Runes of Magic US / AU

Based on Xerise's lovely guides.. it sounds like you want to go D/R.

D/S is the ultimate healer but as the guide points out you'll need 2 sets of gears if you want DPS as well.

As a D/R you will not be able to solo heal end game raids. However you will be an efficient back up healer and have much better dps than D/S. If you want to solo heal end game though D/R is not the right choice. P.S I am a D/R and I love it.


Edit: I thought I should mention that I have not done all the end game instances so I am not 100% that D/R can't heal them. I have done KS and TT however. I can solo heal KS but I have trouble in TT and need back up healing during boss fights. I am not fully geared so I might be able to solo heal it but I am not optimistic. However, this is not a big deal for me bc I don't like being the only healer I enjoy being a back up healer which the D/R is very good at.

I, too, am torn between the two. I feel like D/S is what I "should" make, but D/R is what I "want" to make. I don't want to have fun leveling, spend money to gear up, and get to endgame just to wish my secondary were scout instead... but the only way to find out, is to get there and try it.

D/R is fun and can be a decent end game healer. dps is OK but no where near a real dps class ( unless u gear it with all mage gear and stats, but thats a different story ) D/R elites are very party friendly ( darkmoon and speed catalyst ) so is viable end game combo. wont heal like a D/S but up through WA shouldn't be an issue as long as you keep your gear at par.

Good to know, thank you. I don't expect to ever dps like a real dps class, I have my scout if I want to do that. But with my scout now being limited to shot only because of the shot triggering global cooldown issue, and my rogue side being totally trainwrecked due to the change... I'm bored. My p/m is already pretty much limited to only one skill as well, GH. Both are common and all over the place. I need something to wake me up, and make me proud of my class again.

I want to get out of the super competitive dps field, and lay back to enjoy the game and enjoy runs more, without staring at the scrutinizer and worrying about who is or isn't beating me on it. I want to be different, unique, and have a full skill bar with some sort of challenge as to which skills I use on who and in what order. I want to be good because I'm good, I don't want to be good because I know how to mash one of the only buttons that I have left. I don't want to be gimped offensively, as it seems p/k and d/s are. I feel like I don't need to be able to solo heal, as my boyfriend is a priest and chances are I'll be complimenting his healing in runs anyways. I love all the d/r elites. I love dual wielding. And I just love that it's not the "usual" decision, and that if I get it to endgame and enjoy it and do it well, I'll be one of the few who did.

Sorry for the rant. :p

Amen, brudda... i play a D/M and i can tell you... overall druid heals are SUPA efficient and really awesome... but are a lil less then priests... ive rolled both D/r and D/s and lvled them to 50 each to see about the elites... I personally prefer D/s because i liek to be far away form my target as well as it complements the druids ranged abilites... D/r kinda messes me up... it was fun and all... but the melee doesnt go well with the ranged... also the elites are strange lol... mostly posions and such things as that.

Quoted from "rouks;343100"

D/r kinda messes me up... it was fun and all... but the melee doesnt go well with the ranged... also the elites are strange lol... mostly posions and such things as that.

I'm loving my D/R, gotten to 60/50 and have been running instances and such. We're not supposed to be melee attacking, though it's kinda funny to see the white hits from my dual wielding with nimble hands (I put TP into it for fun :p, nothin to do besides the dodge passive). It's sad that I have no use for my attacks besides doing dailies at this point, but it was fun while leveling up to pop my on/off switch, get 2 DoTs on the mob, and poisonous widow or earth arrow til it was dead.

I'm finding that my heals are holding up more than fine. Heck I solo healed 2nd boss WA when the priest in my party got caught by spinning slash. It's handy to not have my withering/weakening seeds take NP. Granted it'd also be handy to have 15 NP like the d/s does but, I'm finding personally that I'm okay with 10, as long as I don't forget to get up to 10 before the start of the fight. Everyone loves my speed catalysis. The melees will love my dark moon when I get it. So all around, I'm happy, they're happy. I'll never heal like a d/s, I don't expect to, I don't want to try to solo heal anything (though it's fun to know that I CAN finish out a boss solo healing in a pinch if I have to). There are plenty of priests around, and my heals compliment their heals well.

When it comes time to replace my imp stats with comp/temple stats, I do plan to continue going for armor with healing power points, but I will stat much more magey. In WA if there's no blood arrowing scouts to keep up on, and there are no DoTs on my party members, I get a bit bored and wouldn't mind tossing in some nukes while my regens are ticking on the tank. I'll never be a mage, but, I'm curious to see if I can get my magic killin power up to something decent.

Seems like your having a fun time, and thanks for oyur feedback really made me decide whcih one to play (D/R due to the amount of D/S out there) kinda an old thread but hey, why not post ey?

something to consider, in a lot of end game content (for me is RT +) and the limit to a party is at 6 players, it is, in many party's view, a waste to have 2 healers in a party, and would prefer 1 tank 1 heal 4 dps (to speed up the process and what not) ... so if you keep that in mind when selecting d/s or d/r, I recomend D/S.
(it is from anecdotal experience, nothing factual or proven here)

Quoted from "beamyja;457309"

something to consider, in a lot of end game content (for me is RT +) and the limit to a party is at 6 players, it is, in many party's view, a waste to have 2 healers in a party, and would prefer 1 tank 1 heal 4 dps (to speed up the process and what not) ... so if you keep that in mind when selecting d/s or d/r, I recomend D/S.
(it is from anecdotal experience, nothing factual or proven here)

You can heal all current end-game content as druid/nothing--that is, druid without a secondary class. This includes Sardo full and Grafu Normal full, Grafu Hard 1-2 (You can solo heal 3rd with enough DPS, but you'd probably need to be D/W or D/S to have enough HPS).

As far as solo healing 6-mans go, D/W is FAR superior to D/S for all current content (RT-diamond/SC/GC). D/S is better on certain fights with silences or stuns, or when your DPS sucks and there's a stacking group harm effect.

D/R is not meant for healing and neither is it likely to be effective at DPS. Choose rogue if you want to pay 20M per mage stat and still be useless.

Druid was planned an announced as a class with the equivalent options healer or damage dealer. D/S and D/R were planned to be the both extrema for these options. Whereas the healing druid is perfectly designed and realised the option damage dealer is simply broken, withered, gimped. This option needs a profound overhaul during the comminmg druid patch.

ehh... D/r makes a nice DPS and d/s a very nice healer. Ive had my d/s for a long time and when third class came out took rogue. That way I can play either and throw in some decent leather for r/s if I actually need DPS. I can tell you that me and my roommate used my r/p and my d/r for siege one night in my alts guild, both of which are very minimally geared, and did a pretty good job of holding off a guild of 14 people. So I can tell you the class has great DPS potential.

PvP and PvE are not comparable. It is a huge different if your opponent has 100k HP or 6M HP. In PvP you can produce a lot of pressure via DOTs. In PvE it is not possible. There the DOTs have to be 6-10x stronger to see some effects.

its been a while since i last played a d/r but heres my opinions and conclusions based on pre ch4 class balancing updates.

D/S is probably the best healing class in the game. i can solo heal pretty much any instance except grafu and sardo( havent done them enough yet to trust i can do it)

D/R does have good dps potential, but the sad this is that their dark skill do NOT scale higher then their earth skills. i was originally a D/R before i tested this theory out.

with the earth passive bonus maxed and earth arrow @ lvl 50, you do more damage then the dark skills with the same maxed passive bonus(dark contract??) and the dark version of earth arrow(cant remember name). the damage of the earth skills is still higher.


now as for your question of dps. the smart thing to do is to switch to s/d for dps. though not as good as s/w or s/r or r/s its still pretty good.

as for your druid dps, i can solo the first boss in dod with minimal buffs(pet, house maid pots, dmg food) in 1-2 jumps. i can tank hos, zs dl, and can do decent dps while healing. i am at current playing with the RT mage set statting it for dps on my druid to see what i can do there. But as of this moment im doing all that in healing RT gear and a Skeletal staff(outa sardo normal)

also i kick but in siege cause i can heal out the but( my recover with curing ticks around 9.5k/sec blossom around 3k) and still do on average 20k dmg to ppl on the oposing teams

@ Ragnarok

You are describe the current problem of D/R. The combination has on paper very niche skills: one additional DOT, one crit. enhancer, one speed enhancer, one buff für dark damage, one more damage enhancer. If you take a closer look the giant shrinks s lot. Shadow contract is far to weak to compensate the loss in heal. You still rely mainly on the main damage skills like earth arrow or mother natures wrath. The gain in damage is mainly neglectable compared to other druid combos.

The DPS of one DOT is one tenth of EA at the same level. To be the announced "formidable adversary" with "considerable damage over a long period" by "directing the devastating force of nature at their enemy" the DPS of a DOT should be almost equal to EA if shadow contract is active.

Quoted from "Garawen;457525"

@ Ragnarok

You are describe the current problem of D/R. The combination has on paper very niche skills: one additional DOT, one crit. enhancer, one speed enhancer, one buff für dark damage, one more damage enhancer. If you take a closer look the giant shrinks s lot. Shadow contract is far to weak to compensate the loss in heal. You still rely mainly on the main damage skills like earth arrow or mother natures wrath. The gain in damage is mainly neglectable compared to other druid combos.

The DPS of one DOT is one tenth of EA at the same level. To be the announced "formidable adversary" with "considerable damage over a long period" by "directing the devastating force of nature at their enemy" the DPS of a DOT should be almost equal to EA if shadow contract is active.

I havent seen any great loss as far as heals in shadow contract. Sure, its supposed to be a -45% to heals but druids get an innate +35% to heals to start with so its only 10% and you can use a macro to switch SC off, do your healing , and switch it back on so it can be worked around. You also fail to talk about dark moon and some of the other elites that add up when their used on the right toons. Party with a r/s and dark moon is active every chance it gets and thats another 5% magic and heal. Then pop speed catalysis in the same party. I do agree DoTs in general need an overhaul and the x/r classes need dark damage reworked, especially no one has an immunity to dark it should hit a lot harder.

Now what is interesting is playing a p/r and d/r in the same party. Thats turns into fun. Between them buffing each other and the fact that a target wont be able to get a heal to save its life it turns into a nasty combo.

I mentioned dark moon as "one more damage enhancer". It is a nice feature. Maybe the damage buff should be increased to 10%.

Speed catalysis (same with spiritual leader) has severe problems because it deactivates buffs like clear thoughts. Mostly you are not allowed to use it. Ancient spirit water is compatible to clear thoughts. Even more: it lasts longer, has shorter CD and increases the speed more compared to speed catalysis..

Quoted

I havent seen any great loss as far as heals in shadow contract. Sure, its supposed to be a -45% to heals but druids get an innate +35% to heals to start with so its only 10% and you can use a macro to switch SC off, do your healing , and switch it back on so it can be worked around

We call this "Milchmädchenrechung" in German. the equation is: 1* 1,35 * 0,55 = 0,74... 74% of the basic heal

Yes I can heal even with activated SC. My heals are not even similar (apporox. 25% weaker) to a Mage /Priest or Mage/Druid in that case. I can also deactivate SC. Then I heal 35% better than a Mage/Priest. I would be a great off-healer in cases of emergency - not more. With experienced healers this would happen in very rare cases.

The fun you described in PvP I also see. I payed a lot of PvP in other games. Spreading DOTs and hexes is very nice. It builds a lot of pressure on the opponents and healers especially.

But in PvE the raduction of heals is redundant. A a DOT with a DPS of 3-4K is nearly not detectable on bosses with 5 millions HP or more.

The resume is that the option damage dealer is still withered compared to the option healer. Maybe RW will launch a grand slam to fix this.

i got a question, would D/R be wearing mage, druid or priest gear?

generally people keeps saying that it is a dps class then it should be wearing mage stuff to maximisethe dps. is this true? and with the healing point bonus loss compared to the druid set (which is in the middle of mage and priest gear) is it noticeable while trying to dps and support heal?

I know that for D/S the priest gear is double the effectiveness in healing compared to the druid gear ... so is the difference of the same magnitude to d/r wearing mage gear compared to druid gear?

the 2 questions are inter related, and would be nice to get an answer, thanx in advanced.

i got a question, would D/R be wearing mage, druid or priest gear?

generally people keeps saying that it is a dps class then it should be wearing mage stuff to maximisethe dps. is this true? and with the healing point bonus loss compared to the druid set (which is in the middle of mage and priest gear) is it noticeable while trying to dps and support heal?

I know that for D/S the priest gear is double the effectiveness in healing compared to the druid gear ... so is the difference of the same magnitude to d/r wearing mage gear compared to druid gear?

the 2 questions are inter related, and would be nice to get an answer, thanx in advanced.