Celtic Heroes

The more I think about this (while, certainly, taking other player's experience into account), the more I am beginning to think it might not be possible to do what I was hoping to do. I wanted to build a hybrid, support-type character, who could heal, help manage the battlefield and, finally, add a bit to the dps counter, in between. Perhaps I am asking too much from one class, and to take too much away from the druid's primary role, I'll actually just make myself useless in any of the before-mentioned group situations. I know there are books to reset stats and skills; however, I'd also need to have two sets of fully-leveled pets and mounts, for this to work. I don't know. I'm going to have to research further. Thanks again for the advice and comments.

The reason druids mainly focus on focus... is because it increases your skills. Increasing your focus increases the damage of your lightning strike as was as vines, the heal of natures touch, the armor boost of bark, etc. Just in case you didn't know attack does not increase your damage. It increases your chance to hit the enemy with your attack, so dex increases as you know your chance to dodge an attack and decreases your enemy's chance of dodging or blocking yours. Your weapon ability also increases your attack (and dmg I think, either staff or totem) and for most purposes your ability should provide enough attack so you don't need any dex to consistently hit your opponent.

The build that it is recommended to have dex with is when you use a howling winds build. Essentially, with winds you are decreasing an opponents attack, making them less likely to hit you, so by increasing you dex and therefore defense you can make it so you will dodge most attacks.

I see... Ok... Didn't know about the weapon ability adding hit chance... If that's the case, what is dex for? I mean, I would assume the weapon abilty stat is present in all classes? What? Does it just add more hit chance, for dedicated melee classes (in addition to the defense, of course)? Thanks again, for helping me out with this, btw.

**EDIT**
Nm, I answered my own question... I'm also reading the stat guide now...
**EDIT #2**
Ah, to heck with it... I see druid weapons, all the time, on the ah, that have minimum strength requirements. This can only lead me to believe the game designers intended a more balanced druid to be possible. I'm going with it. If it doesn't work out, I'll swap my eagle for a rabbit (or phoenix), and respec. Nevertheless, I learned a lot here, so thanks again.
**EDIT #3**
I moved to Taranis... Folks on Epona ate, simply, "wilding out" a bit too much for my taste. First person I ran into there was a lvl 212 druid, from a top 5 clan, with a black dragon hatchling. I think I've found my zone. Btw, found thie following link, searching Google. It has cartesian graphs, showing how, certain, stats behave, mathematically. Article is from 2015; however, it seems the devs designed this game right, the first time, so I doubt anything's changed:
http://www.celticheroes.info/2015/02/gu ... s.html?m=1
Anyhow, I don't know from what creative fount, all of this rpg goodness flows. The folks behind all of this are the, true, magicians. In the end, I suppose such anonymous game craft just adds to the aura of legendary mystique.
**EDIT #4**
After, only about, 3 hours on Taranis, I had some lvl 100 'tard challenge my lvl 8 to a dual, at the bounty board. Going back to Epona... I've put so much into my character there, and I can see I'm just going to have to deal with this kind of thing, on all of the free servers. That said, I suppose if high level players want to come into an area, clean it out, then leave, then more power to them. It'll only spawn more valuable mobs. Who knows, maybe this has been their intent, and I've got it all wrong. All of this having been said, please, by all means, disregard these, my, largely, noobish ramblings. I just wanted to set the record straight.

There are a few ways to play the druid class.
I suppose you want to solo level most of the time. If that's so then there are two ways to go:
1) play melee totem druid. Here you can go str/dex/foc/vit depending on what you want to focus. If you want to hit more autos it's reasonable to put points in dex and str(more dmg/auto). Or you go full foc/vit with no points in str/dex of you want to do most of your dmg with skill casts. You should take wind and bark in your build for both of these playstyles as they reduce the dmg you receive. Also lvl 1 natures touch does not interrupt. I've seen many people especially at low lol run with lvl 1 touch

2) you can play root druid. Therefore you spend points in root and root the enemy, cast all the dos skills you have and just stand out of range and wait untill he's dead. Personally I've run this build the most on lower lvl. It's a little less xp over all and everything takes longer but you die less and spend less money in pots (time in tavern cooking)

For both "caster " builds you can look for a totem that is dropped by a legacy boss. Frost iron or something which adds skill damage there is also one that adds a skill wich improves your focus for a certain time. Both of these would be better than the regular warden/met/frozen totem

There are a few ways to play the druid class.
I suppose you want to solo level most of the time. If that's so then there are two ways to go:
1) play melee totem druid. Here you can go str/dex/foc/vit depending on what you want to focus. If you want to hit more autos it's reasonable to put points in dex and str(more dmg/auto). Or you go full foc/vit with no points in str/dex of you want to do most of your dmg with skill casts. You should take wind and bark in your build for both of these playstyles as they reduce the dmg you receive. Also lvl 1 natures touch does not interrupt. I've seen many people especially at low lol run with lvl 1 touch

2) you can play root druid. Therefore you spend points in root and root the enemy, cast all the dos skills you have and just stand out of range and wait untill he's dead. Personally I've run this build the most on lower lvl. It's a little less xp over all and everything takes longer but you die less and spend less money in pots (time in tavern cooking)

For both "caster " builds you can look for a totem that is dropped by a legacy boss. Frost iron or something which adds skill damage there is also one that adds a skill wich improves your focus for a certain time. Both of these would be better than the regular warden/met/frozen totem

Ok, so, over the past few days, I've read a lot of forum posts, experimented with different stat/skill sets (3 alteration books and 1 rebirth - oh well, I guess I now know... lol). Anyhow, first of all, it doesn't seem a winds build is feasable, without throwing a lot of points in dexterity. On top of that, winds has half the duration as bark,, and needs to be cast on each mob element - seemingly wasting a lot of enetgy, and opening up the caster to many more opportunities to be interrupted. Conversely, shield of bark can be cast prior to entering combat, and needs to only be cast once, to provide protection from all melee auto-attacks. To be sure, I can see now whete most of the other forum posters are coming from, on this matter. I mean, I can, maybe, see the utiliy of winds in a boss fight; however, it would seem bark would produce the same result (when cast on a tank, for instance), last longer and protect the target from all mobs (again, auto-attack damage, of course). As for the strength stat, the damage formula appears to involve 3 factors, each of which apply a final multiplier to the base weapon damage. Going by the revised formula, strength 40 brings it's factor to a multiple of 1 (5 strength being .35). As for the other 2 factors, weapon ability reaches a multiple of 1 at 270 (increasing from there) and the 3rd factor is something like .96 (not sure why it isn't just 1 - realism, I suppose). At any rate, I'm leaving my strength at 40, to get the full factor of 1. In the long run, this is a minor few points; howrever, going from .35 to 1 on the strength factor will scale out well, for minumum expenditure, here. With that, I'm going to bed, lol. I've been researching this for hours, and done a lot of trial and error, the past few days. Not all fun, I can assure you. That said, I think my hard head is now sufficiently sure the club hits. Cheers all. Thanks for steering me, slowly, but surely, toward comprehension of this class.

Just buy gear that has defense on it. Then you don't need to regulate many points to defense as lixing mobs don't have high attack. I wouldn't throw more than 300 points into str. You won't get much return going higher than that.

Bark isn't really needed for tanks at end game if they're decently geared.

I like winds. Since 2 of our dps skills are dot, then there is time to cast winds on all mobs.

Biggest issue with druid melee is getting attack high enough to land autos on bosses.

Just buy gear that has defense on it. Then you don't need to regulate many points to defense as lixing mobs don't have high attack. I wouldn't throw more than 300 points into str. You won't get much return going higher than that.

Bark isn't really needed for tanks at end game if they're decently geared.

I like winds. Since 2 of our dps skills are dot, then there is time to cast winds on all mobs.

Biggest issue with druid melee is getting attack high enough to land autos on bosses.

I'm lvl 60 atm, so, I think, I'm going to have to wait on incorporating winds. Tried using it, at my current lvl; however, even with 80 dex, and 11 points in winds (-400 attack), even mobs 10 levels below mine where getting through, no problem. I guess this is why everyone says to save winds for lvl 150+. Not sure of the mechanic there, as of yet (maybe higher dex, through gear?); however, the winds approach is, clearly, inneffective at my level, where utilizing the stats/skill points in dex/wind leaves far too few of the former, for dmg armor and healing. Sure, I was able to solo the catacombs bosses, at lvl 56 (lvls 30-40 couldn't hit me); however, it took forever to down these 6-stars, with such limited focus and damage skills, plus, mobs my level destroyed me. So, anyway, used my last rebirth and alteration books, last night. I put the, afore-mentioned 40 stat points in strength, to bring that part of the damage algorithm, to a, "neutral" one unit. Again, according to the mathmaticians, playing the game, the strength stat is part if a three factor group, which are added, and then, multiplied by base weapon damage. So, the strength factor being 0.15818√str, doing 0.15818√40 just brings this part of the equation to 1, incurring no boosts, or penalties, for strength. I suppose I can revisit this at higher levels, should I find the decreasing return on focus higher than any benefit of increasing str, and, of course, I already have enough in dex and vit. Again, according to the experts' math formula, 300 stength would provide, around, 2.74 times base weapon damage. Great if your skilks make use of strength, in their calculations (I assume warrior, at least); however, wasting this many points, just for auto-attacks, seems like a tragic waste. Mind you, I'm new to the game, so, like I said, I'll need to revisit this, once I reach the higher levels, and see what gear and etc., is out there. As for skills, on this alteration reset, I just maxed bark, put enough into touch to give me half health, enough embrace to negate the armor penetration of 1 mob element and the rest in vines and strike (about equal there, I think 12, in each, for now). I, luckily found a +3 swarm ring, in the ah, this morning, as I use this spell on higher level mobs, or when I get surrounded. As for stat points, after putting the 40 in str, I just hit auto-assign. I'm assuming the game knows, better than I, what I need here. Obviously, the str here isn't, absolutely, necessary; however, I just don't like stat penalties, and, in this case, having str 5 incurs a x0.65 penalty, which, to me, seems would be unacceptable, should I come across a good druid weapon, with higher base melee damage. So that's where I am, atm. I have a long way to go, of course, so, again, I'm sure I'll have plenty of time ti revisit all of this, unless, of course, the sun goes supernova, and we all die. Fortunately, I know good res spell for this, so no worries there. Btw, I tested this build, this morning. I am no longer being pwnd by mobs my own lvl, so I think I'm on the right track. Now I just need to go fishing for flounders (energy regen food), save for some energy sigils and research energy drain, as I also had to let meditation go. I'm learning the skill points are far to valuable to waste there. Cheers all...

It's all about playing in a style you enjoy. For me, I found auto attacking more fun than only skill casting. Of course, it really takes access to haste lix to make it effective as all the druid weapons are extremely slow. But with some points or gear that added strength, I was able to pull off auto dmg of 800-1100 per mob and on haste the extra dmg from auto attacks added up pretty quickly. I never added any points to dex, just acquired gear that gave direct defense. At your level though you're prob better going with bark and/or roots depending on how many skill points you have. And prepare yourself for 4* mobs to always take forever to kill specially as a druid.

Hopefully your able to find a fun build to use, as zyz said that's the most important. I've personally not had any real problems on Epona hopefully it was a one off kind of problem. If you don't have a clan I'm serious when I say we'd love you (Numeros delnido), we have a good deal of newer players as well as higher levels. I'm sure we'll give you a improved opinion of Epona IGN Durst Andreas

All I can say is, I'm definitely taking, more seriously, the advise of veteran players. What is it about the noobish, I-can-see-where-these-guys-got-it-wrong attitude, we all have, when starting new games? Lol. Anyway, I can see CH is can be, very, unforgiving to build mistakes, and takes a lot of planning and experience, to be effecrltive. Therefore, I'll certainly not be blowing off any more of what I read here. As for Epona: I think my issue was more of a matter of not fully understanding the game (i.e.: low yield mobs vs. high). I see now, that most quest items only drop later, in the mob spawn cycle. Looking back, I can see the what other players where doing - so non-issue there. To be sure, I do the same thing now. Anyway, had an internet issue, for a couple of days, so I'm off now to level that fishing skill. I'm, currently, physically disabled (hernia), with no money, or public health care (FL), and living off-grid, so I'm limited to, whatever, platinum I can earn in the game. Got enough for plenty of backpack and hotbar slots, so I should be good to go. I'm relying on a public WiFi hotspot; however, the connection is quite good, so, hopefully I'll be able to trudge along. If not, I have nothing better to do, so no loss. Anyhow, thanks again, for taking the time, with my post. This has, certainly, helped me gain a further grasp of the game, as well as, the class I've chosen. I still, sometimes, think another class might have been a better choice; however, the druid is a lot of fun to play (once you get your build right), so this doesn't happen too much.

Once you get the right gear, druids become hella fun as solo toons or in groups/bosses etc.

Phoenixes have improved Druid dps a lot.

With my 219 Druid (I’ve been inactive from CH for a few months), but I was able to obtain 2k+ focus, 10k or so attack lixed up and with skill swapping rings could have all dps skills maxed. I run a tiger mount and magic lure level 6 Phoenix. With a Gele or EDL totem while on hero haste I can do some quick damage.

Once you hit level 120 get some Aggy lightning strike bracers, max bees, a frostiron totem for added vines skill and an offhand lux axe and you’ll be op.