Druids

[Cearbhalyn]

but valius I would bet that you can also almost double the amount of players on at a time over may as well. As the shard gains more people, its going to gain more druids. As well most the druids I see have had their staves for quite a long time.

Have a good one.

[Illithid]

I think that what Valius tried to say is more people who want to kill really bad mobs just choose the samurai/paladin path.

[Cearbhalyn]

no, he was saying that there are alot of people playing druids ...he and I have had this conversation before.

[Fea]

Huh? I'm sorry ...I looked through the posts again and nowhere do I see anything about samurai/paladins? But I am brainless at times so maybe I missed something.  Please do not think I am trying to pick ... I am just confused.

[Valius]

Actually, there were around 30 people on average playing when I left, and there's about 30 people average when I play now.

[Illithid]

Huh? I'm sorry ...I looked through the posts again and nowhere do I see anything about samurai/paladins? But I am brainless at times so maybe I missed something.  Please do not think I am trying to pick ... I am just confused.

No, you are correct, but I just brought that up simply because I think there are only two different pvm templates, druid/tamer and samurai/paladin. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Valius]

There are some minor different templates - but as far as I am personally concerned - ie, my opinion is that you either have to be a Druid of a Bushido/Chiv to make anything of yourself in PVM.

I'm sure there're some people who use other templates, but I would assume that they don't hunt some of the larger mobs either.

[Cearbhalyn]

Actually I have seen 40 ppl on in the evenings Valius, not just last night ..... It flucuates quite a bit, and also, almost all the druids I know have been so for months.

But I will desist becuase the point is not important .

[Valius]

You have to remember that I'm British so I play at different times to you - and on AVERAGE I see AROUND 30 people. Not that it's really worth arguing over.

[Cearbhalyn]

Then Why are you , and trust me I never forget your British

[Valius]

Just pointing out for the record that I play from a different timezone, so I'm bound to see different numbers. But if you want to get the last word in, feel free.


Anyway, back on topic.

When I've had something of a chance to look at the Druid spells we have on our server (I would like to reference them and see how they came to be etc) and make a start on this Malimancy business, then we at least might take some of the attention away from Chiv Bushido - perhaps if negative karma users simply can't use chivalry at all or something? But this really is only giving us the same kinda spells for the negative inclined persons on the server.

We need to look at the lesser professions on the server.

If you look back at the original OSI builds (pre-AoS), you have a few set templates:


Warrior:

Dex Monkey: Very high dex to strike quickly, with weapons that paralyze like spears.
Parry warrior: Weapon and a shield to ignore blows and tank
2handed weapon: Dishes out lots of damage
Lumberjack: Extra damage with axe and lumberjacking
Archers: Speaks for itself

Magery

Tank Mage: Heavy armour wearing mage
Nox Mage: High poisoning skill
Roach mage: mostly for factions - could hide and stealth
Pure Mage: No specialisation per say
Archery mage: Archery as a back up for when out of mana

Others

Thief: Good for taking rares, or upsetting archers by stealing their arrows
Bards: Using music, and usually bows, to engage enemies
Tamers: Using pets, usually the WW to tank opponents
Assassin: Warrior hybrid with hiding and poisoning
T-Hunter: PVM only, specialised in chests and fishing

Crafters

This really speaks for itself I suppose.



Now the thing is, those 'classes' established themselves because of the limitation on skill points allowed (700) and stat points (275? I can't remember) meant that you had to really think about your build. Although it was technically possible to have a blacksmith who was also a warrior, it was ver difficult and meant a lot of compromise. But here, we're more or less spoilt for choise. It doesn't matter if we take Magery, Eval, Meditation, Focus and Healing because we can get those to 120 and still have 5 slots at 120 points to take druidism or warrior skills. ATM I'm looking at Eo's template and I have a spare 105 skill points that I've not allocated, even after taking random skills I don't really need - because we're too spoilt.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice being able to take a lot of skills on one character, but mix that with sockets and you soon end up with a char that's too powerful for its own good. We regularly waltz into Doom and take the harrower without as much as a second thought about it. We can waltz into Destard and floss our teeth with Dragon scales because we're uber-powered. I'm the first to agree that Chivalry makes a lot of difference as to whether you survive a fight or not - I even worked it out elsewhere in the forums as to what sort of extra damage you're looking at by using Chiv. But to be allowed to add Bushido on top, and only for the sake of one single spell - Evasion, you're suddenly ignoring an additional 70% of damage? Add on top the socketted items... and well.

But on the other scale, with Druids, you have the Enchanted Grove. Yes, I know it's been nerfed and no longer HEALS as quickly as it used to - and to be quite honest that's a very good thing. Now people can't simply say "Killing God, need druid" because they know the EG is going to keep them healed up, and to some lesser extent it means that the Druid drops to a more of a support role, having to hand out additional greater heals to characters in the party - but at the same time, the EG keeps their mana too high, so they can happily dump out the Energy Vortexes without thinking about it, whilst controlling a various beasts like the Rune beetle, which they can heal manually or with a macro at the same time. I know when Eo was a Druid, I used to hunt by plonking down an EG and just kicking out lots of EVs to do the fighting, because it's a lot quicker and easier then using such as a Dragon.

Until a way is found to keep elite skills such as Chivalry, Druidism and Bushido (and I do believe that Chivalry and Bushido should start being concidered as elite skills due to the power that they represent when used together) either subjued in some way - or just simply harder to obtain, then we're going to have a massive influx of over-powered players, and continued arguements over which is better- Druidism or Chiv/Bushido.

Having been both classes in my time, I can safely say one thing though. They are both as over-powered as one another, and when adding up their individual pros and cons, I would not (personally) say that one is more powerful then the other. They both have up and down sides, how-ever small, and both take an ammount of learning and skill to use properly.

Anyway, I'll get off of the old soapbox. The above is litterally an example of typing what I'm thinking as I think it.

[Cearbhalyn]

Um, first off , your back to the topic has nothing to do with the topic .....the topic is everything about DRUIDS...which has nothing whatso ever to do with OSI really. You are still arguing, and Im not sure agasint whom.
Which related to Two..... Still argueing ....why ?

[Illithid]

The text was about differences of druids and melee warriors, and it was really good.
He was saying that with 700/225 skill limits you had more options to choose from. We have double that skill limit which merges the templates and fuses them so we don't have so much to choose from (maybe we should?).
The text was really pointing out that druids are mostly considered as support class. While EG is great support spell, and VE is really good offensive spell, it really leaves out that variability of a paladin. While we have absolutely no chance fighting fire resistant monsters (well, at least without disco) paladins can focus all their damage to the weakest resistanse of a monster and thus ditch out decent damage. What if VE was a rainbow eruption that deals damage according to enemies resists? Well, it's almost too good already, only that it doesn't leave us so much variety that paladin's have.

[Valius]

Yay, one person gets me at least 

Instead of re-hashing what I've said and analyzing it, I will say one more thing.

We, as a community, need to be looking at the classes (as they are percieved on this server) and looking at what skills are contributed to making that template - and what ways we can improve certain skills in order to promote some form of balance. Or, we can admit that Druidism and Bushido/Paladins are meant to be elite and make them harder skills to achieve perhaps?

[Kevetsa]

Any increase in druids I'm going to blame on the change in the location of the staff.

The original message was vague and cryptic, and the location was pretty obscure. The new message narrows the area down to 2 places (well, really one, but there's a slight margin for confusion). Although there may be a little hunting required, it's not the same as running across an entire facet to find the staff.