Future Druid Combatant

Cerulean

Hello! I was wondering what recommendations people have for a Druid wanting to get into combat (or at least effective defense) in the future. I'd like to know what skills/abilities/equipment/artifacts (if any)/what have you are essential or suggested.

If I'm just completely crazy for wanting to get into combat as a Druid/new player, you can tell me that too.

Assume that money/time is no object. Money sort of is... but let's just pretend it's not for now. Pretending is fun.

More backslashes because I didn't use enough of those in this post! /// Slash, slash, slash.

Sena

I'd just like to note that those aren't backslashes.

Cerulean

Forward slashes! They're forward slashes. Oops.

Katzchen

I like this one's enthusiasm.

Unfortunately the only Druid combatant I know of personally is Mhaldorian, so that doesn't really help you.

Jonathin

dat avatar

Iocun

Katzchen said:

I like this one's enthusiasm.

Unfortunately the only Druid combatant I know of personally is Mhaldorian, so that doesn't really help you.

Seasone isn't Mhaldorian.

Guhem

I'd always say that it's dependent on the level of combat you're talking about so I'm just going to assume raid combat here. You'd want at the bare minimum Jaguar for mauling (Since it's mostly what people do anyway).

However, it's recommended that you have Wyvern and Hydra would be best coupled with Truemorph so you can morph between all of them to utilize as many of the abilities as possible. The combinations with other classes can be very powerful if you have a good team and know what to look out for.

Get up to hive in groves for bees, if possible lightning for line of sight damage, you'd be able to use wildgrowth there to also hinder opponents.

After that, there's really a huge list of things you could get to improve on group and solo combat, but it's better discussed in game with whoever you feel comfortable talking with in your city/house. Druid utlity is high, but it really depends on who you're teaming up with/what tactics you feel comfortable with as a whole.

Cerulean

I should probably have clarified that! Yes, I was thinking much more along the lines of raid combat rather than solo combat.

Delphinus

"Trans" or "transcendent" is the last rank of a skill. It means that you've fully learned that skill.

That said, the most important things are:

• Metamorphosis to trans
• Groves to the "Lightning" ability
• Survival to trans
• A basic curing system, like SVO or Omnipave
  
• Some triggers to help highlight important lines
  
• Firsthand experience

Artefacts are nice, but should take second priority to most of your skills. Things I've found useful in raids, though:

• An artefact bow of some kind
  
• A shackle of Garash
  
• A Brooch of the Tempest
• Goggles of whitesight
  
• An Aldar talisman
• A health sip ring of some kind
  
• Artefact knuckles (copper, brass, or spiked)
• A permanent moon tattoo or mana regeneration ring
  

Cerulean

Long list is long. Thank you! Is mudlet the best client for Achaea?

Hayte

Misread as "Future droid combatant." Got excited. Sad now. Leaving.

Yae

Cerulean said:

Long list is long. Thank you! Is mudlet the best client for Achaea?

I think you'll find most people leaning towards using mudlet, and that means a couple things. You get more support with it, more scripts if you don't make them yourself, and some other things I'm forgetting, likely. It depends from person to person, and what you can make of your client.

Batang

I have not lost a druid vs druid match since 2007ish

 

I agree with everything Delph said, (listen to that man he is the breathing Achaean Encyclopedia) but I would also recommend adding the following artefacts

 

 

Veil of the Sphinx.  Expensive, but when so much of your opposition has one...ya just gotta do it.

Eagle's wings give you another means of escape.

Learn Weaponry.  Dagger and venoms can be a great asset when using the hydra morph.  Plus being able to start a behead immediately after a hydra bind is so handy.  I've gotten close to 50 kills like that.  Quite a few of them in raid situations.

Clasp of Animal Magnetism.  It prevents forced demorphing.

 +Strength Gauntlets.  Yes maul does a certain percentage (not sure on the math) but it does more damage with the more strength you have.  However from my testing after 14str, the gains diminish greatly.

 

Once you feel you are ready, come look me up in game.  I still have a 50 credit prize for the Druid that can beat me 1v1.

 

 

 

Eld

Since the list of suggested artefacts in this thread is getting rather long and featuring some things that should be pretty far in the future whether you buy credits or not, let me just emphasise the first part of what @Delphinus said. The most important things early on are basic abilities. Focus on your class skills and survival. By the time you finish those out, you'll have a much better idea of what you need and where you want to be focusing. Get involved and ask what you should be doing; most raid/defense leaders will know enough to be able to give you some guidance in how best to use the skills you have so far.
Experience is huge, especially for group combat. Getting used to the spam enough to have some idea of what's going on will make a huge difference.

Cerulean

Thank you, everyone! Your advice is greatly appreciated. I am now officially a Mudlet user. I'm ridiculously happy about there being a client that's compatible with Apple products. So many games I've needlessly used telnet to play when I can't access my Windows PC... never again.

Blujixapug

There traditionally haven't been many druid PKers, and those few have tended to be artifacted goliaths for whom PK is a different game, so you won't have much of a knowledge base to draw from. This means you'll have to learn most things for yourself, the hard way. This means success will be far more satisfying.

Metamorphosis is the main druid PK skill. Hydra is your primary morph, but you'll be switching through various morphs for different powers.

Groves provides some secondary utility, eg. Quarterstaff and Wildgrowth, but in particular your Hive. Bees are amazing and you will learn to love them. They attack through shields and deal a ton of damage.

Concoctions will give you a small, hidden bonus to health sipping per skillrank which adds up to 15% at Trans IIRC, which is nice.

Other useful skills to learn are Survival for abilities like Tumble and Focus, Weaponry for Targeting and Parrying if not Shatter and Behead, a few ranks in Tattoos for some extra tattoo slots, and Avoidance and the other miniskills which provide passive damage resistance.

Druids are primarily a damage and limb break oriented class. They tend to focus on dealing limb damage with targeted mauls, the various capabilities of Hydra morph, incinerate which is an instakill if the target is below half health, and a grab-bag of other assorted tricks like snap, shred, freeze, pound, and howl.

Then there is raid combat which is a different circumstance.

Getting into PK in this game can be incredibly overwhelming. The main advice I'd give would be 1. take it a little at a time, 2. try to find people comparable to you in terms of skills learned and PK experience to duel with, and 3. after every single fight, especially the ones you lose, scroll up to read over what happened, and try to learn something.

Vaehl

I think bees were changed to not hit through shield recently and that makes me

Aepas

Hi there! While some people seem to be flattering me for some reason on the forums, I'm really not the best combatant around, I just happen to be the loudest.

Things I'll say here about druid combat is that typically, your best bet is to get hydra if you are going for 1v1. Hydra in itself is very tricky though, because while it has the fastest and most reliable limb breaking in game, it also has the lowest chance of forming a good kill out of all that.

Druids can deal the most damage in a few seconds out of any class between meteors/bees/maul, especially if you're artied. But really, in the end, don't be that guy. If you want to be a combatant, you should always strive to be the very best at your class, not use the surefire ways to get a few kills here and there (just personal opinion). Learning how to do a proper setup with a hydra is vastly more satisfying than lolmauling someone to death while your bees and meteors do most of the work.

So I'll say most important skills are going to be
-Transcend metamorphosis.
-Lightning in groves
-Throwing in weaponry
 
That's what you'll want to start out combat, but you'll also want to get focus in survival, avoidance, and of course concoctions. Transing all of your main skills first is always important, especially because you can pretty much buy out the game by doing refills for people (Not so much since the alchemists though.) Concoctions are a very good source of income if you have return clients.

Anyways, onto artifacts. Very few artifacts affect how Hydra works which is a bit of a shame, but it still works out just fine.
Hydra flame is minimally affected by int and collar.
Hydra bite is minimally affected by STR
Hydra snap is minimally affected by STR.
Nothing affects hydra third head.

STR and Knuckle arties go well into making your jaguar or wyvern quite powerful, but it's really dull. (I really hate lolmaul tactics.)

The most important artifact I can say is the diadem, as it makes your wyvern freeze much faster, and allows you more time to play around with limb breaks, freezing, and hopping in and out of hydra morph for some decent combos. (hydra freeze is garbage and uses balance. never use it.)

What you'll learn about hydra is the free head allows you to mix up a lot of potent strategies, like instantly breaking things in blackout, afflicting paralysis to bypass parry, etc etc. Hydra is also one of the few classes that can do a quad break.

Where you'll find downfalls is tumble and tree, because hydra is still typically a bit too slow to execute a good kill.

Freezepound will likely be your main 1v1 killer, but it still lacks against things like algiz or other flat damage reduction things, like numbness. It's very annoying.

Hm, I seem to be ranting but I'll spit it all out nice and summarized.

1v1 fighting tree
Trans Metamorph
Lightning groves
Throwing weaponry
and then work your way up from there.
Alternatively:
Trans all 3 class skills
Throwing in weaponry
Focus
Avoidance

It all depends on how many lessons you have and how fast you want to actually jump into combat.

Artifacts Offensive:
lvl1 bow
Diadem

Artifacts Defensive:
lvl 1 sip ring health
lvl 1 sip ring mana
(Sip rings help a lot with your sip bonus from concoctions)
lvl 1 con
(More health makes vigour regeneration very nice)

Alternate artefact pack:
LVL 3 EVERYTHING
Strategies involved: Mauling

The amount of utility that a druid has doesn't really make it need any artifacts to be played effectively at all. Really, skills first, then just find artefacts that make your lifestyle easier, because in the end as a druid, you can fight plenty fine with absolutely not artifacts at all.
I have mostly health, hunting, wings, and my vibrator to help me get around.

hope this helps!

Cerulean

You recommended Throwing in Weaponry. What is it that I would be throwing?

Batang

either handaxes or daggers, envenomed with different venoms for different situations.  This would help you set up breaks/locks/deepfreezes

Cerulean

I've gotten a couple of mixed answers about racial specialization. Man-at-arms or Champion? The former: +2 Str. -1 Int. The latter: +2 Con. -1 Dex.

Aepas

Xoran vanquisher.

Still, go for +STR and +CON.
Int is nice, helps with important things like clot, hydra stuff, etc etc. But mana is mostly your utility. You're a brute tank of flesh and kick-ass, you don't need no mana. (unless you're fighitng a BM, Apostate, Priest, things that make you bleed or things that make you focus. Oh wait, that's everything)

Dexterity isss meh. You don't ever need it, but sometimes you'll just be wishing you had more of it.

Delphinus

@Cerulean: NPCs usually deal flat damage, whereas PK involves a lot of percentage-based attacks. For that reason, +con will help more in bashing than in PK. +Str is nice, but strength has diminishing returns the higher you go.

I'd go with +con/-dex. -Int will hurt your mana pool, whereas -dex will do comparatively little. You can always use a trait for an extra point of strength, if you want.

Trevize

Trevize Amaris, Lunar Cleric (male Xoran Ward)
Health:       6666 / 6666     Mana:         4587 / 4587

health.

Cerulean

When I learn Throwing, should I also find the handaxe teacher and invest in a proficiency?

I also just learned about the existence of traits. Any advice about which ones to pick?

Blujixapug

Without a proficiency any weapon will do much less damage and have lower accuracy, so it is a good investment of lessons to pick one up.