What is the 2nd controler ?

[Kintara]

A Druid controller would likely be playing up the summoning powers. Also, Entangle would likely be in. And they could easily come up with tons of spells that manipulate the environment. You could have "disaster" spells. Flood, Earthquake, Avalanche, etc.. It seems like there are plenty of ways to make it work.

 

[Baby Samurai]

But if we do get the druid in the PHB I, it will have either an Arcane or a Divine power source, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.

I was hoping they would have a different power source (nature, elemental, fey, smelly etc).

 

[Li Shenron]

Or break it into 2 classes. It suffers from the same problem the wizard does: it does too much. The wizard's realm has been said to be scaled back in order to let other arcane casters hvae a chance to shine. So maybe break the druid into a shifter class (defender), and a caster class (controller).

Except that we have the majority of the crowd that even wants the druid folded into the cleric as a talent tree...

 

[drothgery]

Except that we have the majority of the crowd that even wants the druid folded into the cleric as a talent tree...

Well, the caster-druid could pretty much be done just with domains or their 4e equivalent.
The woodsman-druid is probably doable as a ranger/cleric of nature deity multiclass.
The shifter type, though, is the one that really needs its own class.

 

[Mad Mac]

Now I that I think about it, it makes sense for the Warlock to be a striker instead of a controller. They no longer have the "cast all day" advantage over the Wizard, and making them both arcane controllers would probably blur the classes too much, while making the Warlock more aggressive and direct damagey helps distinguish them more.

 

[RangerWickett]

Rogues are controllers. They can pick locks. That's like manipulating the battlefield, inn't?

 

[IanArgent]

Rogues are controllers. They can pick locks. That's like manipulating the battlefield, inn't?

My sarcasm meter is in the shop getting recalibrated. That is sarcasm, right?

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Except that we have the majority of the crowd that even wants the druid folded into the cleric as a talent tree...

Was there a poll on this that I missed?

WOTC is aiming at making classes distinct. In order to do this, they need to dial back the absurdly huge spell lists of the existing core classes. I think we saw the beginnings of this in the warmage, beguiler, dread necromancer, healer, etc. Remember, they said they were carving up the wizard's bag of tricks to allow for arcane caster expansion (illusionist I think was an example given).

Clerics, as a divine leader, will likely be based around buffing, healing and smiting. It would be easy to differentialte the caster druid's spell list. Debuffing, battlefield control, and some healing. Truning people into squirrels, summoning distracing swarms of insects, binding someone with plants, creating slippery mud on the ground, walls of stone, gusts of wind, etc. All very cster "druid-y", all controlling.

 

[Cadfan]

I agree with ehren's post. I do, however, think that wildshape needs to be taken away from any druid that gets those abilities.

Wildshape is too cool an ability to have as an "also-ran" next to the druid's real powers. Druids who focus on wildshape need to be hardcore defenders, up in the front lines, eating people.

 

[Li Shenron]

Was there a poll on this that I missed?

I don't think there was ever a poll, but I tried to wrote "please let the druid stay away from the cleric" in a few threads in the past weeks, and I got almost only bashing