrong with this server. It's why people get to 60 and not know how to play their toons. Its why our raid scene sucks on many levels because people desire max pixels and are willing to do dirty things to get them.

Some people are born to min/max. Others want to play more casually. All I'm doing is pointing out for those people (OP possibly being one of them) that there are other ways to go. It's not about right and wrong, it's about knowing your options and picking the one that you think will be fun for you. If you want to play and use the other druid skills in addition to charm soloing then spending your whole wad of cash on a goblin ring is a bad idea.

[Itap]

Daldaen needs to add a disclaimer to his sig.

*The above post assumes you want to level your character as quickly and efficiently as possible.