Cleric or Druid

[Phumog]

I have been playing my beast for a little while now. I have had a 2box in the past (67 cleric) but gave it to a RLF in hopes that I wouldn't return to EQ. Well that lasted about a year so now I am back with Phumog .


Well I am too lazy to type it all out so going to cut and paste my concerns that I have already posted on my guilds forums in hopes of finding out which would be better to box................


When I used to box my old Cleric I had a hard time finding a good spot to solo/duo, what ever you wanna call it, with that old school pet hobble. But the new snare is a bit better. I have been soloing WoS with and without a 2nd box. The only problem there is that there are SO many groups on the south side of the zone. I mean it used to be LW, RW, and Rock. Now you do a CC and get RW, RW2, LW, LW2, FAR LW, ROCK....thats if anyone even responds. Not sure why but think it cause people like me that can solo/duo an entire camp and kill just as many if not more mobs then their entire group...dunno ...what ever...

Things bothering me about the druid is that I am told the "Incomplete Heal" is based off of the tanks HP and the AA spent by the druid. Which to me means that It will be a rather long time, leveling to 70 and grinding AA, until he becomes a good healer. When on the other hand my cleric could CH me at like lvl 35.

But as far as DPS its the druid hands down. They have great DoTs, a couple nukes, and a great DS. I know the clerics have DS's but you have to target each mob and cast instead of a single cast on the tank and isn't quite as good as the druids.

As far as buffs. You get more Hp with bali and oak but it can be a pita sometimes to find a cleric that is buffing. And I can get alot more hp with a conviction then i can just running around with oak on.

I am not sure if druids get a heal over time. Another reason that has me leaning towards a cleric. Although their Ch cost less mana, and i usually use that the most, I would like the ability for a good HoT. Not to mention the AA that i cannot seem to remember atm that when your in trouble you can steal HP from everyone in the group to heal the MT kinda thing..DA i think Devine Arbitration....dunno...


Just SO many things to think of....

[Baerek]

My opinion is a druid has a lot more utility to you than a cleric. DPS is a factor, travel, DS, etc. A cleric basically will just heal and viction. I think a druid would have little trouble keeping you healed if you're in the right places.

[maxawesome]

It depends entirely upon whether or not you find yourself fighting mobs that hit for 500-1000hp range, 300-500hp range, or 100-300hp range.

If the first two, you may want the cleric just for the CH. But if you're on the low end of the second range or fighting stuff in the last range there, druid is plenty. Druids can heal for 5k pretty easily with the right aa's, and can crit heal then for 10k.

Just spend a week keeping your druid bot in group for aa's and you shouldn't have a problem increasing those helpful aa's.

I guess it also depends on if you've got a ton of hp too. For me, at about 10k buffed, my druid casting two "incomplete heals" versus a cleric casting a single CH isn't going to make or break my soloing, and I appreciate the hell out of the ability to at-will snare, the added DPS, dmg shield, Oak (which I will take Oak alone before Conviction even if I can't get Balikor simply because to me mana regen > the extra 1100hp), not to mention that the druid can nuke and dot, and AC/ATK debuff, as well as succor/Exodus in times of emergency. Plus, the druid can port me to and fro and save me time running about.

Cleric can rez, which helps, but since when is there NOT a cleric in Guild Lobby?? Plus I don't die more than once a week and I have Expedient Recovery.

Wow what a ramble; hope you get my point.

- Iidun Lidun of Antonius Bayle

[Ikkorus]

I box with my cleric all the time from MPG to nest grinding.  Aside from snares I personally would prefer to keep the cleric.  Their heals are about 5x more mana efficient plus rez / conv.

[howard]

If you only 2 box , Cle is better
Bst can pet pull , but Bst cant FD.....if pull failed...er....You know what happen
And Cle have strong HOT
HOT less aggro....good for aggro control when inc 2+

[Taiglin]

Actually I would argue that if you 2 box a druid is better. 3 box and I would lean more to the cleric. I two boxed a Bst/Dru combo for a long long time. My take on their heals is basically if he couldn't keep me on my feet over a decent grind I was probably fighting in the wrong place for good xp over time (unless I was camping something). As mentioned they just bring so much to the table. Speaking from a lvl 70 perspective with a few AAs: tracking, instant group fixed invis, evac, snare, DS, a new big DS out of devestation, heals, summon toon to their body ~rez, ports, nukes, dots, etc etc. I don't have it yet but there is a lvl 70 group heal spell out of arcstone that I would love to have for the guy. My current default nuke is the lvl 66 AE rain. Does some nice damage and crits a decent amount of the time.

Now...I recently got a wild hair and created a necro on a third account. Am in a small family guild and figured I would spin up a cleric on the dru account as a backup for our main (and only) guild cleric in case he wanted to play an alt or whatever. Both are 66 now. HoTs and group heals are really great no doubt. Up until this point my cleric's mana bar is just about always full as there really is no way to convert mana to damage. There are times when I forget he is there because he just doesn't do anything. To give that some context I haven't tried my trio in places like MPG and no doubt the cleric would heal better but not sure how good/bad the druid would do. Mostly been in places like NC getting some xp and trying for runes.

Couple things to think about and it sounds like you are just coming back but might be reading that part wrong. I think at lvl 60 or something Druids get basically a 30pt/tick HoT regen thing + a 30pt healing aura. At 61 Bsts can get a 80pt HoT. When those run concurrently it heals a decent bit of damage. There are also potions in the game now so you can get a HoT or direct heals as needed. Throw in some life tap augs, WA5, spell crit lines and that also will bring in a goodly amount of hp.

Coming from instant group fixed invis to having my Bst invis the cleric and himself and hope neither drop on the way to wherever is a pain. Am getting a bit better about it but is hard to get over not having track, ports, etc; I sure miss em. Travel in general is *that* much more of a pain. Another thing to think about is do you want to be the MH for a group? Cleric it is expected, Druid not as much. It isn't too much trouble for me until it is my bot cleric with someone else as the MT then my hotkeys and whatnot get all screwy (cleric is played blind behind a KVM 95% of the time).

In the end it really depends on what you want to do with your team. You can get used to just about any combo after enough time.

[Phumog]

Thanks for all teh replys folks. I made myself a little halfling druid last nigh tot go with my HUGE ogre beast. As you can tell by my magelo I donot have a lot of HP. But the guild I am in recently got flagged for Qvic and we are working on ToB flags so it will not be long before I am gaining a little more.

I thought leveling was going to be cake with the DoDH Monster missions since I can group my  lvl 2 druid and 70 beast together as well as 3 box my RLF's shammy and farm missions with no down time. But unfortunatly the missions still only give about 2-3 blue bubs at lvl 2. So it is looking like I will have to Power level a little bit in other ways....then again if i do only these missions my beast will have 5k AA by the time I'm done lol......... I am not too worried about her skills falling behind because I can always sit her in the guild hall give her a perfection of spirit and chain cast different spells untill  they catch up.

Again thank you for your input.

[Taiglin]

The xp given for MMs is relative to your level. MMs wont be a good source of "PL" xp until probably the 50s given the time it takes to complete them. As you say though both toons will get xp so that is a perk. Get the druid to 46 and they will be able to group with your lvl 70 toon for regular xp.

[hakaaba]

theyre both good duos but bst/druid is a favorite combo of lots (including me) so it usually gets the edge :p

[Gunzak]

I have been 2 boxing a Beastlord and Druid on FV and love it.  My Beastlord is 65 and my Druid is 54 currently.  At 58 My Druid gets a 3k heal and at 61 he gets a fast 2k heal.  My current goal is to keep gearing up my Beastlord and level my Druid to 62 so we can both enter BoT and duo the beez.  With maxed defensive AAs up to PoP and my Druid with maxed Healing AAs up to PoP it should be cake.  I don't plan to level above 65 for quite a while as my main duo spots, GE and Veksar, are great exp for my Druid and still descent for my Beastlord.  I plan to try out the factory in PoI soon as my Beastlord is keyed for it, the mobs don't hit hard and the zone is always empty.

The Druid just adds to much to switch to a Cleric and since I don't play in areas where a Cleric is needed everything is working out so far.  I can't pass on Damage Shield which stacks with potions, heals, dots, dds, ports, snare, root, buffs (gets a mana regen buff the same level he gets 3k heal, track, forage, etc.

[Phumog]

My lil druid is 15 now only played about 4 hours. I am using a stripped 46 druid on my beasts account to PL ...Mainly for the DS its working good for now but soon I may have to  upgrade to a different Plvler. My guild is full of Multiboxers and hopeing I can use a higher end druid to level her.


I had been using my RLF's 70 sham to 2box WoS. So I know I will have no problems up to WoS with teh druid. All I use with the shaman for heals is his 64 HoT...doesn't have all his spells...If i get a named I throw out a couple of regualr heals. The only named I have had a problem with is teh Chimera Seether..spelling...but I do tend to get him 90% of the time.

[Inphared]

This post coming from a GoD+ geared point of view, for all toons.

Often times when I log on, I don't do anything unless it's with friends, so anything else that I do is by myself. For about nine months, I hydra'd a druid in a Qvic-or-so raiding scene, grouping, duoing, what have you, but I would really have rather prefered a cleric.

Yes, yes, I know that druids get ports and DS's and Nukes and omgwtf everything else, but that's not what I was after.

I'm a thrill seeker. That's all that's really left for me. I don't go XPing, because I have no more useful AA's to buy, any quests I'm involved in are boring, so everything is pretty much moot-point to me. I now have a cleric hydra on the Qvic level, and I do stuff I couldn't do with the druid.

It's down to your preference really (although it looks like you've decided.) I would take a cleric any day over a druid. I use my pet for snare, guildhall for ports, 2 clicky DS's, and I never was a fan of the gimpness of the druid nukes. I pick cleric for the best heals, Conviction / Rezzes wherever I go, BDA pulling, Divine Intervention, 1.5 click, etc.

[Phumog]

Well I got the druid to lvl 50 so far and decided to change it up. So I made myself a DE cleric. Working on leveling him up ATM. For the simple reason that there no match for Cleric heals. I have been tanking MPG alot lately and had a druid in group on heals and I was rahter worried at times about heals landing and how much would they land for....with that experiance I have decided to put the druid on a shelf for now and get a cleric up to level as soon as possable. With viction and self buffs I break 10k easy and SHOULD be able to 2box/solo MPG with those stats with a cleric healer.

[Inphared]

Nice to see you've come away from the Dark Side. /hiss druids!

[hakaaba]

i do believe druids win :p