Druid / Enchanter / Ranger Guide - "Arcane Grove Scout"

This guide covers the Druid, Enchanter, and Ranger loadout combination.

Overview

The DER build is a premier choice for playing a lethally charged ranged character with strong support and combat control capability. This loadout is great at:

Ranged Damage
Puller
Crowd control
Buffs and debuffs
Solo and group flexibility

High Level Roles by Class in Loadout

Class	Offense	Defense	Support
Druid	Dots, Nukes,	Snares, roots, buffs	Animal control, utility
Enchanter	Dots, pet, buffs	Stuns, pet, debuffs	Mesmerization, clarity, fear, charm
Ranger	Archery	Evasive stance	Track, forage, mobility

Core Strategies

Offense - at its core, DER gameplay revolves around stacking your dots and filling dead space with archery shots. You will excel at tearing down mobs one by one. Additionally, you'll have access to a pet or charmed companion but you will want to be mobile in the event agro control is weak.
Defense - DER loadouts provide you evasive stance, a pet, and stuns. These are your core tools for surviving inevitable damage.
Support - DER loadouts have access to snares, roots, mesmerization, charms, heals, and a slew of important buffs and debuffs. Learn which tools matter when to efficiently perform in group situations.

Considerations

This loadout does not tank. You have a healthy selection of escape tools and heals, but DER characters do not tank.
There are buffs between your kits that do not stack. Learn the interactions and what buffs are good for your group, but not for you.
Your optimal damaging attack rotation will depend on how good your bow is.
Your AoE tools can include you as a target. Learn their ranges and effect areas so you don't knock yourself out of a fight.

Leveling Guide by Jokon

Early Levels: 1-10

The first thing you need to prioritize is the acquisition of a bow - any bow in the 1-10 range, thankfully. A bow is a critical tool for the DER build because it represents both your filler and your backup damage. Your highest damaging tools are going to be spells until the high level game and so you're going to be encouraged to overuse them, draining your mana bar. A bow is what you use between spell casts, a bow is what you use when spell casting is not possible, and a bow will be your best tool at the high end game. Therefore, regardless of all other starting considerations you should be acquiring a bow and getting used to how it works.

With your bow sorted, start identifying which of your various spells are going to be your standards. For most level ranges, you're going to want to do dot, bow, dot, bow ad nauseum as a general rhythm. This may not be true for any given level; having said that, prior to level 10 you're going to want to get used to casting these spells, dropping an arrow, and then repeating the rhythm until it's natural. You'll also want to level in outdoor zones for this practice as you'll have much more room to use the other tools in your kit, like snares, roots, mesmerization, fear, and charm.

Emergent Levels: 11-25

Congratulations on reaching 11 and locking in the DER loadout! From here on, you'll be collecting the core tools that make you function as an arcane grove scout. Here you should have the basic tools of the loadout; a few druid dots, a few enchanter dots, and lots of archery - nukes as mana allows, but do pay attention to cast times. Your play should focus on controlling a monster and then burning it down, preferably before it gets to you. You will have access to enchanter pets and charms to help hold monsters in place, however, count on these assistants not always being able to hold agro. This is a problem for DER loadouts because archery does double damage for you while mobs hold still. Group play will likely allow you to double your archery damage thanks to consistent threat management of a dedicated tank. Plan on your pet being a positionally disadvantaged damage over time effect.

You will also start to see the core challenge of the DER loadout; you are your own enemy when controlling mobs. Archery arrows shot carelessly will break all your various forms of control. You will need to focus on swapping targets quickly and learning how to not mesmerize yourself starting at level 16 when too many mobs get close.

Mid Levels: 26-45

In this level range you will continue to gain access to new tools and more powerful spells. You will also start to understand the various dynamics that play out in your loadout. In particular, you'll be moving through level bands where certain spells make sense to use for yourself, but not others. These synergies will be indicated down below, but as a general strategy you should be very capable of fear kiting, dot rotting, and mob control by the time you ascend into the end game.

It is also in this level range that you should start to appreciate the benefits of archery over your direct damage spells. Even at their best your direct damage spells will cap out around 500 damage without focus items or invocations, while your archery in archery stance can and will passively triple for far more. If your bow does not keep pace with your level this may not be strictly true; as you approach the end game and improve your equipment it will become clear that spells like Ice and Discordant Mind are best left off your bars in favor of more damage over time effects and the Arrow nuke line from your Ranger Kit.

High Levels: 46+

You've done it! Here, the true power of the DER loadout can come to bear. Vengeance of the Wild, Gasping Embrace, and Archery will be your go-to attacks. Your best damage will come from maintaining as many different DoTs as possible while using archery to fill the gaps between spell casts. Your druid nukes will help. Each target will wither before your very eyes, and there will be little that you can't annihilate.

In group play, you will provide extremely powerful ranged damage and crowd controlling utility. Split your kit between dots, de/buffs, and mez/charm. All that time you spent earlier learning to switch between targets will help you greatly, as your core challenge will likely be switching between targets.

Specific Strategies

While leveling you will find that the flexibility of the DER kit lends itself to different solo and group strategies. This section will detail what strategies work best in what zones. With that said, the DER loadout will function in any situation that doesn't require intense tanking, so do have fun with it! Also, don't forget your pet; it can help, but you'll find that you won't have the dedicated tools to make it really sing.

Solo Strategy: Fear Kiting

Preferred Stance: Ranged Preferred Invocation: Recovery or Spellblade

Starting at level 2, you'll gain access to Fear. You'll already have Snare, which will keep the enemy from running quickly. You gain access to Chase the Moon at 16 and finally Invoke Fear at 35 which provide longer durations. None of the other fears in your kit will surpass these; don't bother with Panic Animal.

While feared, all mobs will present their backside to you for imminent kicking. Use your damage over time effects and then archery or melee depending on your available gear. At most levels of play you will likely only ever use archery in ranged stance to fill gaps during fear kiting; not only are your hands are better used holding caster weapons that have inefficient melee ratios, your chosen pet companion will likely be able to better use the melee weapons you do have.

Solo Strategy: Face Tanking

Preferred Stance: Ranged or Offensive Preferred Invocation: Divine or Inversion

One of the unique things that the ranger adds to the DER loadout is the ability to deal lots of archery damage to targets that are free to move but are choosing not to. You can convince monsters to not roam around by standing still yourself and letting them hit you. This strategy gives you the highest possible single target DPS from archery; however, if your bow sucks you will probably want to melee instead. Your Mileage May Vary.

This strategy is also noteworthy in that your buffs and debuffs are going to have a different priority; all three of the classes in the DER loadout can apply a damage shield, and between druid/enchanter you'll be nearly covered on buffs. You'll also want to have healing, either directly with Druid spells or indirectly through the Divine Stance which will give you a lifetap like effect. This focus on survivability will hamper your outgoing damage, if for no other reason than you'll have to pay attention to your health more closely than the fear-kiting strategy.

Group Strategy: Dot Rotting

Preferred Stance: Ranged Preferred Invocation: Recovery or Empowering

At around level 11 you'll have enough spells to really start putting the hurt on things and consequently you'll find a spot in groups that need more dead monsters. Your most efficient contribution in these groups is to A) lock down extra mobs with your enchanter kit and B) annihilate mobs with your ranger and druid kits. You also bring buffs and AoE to the group; try to setup responsibilities here with other players in your group to avoid duplication of efforts and non-stacking buffs.

When damaging, focus on loading up your damage over time effects after any necessary debuffs like Tash, then fill the air with arrows. You may need to swap targets situationally for mesmerization, root, charm, and/or stuns; carefully monitor your archery use so that you do not accidentally and/or automatically shoot a monster you just blanked.

Synergies

The DER kit is notable in that you have access to many stances and invocations. Here's a quick overview:


Name	Description	Classes	Reuse Time
Balanced Stance	While this stance is active, all incoming damage is reduced by 10% and your chance to hit is increased by 10%. Endurance regen excluding out of combat bonus regen is doubled. There is no endurance cost to upkeep this stance.	RNG	6 seconds
Offensive Stance	Outgoing melee damage is increased by 100% and your chance to hit is increased by 25%. Every point of bonus damage dealt consumes an equal amount of endurance, with a reduction based on your strategy skill. When below 25% endurance, the chance to hit bonus is reduced based on the remaining percent of endurance. Bonus damage from critical hits and similar effects do not cost endurance.	RNG	6 seconds
Evasive Stance	You have a 95% chance to evade all incoming attacks. Every point of damage evaded consumes 2 endurance, with a reduction based on your strategy skill. Evasion will fail if you have insufficient endurance, or while playing dead.	RNG	6 seconds
Ranged Stance	Your range attack has no minimum distance, gains a 25% accuracy bonus, and can double and triple attack. Every point of damage consumes endurance, with a reduction based on your strategy skill.	RNG	6 seconds

And here's your invocations:


Name	Description	Classes	Reuse Time
Recovery Invocation	You regenerate mana (excluding out of combat bonus) at twice the rate, and spells have a 5% reduced mana cost.	RNG DRU ENC	6 seconds
Inversion Invocation	Shifts two-thirds of spell cast time into the global recovery time at a cost of 10% more mana and endurance.	RNG DRU ENC	6 seconds
Overchannel Invocation	Cast spells have a -100 resist adjust plus another -15 for every non-hybrid caster class at a cost of 33% more mana and 10% of the total mana cost from endurance.	RNG DRU ENC	6 seconds
Spellblade Invocation	Treats the first spell gem slot as a proc that consumes both mana and endurance (33% of the normal spell mana cost). Must be a spell with a reuse time <= the cast time.	RNG	6 seconds
Divine Invocation	All spell casts with mana cost will heal the group member with the lowest HP percentage by that cost. For every additional wisdom class, this will repeat with a heal for 33% of the mana cost.	RNG DRU	6 seconds
Empowering Invocation	Adds 25% plus 10% per additional non-hybrid casting class to HP spell effects at the cost of 50% more mana.	DRU ENC	6 seconds

The DER kit is noteworthy in that you have both the Spellblade Invocation and the Divine Invocation (with boost!). These two are signatures of the loadout and bring unique benefits.

The Spellblade invocation allows the first spell in your gem bar to be a proc'd additional effect in melee or ranged combat; thus, make sure you don't accidently put something silly into that slot (like Mesmerize). The restriction is that the cooldown can't be longer than the cast time; this means most Ranger nukes do not qualify for Spellblade (because they have longer recast times). The most common option will be a Druid nuke, but there's many options to choose from here (like Snare or Invoke Fear).
The Divine invocation causes all spells cast to heal the weakest member of your party (yourself when solo) for the amount of mana spent. This lets you have a life-tap style game play in solo and good support healing while in a group. Keep in mind the effect will be boosted because both Ranger and Druid contribute to this stance's effect.

Various Notes

The majority of your damaging spells will be from your Druid kit. There are some important offensive spells in the Enchanter and Ranger kits (namely the Arrow line), but they are situational or inferior to your damaging Druid spells.
You have less overlap in your druid and ranger kits than you'd think, particularly at high level when the Ranger starts getting Call spells that stack with your druid buffs. Most of the overlap will be in the early-mid game.
Enchanter baseline gets lots of extra mana regen, druid gets spell crit, and rangers bring ATK power and archery crits as baseline AA.
Druids get access to Feral Spirit and Savage Spirit, which are insanely good pet buffs. Don't forget to use them if you bring a pet/charm!

Important Gaps

Your only real active defensive tool is Evasive stance; everything else you can make choices about revolve around about avoiding combat entirely. Mesmerize will be your friend.

AA Priorities

Extra spell gems
Archery damage

Gear Priorities

As mentioned above, your first and most important piece of equipment is going to be your bow. You can and should review the list below to see what bows are available, but as a general theme you'll find that unless you are pursuing fletching your best bet is to get a Runed Oak Bow from South Karana with an objective of getting the Windstriker from Plane of Sky. Fletching should still be considered for arrow improvements even if you don't want the fletched bows. Until you get the Windstriker a +10 (Mithril/Steel) Champion Arrow will double your bow's damage output.

Having said that, if you want to skip Fletching and are self-found, you'll need to farm Gloomwater Arrow or Shardwing Arrow. Hope you like swimming!

Chart of Bows

With a bow solved for, your general statistic priority is going to be Wisdom, Dexterity, and then Strength. This statistic priority focuses on improving your mana pool, spell casting, archery accuracy, and archery damage. Any gear that improves those statistics will be your preference. Attack power bonuses will also help your archery damage.

Quests and Items of Interest to DER Loadouts

Rather than duplicate the list of quests on the Druid, Enchanter, and Ranger pages, here we will discuss items that benefit the DER loadout but aren't specifically tied to one of the three constituent kits. As most of your best items will be from the three above lists, the following is more oriented towards leveling targets and not end-game goals.

Item / Quest	Loadout Focus	Why It Matters	Source	Level
Poacher's Head	Archery	Early way to get bow through quests	Surefall Glade Quest	5+
Heretic Heads	Archery	Early and easy way to get haste belt	Quest in Stonebrunt Mountains	20+
Runed Oak Bow	Archery	Easiest good bow pre-planar	Drop in South Karana	25+

Tips

Although most of your attention will be consumed by spell management, don't neglect your archery. It scales far better than your spell casting.
You have access to evasive stance AND feign death AND memory blur if things get nasty! Try to get more spell gems ASAP.

Druid-Enchanter-Ranger