Druid issues consolidated from the old thread. Druids please review! Then please continue to use the old thread for comments, discussions and further issues, and I will update the list. http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/p...?topic_id=49982 Damage Abilities Reverberate Usually shows as "Resisted" in the floating text, even though it's not resisted. (Bug) Fixed! Wierd bug seen where a mob's hp drops then bounces back up. Happens for other classes too, e.g. Disciple's Ra'jin Flare. (Bug) Starfall Bug with level 50 version fixed, but still not sufficient damage for a burst dps nuke at level 55. Starfall is important to our role as burst dps class. The Ire + Starfall combo should do more damage than any single cast from any other caster class - including sorcs. For high cost, 2 minute cooldown nuke, damage just does not compare to Lightning Blast (repeatable, costs 1 phen). Damage especially poor if Starfall does not crit. Move it to being learnt at level 55 now to match sequence (15,25,35,45) and raise damage to be suitable for 55. Examine accuracy/resist/mitigation. Starfall misses more than any other dps ability and at 10 phen point cost it should never miss. Wierd bug sometimes where the damage isn't applied immediately, but a few seconds later. This can be fatal when soloing, because Starfall is used to nuke something dead when you're in trouble. (Bug) Deadly Swarm - Bug with level 50 version fixed, but could move it to being learnt at level 55 now to match sequence (25,35,45) with damage suitable for 55. Earthquake - Bug with level 50 version fixed, but could move it to being learnt at level 55 now to match sequence (35,45) with damage suitable for 55. Superior Venomous Thorns - Resisted too much and cannot be used at all on some mobs, e.g. Fengrot, Varking, Karax. Cyclone - Never used normally since damage far too low. Needs scaling to match Upheaval so we can AE effectively when physical mobs present and Upheaval can't be used. Nature's Wrath - Cooldown is much longer than DoT duration, for a finisher it does not contribute that much overall. Please make cooldown shorter or duration longer, equal would be nice. Suncaller's Fury & Star Mantle Remove GCD so can be macroed. Increase range to 30m. The 25m range isn't enough to cast on tank from max range when mob is turned and tank +5m on the other side. Star Mantle needs serious damage boost, currently not really worth using. Also shorten the refresh, 10 mins is far too long. Star Mantle is reported twice in chat log, as both DoT and straight damage. (Bug) Wither Too highly resisted, needs adjusting a bit to bring in line with other physical spells like our DoTs. Most noticeable when fighting with rez sickness, some mobs Wither will never land until sickness expires when other spells only resisted sometimes. Resistance reduction seems not to be enough on very high level mobs, e.g. SoD drakes. Maybe add an accuracy-based debuffing affect? Energy-Based DoTs Wild Growth/Piercing Roots/Solar Flare are too weak post-50 compared to Superior Venomous Thorns, Lightning Blast and the finishers which are the main damage abilities used. Just not worth using except on arcane mobs. Make it worth keeping all our DoTs up and ticking again instead of not bothering with them. Would reduce reliance on phen for sustained dps. Some druids reporting energy issues with DoTs, low-mid levels where used more? DoT durations increased for necromancers, doing the same for druids would help with any energy issues, but having DoT up on mobs prevents Tranquility from dropping us out of combat. Burst DPS Druid class was designed as high burst dps with moderate sustained dps. At 50 druids were top casters for burst dps. Now at 55 this role has been lost. Sorc and necro are higher overall caster dps, but we need to out-burst them. Ire - Key ability for burst dps given to us in the big druid revamp - instant cast, no GCD, for chaining to Starfall or Call Lightning/Lightning Blast. Needs increased damage for use at level 55. Could move to being learnt at level 52 now to match sequence (4,12,20,28,36,44). Nature's Tempest - Give it 50-100% damage increase for 30-60 sec, comparable to ranger's 30 sec 50% self dmg booster + stances + talismans. At 7 phen points this is not a cheap ability and has 6 minute refresh. Used with phen abilities for maximum burst. Include phen in the 0% costs for duration, or 50% cost both energy and phen points. Damage Types Our DoTs are physical, our DD/nukes are arcane. This limits our options against mobs of these types. On arcane mobs we can get all DoTs up and have nothing left to cast for a few seconds (at level 55). An additional fire ability would help - maybe finisher, maybe DoT. Solar Flare - make this viable for repeated casting on arcane mobs. Remove cooldown time, increase DD component. Remove 4 sec DoT or combine into DD if necessary. Decrease energy cost, currently very expensive for relatively little damage at 55 and too much for repeated casting. Fireseeds - Increase stack size to 50. Always run out during longer fights and annoying to recast so frequently. (Most raiding druids will have /itemuse "Fireseeds" macroed into their abilities.) Has relatively long cast time on it, bad when you have to resummon them during fights. 50 would be plenty for any single raid fight, and then the cast time doesn't matter. Pet Persistence Level 53 pet sometimes reappears when dismounting even though dismissed before mount was summoned. (Bug) Pantheon set buff pet disappears when mounting, i.e. doesn't reappear after dismounting and has to be resummoned. (Bug) Pantheon set buff pet doesn't persist when relogging/crashing. (Bug) Pantheon set buff pet doesn't remember the /petname you give it. (Bug) Ability Descriptions (Bug) All abilities need damage and duration quantifying on the descriptions. (Missing because pet was developed/tested rapidly at the end of Pantheon testing.) Wind Spear needs hate reduction quantified on the description. How much hate is it removing as a percentage? Or as a flat amount per hit? Abilities Jamming (Bug) If Wind Spear is on autocast, but mob/tank/pet positions change and it can't fire off, this jams all other abilities from being used manually by clicking on them. This is 100% reproducible. Most likely Nature's Frenzy you'd want to use manually. Also seem to get failures clicking Frenzy when any ability is about to autocast and the autocast seems to get in first when it shouldn't. Please fix pet so that manual instructions to use abilities are always detected before trying to autocast. If you can't, remove the backstab requirement from Wind Spear to at least stop this failure (though watching for mob/tank/pet positioning does add something interesting to gameplay). Summon Pet Ability - Recasting and dismissing the current one right before cast completes resets all timer locks, allowing for multiple frenzy uses in short order. (Bug) Arcing Wrath Not firing on mob's spell attacks, only melee. Description says "whenever it attacks". (Bug) Hard to parse because show's up as "mob hitting mob" not under the pet's damage. Arcing Wrath/Crystallize/Mass of Mud - 3 second cast time is too long. Crystallize especially is not worth using, too low damage for the cast time. Nature's Frenzy Reduce cost to 1 or 2 phen points. The extra damage you get from this does not compare with 3x Lightning Blast for 3 phen points. It needs to be more cost effective. Reduce the refresh to 2 minutes like Starfall and Deadly Swarm, 5 mins is far too long. Starfall in particular (if/when fixed) is an important burst ability but we can't cast the pet's burst ability as often, and at the same time. Ability to make the pet "almost invulnernable to AEs" is good in theory, but it's in the wrong place. Needs to go on an ability the pet can cast repeatedly. Suggestions: Move it to Wind Spear. Or make it a separate pet ability, instant cast, refresh and duration equal at 30-60 seconds, costing 1 phen only. Durability - Pet still dies too fast on mobs with damage shields. Also cannot survive in fights when it receives no group heals because druid and group healer are at max range, e.g. AEs on Guar and IoG elementals. Give pet (and minions) the same 75% AE mitigation as necromancers. Order Aligned Fairy - Improve appearance to balance the black chaos fairy and distinguish it more from neutral pets and the various fairy mobs ingame. Suggestion to do this quickly: Copy/paste the soft glowing effect used on escorted player fairy illusion in the Vol Tuniel trial. Overall Pet Dps - Pet dps is now lower than an earthern marauder (currently available from Nature's Tempest) and we originally had 4x earthern marauders on Test. Mixed opinions amongst druids on the pet in general, but some suggestions: Boost pet dps up to at least what the earthern marauders give, by un-nerfing the auto-attack and/or increasing the damage from abilities/decreasing cast times. Make it a caster pet doing ranged damage like the magma minions instead of the auto attack. Give the abilties directly to the druid and get rid of pet.
Minions Earthern Minions - Still doing physical damage despite changes (during Pantheon/50+ ability testing) to make minions free from any damage type.(Bug) Fixed! Magma Minions - Increase range to 25m+. Current range means they die in fights where casters must be at 25m (max range) and 20m on minion is not enough to avoid AEs. Summon Earthern Elemental - Apply design of original post-55 druid spell to help mid-level druids. Make Summon Earthern Elemental III summon 2x minions at once, and Summon Earthern Elemental IV and V summon 3x minions at once. (To match number of minions allowed at once by Earth Mastery.) Summon Magma Elemental - Change "Fire Finish" on description, misleading since damage type removed from minions. Nature's Tempest - Change to 2x magma minions. Earth one dies instantly against AE mobs. Damage - At level 55, minions frequently miss level 57/58 mobs or hit for 1-3 damage. Auto-Assist - Revert auto-assist on minions or add a slash command to toggle on/off. Auto-assist causes minions to break our roots and mez. Also can't avoid minions dying on mobs with furious because can't be kept from re-engaging if druid is doing damage when furious is up. Survivability - Earthern and magma minions at all levels need a big increase in hp/mit. Healing Lifestream Allows you to single target heal through locked encounters. (Bug) Heals for about 2/3rds of what it says it should. Resulting heal value close to reported base number on tooltip, not green number on tooltip for what actual heal value should be. (Bug) Restricted to group, but description says all within 10m. (Bug) Reduce the cost to 5-10 phen. Costs one-quarter of our phen pool and often not worth the loss of dps now. Restore - Did not receive upgrade post-50, would expect one at 52 to match the sequence (10,16,22,28,34,40,46). At level 55, our main healing spell is now 9 levels below us. Healing Turn (Counterspell) - Healing Turn II and III are effectively downgrades. Only heal a small amount more but cost a lot more energy. Soothing Rain/Lifestream/Healing Turn - Increase their range to 25m. Often druid is at >15m or >25m due to mob AEs and heals don't reach melee members of group/raid. Utilities Tranquility- Visual effect (sphere around player) always appears on the druid, not on defensive target. This is not just cosmetic, it causes confusion. (Bug) Nature's Calm - Description need fixing, it says restricted to certain mob types, but it has never been restricted. (Bug). Treeshape/Nature's Tempest - Both can fail because a space check is performed for the illusion component. Fails when standing too near walls or tucked in a corner. Much more common on treeshape because the illusion is so large. Let the illusion fail if necessary, but not the whole ability. If you can't fix the space check, shrink the illusion down alot, or remove the tree illusion and rename the ability to something else. (Bug) Treeshape Does not remove negative effects as stated on description. Only place ever seen to be working is recent Denske/Kensu Contagion debuff. (Bug) Causes 2 lines of chat log spam every second, because invul is pulsed. 30 mins refresh is too long now it is an aggro wipe and cannot be used to tank, 5 or 10 mins would be reasonable. Mixed opinions amongst druids on what Treeshape should do. Some want it returned to previous state where you hold aggro not wiping it, allowing druids to tank briefly. Some like it as a 30 second pulsed invul, for avoiding a total group/raid wipe. Others like it just to wipe hate/aggro mid-fight and the buff is cancelled immediately after casting. Tranquility/Treeshape - Recent change to make flurry/rage go through invuls wrecks these abilities, needs to be reversed for druid invuls. These abilities cannot be used on tanks in combat so this tank check/balancing measure is not applicable. Our invuls wipe aggro, do not allow casting of other abilities, block incoming heals and have high cost/refresh. They are last resort abilities for preventing death. Tranquility has secondary use for training. Both these uses are ruined if they do not make the character 100% invulnerable. Antshape - Casting after levitate causes you to rapidly bounce up and down on the ground, shaking your whole view badly (Bug). Okeli's Shield Has stopped appearing in the Effects Maintained UI window. Confirmed in default UI and custom UIs, and with other druid players. This is an important indicator to see when 2 hits have been taken and the buff lost on the person cast on. Ikik said this had been turned off but didn't know why and what would allow it to be turned back on. (Bug) When spell refresh is hasted, Okeli's Shield is back up for casting before Okeli's Mark has expired on the target. This plays havoc with recasting it, we can't see the timer on the other player. So it can be totally wasted when recast, then it's down for another 30 seconds. Simple solution is to remove the Okeli's Mark block. Or shorten Okeli's Mark to just under the minimum refresh you could possibly get on Okeli's Shield if a player has spell refresh capped. Or implement change for Shaman runes/invuls, check player for Okeli's Mark and fail to cast the spell if present. Increase range to 30m. The 25m range isn't enough to cast on a tank from max range in AE fights when mob is turned and tank +5m on the other side. Theranthropy - Raid-wide wolf illusion causes huge lag when in combat, so much it's just not used in raids. Split illusion into separate area effect buff like kobold and give it simple non-lagging spell effect instead (wolf-related if possible). Quelling Wind Not an effective deaggro, just does not work for us. Only 7% reduction, has cast time and GCD. Many druids doubt whether it works at all. Needs a serious boost in hate reduction. Currently invuls are used to wipe aggro mid-fight instead but this is clumsy and expensive. Same mechanics as the Lingering Dispersion suggested for necros would be very happily accepted by druids! We are a DoT class too, Deadly Swarm and Nature's Wrath are particularly bad for pulling aggro. Include nearby enemies too though as per Quelling Winds description. Rampant Roots - Have to be inside the mobs to use it since roots mobs 10m from yourself, very dangerous to do. Better would be 10m from targeted mob. Brilliant Aurora/Aurora Borealis - Remove restriction of mobs resisting/immune to this. High cost of 15 phen, long 10 min refresh, this should never fail. Great utility in theory but currently doesn't work when needed. Taproot - Broken by AEs in a lot of new content, e.g. Pantheon trash. This messes up energy regen during fights. Make it never break, we can always cancel it early to escape the root. Berry Timers - Mottleberries used a lot but the other berries don't get used. Split Mottleberries, Roseberries and Sageberries so they don't share the same 1 minute cooldown time. Mottleberries are used regularly/constantly in fights, some people have them macroed in. However Roseberries and Sageberries need to be used instantly when hit or poisoned, but are rarely available at the right time due to the cooldown on the Mottleberries. Sageberries - Not currently effective and rarely used. Needs a much shorter timer like 10 seconds (as well as it being separate) because often in fights the debuffs land several times a minute. Make them work for diseases too. Far more diseases than poisons ingame, so not many debuffs Sageberries will actually work for. Night Eye Berries - Don't seem to do anything at all, what are they supposed to do? Certainly don't work like the sorcerer see invis buff does. (Bug)
Buffs Talisman of the Grove - Errors in abilities window descriptions and buff icon tooltips. (Bugs) Abilities window says +405 HP, it's actually +400 HP (tooltip on buff is correct). Abilities window says increases fire resistance by 0, it's actually +196. (tooltip on buff is correct). Abilities window says 61 point damage shield, tooltip say 40. Since Barbwood Talisman at level 48 is 49 points, tooltip is wrong. Abilities window does not mention the +125 holy and shadow resistances (tooltip on buff is correct). Abilities window does not mention the Sunder proc and the damage it does. Seer's Intensity Replace strength and dexterity with something better suiting a caster self buff. Historical leftover from pre-druid revamp and encumbrance. Suggestions for replacements: Wisdom, constitution, 15% spell refresh haste (non-stacking). Cloudwalk - Change to group buff, like other classes that can cast levitation on other players. Currently have to buff 6 people separately when groups need levitation. Speed Buffs Seer's Intensity is not stacking properly with Speed of the Wolf/Pack/all-in-one buffs. (Bug) Wolf shaman given self buff speed increase to 90%, please give druids same on Seer's Intensity (with stacking). Bountiful Harvest - Change the cost from phen to energy. This ability gives identical berries to the single target berry spells, nothing better. It exists for convenience when raiding like the all-in-one buffs, but it costs 4 phen to rebuff a 4-group raid force. Value of Buffs - A boost to druid group buffs to increase their desirability would be welcomed. Observed that shamans got some nice tweaks to their buffs. Other Reporting of DoTs and Debuffs - these bug out in the mob debuff UI window after wiping hate using Treeshape or Tranquility. (Also after a z-axis reset.) Icons are no longer removed when DoT wears off, or appear twice. Ikik has already looked at this once but his first attempt at fixing it didn't succeed. (Bug) Phen Pool - Did not increase post-50. Jharuu Naturalist's Belt (druid only IoG item) - Phen refresh of 1 per 5 mins is negligible, not even observable. 1 per 30 secs would be realistic. Fairy DPS / Tier 3 Pantheon Armour - Is the tier 3 set bonus "increase power of protector of growth" going to be significant given the pet dps was already reduced because it was considered too powerful? This does not seem as valuable as the sorcerer set bonuses. Please explain what this will give us. Foraging Too slow to get the items you want due to the randomness, 15 second cooldown, and having things we don't generally want included in the loot table: Monkshood for dodge (for the rangers) and the fishing grubs and earthworms. Therefore items not used much. Increase the drops so you get 3-4 items each time. Items take up inventory space. Suggestion: Give druids and rangers a 20-30 slot fishing tackle + foraged items bag for the fishing bag slot, since we forage fishing stuff too. Increasing stack size to 50 wouldn't hurt. The Big "Lack of Desirable Utility" Issue (as short as possible) Druid is a utility-caster class, intended to be high utility, moderate sustained dps and high burst dps. Healing has always been a defining part of the druid class and a large part of our utility. Low-mid level druids for soloing/small groups are great fun. But 50+ druids are not desired in groups/raids for extra healing and not essential for utility either. Reasons: No new/upgraded heals at 50+, whilst other non-healer classes got some. No new healing gear post-APW available for druids with HF. Increased raid size (18 => 24 man) and unlocking of 50+ content (now and in future) so small raids replace groups (6 => 12 man). More healer classes present means little/no demand for druid as backup any more. Also less value in druids being a multi-purpose, bit of everything class. Buffs/berries do not equal in-fight abilities, and can be always be provided by a buff bot alt standing outside group/raid. Roots unusable on 50+ content, and would not be wanted in groups/raids unless content created with rootable, unmezzable mobs. Aurora unusable in dungeons/tougher encounters. Hibernate unusable in dungeons/tough encounters where mez is needed. Direction of 50+ content starting from APW, then overland raid bosses but exaggerated even further in Pantheon, Vi'Rak. High demand is placed on key utilities which are essential for the content, which other utility and even non-utility classes can provide but druids cannot: mez, disenchant, cure disease, stance kick. If you don't want us to be part-time healers at 50+, druids need other major utility improvements/additions to replace this including some of the "essential" utilities, to be desirable compared to other caster classes in post-50 content. We are utility-casters, please make us USEFUL again. Suggestions: Revert our mez to be unstricted so we can help with crowd control on all mobs, as it was before the druid revamp. (Would be a good start but it does not set us apart.) Replace Hibernate and Binding Roots at 50+ with a root-like mez, i.e. 50% chance to break if hit. Would replace unusable root abilities and give us 2nd best mez ingame without affecting psis. Duration of 60-80 secs like Hibernate/Binding Roots. Move disenchant ability from sorcs to druids. Or weaken sorc disenchant and give druids double strength version. Controversial! But worth considering. Sorcs have more desirable incombat utilities for 50+ content than druids and this would address the dps/utility imbalance between these classes. Give us a stance removal ability post-50 (ie caster stance "kick"). No caster classes currently have this. An earth-themed ability that shakes the ground beneath the mob's feet would justify throwing them out of a stance and fits the theme of the druid abilities, we've got Earthquake and Upheaval as AEs. Could be a physical spell but must be instant cast, zero refresh (GCD only), and not fail on physical mobs or it wouldn't be of equal value to the melee stance kicks. Give us stances or auras which provide group-wide benefits for each of the archetypes, i.e. damage, regen, heal increase, defensive. Add a cure component (both poison and disease) to Soothing Rain that ticks with the HoT. Would be useful in the newer content where lots of diseases exist, and many minor ones don't get cured on classes that can't do it themselves. Add energy giving component to Lifestream (with fix to hit all allies not just group). Give us silencing ability druids had back in beta.
Tooltip Bugs on Druid Abilities Most druid heal/damage ability tooltips are missing the red/green numbers for actual healing/damage. Abilities needing this fix are: Barbwood Talisman I-VII (for hp value, as seen on equivalent upgrade Talisman of the Grove). Call Lightning I-IV Cyclone I-IV Deadly Swarm I-IV Earthquake I-III Fireseeds Ire I-VII Lightning Blast Lightning Strike I-V Nature's Wrath I-VI Piercing Roots I-VII Restore I-VII Reverberate Solar Flare I-VI Soothe I-VI and Superior Soothe - second value for HoT has green number, but first number for direct heal doesn't. Soothing Rain I-II Starfall I-V Stormcaller's Fury I-VI Suncaller's Fury I-III Superior Venomous Thorns Thunderclap I-IV Upheaval Venomous Thorns I-VI Wild Growth I-V Star Mantle - doesn't give any value for the damage. Talisman of the Grove - see under Buffs section above for this one.
*bump* (because continuously editing doesn't bump heh) And assuming no more slippage in the schedule, druid week will be 7th Dec.
So, since its now Dec. 23.......i take it they are running alittle behind. Or is this something that getting "put on the shelf" too?????
There was a 'slippage' as the dragon there put it. About a month ago it was announced that the class revisions were all being postponed until after Christmas while they worked on some other stuff that had popped up. According to Silius latest post they still do intend to finish off the remaining classes (of course there's always the possibility that could change). We just don't have any dates yet.
A few nasty issues appeared while working on the other classes and a few other things on the back end of the gmae that needed to be fixed appeared. That were brought to light from the new systems they are working on for the classes as well as the new stats window (will show all stats from buffs and gear). This is why they had to pull fire pumal as well as the rogues ability and scale back work on a few other things while they work out the kinks.
I am still updating this list as druid bugs come and go. Please continue to use the other thread for discussions on druid issues. I posted some new stuff for discussion.
