Druid strategy guide
MWO
Member Posts: 214
Hello everyone!
I've been playing through Baldur's Gate some times now and I've been thinking carefully about the druid class. I think their spells are kinda good.
In my last playthrough I was playing with a full mage party (6 mages). It worked very well! My lifeboat many times was the various amount of summons. My analyze is this: Summons in Baldur's Gate 1-2 are very good, even in ToB.
Hence - to get back to my main thread - what do you think about the druid class? Their priestscroll has alot of good summons; e.g. the fire elemental and elemental princes.
Regards
I've been playing through Baldur's Gate some times now and I've been thinking carefully about the druid class. I think their spells are kinda good.
In my last playthrough I was playing with a full mage party (6 mages). It worked very well! My lifeboat many times was the various amount of summons. My analyze is this: Summons in Baldur's Gate 1-2 are very good, even in ToB.
Hence - to get back to my main thread - what do you think about the druid class? Their priestscroll has alot of good summons; e.g. the fire elemental and elemental princes.
Regards
0
Comments
Seeing your elemental prince and your deva/planetar destroying dragons and other big bosses is what make you happy about all the time waited as their leveling curve is quite atypical and they have to wait for forever to reach lev 15, when they gain a lot of lev7 slots in one single leveling up.
This, the insect spells and the Ironskin are imo the only very relevant Druid only spells, the only not RP reasons to chose a Druid over a Cleric, that has better spells to buff himself and the party.
The mid level summons are useful and the Druid has the better variety to choose into, but are nothing that give a clear advantage over the summoning ability of a Cleric or Mage.
Single class druids are powerful in the sense that they get their "I win" spells earlier than other druid types, and in some groups that's all that really matters.
Note that all druids are supposed to be casters, even the Shapeshifter. These are not your WoW druids.
The stigma against BG druids stems from their original BG1 incarnation. In a setting where a single critical hit can end your adventures, druids lacked access to heavy armors/shields (like the cleric) or powerful control spells (like the mage). In fact, the sheer mid-game power of the BG2 druid seems to be an attempt to rectify just how bad the BG1 incarnation of the class was. It also helps justify the uncharacteristic, massive jump in XP required from level 13 to 14 - other classes needed to catch up.
The greatest benefit the Druid class gets is the insect swarm spells, which is the bane of many spellcasters. Those are few and far between though, which is why the Druid is best as a Fighter/Druid multiclass that negates their lackluster armor compared to their cleric counterparts, who are decent fighters that can toss around the occasional heal, protection spell, insect swarm and elemental summons at higher levels. That's only the insect summons spells though, right? So it's those spells that are a bit strong, not the class itself. You should try the SCS component that fixes them. It gives you a shapeshift on will (it's a weapon that you place in your weapon slot that changes you when you equip it), and it returns the intended abilities to the forms (grt werewolf has all the resistances and regens 1hp/sec etc).
It makes them fun and usable without making them too strong.
But it is a VERY nice choise. By far the best druid kit IMHO.
And then there are spells like Entangle which, while inferior to Web, can be just as effective crowd control when combined with spells/wands, especially since (as a level 1 spell) you get more castings of it. Avengers, though, get both Web AND Entangle. Call Lightning is situational, but is incredibly powerful when it works especially when you have 6 different people casting the spell (druid and 5 nymphs). Iron Skins gives druids physical damage protection. The Fire Elemental can hit almost anything and obviously have their use. They won't hit as hard as Aerial Servants, but they can punch through Stoneskins and auto-kill trolls. The insect spells need no introduction, and Nature's Beauty is basically an "I win" spell for a lot of battles. The casting time issue can be somewhat mitigated with common sense and simple strategies.
Besides SCS, EE itself seems to have taken pains to nerf druids with normalized priest spell progression, which severely affected druid spell progression. If you have played/still play the original BG2, you'll notice that druids follow their own distinct spell progression. They originally got a single level 7 spell slot earlier and then got a whole bunch of extra spell slots after breaking the 13->14 XP wall, and if you understood how the class worked it should be obvious that this was likely done to offset how a mere level 7 BG2 druid could basically summon a (albeit significantly inferior) level 10-ish mage (access to level 5 arcane spells), though lore-wise this was also because there are supposed to only be few high level druids in existence at a time (so perhaps the nymph was added when they decided to stick with FR lore). Regardless, the effect is the same.
I'm not sure if this is still the case, though.
Anyway there has to be some reason why all these people, who we can agree on are respected modders, are doing this, right?
Druids are plenty powerful, though mid-game they mostly specialize in bringing down humanoid opponents. They don't have a lot of options against undead until much later on, for example. Still, if you play by their strengths you should be swimming in enough enchanted items/gold to be able to tackle anything else.
Finally, a single class druid PC is able to reach level 12-13 about as fast as thieves/bards, which means that they can force higher level NPCs to spawn earlier. That means Viconia spawns with Aerial Servants/Harm, etc. Really nasty stuff.
I suggest modding the game with Spell Revisions and Faith and Powers. Tons of new spells and new kits. I am having a good time with this setup atm, more than sorc tbh.
well, you're kind of playing a necromancer right now, reviving a 3 year old thread