Class Changes: Druid
Druid Core Spell Changes
For the first decade of the old server’s existence, Druids were considered somewhat underpowered. Over the second decade, however, the class received repeated buffs aimed at enhancing their healing capabilities in groups and raids without making them directly compete with Clerics. Despite these intentions, these buffs unintentionally shifted Druids away from their role as the jack-of-all-trades priest.
Seasonal events revealed that the repeated buffs to Revitalize had actually made Druids better tank healers than Clerics, particularly before Clerics gained access to relics.
At higher levels of play, these changes allowed Druids to take over the intended role of Shamans as primary tank healers. With strong cooldowns and a higher healing throughput than Shamans, combined with their ability to provide group healing when necessary, Druids became a more desirable choice as a secondary healer in the tank group over Shamans.
Revitalize was enhanced multiple times to improve Druids’ ability to heal tanks. Additionally, they were given spells like Natural Balance and Hibernate, which improved their ability to keep a group alive and made them exceptionally effective at saving tanks.
However, despite these buffs, Druids still struggled in situations requiring higher group healing throughput. While it was possible to make Druids work in such scenarios if you were familiar with the fights and could effectively combine spells like Hibernate, Circle of Soothing, and Circle of Vitality, raw throughput often necessitated reliance on Clerics alone.
During seasonal content, it was evident that the heal-over-time spell Relic: Sihala’s Empathy, intended to be a cornerstone of Druid healing in raid environments, did not fulfill its intended role effectively in most cases.
Druid damage, particularly from Runic: Cataclysm, also needed to be addressed. In its original form, Cataclysm alone made Druids the highest Area of Effect (AoE) damage dealers in the game, surpassing even pure DPS classes in AoE situations. While Druids are expected to excel in AoE damage for a healer class, outperforming every pure DPS class was not the intended design. The spell’s potency stemmed from it being a targeted AoE spell that triggered several additional targeted AoE spells, resulting in damage output roughly three times higher than what was expected from the spell description. To address this imbalance, the casted subspells of Cataclysm will no longer be targeted AoEs, bringing its damage to reasonable levels. To compensate for the reduction in AoE damage, we are also reducing its mana cost back to its previous amount and slightly decreasing its cast speed. We are also introducing a new cold rain spell at the runic level to recover some of the class’s lost damage and provide another option for single-target scenarios.
We also gave them two additional runics. Runic: Spined Resurgence is a unique and powerful heal over time spell with a 10-point damage shield. Runic: Barbed Ward, is a self-only damage shield serving as the new capstone to the Spineskin line.
To address these issues, we have implemented a series of changes with the following goals:
- Enhance Druids’ ability to group heal to be closer to that of Clerics without completely closing the gap.
- Ensure Druids are not the default best option for saving tanks.
- Return Revitalize to a state where it is not the most powerful healing spell at lower tiers.
- Redesign Relic: Sihala’s Empathy to better serve as a key healing spell in challenging content.
- Balance damage from Runic: Cataclysm to ensure Druids do not outclass pure DPS class AoE damage, while providing new options for single-target damage.
These changes aim to balance Druids’ versatility while ensuring they are neither underpowered nor overshadowing other classes in specific healing or damage roles.
Druid Spell Changes (Healing)
- Relic: Sihala’s Empathy has been redesigned into a single-target heal with an attached 3-tick heal-over-time (HoT). It provides 1900 healing up front, with an additional three ticks of 200 healing. The spell retains its slot, allowing it to stack with other HoT effects. This design change is intended to provide sustained healing while balancing mana cost and cast time.
- Runic: Cascading Vim is now group heal version of Relic: Sihala’s Empathy offers a similar healing profile but targets the entire group. It has a 4.5-second cast time and costs 760 mana. The HoT effect does not stack with Sihala’s Empathy, promoting strategic spell usage based on the scenario.
- Revitalize has been reverted to its pre-buff state. It now has a 4-second cast time and heals for 1780. This aims to reduce the Druids’ dominance as tank healers at lower tiers while keeping them competitive in various content.
- Hibernate has been removed, as it was too strong of a tool for preventing tank deaths.
- Natural Balance now only balances party health and no longer provides a small direct heal, promoting strategic spell usage based on the scenario.
- New Runic: Spined Resurgence: A single-target, 6-tick HoT spell that provides 610 health per tick and 10 points of damage shield. It has a 4-second cast time and costs 425 mana.
Druid Spell Changes (Damage)
- Runic: Cataclysm Runic: Cataclysm has been significantly adjusted. Its subspells—Cataclysm: Earthquake, Cataclysm: Hurricane, and Cataclysm: Flood—are no longer Area of Effect (AoE) spells, reducing their overwhelming damage output. The mana cost has been reduced to 430, and its cast speed slightly decreased to 4.75 seconds.
- New Runic: Freezing Tempest is a new cold rain spell available at the runic spell level. It deals 650 damage per wave, has a 3.5-second cast time, a -20 cold resistance adjust, and costs 390 mana. This spell aims to offer an alternative damage option in single-target scenarios and to compensate for the Druid’s reduction in AoE capabilities.
Druid Spell Changes (Utility)
- New Runic: Barbed Ward: A self-only damage shield in the Spineskin line, providing 78 bonus AC (after calculation adjustments), 25 damage shield, and 2% spell damage reduction.
Druid Alternative Advancement (AA) Changes
- Euphorbium Mastery was originally designed when damage shield (DS) values were much lower, and has become too powerful with the more recent proliferation of DS items and effects. It now provides a flat 7 damage shield per rank, clamping down on its previously excessive value.
- Advanced Apiculture was previously considered one of the weakest AAs. Advanced Apiculture has been reworked to provide a 25% chance to spawn a queen bee per rank, up from 3%. Additionally, it now increases the damage over time (DoT) damage of Crawling Swarm and Relic: Doomswarm by 5% per rank, making these niche spells more impactful when used.
Overall these changes aim to recalibrate the Druid’s abilities, ensuring they remain a versatile priest class without overshadowing other healers and casters in their specific roles.