Everything was trucking along fine until the beginning of December when I ended up living on other people's couches and then a month or so later when the place I worked for was on the brink of closing and losing my job, I never did have the time to get back into the character.

I feel like I have a solid handle on the mechanics of the class, there was one final thing I was working on testing but I just lost all drive to even play the character for even that. Outside of the character being forced into the short-lived category I felt it was a general success. Got my tat, got the edges I wanted and then some, got harbinger, finally got 100% on a certain elusive cabal power.

I am bad with names anyway, and after a few months of being shelved it is even harder. Glad that Mreash finally got harbinger, you were always around and seemed like to me you deserved it. I know there were more of you I interacted with, post and I'll respond. The only thing that I'm disappointed about is that after a couple run ins with Satebos, I really believed I could have knocked your #### in the dirt with a little planning on my part and I never could get the time to log in to make a solid attempt.

Went ahead and deleted tonight and picked up the pbf. I certainly have time to play now, yay unemployment, see you all in game.

Tell Larcat to show you the money!

So so many things I wanted to ask you about herbal forage and what not. Moonphases and herbs and stuff, just never could catch you about after that one day we spoke in the druid guild in the weald. Maybe you will play another druid I can interact with and pick your brain. GLWYN

Damn. Sorry to hear about your unemployment situation, and thanks for all the guidance you gave me way back as Gravan. Druids are a fun but strange class.

Question for you: Seeing that you've played multiple druids, I'm guessing you have also played non-wood-elves. Does the wood-elf race really make a huge difference for druids?

For me they have all been wood-elves. There is a reason though, I would see taking any other race as handicapping yourself.

And you are welcome, always fun to share info in game with people learning druids.

I've done a couple non-wood-elf druids, and I think they're viable; that being said, you kind of need to approach a cloud druid (for example) from a different angle, and different bits of the druid skill set are favored than with a wood-elf.

Sorry, to say the other races weren't viable isn't fair. On the other side of the same coin, knowing the class really well would be very helpful to playing a non-wood-elf druid. And now you have me wanting to test the other races for the class...

>And
>now you have me wanting to test the other races for the
>class...

You should! They played, I can't say radically more different, but more differently than I would have expected knowing what I do about the class. Going again with the cloud druid example, you can get away with some things with weapon resist and no metal vuln (yes, I know, protection from metals -- but the cloud is still far ahead there against, say, a slashing iron sword) that you really can't with a wood elf, although you obviously have a lot of shortcomings vs. the wood elf, too. Large size is nice, two handed weapons open up some interesting options, etc.

Personally, cloud giant is one of my favorite races for a druid cause of that weapon vuln. When I played my last I'd start tanking around level 26 for groups to Hero.... However... it seemed that people made very good use of the wooden poison weapons and/or wooden wrath, so I basically felt naked 1/3 of the time.

>it seemed that people made very good use of the
>wooden poison weapons and/or wooden wrath, so I basically felt
>naked 1/3 of the time.

Yeah, there's a certain amount of feast or famine there, and you're never quite sure what you're getting as you wade into a PK.

My only really successful druid was a cloud giant. It plays to my style of play which is to run in there swinging. I'm not typically a great "finesse" player. Anyway, I think I need to try a wood-elf sometime as I've done the cloud.

PS - I still see no reason why anyone would ever use the bear form. I saw it with certain outlanders and I never thought it helped them.

IMHO, bearform is situationally good -- but a lot of the time it's not worth using.

Like most things druid, the moon has an influence on it.

One of the reasons I played yet another druid so soon was to tinker around with bearform. I think it definitely has uses situationally. I think you could get some really clever kills with it, by clever I mean very surprising to your opponent.

>> For me they have all been wood-elves. There is a reason though, I would see taking any other race as handicapping yourself.

Why is that? Is there some hidden bonus to wood-elf druids?

Yes.

You sort of make me want to play a druid. Sort of. I've never even rolled one, much less ranked into PK range.

This is a vast oversimplification I'm sure, but it seems like the PK boils down to:

1. Wait until a full moon, sick the Hunt on someone, chase them down.

2. Sit in plant growth with briars and that Outlander thingee, wait until someone walks in, then try to do overwhelming damage while they're lagged from the briars and trap.

3. Run up to someone with the right CoW and herbs and just try to damage them so quickly they go down before they know what hit them.

Condor does seem very convenient though, depending on how similar it works to shifter air forms. For scouting people if nothing else.

t