Why Druid? Highest 'theoretical' self buffed st dps for cleric.
When Druid? Pretty much never. It's decent in Itrop 2nd and 3rd but that's about it.
Why not Druid? It's a luxury since Shaman and Inq cover all you need. It's terrible for solo play, casual and leveling and a meme for pvp. It combines the worst aspects of Runeshaper (Afk until the cd block), Riftblade (procc icd blocking each other) and Fury blast (at the mercy of crits) - but if you pull it off it's juicy af.
1H or 2H? No direct difference, 1h is more responsive.
Buffs: Summon: Greater Faerie Seer | Conduit of Nature* | Armor of Devotion
-> I removed all ''easy approaches'' since there really is no reason to go Druid and cut corners. Shaman and inquisitor cover everything you need for casual play.
-> There may still be another detail coming, mainly for trading 4 Trickster's for 4 Fervent+a 5stack Censure. (Which is an unnoticeable gain)
But for that i would need to get info on how Censure scales and if the big loss in flexibility+ mana tax is really worth it
Little pov to get the vibes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bi7_Kj ... e=youtu.be
//More pov videos from Zehne in the post below.
I just got a hint that Resounding Blow's +50% bonus affects Sanction again. This wasn't the case during ''Mage and Cleric adjustments'' late 2019. Somehow someone at Gamigo did an accidential rollback on some patches (like Stand Tall! eternal stacking for healing). Without this, L. Sanction is dogshit. But being able to +50% it again now, it is pretty break even with compareable variants.
Basics:
You have to doctor A LOT on your target to get things rolling. Target swaps are a nightmare.
Your melee attacks apply 5x Natural Force, Nature's Edict transforms them into Natural weakness for more 'Druid' damage taken, doubled if Crushing force is active.
That's a minimum of 7 gcd's for a 70% buff.
Resounding Blow increases damage of the next 2 attacks by 50%/25% and ALL life damage taken by 100%; which is why Trickster's bolt > Fervent Strike.
Combined Effort(& Punishing Strike) increases ALL damage taken by 20%. Both attack's damage is just around the ballpark of Trickster's Bolt damage wise but they usually scale better into max hits and Natural force helps Censure.
Essence Strike is a life based attack from Druid that refreshes Eruption of Life. It's also your hardest hitting attack for:
Fae Mimikry- which mainly echoes- damage done by the next 5 Druid attacks by 225%.
Dump all your carpet buffs, amplify Essence Strike for the Mimikry block, afk until the next Mimikry block.
It is rather spammy and one may soothe away but if you jinx a timing it all falls apart rather quickly.
Also: A Lot of things are procc based. Like Resounding Blow's cooldown losing chunks on Life Surge damage- which proccs off a Trickster's Bolt + IoB - which impact almost a second later into the next gcd.
Sometimes you just have to fly blind and trust in the buffs and cool downs which 'should be there by then', to really be there.
Druid is both a resident sleeper and pure nail biting- very odd.
First things First: Buffing up.
1) * One big thing on Druid is Conduit of Nature, which renders your pet afk in return for some buffs. However with a minimum of extra attention, you can get that buff while keeping the pet active and able to attack. This means ca. +39k dps flat by chance.
You have very good odds to get the pet to stay active when hitting Rapid Summon, WAIT A SECOND and then quickly press:
> Summon: Greater Faerie Seer and instantly press Conduit of Nature
This can have the game spawn the Pet just ever so slightly after you are able to use Conduit of Nature, making it buff you; but having no ''Faerie model loaded in yet'' to de buff. (This also applies to Mage Ele where it ads over 100k from pet dmg & extra charge generated)
If you pull it off, it's ca. +39k dps for Druid from the active pet.
If you buff up and your pet ends up debilitated, Druid clearly doesn't want to get used today. Switch to Shaman or Inquisitor because why even bother.
Second addition compared to Druid versions which you may know is the use of Nature's Censure aswell as always sticking the ''long opener'')Short opener wastes one Mimikry to use Mimikry's instant 5 Natural Force for Censure, using your worst damaging attack on your best cool down, losing you 100k up to 160k dps), manually getting 5 stacks will end up higher in most cases.
Nature's Censure used in a spammy fashion will drain your mana like crazy. Even with maximum Peace of the Forest, prepare to use Mana Tonics (the mana over time Tonics are WAY better than the one time pots)
If you don't do those extra things, Druid won't beat Shaman.
Macros:
Spoiler:
(rightclick- open in new tab to enlarge the image)
Button gcd = the button you press. Below are the actual effects+ogcds.
Step one: OPENER
Start with Eruption of Life and one Fervent Strike
It's ranged, you want to get it up asap plus whenever Essence Strike resets it, it gets freshly calculated. So no reason to break your back trying to get buffs for it up early. Follow it up with a Fervent Strike which will greatly improve your Sanction and Insignia of Blood.
EoL and Fs are both ranged, enough time to get into melee range!
Get into Melee as quickly as possible and use the #Opener macro 3 times.
If you are not into melee super quickly, it may use SAnction and Cf before Resounding- avoid this!
It will fire Resounding Blow, Sanction HEretic (with +50% buff) and Crushing Force (with +25% buff). Main concern here is to use them early enough so that Resounding is ready again for Mimikry.
Hit that #Phys macro and monitor the stacks of Natural Force.
We want 5 stacks for Nature's Edicts which transforms them into 5 stacks of Natural Weakness (+35% dmg, doubled if Crushing Force was active).
Those +70% dmg taken by Druid attacks is the reason we even stretch the opener out with #phys.
Usually, we replace Fervent Strike with Trickster's Bolt (which does more damage due to Resounding Blow's +100% life dmg taken)
IMPORTANT: Your Melee attacks can have quite a hefty delay between the attack being used and your gcd starting and the attack actually hitting.
While monitoring Natural force, keep in mind that your current attack may hit 0.8-1 second later. Since Nature's Edict also follows this delay, you may hit Edict while the stacks are still displayed as 4. This ''flying blind'' is a returning theme on Druid and how most buffs only apply after the ability actually hit the target. This is why ''counting'' your uses of #phys really helps so you are not dependent on kalerts here.
Use a manual Nature's Edict - this starts our returning Mimikry block
Be sure that Crushing Force and 5 stacks of Natural Force will be active when it impacts.
After the opener, we can use the 5 stacks of Nature's Edict from Fae Mimikry. This removes the need to manually ''farm'' physical attacks and take the main bulk of gameplay away. Druid was intended to have a complex system of Natural Force, Nature's Censure and Nature's Edict. But we simply ensure 5 stacks for Nature's Edict and use Nature's Censure fully passively with less than 5 stacks (L Nature's Censure is kinda bugged in it's damage calculations anyway).
Use #PRE for a manual Resounding Blow, followed by 5 gcds of #MIMI
Pre will also fire a Nature's Censure ogcd right after Edict so it won't steal any stacks that are not expendable.
#MIMI will fire Mimikry- which instantly gets you back 5 stacks of Natural Force. It also removes the cool down of Essence Strike (your strongest attack) and echoes the next 5 Druid attacks. Unfortunately, Druid has zero direct buffs for Essence Strike and you are at he mercy of it criting or not. Having all five Essence Strike not crit or crit (We are talking a fluctuation from 4mil to 22mil completely at random) is the very thing that kills Druid from even competing with Shaman and Inq who can guarantee crits for their best attacks.
Mimikry ends with 5 stacks of Nature's Edict and another Essence Strike ready to go. Use Nature's Edict to make use of those stacks and not worry about them ever again.
And now we are into the Mimikry downtime continuation which will always be the same.
Follow Mimikry with pressing #ES once
Mimikry will end with one Essence Strike still being good to go. You could just press #Mimikry 6 times but this way, we get more use from Peace of the Forest in the long run.
In between Mimikry:
Sanction Heretic buffed with Resounding Blow is our Priority, it's the second strongest attack after the Mimikry block.
If we ''spam'' Resounding Blow, it can delay so much that we have to skip it because of Mimikry being ready at the same time.
We rather ''clip'' the 15 second dot and have 100% uptime than letting it fully run and cause gaps. Sanction Heretic's direct damage is already as strong as a TricksteR's Bolt so there is no penalty for refreshing it too early!
Example: Mimikry usually has a 30 second cooldown, SH a 15 second cool down. Your greater Feary Seer gives Mimikry a 25second, SH a 12 second cool down. If we avoid delaying SH by more than 1 second every block, they keep lining up nicely and every Mimikry downtime will be extremely predictable.
Resounding Blow > Sanction Heretic > Crushing Force
Now we use #eco to not fire REsounding Blow before Essence Strike is ready again. This should take only 4 uses of #eco.
Then use #Sanction for Resounding Blow followed by #ES for Essence Strike.
And back to #eco 4 times.
We once again use: Resounding Blow > Sanction Heretic > Crushing Force
Now we use #eco to not fire REsounding Blow before Essence Strike is ready again. This should take only 4 uses of #eco.
#Eco only once more, Resounding Blow should be 2/3 on it's cool down and Mimikry just about to be ready again.
USe #PRE for REsounding Blow. The macro has no other gcds in it so you can press it even before Resounding Blow is ready. It will not fire a random gcd, just Resounding Blow, ogcd Censure and ogcd PEace of the Forest.
gg you now have Fae Mimikry+Essence Strike ready to go aswell as a +50% and +25% buff for the next two attacks in the pipeline.
If you followed the Sanction and Es timings before, the Mimikry downtime portion should 1:1 repeat the same way.
TLDR:
-> Try to get Conduit of Nature without debilitating the pet (40k dps)
-> 5 stacks Natural Force with either Druid melee or Mimikry -> Turn them with Nature's Edict while Crushing Force is active. (+70% dmg taken)
-> Have Eruption of Life, Resounding Blow and Combined Effort up. (fundamental target de duffs)
-> Only consume Mimikry with Essence Strike. (40% of your damage)
-> Sneak in Nature's Censure without sabotaging Nature's Edict. (Face roll- easy if you follow every Mimikry with a Censure)
-> Chance that there will be a final final final. Sanction ticks in the last 6 seconds and currently we are wasting 6 (Half!) Of the Sanction bombs. With 2 Mimikry being 48 sec and 3 Sanctions being 45 sec, a 2:1 2 block style should ramp Sanction up by a lot- for only 3 sec downtime every 58 sec. Super worth it ofc. It's like +9 Trickster's for free per minute.
Snapshotting buffs for EoL does nothing. RB's +50% has no effect on the procs and at last when refreshed by ES it gets any stat updates anyway.
Druid is extremely mana hungry. It got a gcd buff from 1.5 to 1 sec without any cost benefits. You will need to rely on Peace of the Forest (ogcd costing health for 7% mana) to keep yourself above 50%.
Peace of the Forest can eat up the ''Mimikry Cd removal'' stacks needed for Essence Strike so watch out there.
-> Nature's Censure costs tons of mana and eats your valuable Nature stacks (direct competition to the super important Nature's Edict dmg bonus)
However, we only need 5 Natural stacks every ~ 27 seconds. As long as we keep/ guarantee at least 5 stacks of Natural Force for Nature's Edict right before Mimikry, Natural Force- stacks are very well free for the taking. Censure is a minmax in itself. You could "spam" it with a 4 second cd but stacks more than double (+40% on 4, +200% on 5) it's damage. If you even slightly delay Censure (which we do during Mimikry), going for 5 stack Censures is a better deal. Especially from a mana standpoint. If you are open to run mana pots and fights don't take long, you can totally fit an extra Censure/ cycle (see the RB without Censure it in the visual rotation image)
The legendary point in Censure however is not even close to L. Fervent Strike's value.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bi7_Kj ... e=youtu.be
See how mana taxing it is. I am using Visionary mana Tonic for 12500 mana over 12 seconds, a ''smaller'' one with let's say 1800 per tick is just fine! Tonics tick 5 times so as long as 5 ticks of the tonic's tooltip can fill up ca. 8k mana, you're good.
The mana over time effect will give much more effective mana/ flask cool down when used above 50% mana.
Looks like a lot i know. But it's mainly about ''interrupting eco'' when Essence Strike, Sanction Heretic and Mimikry's cooldown are at certain points.
-> Can easily do 1.75-1.85m
-> Don't try to bring Druid to a party without a very specific plan figured out. If the boss/ fight doesn't represent a target dummy, best not to bother.
-> BE READY TO USE MANA TONICS
-> If the Pet gets debilitated by conduit of Nature, consider just using Shaman/ Inquisitor because why even bother.
Kalerts: (I don't switch sets, it's a general Cleric set which should do fine for your 'Druid set')
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L Sanction vs L BoJ, without Resounding Blow, BoJ does more since it can proc Life Surge, With Resounding's +50%, L Sanction barely runs ahead with about 40k or 2%.
Note: i usually don't spend years on something before posting but am always happy to update. What's still open on this version is to try and let L Sanction "breathe" i got it to over 250k compared to 180k when clipping it which is entering the 1.9m selfbuffed- ballpark. Please do share your experience.
Credits: Winford (Og 4.3 Druid), Sepelio (Downtime prios), Killerloose (pts & bugfixes), Zehne (5 Oracle update), Piksil (i think, someone mentioned he used the SH Druid with nice results and indeed, resounding SH works again)
