Class: Druids

[Endlessorrow]

I know this is touchy with the druid class being prerequsite for dragons and shifters but I have been playing a caster druid and It is not a strong as a caster sorc or wiz or cleric even still decent but very few spell slots even with very high wis and the lack of haste kills me more than any other problem with the build. I propose;

Giving the natures ballance spell a haste effect to all allies, this is a lvl 8 spell and the druid couldnt slot alot of them, perhaps for ballance concerns shapeshifting would cancel the spell?
Or give elder air elementals or fire elementals a haste spell special, this requires 20 druid lvls to acheive that form!

Give earth quake a knockdown effect dc vs discipline?
Give inferno increased damage. Say d4 per lvl.
Give the third lvl quill fire spell increased damage scaled to lvl perhaps d4per lvl?
Give the bombardment spell stun or kd effect.

[Abimael]

Give earth quake a knockdown effect dc vs discipline?
Give inferno increased damage. Say d4 per lvl.
Give the third lvl sting spell increased damage scaled to lvl perhaps d4per lvl?
Give the bombardment spell stun or kd effect.

Although the caster druid really could use some enhancements, giving so much status dealing might become a problem. We all know what Stonehold can do, now imagine a spell that not only disables but also damages everyone in the area of effect. At lvl 20, with Owl's Insight, with dcs near 30, it will become an instant killing machine.

Edit: typo

[Redaurora]

Actually, just fix the buggyness with lagging and not-working AOEs and druids will be fine.

I've heard its possible, and its been brought up before. Fuzzy on other details tho.

[Terrorble]

This is essentially the druid-specific spell list.  Several things are improved in GvM already.  I have fiddled with improvements to quite a few of these spells and totally agree that several of them could use some real help. 

I'll have to look into the AoE thing again.  Looked into it a long time ago but I didn't know much back then.  Also testing it offline is hard since the heartbeat effects not happening seems to occur mostly in online play.

Lvl1:
  camouflage
  entangle (shoulda been druid/ranger only) - not even sure I've ever seen this spell work
Lvl2:
  barkskin
  blood frenzy
  flame lash
  one with the land
Lvl3:
  call lightning
  gr magic fang
  infestation of maggots
  healing sting
  quillfire
  spike growth
Lvl4:
  mass camouflage
Lvl5:
  awaken
  inferno - lvl5 spell that does 2d6 fire dmg that you can basically ignore and use a heal kit in 8 rounds if it starts to annoy you.  My version makes you go blind for 4sec if you fail a fort save every round that it lasts.
  owl's insight
  vine mine - for a lvl5 spell this is a joke.
Lvl6:
  crumble
  drown
  stonehold
Lvl7:
  aura of vitality
  creeping doom
Lvl8:
  bombardment - if you compare this to horrid wilting, they are the same level but you have to focus in conjuration which is pointless, it maxes out at 15d8 instead of 25d8, it can hit the caster, and I think you can make an evasion save against it.
  nature's balance - imo this spell does nothing.  Adding haste among other things is an idea.
Lvl9:
  earthquake (so wierd that clerics get this as a lvl8 spell or even at all) - since my bias is that it should be a druid spell I agree that it should have added effects for druids.  KD makes the most sense.
  elemental swarm
  storm of vengeance (clerics shouldn't have had this tho this spell is insanely powerful when it works)

[Terrorble]

So I found the approach that is used to make AoE spell heartbeat effects actually work but I'm not sure fixing this sort of thing is as easy as making a single fix.  Bummer.  Time to start in and see what happens. 

The original issue is none other than game lag.  It appears the continuing spell effects are simply not given very good priority in the game engine so any time there is anything of higher priority that requires available processing power, which must be just about always, the spell effect does not fire.

[Endlessorrow]

more technical than I am educated enough on the game to coment on.... That said I willl say I beleive removing the heartbeat script may cause aoes like b-tide to follow you around all the time and reduce game lag at the same time.

 I was told this by old school builder Leafstone. I dont mess with scripting at that lvl personaly I am a 4 year scripting noob but Leaf usualy new his stuff.

[BaaRamYou]

I do not know the state of game balance after the wipe, but I'll comment on what I saw druids as pre-wipe: very good to multi-class with clerics, and I don't just mean dragons.

I made two druid20/cleric19/bard1's (1 an elf spotter+zen archery; the other with epic evoc/trans foci +44wis, +3 mod short of the best DC's) and goodness that was a LOT of spells to spam. Low lvl druid spells are undoubtedly less useful than cleric ones, so i filled up the entire rack of them with lesser dispels and darkness. Lesser dispels work on the bigby grab (lower lvl one that doesn't do dmg), don't know why, it's just very easy to dispel those. Lesser dispel also removes darkness 100% of the time too, very good for cleaning up before you invis/GS to run. Combined with a few remove blind's from cleric slots this made you pretty good melee support.

For higher lvl druid slots the good ones are
 - drown (indirectly buffed by making PM's take 10% more bludge)
 - sunburst (immunity existed but on very weak items, so I'd never encountered one)
 - and now crumble, but only cos constructs were buffed. I didn't comment on the worries people had about constructs becoming overpowered solely because of this spell. Got buffed to 20d6 too iirc.
 - call lightning and flame lash. Got buffed too, and become much better finishers after a drown.
 - owl's insight. Saves you spell and item slots.
A druid caster can kill low-save opponents quite easily with sunburst->drown->firestorm/call lightning/flame lash.

With cleric lvls you get all the good stuff like
 - implosion
 - WoF(so that sunburst can be relegated to your fallback blind vs immunes)
 - GS
 - haste maybe?
 - true seeing with as low as lvl 3+4 slots, whilst druid had to use lvl 7 ones.

Druid levels alone would be pretty hard pressed to kill a high save opponent, or a hipser, while saving enough slots for heals and true see. Same goes for a pure cleric caster, especially without drown. But when you combine the two and can spam 14 drowns + everything else AND still have enough slots for maybe 10 heals is when it becomes quite scary, or maybe I'm just overblowing my own trumpet. If you were in a party and not nuking, you could stock up on some ~40(clr6-9,drd7-9) heals/massheal/GRestore too.

Would be nice to see the weaker druid spells get buffed, since I mostly played them (before the massive barb buffs :p) and often complained to myself about how lacking they were vs clerics, even having 1 less slot per spell lvl). I'm saying all this just to warn you of what drd/clr 20/19 might become if you do buff them. Maybe add bonuses only for epic druid lvls?

[Endlessorrow]

I agree clrc druid is a leathel combo another good way to go is to focus unarmed and buff ab and throw alot of harms  I have done that b4.....    Main problem is with mords the way it is now players and tons of monsters will strip every buff you have with 1 mords,   also you will be ineffective against lots of spawns now who all seem to have 35ish sr