Druid Vs Daring

[FloatingTarget]

Yes yes, I know I'm not allowed to have any criticism or make observations about these ships as that's just complaining to some people. But I feel the need to compare them as the description of the Druid is it's a "Super Destroyer" but there really isn't much super about it.

 

Been trying out the Druid and I had to grind a lot to get enough Research Points for it, now I have it I can say it's pretty underwhelming.

 

Its main selling point is its fast firing guns, unfortunately they are not that great, their reload speed isn't much greater than some other DDs and they are punished by only being able to use AP shells whereas other DDs with similar fire rates can use HE (Småland, Friesland) . The lack of torpedoes in favour of AA is also a pain and confusing because I don't know any universe where someone will want to fight planes in a DD. It has the general same size as the Daring but worse concealment and the moment you are spotted everyone will focus you down, making trying to contest caps a bad idea as a enemy DD can just sit their and spot you and throw torps at you and with only AP and no rear guns someone just needs to angle you and you are dead.

 

I'm sure other players can make good use of it but I'm not seeing any reason to play it over the Daring. Like many British ships its Pros/Gimmicks are outweighed by its cons.

 

I have come to like the Daring, but the Druid just feels like the Daring but with a bunch of bits ripped out.

 

Any advice to play better with it? As I said I had to work a lot to get it and I don't want to just give up on it. What would you suggest for commander skills too?

[Gorthuba]

On the contrary, its guns are fantastic. However, you need to have good situational awareness and know how to position yourself properly in order to make proper use of them. The Druid is basically a pocket Minotaur and in the hands of a competent player it'll even beat other DDs like the Ragnar. However, it is a one trick pony and if you don't know how to properly utilize its strengths then it's likely not the ship for you. It doesn't play like any normal DD would and is probably outside the comfort zone of most players. A DD like the Daring is far more well rounded and good/decent at most things, making it comfortable to play in without having to worry too much about anything.

If you're going to fight enemy DDs then you often want to utilize islands to surprise them and catch them at advantageous angles. You can also go bow in or angle without it being any detriment to your DPM. Additionally, you can shred a lot of cruisers if they show side and very effectively farm the upper belt etc. of many BBs. It's been a while since I last played it, but iirc. I ended up dropping concealment expert to just go all out on the guns instead, because it rarely made any difference. It isn't a Småland that's always going to be chasing DDs and brawling around caps. Focus on getting those good angles and read the map to predict how the enemies may position themselves.

[Miscommunication_dept]

Druid guns are amazing but it is one dimensional. Daring is a lot more capable.

 

That said, to me Druid is one of the most fun ships in the game.
Position well and farm broadsides beautifully. brawl a Minotaur and murder it. 
Ragner pops out thinking he’ll kill you like every other destroyer and you melt him.

 

Wouldn’t mind it getting back it’s super heal and some decent AA as torps and a turret were removed to allow more AA guns. Would probably be too strong though.

[Panocek]

RB ships in general seems to have "unique doesn't mean useful" thing to them, with exception being Ohio and maybe Slava?

[Miscommunication_dept]

17 minutes ago, Panocek said:

RB ships in general seems to have "unique doesn't mean useful" thing to them, with exception being Ohio and maybe Slava?

Would also add vampire and Siegfried to the exceptions.

[Panocek]

9 minutes ago, Miscommunication_dept said:

Would also add vampire and Siegfried to the exceptions.

Siegfried I find... disappointing, more than paper stats would imply. And no, instead "ermagad BB guns on a cruiser OP reee" my initial assessment whether I want her is "so, I have 6 barrels of obsolete battleship caliber that still reload like a BB put on awful hull, can I make it work?"

 

Long story short, I find Agir much more versatile/effective than her

[Miscommunication_dept]

I do very well in her compared to my average.

her accuracy makes up for low dpm and she really can punish mistakes reliably.

 

[Panocek]

2 minutes ago, Miscommunication_dept said:

I do very well in her compared to my average.

her accuracy makes up for low dpm and she really can punish mistakes reliably.

 

Smashing broadsides I take for granted in any ship, what I value is how well ship fares against enemies that try to not make mistakes all the time. And 25mm overmatch at hightiers is of rather limited value nowadays, while cruiser dispersion isn't reliable enough to snipe bows/sterns in my book, especially against maneuvering targets. She can't really HE spam either

[WingedHussar_Adler]

i would said daring most of the time....problem with druid are:

- if you play it like dd, most other dds are in advantage due to relativly bad concilement + only AP

- if you play it like gunboat - well it can produce only in certain situation aka broadside which needs low skill from enemie or great personal skill with positioning, but alot of others real gunboat outperform it

- no torps meaning no way to do "lucky" or skillful hughe dmg in burst

- easy conter to its dmg most of the time (angle)

[endlessBoogie]

Vor 1 Stunde, Miscommunication_dept sagte:

her accuracy makes up for low dpm and she really can punish mistakes reliably.

 

Hmmm... her dispersion feels kind of wonky sometimes but apart from that it´s nice.

[tocqueville8]

9 hours ago, FloatingTarget said:

The lack of torpedoes in favour of AA

Honestly, it's hard to even notice her AA is better than Daring's, and I don't believe they even bothered mentioning in the ship description.

[Matt_FSR]

Are....  are we playing the same ship?     Druid guns bad? 

 

 

3 mins 21 seconds into the match - Mino be gone!

[Hirohito]

44 minutes ago, Matt_FSR said:

Are....  are we playing the same ship?     Druid guns bad? 

 

He was saying they're not that great, and specified under which circumstances they are not that great, namely against angled targets.

Your anecdotal evidence here is of an ideal situation where you get to farm the broadside of the notoriously easiest to citadel cruiser in the game.

[FloatingTarget]

Thanks for the advice all, I understand it needs to be played more like a cruiser. It does get annoying when your team mates have a hissy fit when you play more cautiously as they want you to just spot or yolo into a cap and get nuked due to you always being spotted first.

 

I feel like the Druid was not really thought out, It's like the Wargaming devs thought "Let's make a RB Daring with fast firing guns, but we need to compensate" then they went overboard with the cons. It has the same consumables as the Daring but worse concealment, no torps and only one ammo type, less guns and for a marginally better reload it's not worth it.

 

I feel like if they gave it the same concealment as the Daring or even just a better Hydro and/or torpedoes it would help it be as useful as the Daring, but I doubt they will change it as they are pretty stuck in their ways. It was not really worth the Research grind. Maybe I should have went with the Gibraltar?

 

What skills/consumable should I go for? Range or reload?

 

Had a game in the Druid where I could do nothing useful, the moment I opened up I get hammered and an enemy DD was just able to spam torps into my smoke without me being able to respond or even close the gap.

[Karkong_the_Impaler]

For some reason I can make Gibraltar and Druid work. But I wouldn't recommend either ship to anyone, they're very much special interest and neither ship is forgiving or plays like anything else with the all (well, mostly) forward battery, the dragster acceleration and lack of HE and Torps. Even the Druids derp charges are... special.

 

Mostly I'd say, some ships just click with you - or they don't. If they don't, tough luck, play something that does.

 

I'm not opposed to a buff for the Druid because I rather like the ship, but seriously, it's good. Gibraltar on the other hand positively needs a buff. If you check the best players on the ship for their solo win rate in that tub, most don't go above 60%.

[WingedHussar_Adler]

15 minutes ago, FloatingTarget said:

Thanks for the advice all, I understand it needs to be played more like a cruiser. It does get annoying when your team mates have a hissy fit when you play more cautiously as they want you to just spot or yolo into a cap and get nuked due to you always being spotted first.

 

I feel like the Druid was not really thought out, It's like the Wargaming devs thought "Let's make a RB Daring with fast firing guns, but we need to compensate" then they went overboard with the cons. It has the same consumables as the Daring but worse concealment, no torps and only one ammo type, less guns and for a marginally better reload it's not worth it.

 

I feel like if they gave it the same concealment as the Daring or even just a better Hydro and/or torpedoes it would help it be as useful as the Daring, but I doubt they will change it as they are pretty stuck in their ways. It was not really worth the Research grind. Maybe I should have went with the Gibraltar?

 

What skills/consumable should I go for? Range or reload?

Gimmic of Druid is that he has bouth turets on front so he is smallest siluete of all ships with 100% guns uptime.....i think only AP was overkil....maybe she would be OP with HE.....dont know.....right now it is not ship to take...vampire II is much stronger ship for same recourses

[tocqueville8]

Just now, FloatingTarget said:

It was not really worth the Research grind. Maybe I should have went with the Gibraltar?

 

What skills/consumable should I go for? Range or reload?

I got Druid as my 3rd RB ship, even before the Ohio, and I still play her regularly. I find her weaker than Daring, but also more fun to play because of her uniqueness. FWIW, this is my build:

 

 

The 4-point skill is the most debatable:

• CE still makes sense, but some DDs outspot you so much you'll feel blind without RPF to hone in on them
• I take range because it allows me to farm from a safer distance while in the open or, if I smoke up, to still hit BBs and cruisers in the second line if the first-line DD disappears.
• better players than me might even go all-in for DPM, like the excellent @MalteseKnight_ did in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG2cbNrHS18

[FloatingTarget]

Had another battle, got melted by a Forrest Sherman, if a RB ship that's suppose to be a good DD hunter can't even compete with a coal ship, then what's the point? The Druid was utterly outclassed. Fire rate, torpedoes, SAP, seems like the Sherman gets everything, I get it's a strong ship but I felt like there was really no way to fight them.

 

I just don't understand why Wargaming would add a RB variant of a ship that's just generally worse than the ship it's based off. I feel a little salty about this because it feels like I wasted so much time Research grinding for a ship that feels a bit like a con. Should have went with the Vampire II.

[Hirohito]

40 minutes ago, FloatingTarget said:

Should have went with the Vampire II.

Imo overrated ship as well.
Crawling smoke is often just terrible at T10, whereas standard RN short smokes aren't.
The playstyle works well at T7 (Haida), but T10 is a completely different ballgame due to radar prevalence, torps counts, and there being a ton of competitive DDs around that you can't simply brute force like at the generally weak DD tier that is T7.

[Karkong_the_Impaler]

3 hours ago, FloatingTarget said:

Had another battle, got melted by a Forrest Sherman, if a RB ship that's suppose to be a good DD hunter can't even compete with a coal ship, then what's the point? The Druid was utterly outclassed. Fire rate, torpedoes, SAP, seems like the Sherman gets everything, I get it's a strong ship but I felt like there was really no way to fight them.

 

I just don't understand why Wargaming would add a RB variant of a ship that's just generally worse than the ship it's based off. I feel a little salty about this because it feels like I wasted so much time Research grinding for a ship that feels a bit like a con. Should have went with the Vampire II.

Skill issue. In a 1 on 1 Sherman vs. Druid, the Sherman can do nothing but die.

You might want to learn how to blind fire, Druid with it's high fire rate is very good at shooting blind target from smoke and due to the two turrets up front can't reliably be blindfired in return.

Sherman on the other hand is broadside in the smoke most of the time, due to the turret layout - most players go forward and then turn a bit, so they can use all their guns. Due to it's high rate of fire, there is rarely a doubt about the ships attitude and you can home in on the midships. You can chunk half their HP before the Sherman even can accelerate away when you get him at short ranges. Or if you're hydroed by a Sherman, just charge and mop the floor with him.

 

The only DD that isn't food for the Druid is the DD that doesn't get spotted.

 

But again - some ships click, some don't. Sorry man. Druid and Gibraltar rarely do.

[Itwastuesday]

Eh? Daring best, sure, but I'd still like a Druid. There's something satisfying about slamming targets with dd ap.

 

Sounds like you expected it to be slightly OP, perhaps because of the effort RB ships take? My advice is that get Ohio and forget about RB forever.

[Ruthus]

Daring - Play like a DD

Druid - Play like a CL

 

Your mileage may vary.

[FloatingTarget]

7 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

Eh? Daring best, sure, but I'd still like a Druid. There's something satisfying about slamming targets with dd ap.

 

Sounds like you expected it to be slightly OP, perhaps because of the effort RB ships take? My advice is that get Ohio and forget about RB forever.

 

No, only that it be a little bit better or at least comparable to the Daring in terms of usefulness.

[MadBadDave]

While in a North Carolina playing escort I came across a division of a tromp and daring, the Tromp was in a bad state limping having fought the Druid whilst his Daring div mate stalked the Druid 🙄,  my own hp (30k) was low so for some stupid reason Druid turned his attention to me instead of finishing tromp, so while my secondaries and mains are popping off at the Druid tromps also firing meanwhile Daring continues to do absolutely sweet fa, less than 7k distance from the Druid, with the arrival of red BBs I withdraw, Tromp dies and then Druid kills Daring, we won and I survived to the end.  
 

Had Daring engaged the Druid 3vs1 would’ve seen a dead Druid,  but alas poor DD players get what they deserve ; nothing.

 

Point; as mentioned previously regarding op DDs it’s not the ship it’s the person put the daring player into the Druid and 1vs1 would’ve been enough.

 

As for Daring I’ve got her in port gathering Dust, it’s my least played T10 DD,  Druid I don’t have and have met once in battle which was a parting stale mate, yes it fires very fast but accuracy especially at distance is not great.  
 

For me Ragnar is better, it’s the one DD I take a wide birth of unless I’m in Harugomo.  And that’s solely becuase Hp is similar between the 2.

[Ymustihaveaname]

19 hours ago, FloatingTarget said:

No, only that it be a little bit better or at least comparable to the Daring in terms of usefulness.

I think you need to forget about Daring comparisons when playing it and play it totally differently?