Druid Class Guide (Classic - Prophecy of Ro)
This guide will cover the Druid Class from Classic EQ all the way until the end of Prophecy of Ro. I consider PoR to be the end of the Classic era and a good place to end the first set of Class Guides. Druids are the class that I have some of the most experience playing during this era of EQ because that was what I played as a kid growing up.
Druids are typically described as a jack of all trades, they can do a little bit of everything including porting. A good Druid can heal a group in most dungeons and keep them alive as well as do a solid amount of damage if the group already has a dedicated healer. You also come with SoW which makes you the ultimate travel machine, until PoP is added people will be begging you for SoW and rides everywhere. That's both a blessing and a curse.
You can also solo pretty effectively as a Druid, with Roots, Snare and DoTs you'll be able to kite enemies around in many different zones. You can also Charm animals which will let you solo in more difficult places that have animal mobs (Chardok being one example). Despite all of what I said above, Druids lack much value in raid content for awhile. They are great for porting everyone to the raid but once you're on a raid they are outclassed in damage by actual DPS and in healing by actual healers. All of their buffs can be done by other classes too.
The moral of this story is Druids are a great class for group content but they are outshined in raid content (as many will tell you).
Important Stats & Focus Effects
Stats will give you the biggest benefit until you start to cap all of them out starting in Luclin. Druids are WIS casters so you'll want to focus on Wisdom and Stamina during the early eras. Strength and Agility aren't bad secondary stats as one lets you carry more and the other gives you more AC. Aside from those stats you'll want AC, HP, Mana and Mana Regen on your gear.
Once you have maxed out your Wisdom you'll no longer gain mana from it. At that point the only way for you to get better (in a raid context) is to increase your Mana and Mana Regen. If raiding isn't much your thing then you'll want to increase your AC, HP and survivability since that will help you in groups and while soloing. If you kite and almost never get hit, focus more into Mana and be a glass cannon if you'd like.
Armor Class: You will be taking a lot of hits especially when leveling in groups since heals make monsters quite angry. Also tanks (esp Warriors) have terrible agro early on.
Mana Regen (Flowing Thought): Gear with this is very valuable early on since this Mana Regen stacks with KEI and everything else.
Stamina: Gives you HP; works similarly as Wisdom in that it scales as you level.
Strength: Increases your weight limit. Want to carry a bunch of loot? You need this!
Wisdom: This gives you mana, until you max it out it's the best source of Mana for your class. How much Mana you get per Wisdom scales in level; at 1 it's 1 Mana per 1 Wis and at 60 it's typically 10 per 1 Wis.
Starting in PoP and becoming more common as the expansions go on, you'll find Heroic Stats on gear. For Druids you're going to want Heroic Wisdom, Heroic Stamina and Heroic Agility the most. These do kind of the same thing as their non-heroic counterparts. Heroic Wisdom will give you more mana and regen
Want more information about Heroic Stats and what they do/how they're beneficial? Curious what Mod2s are? Take a look at my Heroic Stats Guide for more information about what each stat does and why we're getting the ones that we're focusing on.
Heroic Stamina (HP/Mitigation): Increases HP, HP Regen, and HP Regen Cap. It also gives you some Mod2s which help with damage and stun mitigation.
Heroic Wisdom (MP/Regen): This increases your MP, Mana Regen and Max Mana Regen for Casters. Once you cap Flowing Thought, you'll need more Heroic Wisdom to increase your potential cap.
Heroic Agility (AC/Mitigation): HAgility increases your mitigation mod2s, your AC, Dodge, Block, Parry and many other important mitigation skills. It also increases your Endurance, Endurance Regen and the potential Endurance Regen cap that you can reach. Not as important for a Cleric though.
Important Focus Effects
You can start using Focus Effects in Luclin, there are a few important ones for you and they're the best while leveling up. At level 60 you should keep in mind that you'll have to sacrifice using Tower Gear to use many of these Focus items. This is a pretty big trade off and may not be worth it for some foci. Ultimately, it's your choice. Once Omens of War is released it becomes much easier to get the Foci you want on the gear that's best.
***Mana Preservation: Reduces the amount of Mana consumed with each cast.
***Improved Healing: This increases the total amount that you heal for with each cast.
**Extended Range: Increases the range of your spells.
**Spell Haste: Reduces the cast time of your spells (makes your spells cast faster)
**Improved Damage: Increases the damage your DD spells do. This is very important if you plan to deal direct damage (with nukes).
**Burning Affliction: Increases the damage of your DoT spells. Druids that plan to solo a lot by Kiting and Quadding will want this focus.
**Increased Detrimental Spell Duration: As the name suggests, this increases the duration of your detrimental spells. For a complete list of items that do this check out the Allakhazam Focus Page. I think most players will probably use the Jagged Gravestone of Affliction or a similar Aug from OoW to acheive this.
*Extended Enhancement: Increases the duration of your buffs.
*Improved Dodge: Chance to Dodge is increased by a moderate amount. Pretty much gives you a bit more survivability.
*Improved Parry/Block: Chance to Parry and Block is increased by a moderate amount. More survivability.
Reagent Conservation: Decreases the chance of a reagent being consumed. It saves money since some of our useful spells do have reagents.
Important Spells, Skills & AAs
Druids use all types of Magic but you'll probably want to specialize in Alteration since that is your primary school. Throughout the game one of your most important spells is going to be Spirit of Wolf, this increases movement speed. You will get an upgraded version of this called Spirit of Eagle in Luclin, a group version of that same spell is added in PoP called Flight of Eagles.
As I mentioned earlier, in addition to SoW you also have port spells which will take you all around the world. Typically every expansion that adds new zones has new port spells, you and Wizards are the only two classes which have the ability to port. Druids also get their own HP Type 1 buff, but it won't stack with the Cleric Aegolism or their HP Type 1 buffs. For groups and solo play that doesn't matter but on raids you'll probably never be casting your HP buffs.
On raids you'll probably be using your Damage Shield, Regeneration and Resist buffs the most. You get powerful versions of these spells and people will depend on you to cast a lot of them. Your damage spells won't land much in the early eras but they will in Luclin and PoP, it all depends on the raid though. Depending on the expansion and your guild your role will change, sometimes you'll be a healer of some kind and other times you can throw some DoTs/damage with some buffing utility.
Self Damage Shield Buff: Druids get a unique self buff that stacks with all their other buffs - it will give you a smaller DS with some AC. The lowest level version of this is called Thistlecoat.
Mask Self Buff: This spell line begins with Mask of the Hunter in Kunark, Mask of the Stalker is added in Luclin followed by Mask of the Forest in PoP and Mask of the Wild in OoW. You get some Mana Regen and other minor benefits from casting this buff, it stacks with all other buffs.
Damage Shields: As a Druid you get some of the best Damage Shields in the game. Mages will get Damage Shields as good as you too.
Utility Spells: Druids get tons of utility spells, you'll get invis, Levitation, Snare, Root, Succor, Teleportation Spells, Resist Spells, Spirit of Wolf (SoW), Pacify, Regeneration, Strength, Resurrection (In Omens of War), Nukes, DoTs, HoTs, Direct Heals and much more.
Oaken Guard (Omens): It will mitigate a lot of incoming melee damage for a short period. The best way to describe this is kind of an "oh crap" button when enemies attack you. It can also be used while soloing to save you or give you a moment to land a Snare/Root.
Lion's Strength (Omens): This spell is kind of a one of a kind, it increases melee damage by 5%.
Aura of Life (Ro): Everyone gets an Aura in Ro, yours isn't very good though. I mean, it's better than nothing but it's eventually replaced with something much better. The Aura that eventually becomes the best for you is added in HoT, it's called Wildfire Aura. You will get upgrades of this one as time goes on.
Skills
Druids also come with some Skills worth using, you get both Tracking and Forage. Using Forage will scrounge up some junk, food, drink or tradeskill items. Many people who have Forage never use it, but if you setup a macro that uses it and also has /autoi you'll deposit what you forage and can deal with it later.
Forage Macro: /doability # on line 1 and /autoi on line 2. Set Forage to whatever doability # you want to use.
Tracking is a bit more useful than Forage, with Tracking you can figure out what monsters are in the surrounding area. Doing this will let you locate nameds or quest enemies that walk around or don't have specific spawn locations. As you level up Tracking you'll be able to see further with it.
AAs
In this section I will cover clicky AAs, almost all of the passive AAs are worth buying. Of course some are more useful than others but I feel like that's all kind of self evident. Your first clicky AAs start in Luclin, you'll get Dire Charm which works on animals only and Exodus (Succor), Invis and MGB. Exodus means you can mem another spell since that gives a clicky Succor and the same is true for Invis.
Planes of Power adds a few new ones, Spirit of the Wood which is a great skill that we normally pop during hard pulls or boss fights. Wrath of the Wild is kind of a garbage AA, toss it on a tank or someone in your group who is taking damage. It will get eaten up fast and it adds a very minor amount of dps. Entrap is an AA Snare, it will free up another spell gem slot and then you have Radiant Cure which is a cure for your entire group. Both of these are very useful.
Gates of Discord adds Nature's Boon which is garbage. In Omens of War you'll get access to Call of the Wild and Secondary Recall. Opinions will vary on Secondary Recall, I personally like it and find it useful. You can bind your Druid in a weird location then teleport your group to the secondary location using another AA which you will get later on (or a spell, which I think you also get later on). So yea, for now it is kinda meh.
Call of the Wild is completely useless, it's a rez but also not a rez that I find pointless to use. I think it was originally intended to allow someone to come back to their corpse and wait to find a better rez than your 90% later on. However, people will typically eat the 90% rather than wait and DoN adds Guild Lobby (corpse summon) and SoD adds Mercenaries which will rez you by 96% anyway. Then eventually everyone gets a 96% rez so it's just a useless AA.
There is nothing added in Prophecy of Ro but during DoDH you'll get Silent Casting, Shared Camouflage, Convergence of Spirits and Nature's Guardian. Convergence is basically a single target Spirit of the Wood AA, it's very useful but I believe it has stacking issues with SotW so you'll want to use both at different times. Nature's Guardian is basically useless, it's as terrible as the bear summon you get during Velious. Later on you will get another pet AA, Spirit of Nature (Underfoot), this one can be upgraded into a Swarm Pet. That one is pretty useless too.
Shared Camouflage is a group version of your other clicky invis from PoP. Use this from now on instead. Last but not least, you also get Silent Casting during DoDH which is the first major burn AA that you get. Eventually you will get Twincast and other AAs which will allow you to do massive amounts of damage as a Druid; during your burn rotation you can even climb into the top 10 on a parse!
During this era Silent Casting is pretty meh for you, but you'll be using it a lot as time goes on.
How To Play: Druid Basics
This is one of the more difficult 'How To Play' sections for me to write because when it comes to a Druid the answer is "it depends on the situation". Like I said at the start of the guide, Druids are capable of doing basically everything. If you join a group that needs a healer, you can fulfill that role. Although I would encourage you to tell the group to look for a Cleric that way you can do DPS instead.
Groups that already have a healer, you can do some DPS with your DoTs and Nukes. You also have Snare which is useful to use in any group if you're fighting mobs that flee. Just keep in mind that you aren't the best at any one thing - as I explained earlier you can 'make do' as a healer but not in difficult content. Also, not if your group isn't solid. If people are dying they'll have to run back (until OoW when you get rez).
Tip: When healing you will want to start casting your heals early. As a Druid you don't heal for a lot so it's very possible for the tank to take too much incoming damage and you're unable to outheal it. You'll probably want to know what you can and can't handle before accepting certain group invites, or at the very least be honest with the group that it's your first time in a new area.
When you join a group, cast all of the buffs that you can. If there isn't a Cleric they'll need HP Type 1 along with Damage Shield if no one else is doing it. Give SoW to the puller or whoever else needs it then prepare for healing or DPS. Most people will ask you for a Zephyr when they leave too, this is basically a single target port.
In my experience, finding EXP groups as a Druid is very easy but high level groups that are doing difficult content will typically fill their ranks with different classes... More useful classes. This is where I would advise you to try and stand out when you play. A good Druid can blow up mobs just as much as a Magician and heal just as good as a Shaman. This will stand out to people and they will be more inclined to bring you along.
The reason I am giving you advice like this is because I have had many people bust my ass once they got to know me because I like playing a Druid. "Why don't you pick a useful class?" I am always told and while they are joking, the essence of their point is true. Everyone does something better than you when you play a Druid and on raids you can really see what they mean.
Soloing As A Druid
Druid is one of the few classes capable of soloing in EQ, their strategy in this era is to kite or to do something called quadding. It's essentially the same thing, although typically people consider it quadding when you pull multiple mobs at a time. You'll typically Root and Snare all of the mobs then take them out with nukes or DoTs. Doing this takes a lot of micro management but you have the spells needed to pull it off.
I've personally always preferred the DoT method, you will pull enemies with Snare and then DoT them up as you're running around in giant circles. You can squeeze in short periods of sitting as you run from spot to spot. Or (once Luclin hits) you can use a Mount and sit the entire time. If you can get Woven Grass Bracelet that will give you a mana free clicky to use for Drones of Doom which is one of your better DoTs in the early levels.
My advice on making this easier, pull a bunch of mobs with Snare, if you're pulling them all out of one room Snare the furthest one first. That should let you land a few Snares before the mobs reach you. Once you get all of them snared DoT them all up and run in circles to group them up. Running in circles will help you keep them all in relatively one place and move around as one big unit.
Sometimes if one of the enemies is being unruly (like a caster) you'll want to nuke it to eliminate it quickly. This is one of those things where practice makes perfect, you will learn what to do once you get the hang of kiting and once you understand what the mobs do in the areas you're hunting. As a solo player - don't forget to purchase potions in the Bazaar, especially mana regen pots!
More Tips & Tricks
Druid BiS Lists
I have BiS gear lists for this class which include both Tower and Pre-Tower BiS items. For those of you who care less about a BiS list and just want a list of good gear options, I have included that at the bottom of each page too.
Kunark Druid BiS Gear List
Velious Druid BiS Gear List
Luclin Druid BiS Gear List
PoP Druid BiS Gear List