Haven't ever had either (that right?) but am thinking they run similarly in price. Know there is some difference in animation while you are on one but will be for my bot so not as concerned about that unless it really blocks the toon's field of vision for when I look at that screen. Any thoughts or prefences?
No drog or horse for druid. They do not work indoors and Howler gets a great deal of mana regen and you can not wolf form on a mount. I thought about it a lot and decided it would never be worthwhile to me. To get a horse fast enough to keep up is not cost effective for a bot and once again, does not go into dungeons. If you had a pure caster or even a cleric bot I would consider a mount, but even shamans lose bear form and thus mana regen. Just make a key to stand cast and sit, my two copper.
Im assuming that its not the travel speed of the horse/drog that interests you? Because the horses that are faster then your druids Flight of Eagle are mucho expensive, and with your druids ports and PoK books getting anywhere fast is easy nowadays. In that case, this is my take on the horse/drog issue:
pros:
- Horsey or Drogmor does help to prevent sitting-down agro for your druid bot, but in truth I have to work really hard to steal agro from my beastlord anyway :D . The pet is such an agro machine that the mob will always target a PC in melee range.
- Convenience. Sitting the druid bot down and standing up again is an additional action you have to take, which lowers your respons time
cons:
- Can't interrupt spells while on horseback/drogback
- When you do get agro on your druid bot, i find the horse/drog is actually a nuisance. Firstly because of the aforementioned inability to interrrupt spells you can't quickly change targets and root/snare your attacker if you're already casting. Secondly horse/drog acceleration is very slow. It takes a while to get away from the mob and it takes awhile to stop again and return to your normal bot duties. Better to dismount when that happens and depending on how you've setup your hotbuttons, thats one or two additional actions.
- Horsies do limit the toons field of vision, drogs don't have that prob.
- Can't use em in dungeons, meaning you have to learn 2 routines for multiboxing
Did i forget anything?
I'll leave it up to you to weight the pros and cons and whether or not they are worth the price. It may also depend on how handy you are at multiboxing and how good your reflexes are. The cons may outweight the pros at first until you get some practice in using the horse/drog.
I sold my drog back a while ago, as i am hunting in dungeons most of the time anyway.
/hugs
Form of howler for a druid is only 2 mana per tick. Shaman don't get mana regen from bear form.
Cop covered the major pro's and cons. You can interupt casting well on horseback just type /dism then duck. Takes a second longer, but still doable, not like you stay stuck in a 10 second CH if you notice it's the wrong target or anything.
I'd say just go for it. The horses have a very reasonable sell back value in my opinion. You can use in BoT and other areas you might be hunting in. If you dungeon crawl mainly then no you might not get much use out of it, but get a charisma buff, buy one, try it out. If you don't like it, then sell it back, but the little bit of plat you lose on the sell back of the cheap horse I think is more than worth it for the hands on test drive and getting to make your conclussions about it. Also I hate horses head and I use drog's mostly now on chars when I use at all hehe.
I got a lizard for my druid. As a bot, having a clear view to click alternate targets is more important.
Another way to intterupt is to take a few steps with the horse. It's always word on my cleric...
-K
Thats not the same as ducking it though. If you started a CH and 1 second in you needed to change to another spell you can't if you are on a horse. You can move and interrupt it but it will still take the full 10 seconds before you can use another spell.
Unless you type /dism. You can start casting CH, notice something /dism, duck, do whatever. It just takes a fraction of a second to get off the horse/drog and start casting again.
Thanks guys. Will probably hold off I guess. Standing and sitting isn't a problem as I have that tied into my hotkeys. Have had times where I get an overpull and unless I watch it him healing Taig can bring the adds especially after he sits down. The thought process of creating a duplicate set of hotkeys that didn't incorporate /sit had lead to the idea of a mount for regen purposes. As mentioned though they can't be used inside and do plan on spending time in Nurg/AC/Velks/LDoN etc for the next several levels at least. What I will probably end up doing is going ahead and creating that second set of hotkeys but take out the sit line at the end and do that manually to see how much I acutally use it and when.
Anyway, thanks for the input.
You don't really need to learn two routines. I too have sitting/standing tied into my bot's hotkeys. I just use the same keys when on the drog, the /sit and /stand don't have any effect then. And /dism and ducking works fine for interrupting casts. As Noriko said, drogs are better for targetting purposes.
The only thing that is a pain is if you just get the 10k drog it is on the slow side, though the mount doesn't overwrite sow/soe so keep that on and /dism to run from trouble.
on hard fights, where every bit of mana helps, a horse will doulbe a CHers healing power. CH is ur friend. for fights where i almost chain cast CH, i could not have done without a horse.