Them droods pounding away

Iocun

Serpents aren't squishy though.

Grandue

It is humorous how painfully obvious it is that the ones complaining about Druid combat have very little knowledge on how to use the class effectively.  You know Druids are capable of lvl2 breaking three limbs at once? You know you get instant, guaranteed tramples? You know you can fairly easily riftlock with hydra pretty quickly? Learn to fully use the class before complaining about how impossible it is.

Aepas

I don't know anyone complaining about how impossible it is. Alls I'm saying is freezepound should be insta for the rare cases in which people survive it.

The instant trample is useless (save for some very rare cases) except for a mostly defensive nature, or in raids. Just as well, riftlocking is still mostly impractical as it also requires a quick jump to basilisk and some venoms hydra doesn't have access too. That said, monks have the exact same capabilities, but better and faster. Yet still, NONE of the things you mentioned are in the same place as getting a kill, it's well known that most forms of freeze are too slow, and a correct priority on salves will save from a freezepound. The only time a triple break is useful is if you can return to jaguar and maul them to death quickly after, using the prone to keep them from doing much while you bite their arms off. Once again, that does not happen to many unless you are an artied troll. Saying a class is good at any one or two specific things under certain circumstances does not make it plausible or worthwhile.

Though at the same time, it is easy to assume anyone that really complains doesn't really know much about anything.

Grandue

Aepas said:

I don't know anyone complaining about how impossible it is. Alls I'm saying is freezepound should be insta for the rare cases in which people survive it.

The instant trample is useless (save for some very rare cases) except for a mostly defensive nature, or in raids. Just as well, riftlocking is still mostly impractical as it also requires a quick jump to basilisk and some venoms hydra doesn't have access too. That said, monks have the exact same capabilities, but better and faster. Yet still, NONE of the things you mentioned are in the same place as getting a kill, it's well known that most forms of freeze are too slow, and a correct priority on salves will save from a freezepound. The only time a triple break is useful is if you can return to jaguar and maul them to death quickly after, using the prone to keep them from doing much while you bite their arms off. Once again, that does not happen to many unless you are an artied troll. Saying a class is good at any one or two specific things under certain circumstances does not make it plausible or worthwhile.

Though at the same time, it is easy to assume anyone that really complains doesn't really know much about anything.

I've no problem with making shatter an insta kill.

Getting three limbs to lvl2 at the same exact time is very useful. You're right about the caloric priority, but the downside to caloric being a higher priority than lvl2 leg breaks is that you are almost guaranteed an easy behead if they continue to apply caloric over restoration. Druid is not a flashy combat class, it never was and it likely never will be. It has only a couple ways to kill people and it doesn't always work on those who are more experienced. Druid is meant to be a group tank, and in that role it performs AMAZINGLY. For Druid to be more deadly 1v1 it would have to lose some of its amazing group utility, and I don't think that is necessary. I don't think EVERY single class should be at the exact same level of competence 1v1, there should be classes that do better 1v1 and classes than shine in group combat.

Xith

Well for groups the metamorphs still have double incinerate, right?

I'd say that complaining about not being able to kill the rare people that survive prepped damage with 3% health is silly, but since you're a damage class, it does have to be mechanically possible (or we'd like to think). So if you can come up with a decent way to follow whatever prep sequence is required for freeze pound, I don't think there's a problem.

Mishgul

Druid is amazing 1 v 1 and benefits vastly from a variety of artefacts. Artied druid probably has the best dps in the game, along with bow wildgrowth and freeze ground (the last of which can be supremely deadly against someone spamming movement) druid is one of my least favourite classes to fight next to magi and sylvan.

Hydra combat is all about the mindgames, but you have to have a huge amount of patience to get the opportunities for killing. The few fights i won in hydra against tanris, tirac and bleak required a fair bit of hanging around before they made their mistakes. The same can be said about most classes that require some kind of lock or setup. Its mostly about an opponent failing rather than you executing.

Rangor

Kinda like sentinel. 

Pretty harmless without arties, but once you get those lvl 3's you can dish out some pain.

Frozen pounds are currently very easy to avoid, I'd love for something to slow down caloric curing. Say maybe torso damage.

Xith

Could someone post the supposed setup/skills required to freeze pound?
Combat druids aren't common and I'd like to comment on the matter. Can you not knock the enemy's salve balance off with a limb and then freeze them right after they apply?

Garao

Requires frozen stiff for 97%. I.e, strip caloric, shivering, frozen stiff. 3 freezes.

And being prone doesn't matter afaik.

Eld

Target needs to be prone and frozen stiff, I believe.

Jhui

just frozen

Xith

Next questions
a) can hydra freeze and how long is the freeze balance
b) does morphing take balance and how much
c) what's pound's balance

Garao

Someone who knows more about Druid should answer. Until they do, the quickest freeze they have is (i think) 1.8s allowing for 2 freezes in between limb curing and being able to recover balance before they have salve bal. Morphing doesn't take balance. Pound's balance I don't know, but considering it really should kill it shouldn't matter. Afaik it's significant, though.

Iocun

Eld said:

Target needs to be prone and frozen stiff, I believe.

Well, yes, but being frozen counts as "prone" anyways!

Eld

Iocun said:

Eld said:

Target needs to be prone and frozen stiff, I believe.

Well, yes, but being frozen counts as "prone" anyways!

My mistake, I thought they needed to be on the ground and frozen. Does pound hit paralysed/entangled people as well?

Lianca

I once killed a monk I was pound-kai'ing in raid defence, an unfortunate cata transfix caught him.

Tanris

I know I'm going to regret this at some point down the line, but.

Most people don't def caloric over restore, just caloric for shivering and freeze (last I knew, what's latest svo).

There is an artifact to give two levels of freeze if no caloric with an eq cost of under 4 seconds.

Going to go put caloric at top in my system now.

Tanris

Just as clarification, that's an offhand comment. Not saying that's the solution to pound, all classes should be viable without artifacts.

Mishgul

it's two artefacts if you want it below 4s afaik.

Garao

If people don't redef caloric before breaks then freeze/pound should be bloody easy (in my mind) wth?

Tanris

Consistently hovering around 3.9 for me without diadem, so reallistically probably yeah.

Jhui

wonder what it is with diadem+quick witted?

Garao

Probably lower half of 3s. I don't know the Druid class very well, admittedly. Don't they have a Hydra attack that breaks a limb and freezes at the same time? Also they can prone and then attack? Couldn't they essentially just prone prep both legs, prone/break, break right/freeze, then freeze x2 on 2nd resto apply and pound ? On second thought initial attack is probably too slow to chase balance on that. Idk. Just messing around with break/freeze and freezing twice off a resto apply though ?

Zeon

Problem with freezepound is that there is a curing priority queue that 100% negates it. outside of missing something in blackout obviously. That being said most systems do not have this cure priority as of now.

Dunn

I fking hate hydra bind. 

Also, agree with Zeon. You can negate most freeze set ups with a priority shift, which sucks.

Aepas

I think there are plenty things that can be negated by perfect healing or priorities, but Freezepound does seem to get the worst time of it.

@Xith, Hydra can freeze, I never use it though. Hydra freeze is a balance attack, so you could be utilizing it a lot more effeciently with other things. Normally I freeze with Icewyrm after a lot of prepping with druid. Icewyrm is a lot faster.

Zeon

That isn't true @aepas. Everything has some way of stopping it under x circumstances, but there really isn't anything as simple as stopping freezepound 100%. It could easily be bundled into system standard with no real negative side effects except maybe when fighting blue dragons or magi.

Aepas

@zeon Hm, I guess you are right. It would seem like anything can be stopped anywhere if cured perfectly, but it would cause problems in other situations. I guess freezing is the only thing that can be stopped without any real harm or foul.

Zeon

Ideally we want to move away from having our tactics countered by x curing and towards having them countered by your target doing y when z. Would put survivability into the hands of the player more so than the system.

As to druids just give them some time. This event has slowed things down a lot but there has been a lot of progressive talk in the acc, I'm sure there will be some great changes to come into place in the months after it ends.

Xith

If you can hide the caloric strip in blackout, just do that. Then your two freezes within restoration salve bal prep them in perfect time!