Keep in mind this guide encompasses up to the 50 elites. With the 60 and 70 elites, the most notable changes are that D/S and D/Wd have become very powerful healers. If anyone has experience with the 60/70 elites and wants to contribute please do.
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Druid General Skills
- Recover – heal - 2 sec cast, range 250 - Heals a burst followed by a HoT every 2 seconds for 14 seconds.
- Earth Pulse – damage - instant, cd 15 sec, range 180 - Earth damage hits a target and all enemies in a straight line with a bit of an AoE on the target.
- Savage Blessing – buff - Increases paccuracy and maccuracy.
- Mother Earth’s Protection – situational buff – instant, cd 90 sec, range 150 - Reduces all received damage by 20% for 5 seconds on a target. After level 40, this gets upgraded to 40% reduction for Druid primaries.
- Antidote – situational buff – instant, cd 10 sec, range 200 - Removes poison from your target.
- Knowledge of Nature – passive - Increases your wisdom based on your current wisdom.
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Druid Primary Skills
- Restore Life – heal – 2 sec cast, range 250 - Heals target with a burst, restores 1 NP.
- Blossoming Life – heal – instant, range 200 - Heals target with a HoT every 2 seconds for 20 seconds.
- Mother Earth’s Fountain – heal – instant, cd 4 sec, range 200 - Heals target + 11 friendly players within 100 range of target. If you have NP, it will use 1 NP to heal a little more.
- Earth Arrow – damage – 2 sec cast, range 200 - Earth damage on the target, restores 1 NP.
- Briar Entwinement – damage – instant, range 180 - Earth damage dot every 2 seconds for 12 seconds.
- Rockslide – damage – instant, cd 8 sec, range 180 - Earth damage 5 seconds after the cast.
- Mother Nature’s Wrath – instant, cd 15 sec, range 180 - Earth damage on the target, followed by earth damage dot every 2 seconds for 12 seconds, and restores 1 NP. If you have NP, it will do a little more damage on the burst with no change to NP.
- Summon Sandstorm – damage – instant, cd 8 sec, range 180 - Earth damage to all targets in the target range (circular, about 50 radius). If you have, it will use 1 NP and do slightly more damage and hit twice, and both hits can crit independently of each other.
- Purify – situational buff – instant, cd 10 sec, range 200 - Removes curses from target.
- Unity with Mother Earth – situational buff – instant, cd 5min - For 15 seconds, your healing power is increased by 10%, every spell cast will crit, and you are unable to move for the length of the buff.
- Curing Seed – situational buff – instant, cd 30 sec, range 150 - Increases heals (20% at cap lv 50) on the target for 30 seconds, and restores 1 NP.
- Rock Protection – situational buff – instant, cd 3 min - Reduces damage on yourself (99% at cap lv 50) for 5 seconds.
- Body Vitalization – situational buff – instant, cd 2 min, range 200 - Increases target’s pattack speed for 12 seconds.
- Weakening Seed – debuff – instant, cd 20 sec, range 180 - Reduces target’s mdefense by a %, and restores 1 NP. If you have NP, it will reduce by a little more with no change to NP.
- Withering Seed – debuff – instant, cd 20 sec, range 180 - Reduces target’s pdefense by a %, and restores 1 NP. If you have NP, it will reduce by a little more with no change to NP. Note: does not stack with disarmament.
- Binding Silence – interrupt – instant, cd 30 sec, range 180 - Interrupts target’s cast, and restores 1 NP.
- Concentration Prayer – buff - Increases all party member’s wisdom based on their wisdom.
- Knowledge of the Earth – passive - Increases your earth damage (63% at cap lvl 50), and your earth resistance (25.2 at cap lv 50).
- Pure Healing – passive - Increases your heals (35% at cap lv 50).
- Spirit Guidance – charm – 1 sec cast, cd 30 sec, range 180 - Uses 1 NP and makes the target friendly for 15 seconds – when this wears off it will be not very friendly.
- Rebirth/Advanced Rebirth – 5sec cast, range 150, cannot be used in combat.
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Increasing Heals – Your heals are determined by a number of things, the following not listed in any particular order.
- Magic Damage – primarily from your weapon, mdamage foods, and sometimes from gear passives or setbonuses.
- Healing Power Increase points – primarily from gear passives and setbonuses.
- Magic Power – generally only from certain setbonuses, such as Vahtos, or Juggler’s.
- Healing Effect Foods – Garlic Bread (cooking) and Fresh Fish Soup (codex) work the same way as magic power but only increase your heals.
- Wisdom – a little from passives on gear and plussing, but mainly via statting.
- Crit and Crit Damage – Crit comes primarily from necklace plussing, gear passives and setbonuses; Crit damage from ring plussing. Note, HoTs do not crit, and the majority of Druid heals are HoTs.
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Increasing Damage – Your damage is determined with some similar things that increase heals.
- Magic Damage
- Magical Attack – Druids get 2 matk for every int, so a large portion comes from statting and from gear passives and setbonuses, as well as matk foods.
- Magic Power
- Crit and Crit Damage
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Druid Secondaries
There are five different Druids, depending on which secondary you choose. Each one is going to have slightly different healing and dpsing capacity. In terms of dps, although the Druid on paper was clearly intended as a hybrid heal/mdps class, unless things change, it will never do anywhere near as much damage as the pure dps classes can do in PvE. PvP dps is a different story, as it largely depends on ranged instants (Druid has five of them, which rivals mage) – even if many of your hits will land after you’re dead.
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I want to heal! I’ll show them Druid is better than any priest! :D
If you are intending to be a solo healer (for 6man parties), it is generally recommended to be a D/W or D/S (or D/WD if you go to 70/70). That’s not to say other Druids can’t do it, but for the most part, these two Druids have additional heals that can cover the party.
Druid/Scout
Largely considered to be the best single-target healer, the D/S has two additional HoTs – one heals 5 party members, a self HoT on using Recover, as well as a group cleanse (the same one the priest has). It also has a bow slot for an additional six stats and runes.
Druid/Warrior
Unlike the P/W counterpart, the D/W is primarily a healer that happens to stand near the boss. The D/W is a difficult playing class that has to manage mana, NP (if you want to maximize healing), and rage. The D/W is capable of healing large amounts of damage across multiple party members in the shortest amount of time thanks to its rage-based Healing Wind, rivaling the priest’s Group Heal. It also has an upgraded version of the priest’s Amplified Attack which gives party members a buff to pdamage.
Druid/Mage
Though the D/M is often overlooked as an endgame healer, its extra heal spell gives a HoT to the party and it can give a hp % shield (10% hp at lv 50) similar to the mage’s Electrostatic Charge shield to 3 random party members, every minute. The D/M can also give a nice parry + 5% hp buff to the tank, which also boosts the D/M’s healing ability (and mattack) by a bit.
Druid/Warden
With the addition of the 60 and 70 elites, the D/Wd becomes a very strong healer, with access to essentially (provided NP is well managed) a priest's Soul Source every 60 seconds.
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I am dps!… okay, I’m really a healer. :(
Of the last two Druids, although D/WD does get two extra heal spells, the utility for both are limited and not nearly as useful as they should be. The final Druid D/R, gets no additional healing spells, and all its elites are for damage or support.
Druid/Warden
The D/WD does have a great self buff that increases his own healing power, with NP on hand, it is a 4.5% total boost, as well as the mdamage party buff – which will increase both heals and dps for all the casters. Its other elites provide boosts for additional damage on Rockslide – with two hits that can crit independently of each other, and a Briar Shield that is castable on another person – very nice extra damage for a melee tank, and will also restore some mana for him.
Druid/Rogue
The D/R has some unique elites which center around dark spells, however, the dark damage nuke is regrettably still weaker than Earth Arrow, even with the dark damage boost. With the 60 elite, the D/R can do the most magic damage of all druids, but at the same time, it still lacks a lot of the power the dps classes can do. Ultimately, D/R has an extra dot, a self crit buff, a crit-buff for a party member – which will give the D/R a boost to matk and healing power, as well as an attack and cast speed party buff similar to but weaker than S/P’s Spiritual Leader. The D/R is the only Druid that has no additional or modified healing spells, making it little better than Druid/Nothing and must rely strictly on the general/primary Druid spells for healing.
Druid/Mage
Yes, listing D/M again, as a dps. The D/M has another earth nuke that does more damage than Earth Arrow with an added AoE damage on two nearby targets. The use of Fireball (and with the 70 elite, using Restore Life) can reduce the cast of the next spell to 1 second, which can be used for any of D/M’s casts, including healing. With the mage general boost to intelligence for potentially more matk, as well as the mage general Lightning and Silence, the D/M has additional utility that no other Druid has.
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Healing in Instances
Druid has the best capacity to heal the second party in a raid, which can be aided by certain addons, but usually, a healer is responsible for his party. A Druid does not have the same spells the priest has, so the healing strategies are somewhat different. For the most part, a Druid heals via HoTs, and while a measly small HoT a tick does not seem like a lot, it does add up, especially with multiple HoTs. Ideally, the Druid wants as many HoTs as possible on as many party members as possible ticking all the time just in CASE they take damage. Coupled with Mother Earth’s Fountain for a larger instant heal when necessary, the Druid can react faster than the priest can.
Note: Currently HoTs do not heal the first tick, but do heal the last tick (at 0 seconds left) though the last tick doesn’t show up on screen or scrut.
- Blossoming Life – instant, HoT every 2 seconds for 20 seconds.
- Recover – 2sec cast, after the initial burst, HoT every 2 seconds for 14 seconds. Over 2x stronger than Blossoming Life.
- D/WD – has a longer Recover at 20 seconds, though the HoT is reduced by a tiny bit.
- D/WD – Spirit of Life – instant, cd 4min, costs 8% mana, heals a small %hp HoT every 4 seconds for 40 seconds. The amount of heal depends on level of skill, and the person's hp, and only works if your friendlies are standing in the circle of effect (radius about 75), if they move out of the circle, they no longer get healed. Not quite that useful and it has a very long cd (4min starts as soon as cast), but does help for bunched areas that might need a lot of healing.
- D/M – Spring of Blessings – instant, cd 12 seconds, HoT every 2 seconds for party members within 120 range for 12 seconds. Heals about the same as Blossoming Life.
- D/S – Camellia Flower – instant, HoT every 1 second for 6 seconds. Repeat stacking up to 3 times increases the HoT a bit. About 25-60% higher heals than Blossom and it is also every second, so it’s actually 50-120% higher, though it is very short and needs to be refreshed often. The D/S 50 elite “improves” this skill to heal a little bit more, but it also makes it cost a LOT of mana, and with how often D/S usually casts this spell, it is sometimes not advised. Addendum: With the 60 elite that makes the Camellia Flower an AOE spell, you can be super laggy but the AOE heals are now well worth it. **GET THE 50/60 ELITE AT YOUR OWN RISK, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DROP THE SKILL ONCE YOU HAVE IT.**
- D/S – Healing Arrows – 2sec cast, 5 sec cd, HoT every 2 seconds for 12 seconds to 5 players within the cast circle (about 100 radius). Over 2x stronger than Blossoming Life. It does only hit 5, and not 6, but the D/S can throw other HoTs on the 6th easily, or hope the next cast of Healing Arrows hits that person.
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Managing NP
With ch 4 changes, there are two ways to treat NP. Of course, all Druids should start the fight with max NP (10, 15 if D/S), normally, a Druid will spam Restore Life outside a fight to bring NP up to max.
Method 1 – ignore NP, the difference between heals with and without NP is fairly small, and if you’re having trouble managing the NP, then it is better that heals land when necessary, rather than rushing to waste seconds trying to get NP, to use the better heal too late.
Method 2 – Following every NP usage, you remember to replenish your NP during some non-risky times. You should, of course, know which of your skills use NP, so that you can be ready to try to keep your NP high in case you need it, and also in case there may not be time to replenish it. Aside from 2 second casts of Restore Life or Earth Arrow on the enemy, there are several instants that restore NP.
- Forest Bath (Dalanis Setskill, lv 55) – 2 NP instant, cd 60 sec – less accessible ones are the Sardo Setskill (lv 67) and the VN cape (lv 62), which both give 3 NP.
- Curing Seed – 1 NP instant, cd 30 sec. This buff boosts the heals on the target, so you’ll likely want this on the tank, yourself, or a melee. Coordinate with other healers so that you don’t overwrite each other.
- Binding Silence – 1 NP instant (cast on enemy), cd 30 sec
- Weakening/Withering Seed – 1 NP instant cast on enemy, if you have no NP on hand, cd 20 sec each. Be aware Withering Seed does not stack with Disarmament and your knight or x/K tank might be annoyed if your Withering Seed is not leveled, since yours overwrites his.
- Mother Nature’s Wrath – 1 NP instant cast on enemy, if you have no NP on hand, cd 15 seconds.
- D/WD has about a 20% chance to gain 1 NP when they cast Recover, and about a 40% chance to gain 1 NP when Rockslide instant cast on enemy lands (after the 5 seconds).
- D/WD – Essence Extraction – 4 NP instant, cd 2min, but costs 10% mana.
- D/R can get 1 NP each from Weakening and Withering Seed anytime castable.
- D/S – Mother Earth’s Blessing – 2 NP instant, cd 60 sec. This skill will also boost the D/S’s next three heals cast in the following 20 seconds.
- D/W – Natural Attack – 1 NP instant cast on enemy, cd 4 sec, costs 15 rage.
- D/W – Cross of Thorns Attack – 1 NP instant cast on enemy, if you have no NP on hand, cd 4 sec, costs 30 rage.
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Some Tips
Mother Earth’s Fountain is basically an AoE heal that hits a target and his nearby friendlies. The melee warrior standing near your tank took damage? You don’t have to switch your target off your tank to touch the warrior up with Fountain, casting on the tank will heal the warrior as well. Fountain is also an instant, which means you can heal the party while moving, which can be quite useful, as you laugh at the priest who has to stay stationary to cast any of his heals.
Body Vitalization is a nice atk speed boost for your melee. However, be careful not to overwrite his similar buffs, such as Stimulant. Learn to recognize the icons, and which ones do not stack.
Unity with Mother Earth – a buff that increases your heals as well as making every burst crit (particularly nice for D/W), can be right-clicked off from your buffs, if you need to move before the buff wears off.
Some boss fights have adds that can be charmed with Spirit Guidance, which may make the fight easier to deal with. But you’re going to have to check for yourself which :) If the mob’s friendly has worn off, and you have a second Druid in party, the mob can simply be charmed again!
For D/W, you will want to put Attack on your skillbar. Using it with an enemy targeted will let you know if you are in range of melee attacking (whitestriking), which is how to gain rage in fights normally. If you have Click to Move checked on, doing that will auto move you into range. Other ways to gain rage are via rage potions, with Warrior general skill Enraged - instant, cd 40 seconds, gives 20 rage, and with Energy Restore (Dalanis Setskill, lv 55) - usually used pre-fight. D/W also has Heart Piercing, costs a bit of mana, instant cast on enemy, cd 8 seconds, range 90, gives 15 rage on hit. The nice thing about it is it doesn't have to be leveled to give you the rage, and it happens to be the exact amount needed for Healing Wind. The VN warrior cape will also restore rage, if you can get your hands on one.
For D/S, you can make a macro that will autocast your circle of effect spells (Healing Arrows and Group Exorcism) where your mouse cursor is already located. It takes some getting used to, but some people find this much faster than without. This macro can be used for Summon Sandstorm and D/M's Shield of Light, as well.[INDENT]--credit Xerise[/INDENT]
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Source code
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[INDENT]/script CastSpellByName("Healing Arrows")
/wait 0.025
/script CastSpellByName("Healing Arrows")
/script SpellTargetUnit()[/INDENT]
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Gearing and Statting
For the most part, this is personal preference and will depend largely on how often you get to run your instances and how much you’re willing to spend if you don’t. Everyone will have a different opinion on what exactly they prefer.
2-H Staff vs Wand/Shield
For the most part, the 2-h staff is going to give you better heals than a wand will. However, since there is no /K equivalent for Druids, all Druids are as squishy as non P/K’s. If that bothers you, you may want to drop your heals in favor of wand/shield for some added pdef, as well as another gear slot to stat. Alternatively, you can stat more /pdef to compensate.
Healer Staff vs Mage Staff
This is your choice, but usually, the same ranged mage staff will have much more mdamage, and possibly more crit and matk, than the healer staff does, but it will not come with any healpower points on it. An approximation of which would help your Druid heals more is simply to add the mdamage with the healpower on the healer staff and see if it matches or exceeds the mdamage on the mage staff. This will almost always be the healer staff. If you are intending to do some dps, whether on your mage side so you already have a staff, or as a Druid, you may want to go with the higher mdamage, though your heals will not be as good had you chosen the healer staff.
Healing Power Increase Points vs Magic Crit Rate
This again is a personal preference. You could do the math yourself, and decide based on overall heals with the crit rate. Keep in mind that the majority of Druid heals are HoTs and as such, do NOT crit. This would suggest that healpower items would boost all of your heals, whereas crit would only help a few things such as Fountain and Recover’s Burst hit. However, if you are planning on doing some dps in PvP, crit is highly sought after.
Wisdom
Druids have Concentration Prayer which allows them to check just how much that wis is really helping. Cast your HoTs without the buff, then check your HoTs with the buff on (you can do this with a hero potion as well) – note how much wisdom that was and how high your HoTs are going. If it isn’t as good an improvement as you hoped it’d be, then stop statting wisdom. Keep in mind, lots of healers still stat wisdom for the mana/mdef/mana regen boost, even if they think the wis isn’t helping their heals. Once you have a decent mana pool, wisdom is not completely necessary for healing purposes. If you’re statting wisdom only for mana, you may consider /mp stats as they give more mana than wisdom of the same level would, but you lose the additional mdef and mana regen that wisdom would have given. For the most part, Druids tend to stack more wisdom than priests do, because more wis will always boost HoTs.
Intelligence
Among healers, int and matk are generally considered useless. They do not help your heals at all, so many consider them to be a wasted stat. However, if you’re tired of not being able to kill your dailies or quest mobs, you may want to stack some. This is particularly true if you like to participate in public events as well. Alternatively, you can decide to have a dps set of gear, especially if you have mage as one of your classes.
I want to dodge, can’t I stack dex?
Umm, you need a LOT of dex to dodge anywhere near as often as the rogues and scouts do – look at how much dex they stack, and if you do that, you would be sacrificing everything else to do it. I strongly advise anyone to ignore this “option”, but if you feel the need to gimp yourself, go ahead.
You talked about magic dps, I want to melee dps!
The D/W specifically actually has some elites that do damage, and can even wield a 1-h axe, so it is quite possible to build a melee dps D/W. To a lesser extent, the other Druid/melee classes have some general skill they can use, but have NO elites in regards to physical damage, and will be wielding a lesser weapon. Therefore you may as well swap to the other class as primary if you wanted to do melee dps. A major problem of why the battlemonk P/W is underpowered is because of the lack of physical crit it can gear with, and a melee Druid would have the same problem.
I am leveling and I don’t know what to spend TP on, help!
Unfortunately, even if you intend to be a pure healer, you are still going to need to put some TP into attack spells, in order to kill quest mobs. You don’t necessarily need to keep them at max level, and the higher you level them, the more mana they cost as well. I suggest bringing up Briar Entwinement and Earth Arrow and perhaps Knowledge of the Earth – which will boost both earth spells, with some TP going into the heals as necessary, depending on how often you find yourself getting hurt. You do get one skill reset stone out of your lv 30 giftbag, so be sure to save it in case you mess up and want to redo.
That was long!
Thanks for reading :) I know it doesn’t have everything, but I tried to include most of the important things. Have fun with your druid! Feel free to PM me ingame or on forum, or post, and someone will answer.
[HR][/HR][HR][/HR]I play on Govinda, my main is Tsundae.
Quoted from "PhantomFenom;509639"
Ther are only a few GOOD druids on Reni and many poor---ok druids as many of them have no idea of the true healing potential of a properly played druid.
~Dionaea] 
