Druid 11-20 Progression
Guide

By Mensis

At 10 Druids got
several defining abilities. Apart from the upgrades to the Piercing
Roots spell, you obtained your first counterspell, which enabled you to
cancel enemy’s spell cast. You also gained your first
finisher in the form of a very strong Damage-over-time (DoT)
spell. And like all arcane casters, Druids got their
evacuation (evac) spell – Vanishing Winds. Unlike other
arcane casters, but in line with your Druidic heritage, you obtained
your first direct heal. With so many awesome abilities at 10, you might
have thought 11-20 would be boring. But guess again!

Druid
11-20 Guide

1. href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=602#I">Levels
   11-12
2. href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=602#II">Levels
   13-14
3. href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=602#III">Level
   15
4. href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=602#IV">Levels
   16-17
5. href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=602#V">Levels
   18-19
6. href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=602#VI">Level
   20
7. href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=602#VII">Tips

Levels 11-12

At 12 you get upgrades to venomous thorns and lightning strike. The new
toys are Sageberries (summons 3 berries which can cure you of poison)
and binding roots.



Binding roots (BR) are quite different in nature from Piercing roots
(PR). To put it simply, PR is more of way to quickly stop a monster
(mob); BR on the other hand will hold them in place for a significant
time. The downside is however the long 3-second cast time on the spell,
but it will hold the mob in place for good 40 seconds. This spell is
great for separating mobs before a pull but will also become a key
asset to soloing hard targets later on.



In addition Druids also obtain one of the best travel spells.
Cloudwalk! Although currently missing the cloud, the spell will allow
the caster to literally walk on air. Scared of cliffs? Not a problem
anymore as now you can simply walk off them without the fear of falling
down to gruesome death.



Cloudwalk allows you to bypass dangerous places by walking off
mountains and high rises. Note that you will descend faster if you are
looking downwards, so if you need to cross large distance try to look
horizontally or higher, even though it is a little inconvenient when
traveling. From now on, you can quickly cross large water features and
canyons with a breeze.



Also Cloudwalk is great for kitting. As long as you don’t
take off completely, it allows you to move backwards faster than
normal. Do take care because if you leave ground the game mechanics are
such that the mobs will instantly teleport to your location.

Levels 13-14

Time to say goodbye to your horse, assuming you had one of course. Now
you run almost as fast all by yourself and without the aid of pet bard.
Say hello to the “Speed of the wolf “ buff. This
buff will increase targets running speed by 30% (and mounted speed by
5%) and is a great aid for general traveling, kiting and dungeons.



Upgrades to old spells are also welcome. The new and improved
Stormcaller's Fury buff and upgrade to the Healing-over-Time spell
(HoT), Soothe.

Soothe is a great way to keep your damage output and keep party members
healthy. It provides small health point (HP) boosts every 2 seconds
over 16 seconds. Placing one of those on a tank or careless melee or
magic fighter will keep the workload of the healer and at the same time
allow you to keep on nuking the mobs.



Barkskin is a good buff although relatively useless at early levels; it
increases targets resistance to fire and physical (magic) attacks by
63. While this is a great boost to resistance you do not really get hit
with magic that hard at these levels. However it is still a nice buff
to have on and will become more important later in game.



The last new addition to your arsenal at 14 is Natures Calm (Calm).
This is an interesting although potentially dangerous spell. It calms
the opponent, reducing the chance they will assist their nearby allies
in battle. The uses are many, for example when faces with a 3 mob pull,
you can try to Calm one, root the other and fight the third, greatly
reducing the load on the tank and the healers.



The sad thing is that the spell does not always work. While you will
not gain agro from failing to cast the spell it is still up to lady
luck to decide what the mob will do if provoked. Generally, Binding
Roots is a much more effective and foolproof way of separating mobs.

Level 15

The level many eagerly await. The level when druids gain their class
deciding abilities, the Phenomena! These are stronger than normal
spells and use special Phenomena Points (PP) instead of energy. PP pool
regenerates at a slow rate of 1 PP per minute. At level 15 you gain 30
PP to start you off and will obtain an extra 2 points every 5 levels
(at levels 20, 25, 30, along with new phenomena)



Your first phenomena are:



Starfall  - a direct damage nuke which costs 15PP, it deals
around 800 damage to the opponent. No cool down. Since this does not
cost you any energy it is useful for finishing off a mob when running
low on energy or for tagging a named at the beginning of a battle.



Rampant Roots – A very useful escape spell. It roots all
targets in radius around you for 20 seconds. Great for awkward pulls
and for running away. Costs 10PP



Life Stream – A Wonder. A large group heal in
essence.  It heals all allies in a radius for 770 HP. While it
has its uses and saved myself from a while a number of times with a
cost of 25 PP you cannot use it as often as other phenomena.

Levels 16-17

Levels with mainly spell upgrades. These include a new Barbwood
Talisman, more powerful Solar Flare, restore and a bigger Earth
Elemental (Earthen Bruiser). Just replace the old spells on your hot
bar.



The new spell does deserve attention though. At 16 we gain a strong DoT
– Wild Growth. It is instant-cast so it great to use as a
starting spell in group fights (the ticks will start while you unleash
the rest of your deadly arsenal). This spell alone will give a great
boost to your damage output. It can crit and it stacks will all other
DoT effects.

Levels 18-19

The level that defines druid game play.



Spell upgrades are there (Lightning strike, Piercing roots, Natures
Wrath and Roseberries) are there but they are not so interesting.
Upgrades are straightforward replacements for old spells. Lightning
strike however has a slight change, now it has 5% of dealing additional
damage on spell cast. Hmmm, cool!



The most interesting spell is the Taproot. Say hello to your new best
friend. Taproot will allow you to regenerate all of your energy in just
16 seconds. Of course this comes at a price, the spell also roots you
in place preventing any movement (you cannot even turn on a spot) and
absolutely any action will stop the energy regeneration (but the root
effect will remain). There is nothing you can do to free yourself from
the spells effect safe for being hit. Like most roots, they will break
on hit with a 50% chance.



In groups getting hit is rarely a problem, if it is then something must
be going terribly wrong and most likely you’ll get 50% energy
back pretty soon and will face a run back to your corpse. Just make
sure you don’t make the rest of your group wait for you.

It is always important to keep track of your energy bar and when you
see it running relatively low, load the enemy up on DoTs and use
Taproot. This will allow you to still deal damage while getting the
energy back.



When soloing you have to wait for the DoTs to run out, cast Binding
Roots on the opponent and only then use Taproot. With multiple
opponents this becomes harder but doable.



Also Druids gain access to their first Area-of-Effect (AoE) spell, the
Cyclone. It has short range but apart from your target will also hit
all enemies around it. It does have rather long cast time of 2 seconds.



And of course we wouldn’t be druids if we count shapeshift
into animal forms. The new ability Wolf Form not only grants
significant melee bonuses but also increases our running speed by 50%.
Now there is defiantly no need for a horse, wolf form is better in all
ways. It semi-stacks with “Speed of Wolf” buff to
make the caster run at 160% normal speed and you cannot be
“knocked off” like with a horse. Combine this with
Cloudwalk to gain amazing results!

Level 20

The first thing you notice is that you have become more attuned with
nature and your phenomena pool has increased by 2 points. It may not be
much to some but that’s a whole 2 minutes off the wait time
on phenomena reuse.



Along with upgrade to venomous thorns you will obtain a second
finisher. Thunderclap is an arcane finisher with has no recast timer
and will be available after any spell critical.

As you now have a choice which finisher to use, a simple rule of thumb
is to use Natures Wrath when the mob has more than 50% HP and
Thunderclap when less.



The 2 defensive spells come next. Okeli’s Shield (OS) will
reduce incoming damage by 100% making it 0 in other words on the target
for 30 seconds… or 2 hits which ever comes first. While this
may not look like much it is useful for few things. Pulling for
example, casting OS on you before a pull will give your tank time to
gain agro on the mob without causing yourself significant harm. It is
however hard to use it reactively during battle at this level because
of 3 second cast time. The upgrades to this spell will reduce cast time
later in the game.



The other defensive spell is a wonder. Tranquility provides temporary
invulnerably to your defensive target. For 20 seconds the target will
be completely immune to all incoming damage.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, there is a catch. While under the
effect of the spell a person cannot use any abilities or perform any
actions. None what so ever. Of course, running is always an option.
Keep this in mind before using Tranquility on a healer in a pinch.
While it may save them, it may kill the tank in the process. Not to say
it can’t be used in this way. We are Druids after all; we can
heal.

Tips

• In groups, watch your energy and Taproot early. Using the
  spell will keep you in place for 16 seconds and your group will rarely
  wait for you. Often it is better to load the almost dead mob on DoTs
  and Taproot before it's dead.
• Earthen Elemental is not as useless as it looks. As a
  travelling DoT, it's always nice to use him when you have more than 1
  mob to fight. Otherwise he is generally a waste of energy.
• You can dismiss the Earthen Elemental by clicking the
  little button right of his health bar (pet's health bar is located
  right under your own by default). Useful if you need to root the enemy
  for example.
• Watch out for enemies casting healing spells. You can
  easily identify them by the "heart" icon. If you encounter a healing
  opponent, save your counterspell for the heals.
• When solo fighting stay mobile. At level 15+, the mobs will
  kill you in only few hits. Do not let them near you no matter what.
  Ensnare and SoW are you best friends here.
• You can use "Vanishing Winds" right after you cross the
  chunk boundary to jump to the closest altar. Cuts travelling times by
  almost a half.
• Use Cloudwalk when kiting. Provided you have a level ground
  it will greatly increase your backward moving speed. Be careful though
  as sometimes it does get a little bugged.
• Add a macro to "Vanishing Winds" to alert your group
  members that you are casting it. You can do this by right-clicking on
  the spell in the hot bar and adding this for example:

/group Casting Evac, brace yourselves!

/emote raises his arms. Immediatly strong winds begin
to gather around. (Evac incoming).

• Personal key bind preferences differ but it is often
  convenient to bind
  finisher reaction to “Q”. This will make it easily
  accessible during
  fierce combat.
• Counterspell can be bound to E in the same fashion. An even
  better way is to create a macro on the hot bar that contains:
  

/cancelability

/cast Dissipate