I have been a DPS druid my entire CH life. The only skills I used are Vines, Lighting, Storm, N.Touch, Embrace and Bark. The only good thing about DPS is I can kill mobs myself, having some glory being able to kill Starspell (Instant 20k gold) and helping out in group levelling.
Druids are meant to be support. I fully agree and hence I am thankful for Admin for allowing DPS built to be secondary for those who choose to go to the dark path.
In terms of Entity’s query, I guess it depends on how you want to look at it. I have two opinions on this.
1) I am from Taranis and I know 95% of existing druids on this world are support built such as Royal. So I can safely choose to remain as a DPS built. Support druids are like mages. You usually only need one to cast the wards or buffs / Cloak or lures. Because I know they are support built, I need only maintain a high level of Bark, Nature’s Touch and Embrace which contributes the fight. So it is a good balance.
2) While wards and buffs are extremely helpful, I generally find a full 8 person team can take on all of the existing bosses without any buffs or wards as long as there are 2 – 3 druids with good amount of heal. (Lava Lord & Stone Lord are tough yes but still manageable with a high bark and sufficient heals) The only existing boss that is a must on wards and buffs is only Aggragoth, being ward of fire, abundance and perhaps ward of solder.
Hence, even if you choose to go DPS, as long as you have good amount of heal. You can always squeeze in the fight as chances are other druids are support. So all in all, having wards and buffs are great to have in a boss fight. It is a convenience but not a necessity as our primarily skills – Bark, N.T & Embrace are usually sufficient enough for the kill. This obviously also applies to DPS druids. Killing faster is an added bonus but we don’t need it.
My nature touch is currently 1400, nature embrace being 147 and a very high lv bark. So I am always called to boss fights as well along with the support druids. It’s good to have a mixture as it brings more benefit to the boss fight. I really love druids. We are so Versatile with 20 odd skills to choose from.
PS: Quoting Royal - Bottomline is, a pure DPS stat like mine, can become support in a snap of a finger with the use of an alt book. It does Massive heals. 1400 Heal, 170 nature embrace, 450 natures breath, 350 armour bark and a very high lv ward or abundance for the last slot.
Adding into morph's post, like he said that he has shield of bark and nature's embrace all upgraded and stuff (i am in a different clan), i am currently in league with two to three other druids in my clan to coordinate who has maxed which buffs and which rings to give to whom etc.
Just a little fact : i am an abundance druid, anytime soon I'll even add in abundant aura, but the cast range is so low that it is highly i appealing to me. Other clanmates have maxed nature's embrace, shield of bark, some wards to help with defense. But note that all the druids max nature's touch as healing is most important in game :p
The only thing i have to say about dps or a hybrid is that it looses energy fast as i realized when i max all attack skills, but does rather amazing damage for a druid. Anyways, if you go dps or something, sigils are a dps's best friend especially when you have little to no break in between each mob transfer when the previous dies when leveling.