Hey all,

I was one of the first wave of 8man gank squad druids in the early 2000s and I wrote this guide to help people. I found a copy of it and felt since this is a throwback server, most of this guide might still be applicable. If I have any TOA stuff in here, I will edit it as these things come back to me or people comment below and help me remove TOA tips.

Thanks and see you at Emain!!

For Hibernia!!!

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Druid RvR Healing Guide
By Bishopknight

9/11/03

BishopKnight's Druid Healing Guide - V 7.0
8/29/03

My Realm Rank
8 L 9


My Spec

40 Regrowth, 35 nurture, 9 nature


My realm abilities

Group Purge
Mystic Crystal Lore 2
Raging Power
Augment Acuity 3
Mastery of Concentration
Mastery of Art 2
Purge
Toughness 1
Avoidance of Magic 1
Augment Dexterity 1
Augment Con
Longwind
Serenity 1

All TOPICS REVISED/ BROUGHT UP-TO-DATE
=================================================

21) Fighting Savages (NEW!)

00) best template
01) Uber group makeup
02) dropping back
03) realm ability suggestions
04) Mana usage in RvR
05) using root's
06) using pets effectively
07) using dots
08) group purge
09) Full rez
10) Druid tanking
11) Small sheilds, remove them
12) Sprinting
13) Ninja Druid Training
14) Dueling Tricks
15) Rezzing
16) Proper Buffing
17) Druid speak
18) Healing Casters
19) My hot bar(s)
20) Some UBER spellcraft template jewelry - unfinished
21) Reinforced > Scale

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

21) Fighting Savages ---------------------------------------------

Know thy enemy. We all know savages are the Flavor of the month, premier class in midgard. But how can you protect yourself? Well, you really cannot vs a savage but I have come up with one way to prolong your eventual death vs savages.

Mastery of concentration

Yes this costly ability will save you, but remember that stuns and mez can still affect you, remember to /face that savage on you because his best friend is "clans call" a h2h rear stun that will nullify your ability to chain cast. If your fighting a 2hd savage, your best bet is still to /face.

This has a double effect, if you have specced mastery of blocking, you'll also inherit the appropriate bonuses to blocking since you face your opponent.

Regardless, good luck with the savages, if you think its bad now, wait a few more months wink.gif


0) Best Template ---------------------------------------------------

40 regrowth, 35 nurture ( yellow cold resist for midgard ) , 9 nature is the best
best rez, great buffs w/ no buffbot around, utility roots

1) Uber Group Setup(s) ---------------------------------------------------

2 druid
1 warden
1 bard
1 enchanter
3 more dmg dealers


02) dropping back ---------------------------------------------------

Always look for ways to hide immediately when you see groups or if they keep coming at you stay with the group and have group purge ready. Then try to bolt into a "christmas tree" type tree, don't hide behind a oak type tree, invaders can see your name behind it if within 500 range. In the christmas tree, you are less seen as long as your out of 500 range.

Also, once you have position or your in open field, have your aoe root/single root button ready. Try to root those that purged or missed mez and are heading straight for you.

3) Realm Ability Suggestions In order ( what I'm getting when I respec )
---------------------------------------------------

a - mcl
b - group purge
c - aug acuity 3
d - mastery of concentration
e - mcl 2
f - raging power
g - purge
h - toughness
j - aug dex
k - avoidance of magic 1
k - wild healing


4) Mana usage in RvR ---------------------------------------------------
Keep lvl 40 mana potions on your person at all times and a few in your quick bar, mine occupy spots 9 and 10 on almost every bar. The spread heal is the main weapon on milegate standoffs, try to get up onto the stairs or upstairs into the room as fast as possible for safe healing. If a shadowblade attacks you, hopefully your wearing reinforced armor, the damage will not be so bad. If you have insta roots, you know what to do, else use mastery of concentration to root them off you or try to sprint down the stairs so they fall via stick and then root them once they're off you.


5) Using Root's ---------------------------------------------------
Use this judiciously, don't break a bards mez but have yours ready. Druids are public enemy #1, any smart 8v8 group will want you dead first so arm yourself. Practice those roots and watch the field like magic johnson, see who's coming. Also, don't stay in one place healing too long, SB's have a lockdown on you and are stealthing closer every second most likely.
SB's go for me first every time, so I constantly stick and move, heal and move, heal and move. Never assume you are safe.

6) Using Pets Effectively ( if you really have to use them at all! ) -------------------
I dont recommend them because in RvR, if theyre on a target you cant cast your Mystic Crystal Lore, its stupid cause even though your not attacking anyone your screwed, it says your in combat and cant use it. In my opinion, its a bug. Plus they give you away so don't bother with them whatsoever. Only time I like them is when maybe I'm solo and some archer shoots me, then its helpful but most the time, don't bother.

7) Using dots ---------------------------------------------------
Dots are useful in keep attacks for archers when your not needed for healing. Use these in RvR as well on an RM that is dd'ing someone, the dots can really f-up their casts rhythm and make them run, its sort of instinctual that they turn and run when hit, so your making a caster useless for about 20 seconds almost. Only cast if your group is not requiring heals.

Group Purge---------------------------------------------------
Most times, mids start with aoe disease so you use your group purge first. Then they mez, which sucks, but luckily all mids groups are not this smart. This is definitely a major weapon and you must have it. Groups wont want you if you don't. Get it, period. Sometimes its better to wait 1 second after aoe disease so you purge both mez and disease so your immune from both for 1 minute. Try to be judicious here.

9) Full rez ---------------------------------------------------
Not much to say other than I love this ability, speccing 40 in regrowth is worth it for this alone. 39 is a great spread heal too. Full rez in battle is crucial. Also, a tip, designate the full rez druid in the group the in RvR battle rezzer, that way there is no confusion if the other one is rezzing or not.

10) Druid Tanking ---------------------------------------------------
Dont do it.... unless your oom and instas and MCL. Then pick the nearest enemy with lowest health and kill them. We do really bad damage in quick battles, come on face it and we know it. Were supplemental fighters at best. You shouldn't have to fight in a balanced group anyways. You should be busy healing and sending pet, dotting, rooting purged tank invaders and rezzing. I have 75+ strength on my SC armor , around 300 w/ purple buffs and I still do about only 60 dmg w/ additional 20-30 from self arms buff as well.

11) Small Shields, remove them ( sc your armor to not have one if possible ) -------------
How many times have i read on the boards that ... "I can see the healer a mile away by his round shield and we pounce on him and kill him first". This shield every noob druid thinks they need is not so effective in RvR. Its not going to help that much because you are not supposed to tank. If your taking agro, your pet should sick the caster if you have it on defensive, other than that, you should sprint out of range and root your stalker. If you DO remove your shield, expect the opponent to have no idea who is the healer till battle ensues where as they should be mezzed and/or dead by then.

12) Sprinting ---------------------------------------------------

This is a druids best friend in most cases. Try to get the 1 RA pt, Longwind for 5 more seconds of sprinting time if possible. Some druids use Mastery of Concentration but I do not believe you need to spend those points if you master the art of sprinting and hiding. If you are attacked, you should immediately sprint. Try to distance yourself and the attacker away from the group if your group seems like the current battle is a lost cause. If it seems like you will be assisted, circle around. There is a chance you will be snared by "PREVENT FLIGHT" that is where your realm ability "PURGE" comes in handy. Use it, but save 'GROUP PURGE" for your team always. Again, most the time, you will be taking a main attacker out of the situation and giving your offensive minded teammates more time to wreak havoc on your attacker.

13) Ninja Druid Training ---------------------------------------------------
Ninja druid training is pretty much an art form if I can say that here without sounding too much like bragging. I am 99% of the time last to die in a group or never at all. I can pretty much sense where to go. I will tell you one of my biggest secrets. Here it is. Say you are fighting at the AMG or MMG. You get attacked, but you have about 3 or 4 seconds lead , you run up the stairs into the room, greater heal yourself and jump out the side window onto the alb/mid side of the wall. Next proceed into the woods or the corners of the milegate and tuck yourself into the corner of the wall and sit where u can med back your power. It is important to heal yourself because you lose 50% of your health by jumping out the window to be exact.

Also, more druid ninjitsu is involved in running for tree cover whenever you encounter a group. When you see a group of invaders, try to find the closest tree and run behind it and face your group members, you can heal thru a tree as if it was not there. This is really incredible because you are getting basically a free "MASTERY OF CONCENTRATION" here while you heal uninterrupted for many seconds. In my case, I have "MCL2" and "RAGING POWER" along with specced heals of 400+. I tested it the other day and I can get off 21 specced heals at 400+ hp before going completely out of mana in a row. I really can't stress this enough. If you are spotted healing, you will be attacked. So it is dreadfully crucial you hide and heal.

At lord standoffs, if mids are coming in and it looks helpless, fall off the back but fall back into the tower, you will stick to the wall and have a perfect spot to spread heal from while you receive no dmg or interruption. Also, you can scale your way down the wall and keep your IRS score high

14) Dueling Tricks ---------------------------------------------------
Well, this is certainly a great new area to talk about and I'm sure I will learn more as I play. But honestly, I am a healer spec so my nature is not as strong. BUT, that does not mean I cannot win in battle, it simply takes more tactics. First tip, secret is to obviously have someone else initiate the duel, so that you can start when you are ready. When you are ready, make a macro for /duel accept. Have your dot ready next to it and cast it right after you hit your macro. You will immediately interrupt your opponent and stop his dot cast, send your pet immediately, if you can continue to dot the druid, and root the pet if you can. Then engage. Again, I have a weak dot so nature druids are heavily favored in dueling vs each other. Also, dueling caster is simple with purge and group purge. Cast the pet on them immediately and purge their stun or mez/stun combo, once your in range go at them, even MOC wont stop you if you have both insta heals ready. You should be able to take a caster down quickly with a fast DPS sword/sickle.

15) Rezzing ---------------------------------------------------
With the invent of rps for rezzing, this is great for druids, but we dont get breaks on mana usage or less time for better rezzes unfortunately. However, in a battle, designate one person to rez ( depends if u wnana let one person get all the rps ) and one to heal, IF you have 2 druids in the group. Again, u might want to switch it up so u equally distribute rps but this is the best thing to do. What happens is one is dedicated to healing and the other to reviving members, you really double the effectiveness of the team because you both are on the same page and you feel like your stronger than your sums. Its simple tactics and common sense but so few people think of it.

16) Proper Buffing ---------------------------------------------------
OMG, this is the biggest deficiency I have ever seen in people. They simply don't know how to buff, and I could write a 20 page paper on how to do this i think. People are so ignorant in it. Ok, to start, this is ALL casters need for buffs

39 nurture spec qui/dex actually gives you 75 to both stats
nurture skill points actually raise your buffs points
buffs usually buff for alot more than they delve for
melee speed buff does not reduce casting time for spells

CASTERS

str/con
qui/dex
int
dex
con

TANKS

str/con
qui/dex
melee
dex ( if no bard/warden )
con ( if no bard/warden )
af ( if no bard/warden )
str ( if no bard/warden )

melee buffs only help the regular attacks, they actually lessen the HIGH damage on style attacks. So if a spearo wants max damage on first hit, don't recommend melee buff. QUI buffs actually have NO DOWNSIDE so cast these on any tanks, they don't lower damage. More QUI should actually be spent when you create a damager in most cases.

HEALERS
str/con
qui/dex
dex
con

VERY IMPORTANT FOR DRUIDS PLEASE READ.
heal cast time and buff cast time is directly affected by your dex. so CAST QUI/DEX AND DEX ON YOURSELF FIRST. I REPEAT CAST ON YOURSELF FIRST!!!!!! You are casting sometimes 20 buffs on players, and you knock off at least 1 second per buff if you just cast those first on yourself. I have seen a 100 times how bards/druids/wardens don't buff themselves first before others. Really a thing that most people didn't know but I am trying to do my part. Because BK cares

17) Druid speak ---------------------------------------------------
Well, I really haven't made up many words but I did make up the abbreviation OOR. Which I like to say a lot means "OUT OF RANGE" because as I mentioned above I'm hiding and healing a lot and sometimes my teammates run out of range of the 2000 range limit for heals. I'm hoping to standardize this word Also, another common word is GP, for group purge, some don't know it yet. Spread the words , thx

18) Healing Casters ---------------------------------------------------
This is mostly preemptive, you can easily keep a caster alive with fast heals. I have my bar setup so i can use my baseline heal and my spec line and my greater heal whenever I want. For the situation. I can get my baseline heal down to about 1.6 seconds fast with buffs. ( yes I timed it with a stopwatch, I'm a geek ) DEx is so huge for a druid. I have 252 dex with buffs, and I have aug dex 1. If you want to heal mostly, equip the oghamahast pick hammer for dex/emp/con increases while u heal, u might as well hold something that is buffing your stats while u heal <shrug>

19) My Hot Bars ---------------------------------------------------

first bar ( buffs )

second bar
1 - aoe root castable
2 - stick
3 - dot
4 - (potion)
5 - (potion)
6 - (potion)
7 - renasance heal
8 - matter resist
9 - cold resist
10 - heat resist

third bar
1 - full rez
2 - stick
3 - spread heal
4 - mcl 2
5 - sprint
6 - group insta heal
7 - renascence
8 - single insta heal
9 - raging power
10 - mastery concentration

fourth bar
1 - aoe root
2 - stick
3 - single purge
4 - group purge
5 - stick
6 - group insta heal
7 - renascence
8 - insta heal
9 - raging power
10 - mastery concentration


Bishopknight - "Bishopknight"

Copied from Rastmajires Guide

Playing a druid is one of those most rewarding classes in DAOC. It is also one of the most difficult, and frustrating classes in rvr. Your groups success depends upon you.

You have to get throught he mass ammounts of inturupts from spamed spells, melee, and pets. All the while keeping your group mates alive.

New Druids

The single largest fault of new druids, is thier tendency to not pay attention to the flow of the battle.

1. If your tanks are pushing forward, you need to also be moving forward.

2. If the enemy is attempting to flank the sides of your group. You must keep your group between you and them.

This may seem simple common sense. But it is amazing how uncommon common sense is.

Pets, roots, and shears

These should be the last thing you as a druid do in rvr. If you as a druid are wondering around looking for targets to put your pet on. Your group is probably dieing behind you.

I can not remember the number of times i have heard the druid say "You droped so fast man". But in reality it took 5-6 casts to drop your group mate. The druid was simply not paying attention to thier job. Or was mid cast on some spell that was un needed.

If that is not enough incentive to not using these abilities. A pet, root, or shear also puts you into combat. Which lowers your power regen to 12 second tick time instead of 3 to 6 seconds. (depending on standing or sitting)

For newer druids my sugestion is do not use any offensive spell what so ever untill you can go a full night with no more than 2 group mates dieing. (discounting full group wipes that could not be avoided, it happens)

SoS is your friend

SoS is a group buff cast by bards. ( See the main rvr page under SoS) Proper use of SoS should last you an entire fight, allowing you to be un-crowd controlable for the entire durration.

If the prior reasons not to use pets, roots, or shears were not enough. These abilities will also drop SoS from your toon.

In other words, if you have SoS up, you should be doing NOTHING other than running away from enemy tanks and casters, and healing untill you are totaly OOP.

What heals to use

The only two heals that should be used in combat are the large single target spec heal (the 2.2 cast time one), and spread-heal.

The group heal does not heal enough damage on a single target to keep someone alive. If you are using the spec or baseline group heal, you need to rethink how you play your druid.

It is perfectly normal to go through 2 to 3 power bars full of power in a good 8 man fight. If you have people in your group dieing, and you have not gone through this much power (not including rezzes) you are not healing correctly.

The smaller spec heal, while verry mana efficient, takes too long to cast if your target is taking damage. This heal should only be used if

1. your in downtime

2. your target has stoped taking damage.

Devine Intervention

This realm ability provides a pool of healing for every one in the group accept the druid whom cast the spell. The ammount of healing within the pool depends on what level of the RA you have.

DI has a certain healing latency inherrant. So while a target may be taking damage, they will not be healed right away. Thus it is posible to assist nuke a target down before DI will ever heal that person.

Due to this latency it is not advisable to use DI as an extra insta heal, or think that while it is up you are free to not heal. DI is a pool of healing to cover any heals you may miss. While DI is up, you should still be using single target heals and spread heals, on any target taking damage. Do not rely on DI to do your job for you, it is a poor substitue.

Druids and spell queing

This is something that not many people are even aware exists in game. When you cast a spell, and hit a key to cast another spell while casting the first. It will tell you that the 2nd spell will cast when the first spell is finished. This is called spell queing.

As a druid you should have spell queing disabled at all times. This will take longer to get used to. As you are so used to using and abusing this feature for the durration fo your play time. But this tends to get your group mates killed.

In thier panic many druids will spam heals on a target that is getting damaged. This will que up continuous heals. Draining your power past where it is needed, and making it more difficult to respond to other group mates taking damage other than the one you are currently healing. (due to a que'd spell going off, and you 1. waiting for that spell to finish 2. canceling it by running around.) By this time the new group member is dead, and you are using PR to rez them.

The best way to impliment this new style of healing is to place your large single target spec heal next to your spreadheal on your quick bar. When someone in your group needs healing target them, and hit the single target heal quickly followed by the spreadheal.

The result of this will be that if the target is out of LOS (mythic's buggy code) the single target heal will not fire. But the spreadheal will. Thus the target still gets some healing. If you try and do this with spell queing turned on. It will only que up the spreadheal if the single target heal does go off. Thus burning through 2x the power when it is not needed.

Templates and druids

One of the largest problems druid have is power durring combat. You must have at least 36% power pool in a druid template. 40% + is sugested. You should also have at LEAST 2 power regen items in your druid template, if not 3.

Some of these items include: Druid champ weapon, druid epic arms, Kalare's necklace, darkspire buckler. There are many more items that can be included, but i can not stress enough the need that you have at least 2 if not 3 regen items in your template.

In a good 8 man fight, you as a druid should go through two to three full power bar's of heals. If you can not keep up with this, then you need a better template.

There are several well equiped druid templates with the proper ammount of regen items included on the templates page here

More RVR Guides/Tips


RvRing on a druid can be difficult. You will need to have skills in mobility and kiting, reading and knowing your own groupmates, and knowing when to use certain heals. Your primary abilities will consist of your Major Heal, Greater Heal, Instant Heal, Minor Group Heal, Group Heal, Spreadheal, and Root. Secondary abilities will be your buff shears, curing poison/disease, and DoT.

How Do I know what Heal to use?

Knowing your heals is very important. There are many different scenarios in which certain heals will be best.

If one of your groupmates is in Line of Sight, and has become assist targeted or taking massive damage, it is best to use your single target Greater Heal. If they are not in line of sight, sometimes it is best to use your Spreadheal, and sometimes best to use your Group Heal.

What is a Spreadheal?

Spreadheals are specialized healing spells that intelligently heals the most damaged member of the group. It is usefull when there's no time to detemine who in your group needs help first. It is best to think of a Spreadheal as a pool of healing. When cast, it is distributed amongst your groupmates to whoever needs it the most. The cast time on this spell is long, however, and can sometimes be inappropriate to use depending on how fast you need to get a heal off. The amount of healing Spreadheals can do depends on how large the group is.

Should I be fighting?

Yes, and no. If there is little to no healing to be done, you can help your group by interrupting opponents with your DoT, buff shear, or Root. You will have to determine when it would be helpful, or when trying to Kite something off of you, or a groupmate.

Bishopknight wrote:8) Group Purge---------------------------------------------------
Most times, mids start with aoe disease so you use your group purge first. Then they mez, which sucks, but luckily all mids groups are not this smart. This is definitely a major weapon and you must have it. Groups wont want you if you don't. Get it, period. Sometimes its better to wait 1 second after aoe disease so you purge both mez and disease so your immune from both mezz for 1 minute. Try to be judicious here.

afaik theres no disease immunity