I have a handful of 3.0 characters. Included are Druid, Cleric, Ranger, Paladin.
Comments are based on my experiences.
I'd count CLR with their hammers way more pet-oriented than druids with their cosmetics bears. Srsly those cubs are like lvl5 or something.
Cleric hammers are terrible. The first is very low level, the second doesn't even work.
How low? Low enough that when you get into CG, the pet can't proc the summoned weapon.
Druids on the other hand, have a second pet summon that not only works, but suprised me with its survivability when farming everything I needed to get into CG in the first place.
Clerics used to be on the ring. They were removed because it made them too powerful. Granted now there are things that would wipe out the ring pet in one shot it still would make the cleric more powerful than other classes that are pet dominant. Kinda like blending roles too much.
With the changes and improvements that have been made to a number of classes, I think that perhaps putting the cleric back on isn't such a bad idea, if only to give the cleric some actual DPS. As it is now, you NEED to either box or group to have a hope of killing a mob anywhere outside of Crushbone.
I don't understand the comment that it would be more powerful than the pet dominant classes though. The CG pet is only so good for so long. Send one against a trash mob in Qvic and let me know how long it lasts.
The Necro pet has a lifetap that heals the group, the Mage epic pets are monsters with (comparatively) massive melee DPS, and I've seen the Beastlord pets take on MoW and his friends.
Sorry Xigs, but it really hard to argue that point since druids get heals, insane regen, DS AND can output hefty damage themselves. But arguing it is moot.
It might be that you haven't gotten far enough into the beginning of the endgame. I haven't ventured past T2 in Plane of Dragons but this is what I found regarding the druid.
- The heals are mediocre even with Focus and Oracle, and with Paladins getting the heal proc on epics, those heals aren't worth the time to cast.
- The DS is the same one given by the buffbot and CG/FG pet. Which still isn't as good as a Mage DS if I remember my numbers correctly.
- If your DoTs aren't resisted, once you get them ALL stacked, you're doing a whopping 5k or so per tick. The DDs aren't any better. With long casts and long cooldowns, that 2k blast is less and less impressive.
The sad state of Druids is that they've been relegated to being a regen bot for RoA.
The sadder state of Clerics is that they can't go anywhere alone and you might as well change their epic graphic to a purse for as hard as they can hit.
