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In my experience from playing Lladi, I’ve mostly played as a caster but have played about a bit with animal forms.
Firstly, something I’ve come to realise over time having played with various splashes is that the most effective I’m managed to find is definitely pure druid, especially if a caster.
For the animal forms, Bear form isn’t really supposed to be massive damage output – it’s the druid tank option, with Wolf being the dps option and working much like a rogue – you’re very dependant on not having aggro so that you can get your sneak attacks.
Now, the stuff I’m more knowledgeable about, caster druid
The elemental forms are aimed at people who want their druids to be casters. As such, any destiny other than Shiradi or Primal is going to mean you’re losing out on caster level. You’re also probably best off with two-weapon fighting over two-handed if you’re going to spend feats on it as you’ll be able to utilise the Primal 2wf line with it. I used to be 2wf on Lladi, but these days I don’t feel I have the feats to spare.
The reason so many people on the forums complain about it is that a lot of people tried to apply a lot of the tricks and tactics used by other caster types, which don’t really apply. Druids have two things they really offer substantially as casters – very effective aoe casting and healing over time effects. Additionally, relatively few of their spells are save based. Therefore, you’re looking mainly at dps metamagics – empower, maximise and empower healing – and increased spell points through the mental toughness line.
I find the most effective spells in my repertoire are the following:
Earthquake – doesn’t really need the metamagic feats, though they’ll provide extra damage, this is one of the most effective crowd control spells in the game, enhanced by the fact that relatively few classes (and therefore monsters) have good reflex saves. I keep a version with max/emp and a version without them on my bar so that I have the option of the damage for major battles and can use the cheap meta-less version for general CC.
Storm of Vengeance – whilst not enhanced by the elemental forms, this is one of the most powerful AoE spells in the game and stacks nicely with whichever other options you take. Obviously, maximise & empower are handy.
Ice Storm / Wall of Fire – depends on elemental form which you use, but these are the old staple AoE damage spells.
Mass Regeneration – often overlooked, this is a stunningly good spell, especially if you have a traditional healer along as well, as you can keep the group going with this between the Mass Heals.
Greater Creeping Cold – the one that makes me wish they’d done a fire equivalent, this spell is absurdly powerful. Multiple hits over 12 seconds, getting progressively more powerful as they go on and not weak to start.
Whatever you do, you’re going to want to take a variety of elements, not concentrate entirely on the one. Every element has things that are immune to it, plus against a hard boss you’ll be doing higher damage by stacking multiple spells on them rather than just using the one, and that pretty much requires multiple elements.
The big thing to remember that is what makes them effective isn’t the savant-sorcerer style specialisation in one element, it is their versatility with multiple elements and ability to stack several AoEs at once, that no other class can really manage to such an extent.
Thanks Portilis for sharing your experience
I tried to go for bear tank, but the problem was to be able to take aggro…
About spells, I really liked Earthquake, Wall of Fire and Regeneration Mass.
For sure, I have to try Greater Creeping Cold
Maybe equipping Icerazor…About epic destinies and caster level, ddo wiki says you gain +1 Druid and Ranger caster level per level of Fury of the Wild (up to +5 total at level 5)…
Feat starvation is definitely an issue, I agree.
Lladi has all his destinies at 5 and I’ve played with a few with him, and agree that P.A. is the best I’ve found. Shiradi can be played in the same style as a Shiradi sorc – there’s a wide range of cheap low level spells you can use to trigger the procs – but personally I find the playstyle dull.
As regards gear, it is very much a matter of personal preference in all things, as there are multiple ways to reach the same eventual goal. You’ll also probably find that as you go up to 25 you’ll replace a lot of level 20 items – both with named gear and with random drops, as +8 stat items for example become your standard. There’s a list of the named items from U17 on the ddowiki that’s a fairly good starting point for looking at options.
I will also note that I found woad form uninspiring. Yes, it is very powerful, but I spent all my time trying to build up charges for it and very little time actually enjoying the quest. There’s loads of other very nice stuff in the tree, so don’t feel you have to take it.
Also don’t underestimate your pet, especially for pure druids. Lewis, Lladi’s wolf, is currently sitting on around 1300hp in quests with improved evasion and heavy fort, and whilst his dps won’t match a barbarian he still puts out a decent chunk and there’s no such thing as too much dps. Personally I’d advise not trying to set the wolf up as a tank but instead go down the cunning / bluff line and let them do a bit of extra dps as an assist.
It also drives people nuts when you tell them your wolf is using a collar made from raid wraps and flawless dragonhide armour
Gear wise Nik has
spell power hats (devotion, ice and fire, with fire being particularly nice as it has omniscience ;)), also the eveningstar PDK hat but havent used it very much yet
improved deception amulet from FR prequests, would love to epic it but low drop rates , not an essential unless youre wolf focussed anyway
Cannith ring with protection 5 and con 6 (due for replacement when I can be motivated)
Junk TOD ring with holy burst (gives holy burst to attacks in wolf / bear form…)- likely get replaced at some point, 2d6 + burst is nice but doesnt give much else, a house P elemental ring would be good but not managed a single part of that (base, shard, seal or scroll) so meh
Carapace armour from demonweb with wis 8 (quite cheap on AH, & if you ask in guild most addict err regulars will have spares)
planar focus trinket with exceptional wis 3
Eveningstar Fighter gloves – 30% heal amp with str 7 / exceptional con 2 tough one to beat
Bracers with 20% heal amp / superior parrying – potential to swap for 30% amp / superior parrying & then get new gloves but that 20% amp is handy
EH treads for boots (striding , dex 7 and exceptional dex 2 plus ghostly or blur in one boot shaped package is nice)
Shroud Triple air Spell point / drow smoke / TOD goggles as appropriate
Drow piwafwi cloak (sneak attack / improved invis proc)
Shield with doublestrike 3% (slowly working on bits for a LOB shield as you can make them crystal but not a lot of luck on drops), hoping to get a fall of truth madstone aegis to tide over, wall of wood is also good but a PITA to farm
about 80 different weapons ;), eveningstar frost sickle and CITW dagger are main two depending on if i want two spell power boosters active (other helm) or not, but have a whlole other bunch of situational weapons like xxx of radiance, Tinah (CITW dragon basher) CITW “SPear” for use in elemental forms
Hoping to upgrade to an epic dragon scale at some point, but choice between black / blue first is a toughie, probably side with blue as have a lot of on hit melee procs already (esp if in LD destiny), & to have a shield and raid weapon with red slots to add a spell power property to each
Wolf is using my old white scale and a xxx of radiance collar, even with 1000 hp and heavy fort really seems to hemhorrage hp at times when it happens to aggro a mob nooone else is already aggroing, pretty sure theres something buggy meaning the fort is missed at times, & the SP loss on death seems somewhat OTT, AP set up pretty much like Ports to work as dps / bluffer rather than tank, one day mean to farm out some grave wraps to collarify for the neg lvl proc, hp and stun chance (shame devs havent given stun feat / line as a choice
)Havent got anyone w woad yet so purely know it from Dom / Tarl & others abuses in Raids ;), but spirit doesnt seem to hard to build up if meleeing / dropping “free” mass vigors / DOTs, hoping to see how Woad compares to Wolf
Meant to mention :- Regenerate (like heal, and also cocoon from PA destiny) can only benefit from empower heal metamagic feat to increase its healing. Wanted to swap this in on Nik but something is broken on Druid feat swaps …so can only LR it, & havent been able to face setting up hotkeys / item swaps again
The Vigor line can be maximize / empower / empower healed, although regenerate is slightly more sp efficient
You can stack regen / vigor if you cast the regen first
You can cast a fully metamagiced regen / vigor, then if you cast a non metamagiced before the duration expires, the metamagiced version is extended. This can be hard to time as the timers dont work properly, but on Nik i will throw a maximized vigor, then renew it using free sps from wolf form melee criticals (which generally will occur fast enough), although in practice you do end up refreshing the metamagiced version at times due to lag / people going out of AOE. at 10 s duration per cast it can drain sps moderately quickly if not getting free sps but worth knowing the tricks
Currently one boosts the electrical damage and one boosts the acid damage, it used to be the case that if you had spell power boosts for one element on multi element spells then all got boosted but the devs decided this was obviously totally overpowered & changed it.
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